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Hate to say it but i am thinking about jumping ship to vbulletin - stop me

HortonHorton New
edited February 2011 in Vanilla 2.0 - 2.8
I have been with Vanilla since May 2007. My site had 2 million page view last year and is only growing. It is a hobby that makes me more than 20% of personal income.

I like Vanilla. I like Open Source. I think Mark’s road to success is super cool. I am a fan.

The downside is that I am not a programmer so I am screwed if I get in over my head.There really is not a clear support model. Maybe that changed with V2… I love what I have seen in V2 but every time I install I find bugs and Bonks. I want V2 but I need to know it is going to work. I would go with Vanilla professional but they want $600 to install. I can do the install. I got myself this far….

I am taking a long hard look at vBulletin. Talk me out of it. Tell me why I should hang with Vanilla.
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Comments

  • ShadowdareShadowdare r_j MVP
    edited February 2011
    Well, I could help you install it for way cheaper because I do web consulting as a past time. The main reason Vanilla is offering their services is for main big businesses who want their support for Vanilla directly from the team instead of some third party support.

    Vanilla will be big in forum software in my opinion. Indeed, the mission statement is pretty awesome and the freedom of open source here is a little more outstanding than other forum software.

    The Vanilla team has succeeded in staying up to date with things like social media connections, a profile activity wall, and things like that by focusing more on SEO magic, customized tools, and a fluid user experience.

    It's different from all the major forum solutions out there. It's much more easier to use. You'd be surprised that the majority of people on the web don't know what a forum is and why they would join. Vanilla simplifies it a little bit more and looks more fresh than the generic looks of the other forums we see today. Vanilla focuses more on discussions than getting users with not as important features like signatures and confusing profile options. Though, if you need these certain features, plugins are possibly available.

    These are only my own opinions. My opinions may change later but who knows? Don't quote me on any of this since it's only my two cents. Their idea of a forum is a little more different than most of the other forum solutions out there. Let's hope it stays that way. I know the only thing you don't like is the support model. I think it's overrated as well.

    Choosing a forum software all depends on what you need for a community and what you look for in a forum.

    Add Pages to Vanilla with the Basic Pages app

  • I'm not sure what kind of support you need and how much access, but if its just the day to day running of the forum then http://vanillaforums.com might be of use. The plus plan comes with email support as well. If you are looking for development work, there are some developers around that i'm sure are more than capable of doing vanilla work, myself included. General support is also given by the community, i try to help as much as I can, and so do many others.

    I recommend maybe installing a localhost if you haven't already and installing the latest version of vanilla and subsequently installing new versions locally first, no reason to take down a live site with untested software. There are times when a release will be tagged that misses something, its very easily done if you are trying to release software as quickly as possible. This is why vbulletin takes the other approach and has a much longer release schedule to further try to minimize the bugs and have more testing. This in turn means current bugs take longer to be fixed. So there are weigh-ups between the two development strategies.

    But just by installing a localhost and running a quick test first can prevent having live bugs and bonks. Save your $195, and then you can buy my theme when it comes out. :)
  • you cant support FLOSS and use vbulletin
    the beauty of FLOSS software is its freedom, not just price, but your freedom to use it, modify it, add to and remove to it etc etc. You cant do that with vbulletin. Thats a price you cant put a dollar on.

    A better approach, considering you have an entire FLOSS community at your disposal, is to post your actual issues, your errors, and receive help.
  • @horton - I'm not a developer but look what I did http://leafboxtea.com/discuss

    I know nothing about coding, I fumble my way around with a little css but thats it. I know enough html to make a blog post look nice (usually though, I use Kompozer). I managed to embed a Vanilla forum into WordPress pretty easily.

    You are most definitely not alone here. I moved to Vanilla from SMF and Simple:Press. I'm really, really pleased with what I've found in Vanilla. The look and feel is the thing that makes my site perfect. Vanilla is easy to use on the dashboard side (I don't think any of the forum softwares can claim that...!) and the user end is simplified.

    The model created by Vanilla is where forums are shifting too. I know of forums that are not Vanilla that are put together the same way, because the old models just don't work very well.

    The latest version of Vanilla is what really brought it home for me. In reading the forums, it seems that there are some bugs going on this week, but the latest version let me setup my forum page in something like a hybrid between the old-style hierarchical forums and the new model of open discussions. The categories are there, but its easy for the user to switch views. There isn't another forum software out there that can do that.
  • I can't say this from first hand, but from the stuff I've heard about VB lately, it would be worse than using Vanilla and some of it's bugs. The new version seems to have a lot of bugs and problems with it. Again, I've only heard from people. A lot of people seem to be looking into XenForo.com which is gearing up to release their first stable version in less than a couple of weeks.

    Vanilla, I really like it. Period. I haven't had hardly any problems with Vanilla since when quite a few months before it was actually released. Admittedly, I don't run an actual community on Vanilla, I use XenForo. But I do have a local site and a demo site running for my themes I am working on.

    I personally love how clean and simple it is to use. It's also really easy to design themes for. But it's really a matter of personal preference, and I can't tell you what and what not to do. I am just looking out for you, I'd hate to see you spend the money on a product and feel like you wasted your money on the product(VB).

    Good luck!
  • You guys are turning me around. In truth is I can live with Vanilla 1, my site is doing great. There are some things I wish it did and most of that is promised in Vanilla 2. I am just afraid that if I go to V2 and it goes sideways, I will lose traction with my readers. Plus I have commitments to advertisers.

