vBulletin

vBulletin

Developer(s)	Internet Brands, vBulletin Solutions
Initial release	2000

Stable release	4.0.0 Patch Level 1 / December 23, 2009; 14 years ago (2009-12-23)

Written in	PHP
Operating system	Cross Platform
Platform	PHP / MySQL
Available in	Official support for English, German, and Chinese
Type	Forum software
License	Proprietary, commercial
Website	vbulletin.com

vBulletin (vB) is a commercial Internet forum software produced by Jelsoft Enterprises and vBulletin Solutions, both subsidiaries of Internet Brands. It is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database server.

Forum product

Since the initial release of the vBulletin forum product in 2000, there have been many changes and improvements. Below is a list of the major revisions and some of the changes they introduced. The current version is 4.0 gold.

vBulletin 1 and vBulletin Lite

Development of vBulletin 1 is no longer active, nor is it a supported release.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 The product was discontinued after vBulletin 2 because there were security issues and it was out of date, and Jelsoft did not want to spend resources into maintaining a non-commercial product.

vBulletin 2

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. Improvements include private messaging between users, attaching polls to threads, unlimited forum nesting, user avatars, and a user control panel.

vBulletin 3

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 as follows:

The templates and style were updated to use XHTML and CSS
Hard-coding of English text was eliminated
Support for multiple languages by use of phrases
A WYSIWYG editor for users to post with
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).

vBulletin 3.5 addressed some of the problems users had with version 3.0. Some of the changes are as follows:

A plugin system was introduced, 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" or "mods" in the vBulletin community) and not having to re-edit scripts after upgrading.
Inline editing of thread titles and post content was made possible via AJAX.
An inline moderation system was provided, 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") was created to let third-parties integrate more easily.
A template history and comparison system was introduced where administrators can store a specific revision of a template into the database, which can be arbitrarily compared against each another.
A MySQLi wrapper was added, which added support for MySQL 4.1.
A database-stored thread-marking system was added. 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; additionally, if you idled for 15 minutes (some forums have longer timeouts, 15 minutes is the default) this information would be lost.

vBulletin 3.6 introduced features such as the multi-quote system, the infractions system, the ability to automatically post threads and announcements from RSS feeds, and podcasting support. The Gold release of vBulletin 3.6.0 was released on August 3, 2006

A first look at vBulletin 3.7 was announced on November 23, 2007.^[1] It was officially released on April 29, 2008.^[2]

File:Wiki vBulletin Admin Control Panel.jpg

vBulletin 3.7.0 Admin Control Panel

New features in 3.7 included an inline spam management & prevention system, thread tagging and tag cloud, thread prefixes, reciprocal friendship between users, public visitor messaging on user profile pages, user picture albums, user-created social groups, user-customizable profile pages, a lightbox viewer for images attached to posts, post edit history, a notices system, multiple human verification systems, and social bookmarking integration.

Version 3.8 introduced more new features, such as social group discussions, social group categories, private message sorting and filtering options, private message history, quick edit for newer types of content (visitor messages and picture comments), social group icons, social group transfers, a private message quick reply box, 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, and dismissible notices.

The latest stable release of vBulletin is 3.8.4 PL2 which was released on December 22, 2009, due to a security flaw. This will be the last update for Version 3, as all focus now is on Version 4.^[3]

vBulletin 4

vBulletin 4 was released December 21, 2009. New for vBulletin 4 is the vBulletin production suite, which includes CMS and blog functions.

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, former lead developer of vBulletin announced the development of vBulletin 3.8 and vBulletin 4.0.^[4] 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

Widget system for single pages

Video BBCode - Popup to the editor that allows a video url (youtube, metacafe, etc) to be input

In the lengthy discussions^[5] which followed this turn of events, additional information was revealed, including that:

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". For users that paid the pre-sale cost for vBulletin 4.0, a message stating that the Beta will be available "sometime in mid-November" was issued.

Other products

Plugging in to the vBulletin core, Jelsoft has released several 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. The latest version is 2.0.2.^[6] As of the release of vBulletin 4.0 "Gold" Blog will no longer be considered a separate product. Instead, vBulletin Blog will become a component of the vBulletin Suite ^[7]

vBulletin Project Tools

A host of tools that supports 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.^[8] It was priced at $60, and updates were available as long as the original vBulletin Forum license is active. After the release of vBulletin 4.0 "Gold" Jelsoft plans to discontinue Project Tools as an active development project motioning to release it to all customers on vBulletin.org due to overall lack of sales ^[9]

vBulletin Publishing Suite

In addition to the classic vBulletin Forum product, customers can purchase the vBulletin Publishing Suite, which includes Forums, an article-based Content Management System and Blogs.^[10] Pre-Orders for the vBulletin Suite began on October 13, 2009 with a reduced $130 upgrade fee for customers with an active vBulletin license and $235 for new customers and customers without an active license until October 31, 2009^[11]. The vBulletin Publishing Suite will be released alongside vBulletin 4.0 Forum product.

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 relies excessively on references to primary sources. Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources.
Find sources: "VBulletin" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)