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Contrary to some suggestions/theories, I do know everything which has gone on (and I mean everything) but it really wouldn't be professional or correct for me to post publicly about any of it.
I also don't want to be held responsible for any repercussions resulting from anything I say - it really is up to the company owners to make a statement, if that's what they decide to do.

I don't have any loyalty to Kier or Ashley but I do respect Mike and consider him a friend and for that reason also I won't say anything.

If the truth is ever known then all will become clear.

I appreciate that doesn't help anyone but it's not my job to update XenForo customers. It never was.

Raza,

You seem like a straight shooter, so I'll respect that and cut straight to it without any sales patter or marketing fluff.

We want your business. I'd love you to convert your sites over from vB and I want you to be happy.

That said, you have to embrace the change and understand that IP.Board is a different product with a different philosophy and culture. The current product is the culmination of seven years of development (and arguably three more spent at Ikonboard, my first BB). IP.Board may have been considered by many as 'the second choice' but it is has never been written as a poor cousin to vB or a knock-off clone. We have made our own design decisions based on the feedback from our customers and through our own development. For what its worth, we brought many features to the market including topic multi-moderation and in-line moderation to name just two. We are the only viable forum system to include Open ID, Windows Live and Facebook log in with an extensible system to add your own. We are one of few forum systems that provide a MSSQL driver with a fully abstracted system to write your own (Oracle, PgSQL, etc).

We took a year out to re-write IP.Board 3. We wanted to write an extensible framework that could speed up development of future applications and provide an excellent base for the forum system. IP.Board 3 did not add many new features. This was a deliberate decision to allow us to deliver 3.0 as quickly as possible.

IP.Board 3.1 is the first release of the new framework to add significant new features. I wouldn't say that it is a direct response to "missing features from vB" but we have had a lot of feature suggestions from recent switchers and we've found the time to implement them. However, we're not simply going to run through a list of vB features and "add in the missing ones" because I don't feel that many are required or suit our product.

We've been progressing very well for seven years. We have customers ranging from scrap booking soccer moms through to Skype, EMI, NBC, etc. I don't say this to boast, but to merely illustrate that capitalising on vBs misstep isn't a "do or die" situation for us. Of course, we'd *love* yours or any other current vB owners business and I'll personally do all that I can to make you happy.

All we ask is that you embrace the change. Draw a line under vB if that's what you want to do and make the switch. Accept that it's a different system. Accept that some features will not be there. Accept that some of your members are going to complain initially. These are all requisites for successful switching. IP.Board is never going to be vB with a better corporate mentality. Several vB owners have switched successfully and are very happy with the software. There is always room for improvement and we've always worked closely with the community to drive the product forwards. But there is never any guarantee that a request will result in an inclusion regardless of who you are.

We have a lot of great things just around the corner. IP.Board 3.1 is shaping up to  be an excellent release. We never do the bare minimum and we always try to improve on an existing implementation of a feature.

This year is going to be an excellent one for us. We have a few more things on the go that will really solidify our position.

If you feel that the time is not right to switch, then wait and see what happens. vB will at some point release a stable product that is useable but one has to ask "what is next?". Do you stick with them in the hope they release an amazing vB4.1 or do you decide that you like our philosophy and outlook more and will happily sacrifice ajax quick reply in return for a feature rich stable platform with a certain and bright future?

No amount of discount is going to answer that for you. And it shouldn't. I want you to switch because it's the right thing to do and not merely because you got a good deal.

Social Groups can be quite useful but we need to think outside the box. Most people start a forum and forget the other benefits of a community in the real world. At the basic level you live in a town or city. That town is divided into neighborhoods, blocks, and groups. However you work together to make the town thrive. If you don't work together and rely on one thing for life, than the town fails. Social Groups can be seen as just another aspect of the online community.

First I would recommend installing these addons:

New Social Groups page layout - vBulletin.org Forum
Mass PM Social Group Members - vBulletin.org Forum
Social Group Calendars - vBulletin.org Forum
Automatic Calendar Reminders - vBulletin.org Forum
Social Group RSS - RSS Feeds for Social Groups - vBulletin.org Forum

You can find more here:
vBulletin 3.8 Add-ons - vBulletin.org Forum

I'll admit all of these should be part of the default functionality of social groups. However let's move on after these are installed. You're still missing file upload functionality but we'll get to that in a minute. So, now you have something approximating the group functionality of Yahoo Groups (minus file uploads).

