The vBulletin Meltdown, and Great Customer Service from IPS

I’ve been following the situation at vBulletin with some interest for a few months now, from the acquisition of Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd. by Internet Brands, Inc. to the recent upgrade of their company forums and pricing structure changes. It’s been quite the dramatic few months, coming to head lately in what can only be [politely] described as a negative press frenzy. From heated forum topics and “expose” blogs, right through to a feature on The Register. Several ex-employees of Jelsoft have also been less than complimentary regarding the way that Internet Brands are now running the company. Scott MacVicar (ex-Jelsoft employee and PHP Core Developer) posted on his Twitter account: “So sad to see the company I helped build up screw customers over. Glad I bailed when I did.”

There has been word from some sources that the vBulletin team have been banning members for negative posts on their company forums, something Jelsoft were previously proud to be flexible about allowing. “Since Internet Brands took over [vBulletin] and started changing things around, I have been quite critical of them on their public support forum, and this has escalated to a crescendo this week,” one paying customer told The Register, requesting anonymity. “[On Sunday], they inexplicably banned quite a few people, myself included, for their complaints.” He also said that the company has deactivated his “quality-forum support,” which means he can no longer download software modifications from vbulletin.org. And since his banning, his support tickets have been ignored.

When I asked Ray Morgan, General Manager of vBulletin Solutions, for comment on why he felt there was such a negative response to the new pricing changes, he responded: “We disagree that reaction has been bad. We’ve experienced record software sales since vBulletin 4.0 went on sale, demonstrating an overwhelmingly positive response.” Adding that the company “don’t believe a small but vocal minority should be taken to represent the entire vBulletin community of tens of thousands of customers.” The problem that Ray seems to be missing is that the “small but vocal minority” are the core community of enthusiasts, the people who spread the word about the product, many of which have been part of that community for over five years. Internet Brands may be seeing record sales on their books, but those core users that made the product a success, are now looking to move to other forum software providers, and many of them are choosing Invision Power Board, arguably now the leading community software on the market.

In response to a recent interview with IPS Chief Software Architect Matt Mecham, the ex-Lead Developer of vBulletin, Kier Darby, commented that “IPB3 looks like the current state of the art for forum software, well done to you and your team.” Having worked on vBulletin 4 himself, this is quite a cutting review of the software that Ray Morgan describes as “an incredibly robust product with unrivaled forum features.” Including “virtually unlimited configurability, customization and permissions management.” IPS have also publicly commented that their own company forums run on a single virtual private server, which compared to the five server cluster (including two web servers and three database servers) that the vBulletin customer forums are powered by, is quite remarkable. When Internet Brands finally managed to reopen their forums after the seemingly disasterous upgrade, their cluster ground to a halt, Ray Morgan told me that this was “due to our customers’ extremely high interest in seeing the 4.0 product live,” adding that “the initial pattern of usage was characterized by people eagerly exploring every corner of the site. It was like Christmas at Macy’s (or, for our U.K. customers, post-Christmas at Harrods)” and  that “overall performance has been better on 4.0 than it was on 3.8.4.” Other sources who have seen the code suggest that the initial server troubles were more likely caused by a horribly unoptimised code-base, and new features that are all but guaranteed to bring servers to their knees – notably the new search index – a feature that was dropped from IP.Board 3.0 in it’s beta program as a result of significant MySQL table locking problems.

Invision Power Services have taken the recent events as an opportunity to showcase what they’ve learned from their previous mistakes in regard to criticisms about being overly corporate, by being open in their opinion on the situation, providing clear and detailed answers for confused vBulletin refugees, and arguably most notably, lowering their prices. Charles Warner, the company’s President, noted on their company Twitter account that “IPS understands many clients use IP.Board for their livelihoods and we take our responsibility to them seriously.” A sentiment that will tick a lot of boxes for concerned forum owners. IPS have, however, taken the situation with note-worthy humility; Matt Mecham shared his views with me: “I find the current situation to be most disheartening for everyone who has an interest in [vBulletin]. Knowing that the original developers felt so despondent by the new management that they chose to walk away from a job they held for 9 years or so says more than I ever could about the situation.”

As someone who has worked with community software for over six years, it saddens me to see this situation come to a head in the way that it has. Jelsoft had a great product in vBulletin, and were a strong player in the forum software market. Unfortunately, Internet Brands seem hell bent on destroying that reputation, and with it, they’re taking away one of the best sources of innovation for the other providers: competition. I truly hope that Ray Morgan, the vBulletin team, and Internet Brands as a whole, recognise the damage they are doing to their product, and manage to turn it around before it’s too late.

If you’re a vBulletin user, a recent IP.Board convert, or anyone that works on or with community software, I would love to hear your thoughts. Please leave any comments below.

Disclosure note: I am not an employee of Invision Power Services, however I do hold a moderation position at their company forums. The position has not influenced this post in any way, other than to provide me a dual-sided view on the situation. Quotes from Ray Morgan were requested and received via email on October 28th by myself and have not been modified.