aPaddedCell Article: Goodbye vBulletin, Part One: Reasons to Switch

Wow! That's awesome.

Are you going to start on Drupal 5 or Drupal 6?

jGirlyGirl wrote: Are you going to start on Drupal 5 or Drupal 6?

Drupal 5, looking forward to 6 though, I've tried it out and it looks good. There are big speed improvements too I hear.

*** EDIT ***
I've also started a thread about this on vBulletin.com. Only fair to tell them why we're leaving, hopefully it'll help them improve their product (unless my article is totally wrong of course!).

Wow, thanks for the link. I hadn't seen that, love the look of those .info files for themes, just plonking regions into the .info file of a theme is a fantastic idea. Even creating a starter theme that just has a .info file, I wanted that functionality the other day!

Being able to theme forum-topic-list looks good too. Soooo exciting!

Hey, nice write-up. I must agree with most of that. Now I'm really looking forward to part 2, the new forum, and Drupal 6 all at once.

A few items in the article caught my attention:

• You do still have to worry about licensing with Free Software, as it's only free because of a licence whose conditions need to be met upstream and downstream.
• A hybrid human-readable + performance-optimised template storage system might be ideal. Flat-file for editing definitions, and optionally compile/serialize/cache -- possibly to a SQL db, or an object file -- for performance.
• You're likely right about vB not being architected for security, but regular MVC doesn't mix with security easily either. Maybe an aspect- or context-oriented approach would suit, on top of MVC.

I think I could handle a bad interface, bloated HTML output, and commercial licensing, but it would drive me nuts if I had to constantly change my templates to fit around the latest version. I'll have to look into drupal a bit more, but I'm quite satisfied with my CMS of choice

Great article! A few things to add:

1. Features

Features are good but only if you use them. Of the list posted in the article, I'd guess that we regularly use about 60% those features (and some we could definitely live without). And yet they are here, bloating the code, making the site slower and more difficult to use.

3. Templates

You really have no idea how bad these templates are if you haven't seen them. They are a nightmare to work with, overcomplicated code everywhere, condition after condition to determine whether certain features are turned on or not. There's a reason why you never see significant modification of the vBulletin interface. And then, as Liam said in the article, even if you do try to change things you get warning messages after every upgrade and have to comb through the code to see what's changed.

4. SEO

I think the bloated code has something to do with this. We are excited to see how our rankings and search traffic change when we move to drupal. Unfortunately it will probably take a few months to see the difference, but we believe it will be worthwhile.

Liam - I think you could have gone a little further with the introduction. Don't be too afraid of criticism. Remember this graphic.

absolutecross wrote: Looks like they found a half baked excuse to close your thread on vb.com...

Yes, I PM'ed the community manager (or whatever his title was). He told me, quite politely, that the conversation was closed because it was just a series of rebuttals and wasn't going anywhere. I did explain--to both him and the person who accused me of only writing the article to get visitors to aPC--that the article took approx. 14 hours to write, that I agonised over it, and could have spent the time more remunerative work.

Basically I think they wanted an excuse for closing the thread and that guy gave it to them. I did notice that even one of their programmers couldn't find much fault with the article, basically nitpicking about flat files and use of the word 'bloatware'. If they hadn't locked the thread I would have answered his post, although that's mostly my fault as I left it for a day or two before going to reply (too late). It's sad that they didn't let the thread play-out as a lot of the members were using it to voice their own concerns with vBulletin, it could have been a great way for them to learn the ways their customers want the software improved.

In Jelsoft's (or whoever owns them) defense, they did let me voice my opinion before locking the thread, and it probably was a conversation that was going to ramble on forever. I just wish they hadn't insinuated that I'm a liar and made it look like the article was only written to gain visitors to my site. The guy who pointed that out did reply to my PM and turned out to be a nice guy, he thought there were some valid points in the article. Really though, if I were just doing it for the visitors the article could have been dashed off in five minutes: 'vbulletin sucks' blah blah blah, vbulletin is t3h suxxors (never mind why it just does 'cos I said so, innit) etc. etc. etc. But it wasn't dashed off!