So the basic layout and functionality is built. We have something to work with now. Now we have to promote the system to our users. By default the functionality is hidden on the Community Menu. While dropdowns have their purpose, they should not hide major features and prevent their discovery. Users probably never use the Community dropdown. We should put a link to Groups directly on the navbar. If you use the default navbar code than you simply need to add:

<td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="groups.php$session[sessionurl_q]" rel="nofollow">$vbphrase[social_groups]</a></td>

If you're using a more modern navbar than whatever your menu system requires. Mine is simply an unordered list. I would suggest changing the social_groups phrase to simply read "Groups" as well.

Next, in the Admin CP, create some categories for your groups. These function similarly to tags. This allows you to control the type of groups created to an extent.

Now, create an "Group Manager" group. All new group owners should be encouraged to join this group. It really should be automated but I don't have the code for that at this specific moment. You might even create a couple of other groups around your site's topic. For example, if your site is focused on ice cream, you could create groups like "Ben & Jerry's Lovers", "Coldstone Fans", etc...

Now we need to advertise this new feature to our end users. There are many ways to do this including email, mass PM (if you have the addon), Sticky Threads, Announcements, and Notices. They all have their benefits but Notices are well most noticable and not subject to spam filters. This addon could help as well:
Social Group Creation Announcement Threads & Private Messages - vBulletin.org Forum

Going with Notices, create a new notice that advertises the feature and the benefits. Our features in groups are Event Scheduling, Photo Sharing, and Intimate (as in small, not romantic) Discussions. Of course this works best if the groups are organized around a cause or geographic region.

There are other addons that publicize new group discussions and show them on the home page. You can use the RSS feed addon above to show and format these anywhere there with a little coding. The main thing is advertising them. Using Groups allows your users to direct the growth of your site. As such they have more of a vested interest in the site's success. Of course for your benefit, they give you an entire new content type to monetize your sites. You can show advertising focused on the content of the group. You can create "subscription" only groups with little issue. All you need is ideas.

Oh, I forget about file uploads. I wish Social Groups had file attachment capabilities on the first post of the discussion. One way to work around this is to create a forum specifically for this purpose and give it a display order of zero. Users can create a new thread in this forum simply to host the files. Then you can link to that attachment directly in the Social Group discussion. It is a pretty messy work around though. I am hoping that the new asset manager can be tweaked to easily allow files besides images to be attached to social groups in 4.0. It will be one of the first things I look at.

Anyway, I hope this gives you a couple of ideas of how to implement social groups in a community. Would like to hear back from people.

Greetings all,

Well, we've had our share of excitement this morning, and since this thread was going on, I hope you don't mind my popping in to explain what's going on over at vb.com.

We decided to take some extra time before bringing the forums back up this morning after the upgrade to 4.0. Briefly, here's what happened.

First, the good news: The installation of 4.0 itself actually went as planned. The upgrade to 4.0 Publishing Suite from the 3.8.4 base product was seamless, and that agrees with the success the alpha/beta team has seen up to this point.

The issues we encountered were related to the fact that the instance of vB running on vBulletin.com has integration points with various business systems: administration, release management, ticket support, the product information site, and more. Cooler heads make better problem solvers, so we chose to investigate and solve the problems with the site offline rather than live to the world.

The issues we ran into are unique to our environment, and they are not things that would factor into a normal customer installation.

Our forums are actually up, running and stable now, but are only accessible to our internal staff. Given that this is such an important upgrade, we're taking our time and being careful, and we're planning on opening our forums back up tomorrow morning.

These "bulk edit" of members...when would you use them and for what?  As a forum admin of 45k members (over 60k signups) the only bulk actions I do are via a plugin I made to delete all members either not activated or 0 posts before a certain date.  What else would I bulk edit?  And I am sure a plugin could easily be made for whatever answer you have.  That's the beauty of mybb imho is the extensibility it provides to the admin.  I can get mybb to do almost anything I need without core file edits.

