vBulletin

vBulletin

Developer(s)	Jelsoft Enterprises
Stable release	3.8.3 (2009-6-10; 25 days ago) _[+/−]
Operating system	Cross Platform
Platform	PHP / MySQL
Type	Forum software
License	Proprietary
Website	www.vbulletin.com

vBulletin (abbreviated as vB) is a commercial Internet forum software produced by Jelsoft Enterprises. It is written in PHP using a MySQL database server.

1 History
2 Versions
3 Future development
4 vBulletin 4.0 release date
5 Other products
- 5.1 vBulletin Blog
- 5.2 vBulletin Project Tools
6 Modifications
7 See also
8 References
9 External links

History

In 1999 James Limm and John Percival were running a Visual Basic website using Infopop's UBB.classic forum software on VB Forums. As their site grew, they noticed that their software, written in Perl using a flat-file database, could not always cope with the number of users they had. In February 2000, the two decided that it would be better to write their own solution as both were unfamiliar with the software's code and thus unable to optimize it. Initially, it was designed solely as a rewrite of UBB, in PHP using MySQL, and was meant only for their own forum. Other UBB owners expressed interest in the solution, and they offered to sell it to Infopop, but their proposal was rejected. As there was still a demand for the software, Limm and Percival created Jelsoft and released their work as a paid solution, called vBulletin 1.

After subsequent minor releases of their software, the two decided to start working on a new version that would be more than a rewrite of UBB: they wanted to turn their software into a competitive solution for forums. Rewriting the entirety of the product, vBulletin 2 commenced development. Shortly thereafter, Limm became the managing director and Percival the lead developer. To help with the scale of the project, two additional developers, Freddie Bingham and Mike Sullivan were brought on to help finish vBulletin 2. Kier Darby was brought on during the vBulletin 2.0 Beta phase to further development. The release of vBulletin 2 proved to be very successful and is what made vBulletin popular.

In December 2002, vBulletin 3 was beginning development. Percival decided to step down as lead developer and product manager, turning his roles over to Kier Darby. vBulletin 3 was under development for a lengthy period of time—nearly two years—as it went from a mere improvement on vBulletin 2 to a complete rewrite. However, version 3 was finally released in March 2004. In 2005, vBulletin 3.5 was released that addressed some of the shortcomings of 3.0 (discussed later on). vBulletin 3.6 was released as a stable version on August 3, 2006.

On July 4, 2007 Jelsoft posted a topic on their support forum stating that Jelsoft had been acquired by Internet Brands, which promised significant investment in software development.

Versions

Since the initial release of vBulletin in 2000, there have been many improvements made. Below is a list of the major revisions and some of the changes they introduced.

Latest release

vBulletin 3.7.0 Admin Control Panel

The latest stable release of vBulletin is 3.8.3 which was released on June 10, 2009. This will be the last update for Version 3, as all focus now is on Version 4.^[1]

v3.8

On August 4, 2008 Jelsoft annouced that they will be continuing with vBulletin 3.x series. It was officially released on January 8, 2009. vBulletin 3.8 has the following features:^[2]

Social group discussions
Social group categories
Private message sorting and filtering
Private message history
Quick edit for newer types of content (visitor messages and picture comments)
Social group icons
Social group transfers
Private message quick reply
Private message throttling (limit messages sent over a time period)
Private message reporting
Profile privacy (limit blocks to a subset of users)
Lightbox navigation
Thread prefix permissions
Dismissible notices

A full and detailed list is available here.

Prior Versions

v3.7

A first look at vBulletin 3.7 was announced on November 23, 2007.^[3] It was officially released on April 29, 2008. ^[4]

New features included:

Inline spam management & prevention
Thread tagging
Search cloud / tag cloud
Thread prefixes
Reciprocal friendships between users
Public visitor messaging on profile pages with 'conversation' feature
User picture galleries with user comment facility
User-created social groups with invite only and moderated membership options
Extended member profile pages
Customizable member profile pages with admin-controlled styling abilities
Inline editing of custom user profile fields
Lightbox viewer for attached images
Viewable and comparable history maintained for post edits
Extended re-authentication for inline moderation actions
Notices system for navigation bar
Multiple human-verification systems including reCAPTCHA, image verification and Q/A
User change history
Social bookmarking integration

v3.6

vBulletin 3.6 had some changes that were not available in previous versions. It became available for customers to download via the Members Area of the site, vBulletin.com. New features included:

Multi-Quote
Infraction System
RSS Poster Robot
Podcasting Support.

The Gold release of vBulletin 3.6.0 was released on August 3, 2006 [4].

vBulletin 3.6.7 introduced full support for the Project Tools and Blog addons along with several new hook locations.^{[citation needed]}

v3.5

vBulletin 3.5 addressed some of the problems users had with version 3.0. Here are a few of the changes:

A plugin system that allows for modifications of the software without the need to edit the program scripts. This allows a forum operator to keep their modifications (called "hacks" in the vBulletin community) and not having to re-edit scripts after upgrading.
AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) editing of thread titles and post content.
Inline moderation, allowing forum operators to manage threads and posts on their board without having to go through intermediary steps.
An API system (referred to as "data managers") to let third-parties integrate more easily.
Template history and comparison where administrators can store a specific revision of a template into the database, which can be arbitrarily compared against each another.
MySQLi wrapper that adds support for MySQL 4.1.
A database-stored thread marking system. Previous versions of vBulletin relied on a variable stored in the database, and also a cookie, to store information about what threads had been read and not read by the user. However, this information was volatile and did not keep; plus if you merely idled for 15 minutes (some forums have longer timeouts, 15 minutes is the default) this information would be lost.

