UBB situation is a joke

[Pilot]

I still have a UBB license and now and then look at their site.

Can you believe that UBB 6.1 is still in BETA! Now up to Beta 2.1 !!

They finally are admiting that UBB 6 is heavier on the server.

They are still promising basic features like who's online and polls for 6.2 soon (actually Ted said September so they've missed that already).

I paid these guys for another years member access back in January and I have had no value from it since they have still not produced a functional and performant release of UBB 6.

Of course in the meantime I migrated to VB but the delays are simply a joke over at UBB land. To cap it all they are moving the UBB support forums to OpenTopic so the users can enjoy the superior features of OT.

That really says it all - a site that chooses another BB product (albeit one they make) to host the support BB of UBB.

Oh- and InfoPop have just bought WWWThreads. They will develop it in PHP to offer more scalability for self-hosted boards...hmmm.

http://ubbforums.infopop.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=25&t=000032

Of course they will keep developing all three BB products! I have heard that line many times before in the software business.

My personal view is that IP have realised that the Perl and flatfile format of UBB is a dead-end.

[WizyWyg]

Have you read their recent postings on "flat file"

They "glorify" that its better than db backend


They also nitpick Vbulletin because it uses MysQL
Dont they know that at least with Mysql, it can be converted to other SQL database with a little tweaking.


Can't admit when they are wrong.

[glha12]

WizyWyg, I believe you are lying and are making up what you are saying just to make Infopop look bad. Show me where Infopop said about flat files being superior to a database backend and show me where they nitpick Vbulletin because it uses MysQL .

Where is your proof? Without proof your comments are meaningless and no one should believe them as you are obviously lying just to bash Infopop.

Regards,
glha12

[Pilot]

What does WWWThreads use for data storage?

That should tell you what they are thinking.

UBB 6 in my view has been a major disappointment - early versions were slow, and later versions seem to have data-loss bugs that are still not resolved - it's been in beta most of the year.

I made the right decision to stick with UBB 5.47 until VB 2 was ready and then migrate. I think they (UBB) will stablise UBB 6 and then provide a migration path to WWWThreads for future developments.

Any site that bans customers for criticising them has be a supplier to avoid. I am banned from their board even though I made only polite, factual (but critical) comments.

I encourage any UBB users thinking about migrating to VB 2 to make the move. This is a better place - time has stood still on the other side.

[mjames]

Guys, please read: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...threadid=21277

Not supposed to discuss other forums, it doesn't make anyone look good if you are bashing.

[Skeptical]

I personally believe that new threads shouldn't be started to promote/bash other bb's. BUT... if someone brings up another topic and it somehow gravitates toward the discussion of another bb, I think it should be ok to let people express their opinions to a point.

The last thing we'd want is for this place to become another draconian bb.

[Pilot]

No, it says not to promote other boards - I am hardly doing that.

Chit chat is to discuss anything - so this is entirely within the rules.

[Martin]

Originally posted by glha12
WizyWyg, I believe you are lying and are making up what you are saying just to make Infopop look bad. Show me where Infopop said about flat files being superior to a database backend and show me where they nitpick Vbulletin because it uses MysQL .

Where is your proof? Without proof your comments are meaningless and no one should believe them as you are obviously lying just to bash Infopop.

Regards,
glha12

Actually, they have been trying to convince people of this for a long time, at least since vB came on the market and proved to be far superior in speed and ease of customization. They even went so far at one time to list "superior flat file storage system" as one of the "features" of UBB.

I won't go into any infopoop bashing, though. The product I run and support says everything I need to say on that matter.

[WizyWyg]

Originally posted by glha12
WizyWyg, I believe you are lying and are making up what you are saying just to make Infopop look bad. Show me where Infopop said about flat files being superior to a database backend and show me where they nitpick Vbulletin because it uses MysQL .

Where is your proof? Without proof your comments are meaningless and no one should believe them as you are obviously lying just to bash Infopop.

Regards,
glha12

Damn, sheesh, all you have to do is search the forums there.
IM A UBB user as well as VB but I have not updated UBB since version 5.46a (which was sucky to begin with).
I WAS disatisfied with the product for the price I paid for it, and never renewed my license. I wanted something more than a forum that took 1 min to search for something (that's flat file for you)

Though, after seeing their "support forum" as they call it, I was even more disgusted that they (the programmers/developers) of the board could take such a "arrogant" stance on Flat file vs DB backend support (ANY db backend support).

If anything I have everyright to "complain" based on my experience with the two softwares. vBulletin is far superior in what it has to offer, though UBB has its uses (yeah, for the "beginner" webmaster who wants the least amt of work in running a forum)

[MattR]

Originally posted by glha12
WizyWyg, I believe you are lying and are making up what you are saying just to make Infopop look bad. Show me where Infopop said about flat files being superior to a database backend and show me where they nitpick Vbulletin because it uses MysQL .

Regards,
glha12

Not only has Infopop taken that position but their moderators and other paid staff have repeatedly suggested that a database backend is inappropriate for this type of application.

(They are somewhat right about MySQL, of course ).

Take an informal poll -- find the 5 largest UBB boards. Then find the 5 largest vB boards. Compare speed, number of posts, users, etc.

Compare features, and perform a search on each one. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak!

(By the way, this is post 600!)

[Marco]

http://forums.ford-diesel.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi

Living proof that UBB can handle a lot of posts, too (this particular one has more than 500.000 posts and runs just fine, as far as I can see).

[JamesUS]

But there are vB forums with more than double that figure.

I'd also be very surprised to find a UBB supporting, say, 500 concurrent users browsing the forums.

[Marco]

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/

This used to be a UBB with anywhere from 300 to 600 concurrent users browsing the board... except, they converted to vBulletin now

[f150guy]

Originally posted by Marco
http://forums.ford-diesel.com/cgi-bi...ultimatebb.cgi

Living proof that UBB can handle a lot of posts, too (this particular one has more than 500.000 posts and runs just fine, as far as I can see).

I think that Ford-Diesel is living proof that UBB6 that large will work just fine if the site owners are willing to compromise their forums a bit to make it work. I seem to recall the bear of a time that Jason had when he migrated to UBB6. He was forced to archive ten of thousands of threads to readonly status just to get his server load to a usable level...

http://forums.ford-diesel.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=6&t=001070&p=

Please note that this is not a shot at Jason or Ford-Diesel.com. As purveyors of similar subject matter, he and I converse every now and then about the state of Ford trucks online.

[Pilot]

WWWthreads seems to be based on Perl or PHP and MySQL, IP have said they will only develop the PHP version which only uses MySQL currently.

So IP have bought themselves a PHP/MySQL bulletin board. Well what does this tell you?

It tells me that this will be their main platform in the future for their downloadable BB - they can reuse some of their features from OT without too much effort. UBB is effectively dead (IMHO).

WWWthreads (sorry UBBThreads) may get other databases added but they are essentially taking "if you can't beat them - join them approach" to VB vs UBB.

Short term though it will lead to transition problems and an opportunity for VB to take sales from both product lines.

This is only my view of course... but what a U-turn. One wonders how long they have been planning to "drop" UBB?

Certainly the UBB development effort has been half-hearted (and some would say half-baked) - what a waste of time re-writing UBB 6 to use twice the CGI calls of UBB 5 (due to lack of static HMTL).