SMF is simple and it's base layout is terrible.  Yeah it can and should be edited as any default forum should be but that's not the point. Every good looking SMF site I have ever seen has entirely nullified the default layout.

This forum mentioned earlier in this thread:  Metal&Shit Forums

That can be done in about 20 minutes from scratch. It's image changes and some css alterations. That's it. You can make that skin without a single xhtml edit.  That should impress some.  

Now spam...let's discuss this for a second.  I have 760k posts. I rarely get any bot spam.  I mean very rarely.  I don't run akismet either.  I personally find it a problem with too many false positives. The secret is simply moderation.  I have 6 mods now (volunteers) that keep the site running perfectly well.  Spam can be a problem for any site. But most of it is xrummer and I think half the issue is running a site like VB, phpbb, or SMF which are commonly attacked by xrummer.    Mybb is still a bit off the radar.  

Also spam can be curbed by preventing bad signups. You can add hidden fields. I add .ru in my email block filter too (helps more than you think) and I block most of the bad email services like bugmenot and mailinator.  Lots of things can be done that aren't too extreme nor hard to implement.  

If you have spam problems you can't control I am gonna call you a bad admin.  That's how I see it.

Right now I have one of the top 5 post count wise Mybb forums and arguably the #1 most active.  The site runs well on my dedicated. I don't see why a forum with 5 million posts can't be run just as well on mybb as any other software.  They are making imho strong advances toward large forums.  Ryan Gordon has provided some great caching tools and there are things that can be done to really optimize a site and server to get the most out of your hardware.  

There are no limitations imho for Mybb.

Due to the spam hit we had today I have placed a restriction on the number of posts a new user can post in a day.

Starting today any new member that signs up will only be able to make 5 posts in a 24 hour period.

I understand there are people that sign up and become valuable members of a community. I apologize to them for having to do this. I have a zero tolerance for spam.

Just to recap all the restrictions I have set on the new member user group.

• Can not post links.
  
• Can not have a signature.
  
• Can not post status update.
  
• Can not import status updates.
  
• Can not post more than 5 times in a 24 hour period.
  
• Can not edit profile or customize profile.

Once a user has contributed 25 posts they are moved into the Registered Members group which removes the above restrictions.

By default, IPB will store all cached data in the database.  But if you would like to take advantage of a PHP accelerator or content cache, there is support for APC, eAccelerator, Memcache and XCache, as well as for storing data in files.

Admins of larger sites will likely want to take advantage of using an external cache source, but even smaller forums will certainly benefit.  I've seen performance improvements on all of my sites as a result of this simple change.

Your first step will be to make sure you have one of the PHP cache systems installed on your server.  If you make the selection to use a cache sytem and the extension is not available, IPB will simply revert to the default cache store method.

Once you are sure you have the cache system installed, you will need to add a line to your conf_global.php file, to enable the system.

For APC:

$INFO['use_apc'] = '1';

For eAccelerator:

$INFO['use_eaccelerator'] = '1';

For Memcache:

$INFO['use_memcache'] = '1';

For XCache:

$INFO['use_xcache'] = '1';

For disk storage:

$INFO['use_diskcache'] = '1';

Once you have saved the edited conf_global.php file to your server, IPB will begin using the chosen cache method.

If you have more than one IPB forum installed on your server, you may need to use an identifier with the cache method you have selected.  You will need to edit the ips_kernal/classCache/*.php (the file you edit will depend on the cache storage you are using) file.

Find this line -

private $identifier	= '';

Add whatever value you prefer, such as:

private $identifier	= 'forum1';

I hope you will find some performance improvement by using this tip.

Simply put, IP addresses don't have to resolve to anything. Domain names, URIs, addresses are there for human benefit. The computers don't need them at all. Some IP addresses aren't even routable over the Internet (10/8, 127/8, some portions of the 172 and 198 blocks). Some companies like IBM, Apple and HP own their own blocks of IP addresses to use as they wish. Other issues could be the Reverse DNS entry doesn't exist or the server timed out on the request.

You can look at the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) to see which agency they issued the IP address to.
IANA IPv4 Address Space Registry

From there you can go to the agency and see who the IP was issued to within that region.

