UPDATE 1/19: Internet Brands has allowed me a partial refund, minus a $35 “processing fee”, whatever that is, I can’t find it documented anywhere on their site. Oh well, I’ll feel better knowing I’m not locked into vBulletin anymore. The company’s last reponse is at the bottom. Notice how they still refuse to acknowledge that their software is buggy or that customers are complaining about it.
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I too was suckered into taking Internet Brands approach of “taking a risk” (their words) of purchasing their new vBullletin 4.0 Publishing Suite. A purchase Internet Brands encouraged licensed owners to buy prior to seeing anything about vBulletin 4.0.
Well, I got a hold of it, tried to install it to a test server, and after a few database problems, which I don’t know were vB related, or had to do with my version of MySQL or the existing database, I got it almost running.
Almost, meaning the CMS didn’t work as described, which didn’t mean a lot to me, as I’m not too interested in the CMS at the moment.
But then I got a lot of problems with search results. I can’t even figure out why search is only working half assed. It seems vBulletin is indexing only random posts, even after rebuilding the search indexes. This is a known problem even on vBulletin.com forums. Just try searching for something on the vBulletin site itself. The search speed seemed to be longer also, even getting one PHP timeout, but I need to do more tests on that to see if it’s really vBulletin choking on that.
The other problems I noticed, and confirmed by other people, was various issues the hybrid/threaded modes of the forum. Not many people use this feature, but I do, and some people insist on it, and it was a working feature in vBulletin 3.8. Sometimes the hybrid mode works, other times it doesn’t, and it doesn’t seem to matter what browser I’m using.
The other problems with vBulletin seem to be css related or template issues with other products or customizations, just from the limited experience I’ve had with it. Note that I haven’t tried to add any modifications or templates to my test base, which is barely functional for a production environment. I’m glad I didn’t try to do a full converstion from 3.8 to 4.0
The Licensed Customer Feedback forum of vBulletin is full of complaints from licensed customers, wondering when the bugs will be worked out. Internet Brands has been trying to release a 4.01 version, but it’s been pushed back.
There isn’t any word about what 4.01 is supposed to include, but hopefully around 100 of the most severe bugs are fixed, resolved, or at least addressed.
All this heartache made we ask vBulletin for a refund for the Publishing Suite which I purchased. Some people had received refunds so I thought I’d give it a try. I was denied a refund by Internet Brands because they thought my reasons for a refund weren’t justified.
So I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau (you should too if you’re denied a refund). Here was my complaint:
Sneakydave.com and other properties are on a new VPS server from Slicehost. Great host, great system, more freedom, and more x64 headaches!
I’m still trying to finish redirecting all of the old Mambo based articles to WordPress, so bear with me. The Wagglepop articles are next, so Ray, don’t think that information is inaccessible!
“The Search” is the best way to find anything on this blog, but it’s at the bottom of the page!(?)
SneakyDave.com and other properties are now part of the Solid Mean Technologies network.
I gotta commend Tulip Tools for playin’ these fools. I’d be tired of it after about a week of lawsuit threats. If I had a time for whenever a website thought it was going to revolutionize auction and ecommerce sellers….
The story is the same. Some idiots (starring Scott Ceci and Richard Austin) start an auction site with buggy, free, or slow software, starts making promises, blah blah blah, how great things are gonna be if people just “join now”, etc. etc. Making illusions of a co-op, MLA. blah blah blah. Insert your own AuctionPie / Gegy / BidBay story here. And then the fools go on the attack when facts start emerging about it.
In this case, it appears Swoopbug (and/or Showbidz.com, seem to have the same owners/operators) was offering some kind of “shareholder” agreements to sellers that participated, and obviously, that’s kinda a no no unless you’ve got the right documentation and approval for that type of crap.
Anyway, because TulipTools dared ask the questions about all the ownership name changes on the auction site’s name servers, and then dared ask for documentation about how this “shareholder” plan was going to be executed.
BargainBloodhound starts the discussion here, and it doesn’t take long for somebody’s panties to get twisted.
http://community.tuliptools.com/index.php/topic,19006.0.html
Stay away from these wannabe eBay sites like Swoopbug and Showbidz. They’re bad juju. Visit TulipTools often. They got a good eye for the liars, profiteers, spammers, and scammers.
This is how Richard and Scott try to put TulipTools in their place, by issuing multiple “press releases”. MORONS!
http://www.prlog.org/10420375-tuliptoolcom-scammers-forum.html
http://www.prlog.org/10420425-internet-cyber-stalkers-alan-polonsky-joins-tulip-tools.html
Other “professional” Swoopbug press releases:
http://pressroom.prlog.org/Swoopbug/
By the way, SHOWBIDZ is a trademark of Musicland Group, Inc, and this POS site I mention has nothing to do with Musicland Group, Inc.
Also, I’m not a member of TulipTools, nor do I know any of the owners personally. I just like the way they ask questions.
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