vBulletin adoption of plugin system

[Hostboard]

First off I have been doing this for decades (early 80s if you count BBSs). My first venture to a purely online hosted community was using UBB 5.x (UBB was the leader back then). Back then it was a flat file system, and with my site growing we pressed the envelop and developed a MySQL backend for UBB. As the site grew and we adopted more function/features, it was apparent that there were issues with modifying the code and features "colliding" making additions that much more difficult sincvre you had to modify the core files back then. Being a forward thinker and seeing what other software packages were developing, I proposed a plugin system for UBB back in 2002 (my other moniker 1QuickSI). Being that this is right in the middle of vBulletin v2 development and I am sure JelSoft had a bullseye on InfoPop back then and have always wondered if this post by me sparked vBulletin to start developing such a system? This is the 21st year for my site to be online...

UBB API?

Would be interesting to see UBB to use plugins where you run a config script and just add what you want. An example of what I am saying is done by SqirrelMail. Download your plugin into a directory, run the config, select the module and your all set.

www.ubbdev.com

 

[Nabix]

That is interesting. You never know though. I would assume vBulletin staff would have been poking around other software to check their development stages and pull ideas from.

Side note: I thought UBB was dead. I also didn't know it was $140...

 

[cheat_master30]

That is interesting. You never know though. I would assume vBulletin staff would have been poking around other software to check their development stages and pull ideas from.

Side note: I thought UBB was dead. I also didn't know it was $140...

UBB Classic (the Perl based one which stored content in static files) is dead. But they bought another script about a decade ago, renamed it UBB Threads and now sell/maintain that, which is a standard PHP based system that uses a MySQL database for storage.

UBB.Classic - Wiki - UBBWiki

www.ubbwiki.com

 

[Nabix]

cheat_master30

Ahh... I see. To be honest, nothing about that look like something I would spend $140 on. Not with the options other competitors have.

 

[cheat_master30]

Same here. That's likely why the newer versions of UBB never caught on; they're just not up to the same standard as their competitors.

 

[LeadCrow]

nothing about that look like something I would spend $140 on

UBB v8 was going nicely but iirc their lead dev's sudden demise put a stop to that and they limited their later effort into refreshing v7's codebase instead.

As for wether forum moddability under that form would've made a difference today, I wonder. Many functions are nowaways provided as apis to remote services with very limited addon code that cannot process it independantly.

 

[Nabix]

UBB v8 was going nicely but iirc their lead dev's sudden demise put a stop to that and they limited their later effort into refreshing v7's codebase instead.

As for wether forum moddability under that form would've made a difference today, I wonder. Many functions are nowaways provided as apis to remote services with very limited addon code that cannot process it independantly.

I love older looking more 'retro' style bulletin boards. But I don't think they have a place in a market where they are purchased. Free and open source, yes. For example, I've been working on my own software which I'm either calling RetroBB lol or MintBB (I belive that I uploaded a screenshot in my conspiracy post). Its a side project I do in my free time to burn time. Miss the ol' vB3 era days you know?

 

[LeadCrow]

MyBB had high substitution value for vb3 so many migrated to that when vBS' products started underwhelming.
As you said, nowadays it's difficult to justify paying for software if opensource alternatives are as good or better, but consider that many absolutely need guaranteed or priority tech support. MyBB had hostile policies from back when they owned the mountain and still offers no priority private ticket support, even for money.