Overall they were polite, did the right thing but for the wrong reasons. My impression, after that experience of the Jelsoft community, is luke warm. Although posting an article like that is somewhat like entering the lions-den.

absolutecross wrote: (e.g. usually people bring up the obvious things like private messenger, subscriptions, etc

Those modules are available, but as I was saying in this post, there're problems with them. By the time TWF moves over, those problems will be fixed (they're mostly pretty small).

absolutecross wrote: I dunno, but Drupal (and open source in general I think) seems to get under your skin, motivate and excite you (er well it does for me at least haha). Drupal is not perfect, but it is constantly improving at a pace that I can actually see on a daily basis. It's reason to be excited

Absolutely! I know what you mean.

absolutecross wrote: (my site, tutorialforums - now neverside

Don't be afraid to provide a link old chap.

absolutecross wrote: I've been working on writing up some of the more subtle details in my "If only Drupal's forums could do XYZ" list

Are you planning on publishing that on one of your own sites? We'd be glad to publish it on aPaddedCell.com, with a nice linky to your site (if the article fits in with our readership of course!)

Thanks very much for your excellent post Dave! It's great to get some encouragement. I'll definitely be hollering for you when the public beta comes around.

Megan wrote: Don't be too afraid of criticism. Remember this graphic.

Yes, I was remembering that graphic! The intro wasn't great, I admit it, but that graphic did stop me from destroying the rest of the article with fear.

Abhi wrote: You do still have to worry about licensing with Free Software, as it's only free because of a licence whose conditions need to be met upstream and downstream.

Hmmm, true-ish. I'm not sure how I should be worried about that, upstream is trusted because of posts like this on the Drupal forums. I know they're looking after things and that it's GPL all the way. As for downstream, well am not sure what can be done about someone stealing my code if I don't know anything about it, so I don't really worry about it. I will continue to not worry about these things until I have to: it's a bit like worrying about being run over by a bus when sat on the toilet. I can't be arsed.

Please do feel free to enlighten me why that's completely the wrong attitude to have, I was being silly (as opposed to trolling) in the paragraph above.

Abhi wrote: A hybrid human-readable + performance-optimised template storage system might be ideal.

Which is exactly how Drupal works I believe. Flat-file templates for the human-readable themes -> SQL DB cache table(s), modules often have their own cache tables -> user. Although caching is only performed for anonymous users (I believe).

Abhi wrote: You're likely right about vB not being architected for security, but regular MVC doesn't mix with security easily either. Maybe an aspect- or context-oriented approach would suit, on top of MVC.

You're bound to be right about that and I was barking up the wrong tree. I think vBulletin are usually bang-on when it comes to security, the product may not be architected for security, but they're faster than most at fixing any problems that do arise. Everything's relative too, they beat the nearest competition (phpBB) hands-down!

I suppose what that means is that by adhering to MVC and object orientation-ish (well the good bits of object orientation: implement an interface in a modular fashion) principles Drupal has better quality code. More maintainable, easier to spot bugs, easier to refactor. That's what I was trying to say: Drupal will get less security issues because of: once and only once. If most functionality is made-up of calls to highly optimized functions, then security bugs will appear with less frequency and will be easier to fix. Drupal (the core modules at least, can't speak for third-party as they may not adhere to the API) seems to have very few problems, I thought it was probably due to them using good software design practices. I probably didn't say that in the article, making it seem like MVC is the answer to security issues.

Am amazed you only found those things to talk about Abhi, my programming zen must be improving. Feel the power of my monad!

Well, in my view I do not think VBulletin and Drupal are scripts to be compared. They are 2 completely different types of scripts. One is a forums script, one is a content management system.

You guys switching this board into Drupal? You mean you will integrate it together?

Yes, we thought that since we're running Drupal for the content site, we should consider it as a forum platform as well. We were also considering Vanilla and PunBB but felt that Drupal would be the most flexible.

Abhi wrote: I agree with whoever mentioned in the vB forums thread that MVC is not quite as you described it, but it's hard to criticise a 30-word, explicitly oversimplified definition.

Yep, it is grossly over-simplified. I didn't want to ramble about the subject as the target audience would either not understand or become bored. Should have included a caveat.

Abhi wrote: be aware of exactly what the license (GPL or otherwise) requires and not get too careless about what code you use, or how you distribute it. I guess 'worry' is too strong a word; 'careful' fits.

That's fair enough, was over-exaggerating a bit as I am careful with where code comes from, always check licenses even if I'm only going to be excercising freedom zero.

Abhi wrote: The article was solid because you got to the point and spoke from experience -- you should share more of that in future works.

Thanks very much!

Two years ago I went into the same rut with vB over web design standards. Like MS, they simply won't change, despite change can be good overall for them.

What folks don't understand vB promotes a "old skool" programming mentality. All they concentrate on is code and how to keep appearances among the forum software community (so well known when the whole AJAX rah rah hit the fan 2 years ago, when IBP pushed it), that promotes programming code, not web standards.

