Action Alert! Funds Needed for vBulletin Licence Upgrade

**Nick** · 10-20-2009, 07:46 AM

Earlier this year I bought an "owned" vBulletin license which was meant to last forever, requiring only a small annual fee for continued updates. Unfortunately, vBulletin has since changed their payment plans for the upcoming release of vBulletin 4.

It seems I have until the end of October to pre-order vBulletin 4 or end up paying double later on. That's why I'm asking for contributions to help cover the cost. I'll go ahead and order vB4, but have set the ChipIn to last an extra month to give me time to recoup some of my money. If you can spare a dollar or more, I'd be very grateful.

Here's are the details from vBulletin:

vBulletin News: Announcing the Presale Event for vBulletin 4.0 Suite and Important License Changes

We hope your community is enjoying the flexibility and power of vBulletin™. As always, our goal is to offer a great product at a great price, and we are dedicated to helping you build and grow successful online communities.
Over the last 12 months, we have been building vBulletin 4.0 to be the most powerful forum and social publishing software. Today, we are proud to introduce the new vBulletin 4.0 Publishing Suite product that includes the power of the vBulletin 4.0 Forums with a seamlessly integrated content management system (CMS) and blogging platform.

As a preferred customer with an active license, we are excited to offer the vBulletin Publishing Suite at a pre-sale discount price of only $130 (over 50% off regular price). This is a truly limited one-time special offer giving you $120 off the upgrade price but will expire on Friday October 30, 2009.
Learn more about vBulletin Publishing Suite features and pricing on our new website: http://www.vbulletin.com/

Beginning today, we are introducing new a license structure. vBulletin is changing to a one-time owned license fee for each major point release. That means no more annual renewal fees. Once you purchase a major point version, you’ll receive maintenance, security and minor point releases for the life of 4.x.

You have the option to keep your current active license until it expires (according to the 12 month term and conditions). For the remainder of your active license, you will continue to receive support and have access to forum software updates, including vBulletin 4.0 Forums. Once your license expires you will only be able to access the 4 Series software updates by switching to the new one-time owned license. For more information, visit the vBulletin FAQ.

Over the last 10 years, our products have offered an exceptional value and we look forward to bringing you the best and keeping you as a loyal customer. Our team is expanding in number and expertise in order to develop more innovative features and to deliver them faster. We are investing in exciting development areas such as new products and services for 'Big Boards' and mobile applications and look forward to helping you grow your community.

Sincerely, The vBulletin Team

**Nick** · 10-23-2009, 02:45 AM

Big thank you to those of you who have donated. If you haven't already, take a look at the screenshots for vB4. It looks pretty fancy. We'll be able to turn these forums into a full website. Can't wait!

**JonH** · 10-23-2009, 03:02 AM

Originally Posted by Nick

Big thank you to those of you who have donated. If you haven't already, take a look at the screenshots for vB4. It looks pretty fancy. We'll be able to turn these forums into a full website. Can't wait!

The screenshots look like a welcome change for forum sites, it's about time!
The function of a discussion forum site isn't much different from a social bookmarking site, the major difference is the layout. I'm sure in the future HotaruCMS can be set up as a discussion forum site with the appropriate developed plugin suite and skins.

Sorry a little off topic

**Nick** · 10-23-2009, 03:57 AM

It's interesting you say that. A lot of people use forums as social bookmarking sites by posting threads with article snippets. If the "Rate thread" option was more prominent, they would have much more of a social bookmarking feel to them. But then again, there's a world of difference between Digg and any large forum.

**Nick** · 10-29-2009, 03:54 AM

Update: I've put in our order for vBulletin 4.0. It's still in early beta so I can't download it until the "Gold" release, whenever that may be.

vBulletin.com has upgraded their own forums which you can check out here.

If you haven't yet contributed to the ChipIn and would like to help out, please do!

**Nick** · 11-14-2009, 01:04 PM

Another update at vBulletin.com. They've put up a demo of the "CMS" version of vB4.

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

**Nick** · 11-20-2009, 05:28 PM

Well, we've upgraded early, jumping into a beta version about a month before the final "Gold" release is expected. You'll notice some problems here and there, and I had to disable the CMS front page for the time being, but otherwise the forums seem to be working fine. Not sure where I'm going to squeeze in the old RSS, Assembla, Twitter and Facebook icons though...

If you're interested, you can see all reported bugs in this version of vBulletin here:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/proje...sversionid=g18

**JonH** · 11-21-2009, 05:53 AM

Looks nice! All the thread functions are much easier to read. Don't forget the demo link with the Assembla/RSS/Twitter links.

**Nick** · 11-21-2009, 06:49 AM

Okay, I've added those links as tabs for now. I expect to be upgrading weekly so will hold off on more template editing until things settle down.

Latest: I broke the front page so have disabled it until at least the next beta version comes out.

**JonH** · 11-23-2009, 01:21 AM

A few bugs I've noticed:

The add rep box gets covered up by the page body (Firefox).

When I go to rate a thread is says I've already rated it. Maybe it's set up for only 1 admin.

Edit: OK maybe the first one i mentioned is my own memory bug