v3.0

Initially, version 3.0 was intended to be an extension of the 2.x release that would improve performance and user experience. However, as time progressed, it proved to be a complete rewrite. Some of the key advantages over vBulletin 2 are:

The templates and style use XHTML and CSS.
None of the language displayed by vBulletin is hard-coded in English; there's support for multiple languages by use of phrases.
A WYSIWYG editor for users to post in.
Paid subscriptions that allow administrators to charge for certain features of their site.
Multiple views for threads: linear (a flat system), threaded (display of the entire thread tree), and hybrid (a combination of both).

v2.x

vBulletin 2 is no longer under active development, except for security updates. When this version was released, it had numerous new features over vBulletin 1, which it replaced:

Private messaging to allow users to communicate in private.
Polls could be attached to threads.
Nested forums of unlimited depth. This allowed forums to be children of each other without constraints.
User avatars.
A user control panel that allows users to control various board options.

v1.x and vBulletin Lite

Development of vBulletin 1 is no longer active; also, it is no longer a supported release.

vBulletin 1 was the initial release of vBulletin, sporting the same features as UBB.classic. The release was very popular as it was one of the first systems that was written using PHP and MySQL that had the features of UBB.

vBulletin Lite was a degraded version of the 1.x series that allowed potential customers to test their server for compatibility with vBulletin. The product was discontinued after vBulletin 2 because there were security issues and it was out of date, and Jelsoft did not want to spend resources into maintaining a non-commercial product.

Future development

Rumors and hints about the development of the next generation vBulletin product, vBulletin 4, have been dropped by developers and discussed endlessly by users for several years now.

On August 4, 2008, Kier Darby, lead developer of vBulletin announced the development of vBulletin 3.8 and vBulletin 4.0.^[5] vBulletin 4 was described in this announcement as "an extensive rewrite of the vBulletin system. Architecturally, vBulletin 4 follows MVC (model-view-controller) object oriented principles, allowing far greater capabilities in code re-use and extendability." At the time, the requirements of vBulletin 4 were "PHP 5.2.3 and MySQL 5.0.22 or newer".

On December 15, 2008 James Limm, Managing Director of Jelsoft, posted the vBulletin 4 Series Development Update with significant differences from the August announcement.

In August, we announced a major overhaul of the code base. Rather than targeting all of these changes in a single, long-term release, we intend to accomplish all the planned improvements over a number of versions. In order to achieve this goal, the largest vBulletin development team ever assembled is now working within an Agile development process, allowing us to deliver new features into your hands faster.

Each incremental release in the vBulletin 4 series will include improvements in features, usability and architecture. Development efforts are prioritized towards those areas that can provide real, tangible benefits to our customers, at all times with an eye toward maintaining and enhancing the performance and reliability expected of a vBulletin product.

Key features and improvements that will be included in the first vBulletin 4 release are:

Cross-content search system providing a single interface to search across forum posts, blog entries and comments and other supported products

Improved search performance

A fresh design and layout making use of semantic markup and CSS styling

An enhanced style and template system to enhance your ability to change the layout

Controls to assist with the placement of advertising elements

SEO features, including friendly URLs

A centralized attachment system, allowing the sharing of attachments across products

In the lengthy discussions^[6] which have followed this turn of events, additional information has been discovered:

The PHP and MySQL requirements won't be raised as high as announced in August, because the first release will be sooner than previously expected
Jelsoft is now developing a Content Management System which will be fully integrated with vBulletin although it is unclear whether it will be sold separately like Jelsoft's Blog and Projects products.
vBulletin 4 is now being developed and will be released incrementally through 2009, with the first Beta expected "early Q2 of 2009". In a later post, the first Beta got pushed back to "late Q2".

vBulletin 4.0 release date

On May 13, 2009, an internal Jelsoft memo was leaked. This memo stated that the release date for vBulletin 4.0 gold was July 15, 2009. The memo also stated that there will be no public beta of vBulletin 4.0

Other products

Plugging in to the vBulletin core, Jelsoft has released two addons that provide functions to meet more specific needs.

vBulletin Blog

This allows members of a vBulletin community to create their own blogs. vBulletin Blog 1.0.5 was released to the public on April 8, 2008. It is priced at $60, and updates are available as long as the original vBulletin Forum license is active.

vBulletin Project Tools

A host of tools that will support the development of a product through production and life time, with a bug and feature tracker. vBulletin Project Tools 2.0.0 was released to the public on September 30, 2008.^[7] It is priced at $60, and updates are available as long as the original vBulletin Forum license is active.

Modifications

Modifications (also known as "hacks") allow you to modify the vBulletin in many ways. vBulletin's official sister site vBulletin.org gives you the ability to download thousands of modifications which are primarily written by volunteers who are vBulletin customers. The official written purpose of vBulletin.org is:

To extend vBulletin.
To educate members.
To help solve problems.
To support the entire member base professionally and equally.
To provide a place where people can attain and share information about vBulletin.

References

This article needs references that appear in reliable third-party publications. Primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject are generally not sufficient for a Wikipedia article. Please add more appropriate citations from reliable sources. (December 2007)

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=235378