Any IP address starting with following are guaranteed to be spoofed. These are for private networks and special purposes:

• Begins with 10. (i.e. 10.0.0.0 through 10.255.255.255)
  
• Begins with 127. (i.e. 127.0.0.0 through 127.255.255.255)
  
• Begins with 169.254.
  
• Begins with 172.16. through 172.31.
  
• Begins with 192.168.

IP Addresses that don't resolve can be other computers or bots of whatever kind including spiders for search engines or other harmless data collection.

GTB, on 09 June 2012 - 05:54 AM, said:

Just let me respond in here as you quoted my post from another site.



First of all this , after reading this thread , i now am fully confident that my resignation from vBSEO was one of the best decisions i made. Before speculating any further , i will continue to be in vBSEO team till August 31 to assist them within the days without me. I decided to quit vBSEO a project i worked over 6 years because of people like you. Please don't get me wrong , internet is a free place and you can post anything you want , however many of you are completely spending your only time creating and discussing tons of theories about developers that offer products for sale. As i stated in original thread you copied , you guys think paying 30-40$ for a license renewal fee you guys deserve everything in our lives. In reality this is actually completely wrong. I learned it when i am working with Enterprise level products and the support level offered on those many different enterprise products. Trust me you'll never see fast support responses like vBSEO , vBulletin , Xenforo etc..  



Forum solutions and communities were great example to development world in past. Good competition , many add on companies , different products. It all changed unfortunately with the sale of vBulletin. I know the truth behind the scenes but can't post or talk anywhere about them.  I can't even chat with my friends , basically me and couple other people's freedom's are limited right now. That is my main concern instead of Xenforo being developed or not.



In that post , i just simply stated truths which i've posting on different occasions. I have more then one hobby site running on Xenforo and if i decide to run any other one , i will not hesitate to run or purchase it again. Even if Kier and Mike will not deliver a new version. The product offered for 140$ is still there and usable. It is your personal choice to purchase or not.



However forums that i make money or my company makes money from are business. I can't and will not depend on a script that has a huge law suite going around or future is unknown. That is something i can't do because of my responsibilities to the company i work at.



Final information : My concerns are 99% related to billion dollar company suing a small new start up company. other than that i don't think Kier and Mike will do many things they were accused by in this thread by you and others.



What will happen if someone tries to speak every detail about you , accuse you money grabber thief etc..



Do you really think you have the right to talk tons of garbage about other people ?



Seriously this thread should be handed to a doctor so many will be treated for their paranoia.



there is nothing wrong about raising concerns but taking every word out and create a conspiracy theory is not healthy human beings will do.



I am sad for many people around and good luck with the paranoia world you created.



However correct way is simple : Respect & Empathy

Hi guys,

Firstly, thank you for your concern. It's great to see that there are still those of you out there who stake an interest in AA and its success... please know that we haven't forgotten about you!

We do indeed have something in the works. There is no determined timeline other than "when it's ready." All I can recommend for now is to enjoy the quiet community while it lasts, because it sure won't be forever. And also, as long as your account has a valid e-mail address attached to it, you'll be sure to hear from us when we're ready to get things going again.

Rest assured, AA has not gone down, it will be back, and it will be greater than before.

Probably. Which could be a good or a bad thing. Good because it reduces the useless "thanks" posts. But on the other hand, others may see those "thanks" posts as valuable parts of the community that help illustrate the community's closeness and generosity amongst members.

Personally, if something is more than "just" helpful or something I agree with, I'll "like" it but still reply in a post, but with more than usual. e.g., "Thanks so much; I've been trying to figure this out for weeks and your solution is the only working one I've found."

When you set up the converter to import from vbulletin you name the import. Once the conversion is done you upload the files from the converter tools folder and edit the config.php file and add the name you gave the conversion. Your new IPB install will then redirect all the old vbulletin urls to the new IPB urls.

Please remember that MyBB 1.6 is still in development, in a pre-beta stage.

The forum I set up is for novelty purposes only. Do not look for bugs at this point (as there is no way to report them); instead, explore some of the new features. :) I'll try my best to keep it up to date with the latest revisions, but I can't guarantee anything. Also, I have disabled a few things in the Admin CP (database backups, PHP info, etc.) for security purposes. Finally, I have used a script to load in some fake users, threads, and posts to fill up the forum a bit - you are free to post your own threads and posts.

