Review: vBulletin 4

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If you’ve been following me @ twitter or on this site you know I am converting my sites slowly from vBulletin to IP.Board. I did upgrade one vBulletin license to vBulletin Suite. The decision to convert had nothing to do with the software. It had everything to do with the way that Internet Brands, the owner of vBulletin, treated long time supporters of the product. Since converting my first 3 sites I found that being loyal to vBulletin made me keep a blind eye on other products. Now no matter what happens with vBulletin 4 I doubt I’ll ever switch back. IPB and their suite of products is light years ahead of whatever IB can come up with. Damn shame to see the market leader, vBulletin, taking a back seat to IPB.

I did download the vBulletin suite and I did install it using a copy of one of my sites. The rush to get it out the door to stop the exodus of customers to IPB has show how unfinished this beta is. Sure it is called a beta, but, in reality it at best alpha quality. The CMS does not even work on Windows Server if you use IIS. Here are a few bugs I have found and yes I did have the courtesy to post them in the bug tracker or confirm ones that other posted.

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Converting from vBulletin to Invision Power Board

Posted on by AWS9 Comments on Converting from vBulletin to Invision Power Board

All my community sites are powered by vBulletin. I’ve been using vBulletin for 9 years. I was an early adopter after the mess that happened with UBB in the pre-Infopop days. I never thought the day would come when I would have to move to another forum package. With the recent events at vBulletin like the presale fiasco where they want you buy or upgrade to a product that isn’t even available yet to the censorhip and banning of long standing customers on their forum I saw enough. IB doesn’t seem to have a clue or care about customer loyalty.

My original plan was to test vBulletin 4 on one site and then decide if I would upgrade the rest of the sites. After seeing what happened when Internet Brands upgraded to vBulletin 4 and after seeing it in action I changed my plan. All my sites will now be converted to IP.Board. vBulletin 4 offers me nothing. IP.Board on the other hand has features I’ve longed for. OpenID and Windows Live as well as Facebook signon modules. Then there is IP.Converge to easily integrate users across different software platforms.

Anyway this post is to track the progress of the first vBulletin to IP.Board conversion.

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Schwarz Network Opens

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Schwarz Network officially opens it’s doors.

Schwarz Network is the brainchild of me, Bob Schwarz. I own a wide variety of sites and until now never had one place as a news hub to keep the visitors up to date. Our network consists of a wide variety of sites that cover a wide variety of topics.

Most sites are community oriented running vBulletin software for users to interact and share knowledge. Our sites range from technical like Computer Help Forums to off topic like Off Topic Forum and everything in between.

We also offer services to help get your own sites online. We offer server setups and Windows Server management as well as custom software installations.

Browse the site to check out all that Schwarz Network has to offer.

Windows Server 2008 RTM

Posted on by Admin Reports1 Comment on Windows Server 2008 RTM

I recently installed Windows Server 2008 on one of my servers. I was part of the beta test and have installed all the beta versions of Windows 2008 although they were used for bug reporting and as a learning tool. The server it is installed on is the final stop before installing on my live servers. So this is the final look before I upgrade all my servers to Windows Server 2008.

Also coming soon will be a Windows Server 2008 forum

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