vBuzzetin

[TheBuzzSaw]

I have a love/hate relationship with vBulletin forums. They are extremely powerful and currently dominate the professional forum market (for good reasons). However, I feel that vBulletin has stagnated in the last while. It has reached the point where the team insists on patching up an ancient core over and over rather than overhauling for the modern age.

I am beginning a project codenamed "vBuzzetin" (no, it will not be called that in the end). It will take a few years to complete (especially if I am forced to code the project entirely alone), so, don't get your hopes up that this project will have releases in the next while. I am here to ask for your guys' opinion of vBulletin. What do you like about it? What needs to change?

In offering your suggestions, keep the ideas on the large scale. Ideas like "the User CP link is too small" are not what I am talking about. I am referring to things that span across all vBulletin communities. One prime example would be "the admin control panel (for those who have seen it) is too blasted complicated/cluttered with too many options". To help you spark a few ideas, here are my primary goals with this project.

- open source + free: I am bit tired of vBulletin's ridiculous license costs
- standards-compliant code: This is fuzzy to the casual Internet user, but programmers will welcome this change greatly (table layouts must die); sites will load much faster thanks to standards-compliant code
- better content management functionality: It pains me to see a "site" built around strictly forum threads. The ability to add actual site pages inside the forum framework needs to be simplified.
- native blog support: Again, vBulletin charges an extra fee for blog enhancements. I believe these features should be built in.
- Web 2.0 quality: Needs moar AJAX
- less bloated back-end: vBulletin is just too slow. It loads up far too much junk before doing the simplest operations.
- simpler template system: Making a forum skin is a royal pain. This process should be simplified to where any web designer can put something together.

I realize many of these sound really technical, but you don't have to be. Just share your thoughts with me.

 

[Yaya]

I'd let the baby at least grow to be 3 until you start working on this, Buzz.

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

LOL! You let me worry about my child.

 

[Waluigi911]

Dang... Did you already finish your Youtube project?

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

Dang... Did you already finish your Youtube project?

No, that's in progress. And it uses components that will most likely end up in the final vBuzzetin.

 

[Kirby King]

I tried writing a forum when I was, like, 13. Obviously it sucked (and I never quite finished) but I at least appreciate where you're coming from.

You're not just trying to one-up vBulletin, though, are you? Because there are alternatives out there, some of which likely do things better than vB, and some of which can probably give you more ideas for improvement. I'd just be worried that you don't set out to duplicate something that's already out there. (I haven't really looked at phpBB very closely in years, but I'm under the impression the 3.x branch is much more formidable than 2.x.)

I actually wrote a post on my blog criticizing vB's absurd licensing scheme (which I won't reproduce here), but I have the feeling that's not the kind of thing you're going after....

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

Oh no. I plan on creating my own entirely unique community system. The tricky part is that I do indeed want to appeal to the vBulletin crowd and fullfill that need better than vB does. Do you have a link to your little blog entry? I am interested in your perspective on things.

I am a fairly big fan of phpBB3. They actually surpass vBulletin in several areas but completely fail in others. When I create new sites, phpBB3 is my community weapon of choice (particularly since it is free and "good enough"), but even that falls short of my ultimate desires.