There are three accounts:
demouser, demomod, and demoadmin

The password for all three of these accounts is:
demodemoDEMO

Enjoy!

http://bellomandesign.com/mybb/

Threads: 4,393, Posts: 57,085, Members: 1,331

Well done AA and more importantly, all the members!

Think of this; if you get helped here and improve your forum somewhat, you start to realise that AA isn't just helping 1,331 members. It's actually helping hundreds of thousands.

So thanks to AA for hosting this forum, and thanks for ALL the members  who contribute.

I can think of a few personally that I've liked reading their posts, such as David, Nick, Soliquay (spelling? - always hard to remember the spelling of that) and some others I can't think of right now. Your posts have helped me a bit, and as a result, you've helped in some sence nearly 32,000 members on my few forums. And I dare to say you've helped somewhat in some sense the 10's of millions of hits we get each month.

hotwheels said:

And this has *what* to do with the original topic?  This is why I was so f*cking glad you guys were banned from vb.com.  You guys would come into any topic and start going on and on about how IB did you wrong.  The sad thing is, a lot of us probably agreed with you.  But I have no sympathy whatsoever for you guys now because you are all just big whining babies with no manners.  It's really too bad you are being allowed to turn AA into your new whining ground.  You can't even keep your whining posts about Big Bad IB in your own forum now.  You have to come into every other post and start going on about them too.  It's one thing if you actually come make a good comeback to my post and stay on topic ("But Lynne, the number of queries is important to me because...... And the fact that the templates aren't cached yet really concerns me because......"), but no, just more of the same "IB wronged me and they are the bad guys and I have a RIGHT dammit to complain and bitch and whine in any thread I want to here on AA cuz I haven't been banned from here yet."

Well, have fun.  You guys are really doing a good job at ruining a good site for the rest of us.

All I did was add the following to the end of the postbit_legacy template:

<if condition="in_array($post['postcount'], array([COLOR=Red][B]1, 10[/B][/COLOR]))"><br />
<table class="tborder" cellpadding="6" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="100%" align="center">
		<tr valign="top">
			<td class="alt1"><div> 
<center>

[COLOR=DarkGreen][I][B]GOOGLE ADSENSE CODE[/B][/I][/COLOR]

</center>
</div></td>
		</tr>
	</table>

</if>

You can change the numbers (in red), and add as many as you'd like, to display the ad(s) after whichever post #s you want.

I haven't made a post anywhere about this vBulletin fiasco, at least up until now.

I decided to make it here, as doing so at the official forums would appear to be unwanted, as well as a waste of time and might even get me banned there. And since a few of the vBulletin "powers that be" seem to be lurking and posting here, perhaps they'll take notice and maybe even listen to what in the end only amounts to just one customer's feedback.

So let me start by saying, that I guess I would classify myself as the "silent majority" type of person.

I'm typically the type of customer that when I get ticked off, I don't say a whole lot, don't make a big stink or create a big scene, instead I just don't return as a customer. And if asked, I'll quietly tell my story to others about my bad experience and explain why I don't deal with someone and won't deal with them anymore. But make no mistake, I'm not just one on to myself, I'm one of a larger "silent majority".

Now having said that, my background is that I started working with forums back at the end of the 90's, when forums really started to become a viable medium for hobbyists and people with specific interests etc.

And at that time, Infopop was the king of the hill with solutions like ubb.Classic which was a time when vBulletin didn't even exist. For those who were around back then and working with forums, I'm sure they'll remember the birth of vBulletin and how it came to be.

Now from what I see, vBulletin is making many of the exact same mistakes in their management approach that old Ted et al. from Infopop made, that eventually led to the more or less demise of Infopop's leading market position.

Now for those who were there, I'm sure they will remember (probably not so fondly I'm sure) that Infopop became really arrogant (among other things) and made a number of critical mistakes like essentially abandoning ubb.Classic and ubb.Threads users and then instead pushing their hosted solution on them, which in the big scheme of things was no doubt much more profitiable for Infopop. And very much like the vBulletin of today, what Infopop did was that they seemed to get into a never ending series of delays, direction changes, management changes, policy changes, pricing changes etc. that in the end left many Classic and Threads users in the lurch. As for their hosted solution, it never caught in a significant way and today it's not really offered anymore.