As web designers understand, the move is to remove presentation code out, all to be ready for the eventual XML replacement. This transition phrase from HTML 4.01 to XML is via XHTML. Blogs have really taken off with XHTML and most try to comply with XHTML Strict coding, making it a breeze for spiders to index their sites and upkeep their work. The result is blogs getting higher page rankings.

Forum coding is at the exact opposite. It's very programming friendly (why vB has such a dedicated add-on mod site, with plenty of 15 to 20 year-old beginning coders), but the presentation of that code fails because, to date, forum software companies like vBulletin does not have any web designer on staff that can push web standards (most staff was promoted into vBulletin from that mod community, that concentrates on programming).

Years ago they tried to spearhead a CSS replacement movement, but more like a hobby, as they were adamant in not changing their forum to XHTML Strict (it wasn't about old customers with NS4 browsers, but how limiting Strict is with all those bells and whistles your article was referring too). A vBulletin staffer setup a private site to do this and invited us web designers over to hash out the web code. The result was folks like me, who doesn't tout the company line, goes back to the official forum -- after telling the dude organization is needed -- to talk about the hot issue of the day there, and got hit with a ban from that same staffer (remember the CSS site was a private off-duty forum, right?).

That's how vBulletin plays "the game" if you disagree with their direction. Two years later, I come back to get some mods, and the same attitude is there over very trivial matters. Worse, 2 years ago the same dudes got the same treatment, but now "learned" from that community the mores of staying with the status quo.

That's why you won't see them changing, like MS, they have no competition and competition they do have they ban or do the public humiliation scheme.

I haven't tried Drupal, but if Drupal is friendly to suggestions -- not defending turf -- I hope it can give vBulletin and other stick-in-the-mud forum software vendors a run for their money. If for anything, to give the end-customer (why any software company is in business) more choices for their needs. Navigation is just the tip of the iceberg (seems Drupal has taken an idea from DirectAdmin or vice versa ), web design and usability are also factors.

Great article, and also hope more folks write about these issues. We're the content makers, and content makers need software to work to our needs -- not be dictated how/what/why we can do it.

I love vBulletin as a forum, but can't stand it's programming culture. Pure pigheadness, even over the most trivial matters that's important to content-makers.

Well, after this reception by the Dupal side, I'd take vB's snot nosed kids anyday...

http://drupal.org/node/93127

Not only rude, absolutely wrong, and obnoxiously paranoid to go with it.

Adios!

I had a skim through that thread. Looks like someone posted asking how to convert vBulletin to Drupal and it turned into a huge rant about why would you want to do that because Drupal's forum sucks. And you are surprised the Drupal community got grumpy? People show up on Drupal's forums, say Drupal's forum sucks but are not interested in helping to improve it, and wonder why the community gets upset.

What sort of reception do you think I would receive if I went to the vBulletin's forum, found someone asking how to convert their Drupal forums to vBulletin, and started ranting about how they shouldn't do that because Drupal's forum is so much better. And, yes, I do happen to prefer Drupal's forum. But I wouldn't be so rude as to go spouting about it in the vBulletin community.

Michelle

Michelle wrote: What sort of reception do you think I would receive if I went to the vBulletin's forum, found someone asking how to convert their Drupal forums to vBulletin, and started ranting about how they shouldn't do that because Drupal's forum is so much better.

Quite right Michelle. Did Sepeck close that thread? I noticed the reply links have all disappeared (not that I have any desire to write a reply).

Glad you liked the article. Switching is a risk because--as you said--vBulletin is the interface most of our members are used to. But then vBulletin has some problems, whereas Drupal is a pleasure to work on and extend.

It's a lot to get used to, and we could have made the interface a little more like vBulletin's. Although everyone did have plenty of time to give us feedback, but we didn't receive a single comment!

One more thing: we will be changing the design a lot, this is just the start. One step at a time and all that!

Bruce wrote: I have downloaded all the modules from drupal.org to get me started. Is that all I need?

Should be! Best advice is to take a copy of your database, then test the conversion thoroughly. It'll take some time before you're ready to move the live site over, most of your time will probably be taken up matching functionality.

Bruce wrote: How did you get drupal to quote/multi-quote as above? Is it manual or is there an additional module that I haven't seen?

It's manual, but I've seen quote modules used on other Drupal forums. Have a search on the modules list, if you can't find it let me know and I'll hunt it down for you. Also be ready for a drop in functionality, although what you lose in functionality you get back tenfold in ease-of-theming and upgrades (no more fiddling with the upgrades every minor release!).

Don't know about the others on this site, but I never used the auto-quote thingamy.

Welcome to the Webmaster Forums by the way.