    This is an interesting experience. On my site I am never the one asking for help. I am the "go to guy" for that subject matter. I like being on the other side of the equation. It is sort of a paradigm shift.
  • RaizeRaize vancouver ✭✭
    #1 reason to stick with Vanilla is because it's better at mobile (among other things). If you switched to vBulletin at this point you'd be moving backwards, it's really that simple.
  • LincLinc Detroit Admin
    I've spent the last year and a half of my life coding for Vanilla in my spare time to free myself from vBulletin's POS software. The idea of migrating to it by choice baffles me, frankly.
  • When you say that you are having problems with Vanilla2 do you mean that lately you tried to install it and it hasn't work? Or was a a past experience. I used to get those Bonk messages a lot, but haven't seen one in a while.

    I can try to help you get it all working, I'm not to great with PHP but I seem to do pretty good with problem solving on forums and whatnot.
  • In late December I installed vanilla 2 a number of times. I migrated data from my production vanilla one site and I set up some new instances. In all cases I found a few bonks but more to the point I found functionality and performance to be lacking. I also suspect that I would have to learn PHP to make the basic template changes that I need. I think if you're a programmer and this is your hobby you take those kinds of things for granted.
    I was thinking about commercial versions of software so I could make a phone call to support person and get help. That is really the one thing that I don't like about vanilla. Open source depends on the communities. That's great unless I need the right answer & I needed quickly.
    I'll do an install this weekend and migrate my current form over to look at it. Nothing would make me happier than to find that I'm wrong and I can stay here and get what I need.
  • oliverraduneroliverraduner Contributing to Vanilla since 2010 Switzerland ✭✭
    I am absolutely happy after migrating to Vanilla 2 FROM vBulletin - which is just not state-of-the-art or probably just too complex/overloaded. In the end it was more a design question, but I am really really happy with Vanilla.
  • RaizeRaize vancouver ✭✭
    @Horton last time i checked, vBulletin doesn't have a support number you can call... it sounds more like your thinking out loud as opposed to making a rational argument one way or the other. if you are making an income from your forum than it should be a simple business decision whether to go with a free/os option or a paid/supported option. either way, good luck
  • RaizeRaize vancouver ✭✭
    edited February 2011
    And just for the record, I am running three separate communities based on Vanilla 2, one of which I migrated from vBulletin with 2500 members. I haven't experienced any errors or performance issues. In fact, Vanilla 2 is better than any other forum software out there from a performance standpoint.
  • lanymolanymo New
    edited February 2011
    @Raize agree about going with a paid option when possible. Curious what trigger your decision to switch from Vbulletin to Vanilla? How is the traffic change, if any ?
    @Horton i think u should get Vbulletin if u can afford it. Have u see the latest CMS Vbulletin? It blow Vanilla out of the water, sorry if i offend anybody by saying that here, but for me, visually for the front end user, there's no comparison.

    http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/content.php

    I think it depends on what you want. Simple i would go with Vanilla. Features with bells and whistles go with Vbulletin. I think you need to understand that the "Feel" of your forum would be different and definitely affect your end users as well. .

    For me, the biggest strength of Vanilla is also it's Achilles heel. It's just not exciting or slick because it wants to be minimalistic. But if you want simple, Vanilla wins.

    There's also another good one, call MYBB, which is "a free Vbulletin" termed by some users. It;s getting increasingly popular, so worth a look as well.
  • RaizeRaize vancouver ✭✭
    @lanymo

    It was an interesting adjustment to go from vB's category focused layout to Vanilla's discussion focused layout. There was a lot of complaining from members, and traffic dipped quite significantly at first. But, like any good leader I had to communicate why I thought the change was beneficial to the community in the long run. Over the past few months, as users have gotten used to the Vanilla style of discussion, traffic has recovered somewhat but still not back to where it was before (due to big hit on SEO.. Google doesn't like it when the link structure of a whole site changes after so many years). But the fact that it's easier for new members to sign up and use the site means it will keep growing over the next few years so I was prepared for the sacrifice. Hell, Zuckerberg has it much worse then me when it comes to making changes to the community.

    vB is a dinosaur. It's bulky, hard to register, hard to use, and overall an inefficient piece of software. I've noticed that traffic on a lot of big vB forums has dipped significantly over the past couple of years due to people spending more time on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Those sites are designed to be dead simple to use, and thats what users have become accustomed to. So when they stumble onto a vB forum for the first time, they are deterred from signing up. Even previous members stay away because it seems like hassle to read through and make a post. Only the traditional geeks who have grown up with vB over the past decade go out of their way to participate in forums like that. So, what I'm trying to say is that Vanilla is the next generation of forum software and to grow a community in today's environment, you have to compete with sites like Facebook and Twitter where people are spending most of their time. You have to provide a similar experience, and lower the barriers of participating in your community as much as possible, which Vanilla does.

    Sorry about the long post, I just had to get that off my mind because people need to start looking at the bigger picture if they want to understand why Vanilla is a superior discussion platform.
  • just install v2 on another server and have a look. Let's see if you can import all data and get it to work.

    the same goes for vbulletin: install on another server and test it!
  • I am thinking that a large amount of my issues with V2 are all about my use of CLEditor.

    I feel a littel dumb since I noticed this issue before. I have a test forum up right now and so far it does what it should. Not totally set up but no crazy bugs except CLEditor.

    My deal is that i just need it to work. I am thinking I am going to stay with VF but may drag my feet on V2 until I can make the change without losing traffic
  • Now all I need is for find a way for my users to live with out a WYSIWYG or find one...
  • LincLinc Detroit Admin
    edited February 2011
    I rewrote the TinyMCE plugin yesterday to incorporate lessons learned from CLEditor, and I find it plays nice with things like Emotify. Once I hammer out the last few bugs, I'll ask the author to re-release it (or make my own fork otherwise).
  • LincLinc Detroit Admin
    FWIW, my users lived without a WYSIWYG for 2 months until I had time to do this. There was some dismay, but the world kept turning.
This discussion has been closed.