And once again, just like vBulletin is doing now, when people started to complain and whine, Infopop used a very similar approach in that, Infopop employees started rallying the troops as it were and starting banning overly vocal customers, editing and deleting threads they didn't like and generally speaking, essentially Infopop just dismissed people's complaints and instead of listening, adjusting and changing, they spent a lot of time running around doing damage control and doing their best to spin things so that they always looked wonderful to those not "in the know".

But for those "in the know", what happened was that the disgruntled customers grew and grew and slowly started trickling away to other products and mostly to vBulletin. And with that not so slow migration, not only did a lot of customers leave, but what also left was lot of expertise. So before too long, hackers and coders weren't spending their time and expertise on ubb but instead on vBulletin. And that just led to vBulletin becoming a better and better product.

Now I could go on and on about what I remember and what I think happened, but whatever the case, there is no denying that whatever anyone remembers, the end result is that vBulletin very quickly overtook Infopop and eroded their marketshare dramatically. So much so that eventually Infopop changed their name to Groupee and have all but disappeared from the forum biz at least as a viable option.

I would humbly suggest, that many of that the same ingredients are there today, for Invision or another product, to do the same thing to vBulletin, that vBulletin did to Infopop back in the day.

Now for me personally, I really don't have an axe to grind per se and have been a big vBulletin supporter and booster since moving away from Infopoop. But I'm not too happy right now, as I feel like I've been mislead in a number of ways by the new regime at vBulletin. Specifically in the areas of pricing, license changes and the blog licenses. And it would seem from the uproar that it would appear I'm not the only one who feels the same. And I'm really not too happy with the new approach on the official support forums with the censorship, spin etc.

So to suffice to say, I'm not too happy with vBulletin right now. And I don't really feel the same connection to vBulletin anymore as it doesn't feel or seem the same anymore.

So what I plan to do is, I plan to convert one of my smaller forums to IPB in the next little bit. This particular vBulletin license expired back in September, so there isn't much of a price incentive to stay with vBulletin given the new license pricing. By converting this one little site, my plan is to get used to IPB software and became familiar with installing it, setting it up customizing it, etc. At the same time, I'm going to keep running my other active vBulletin 3.8 licenses until they expire which is sometime during mid 2010 - I guess you could call my approach the "don't cut off your nose to spite your face approach".

When renewal time comes next summer for most of my vBulletin licenses, what I'll do is make decisions at that time on what approch is best for each community - that being to either continue on with vBulletin, or instead move to IPB or some other solution.

Given the fact that it would appear that I'll have no real price incentive to stay with vBulletin at renewal time and given the fact that I'm pretty ticked off with Internet Brands and vBulletin, there is a strong possibility I might move to IPB or other software. But time will tell I suppose.

So I guess the bottom line here is that you could say I'm really not impressed nor happy with vBulletin right now and it has just cost them one license and one community because of it. And that is something that vBulletin should take notice of, because there are many other little "silent majority" types like me who are feeling the exact same way right now and making the exact same decisions right now. And as people slowly move to other platforms, they will take along their talents and skill which will only stand to strengthen products like IPB and weaken vBulletin.

In the end, as the old saying goes, "the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour".

Hopefully Internet Brands and the management team will wake up before it's too late. :2cents: :ohi:

I installed this modification yesterday afternoon - vbStopForumSpam - known spammer lookup for new registrations - vBulletin.org Forum - here on AA as well as on a client's forum - and so far, it's blocked 46 registrations from attempted spammers here.

I think that's pretty good, if I must say so myself! I'll continue to watch how it performs, and see if the spam here reduces. :)

There are modifications available for vBulletin, phpBB and SMF: Stop Forum Spam - Downloads and Contributions
... as well as CSV lists of the e-mail addresses and IP addresses of the spammers.

Nick said:

Well the focus on the vBulletin 4.0 series is more about architecture than it is about the wholesale adding of features. Though through rearchitecture, we can integrate features better, provide enhancements to current content types and build the software better.

In vBulletin 4.0, the Style and Search architectures have been rewritten completely. These are the two biggest issues facing customers today. The vBulletin 3.X style is outdated and cumbersome. Its difficult to add new features to it easily and so that they are usable. So a new style was needed. The style is more than just the look on the top. It required a new engine underneath that was OOP and more under control with vBulletin getting its own XML namespace to handle variables.

The templates are also more self-correcting. This means that when you upgrade, vBulletin will check your current templates against the new default ones and the default templates from the previous version. It will then attempt to make the changes necessary to bring your current templates up to date without any editing on your part. That should make future upgrades a lot easier, especially since layout is no longer controlled by templates but by style variables and CSS. You'll see less template edits overall. This will make it easier for plugins to insert their code, or to control objects through the DOM and makes a lot of new feature enhancements possible in the future.

Search in vBulletin was monolithic. It was written back in 2003 and not really expandable. Too much work to overhaul for a point release and needed a steady focus. Previously each content type needed its own search engine built into vBulletin. This is why when you searched for a term you had to run a search in different areas to find them all. This has been rectified. It also offloads search to additional tables so that you shouldn't have locking issues on the post and thread tables on large boards.

The biggest new features in vBulletin 4.0 are the Content Management System which allows users with appropriate permissions to create articles and pages from the front-end and allows administrators to create Page Layouts using grids and widgets. The big feature is Ad Management. It hasn't really been talked about much but it allows the Administrator greater control over advertising placement and who views them.

Really that is it for vBulletin 4.0. Maybe a few things here and there. Changes to the Style alone warrant the 4.0 version number because its a big step forward to the software. The CMS and Ad Management allow vBulletin to grow beyond the forum niche and makes the software a Community Platform. This is a move that has been several years in coming, long before IB purchased the company at least since the introduction of Project Tools and the Blog but before then is my thinking.

For addon developers, this means that they will need to redo their templates for the release of vBulletin 4.0. Plugins will need to be changed to actually register variables with templates before display and then properly build the template. No more random variables just tossed in templates without order. However the actual plugin system is relatively unchanged so this should not be a difficult task for experienced coders. The amateur plugin developers may struggle with some of the concepts.

That is basically it for vBulletin 4.0 explained right there. vBulletin 4.1 will involve the architecture of database interaction, new content types, and bringing discipline to the plugin system. Again all major undertakings. It will probably be the most significant undertaking in the 4.X series.

Doesn't seem like a lot but vBulletin 4.0 also has the shortest development time of any major vBulletin version. Only 9 months at that. We'll see if they have the resources to get it down to 6 months like they want. Only time will tell that. I know that most people don't have access to the development like I do but I am impressed by what the development team has done and think that most customers will be happy with the new version instead of waiting for 18-24 months to see an alpha of the originally envisioned vBulletin 4.

The following applies to established users not spammers or first post trolls.

Banning an established user should never been seen as a solution but the result of failing to reach a solution. If it does come down to banning, everyone loses in the long run. The community loses the knowledge of the person banned and the banned user loses an outlet. Its in everyone's best interest to try and resolve issues amicably.

Sometimes its inevitable that it would come to this but you should always try to resolve issues before banning. I think people reach for that ban button too quickly. A better solution would be to create conflict resolution scenarios for your staff so they know how to react in different situations and how they should be handled within the community. If a moderator has a problem with a user than they should be encouraged to ignore that user and walk away. Let someone with less emotional baggage handle the issue.

At no point should someone let something like infraction points or warnings snowball into a system ban within a few minutes. You cannot resolve conflicts while you are angry. Each person needs to step back and calm down before things can be looked at rationally. If you ban too quickly you don't know what your missing.

As an Example:
When I was at Sitepoint, there was a user who was very antagonistic and attacked a lot of things. I could have banned him but contacted him via private message. He didn't realize that his messages were being perceived that way and after we talked a while, he said he would think more carefully on the issues that he was passionate about. After that, he became an admired member of the community and eventually became a volunteer staff member. Today he is a professional blogger. If I had just banned him, we would have lost years worth of contributions from him.

Unfortunately, you will not be able to resolve all conflicts and inevitably you'll ban someone but I still think everyone loses in that case.