vBulletin has always been a very revered product and one of the most commonly used forum software over the years. In the past 1-2 years different vbulletin sub versions in the 3.x series have given us lots of features to play with and also led to the official addons, such as Blog , Project Tools which maybe not as popular as its predecessor , but definitely picked up user interest. With the last few versions, vBulletin also has come up with the idea of introducing a community script and not just a forum software only( not my favourite though ) and also profile customizations.

But recently vbulletin website and forum also seems top be proceeding towards vBulletin 4 , their next major version. Some of the key improvements which they have announced as of yet includes :

• Cross content search system , facilitating centralized search for forum posts, blog entries and comments and any other supported products
• Better style templates and systems to make more semantic coding and adherence to CSS from the base templating system
• A better look and feel for the base product also using semantic markup
• SEO urls and search engine friendly options
• Options to include advertisements inherently in the script itself
• and a centralized attachment system

Features like these make you clearly feel that they have understood one of the points I had pointed out earlier – that it is time to stablize the main product and spend more time on improvements for the forum administrator. While additional features do sell the products, it is improvements like these that make the customer / forum administrator happy. From the official mini site for this release, I quote

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.

Although they have not yet given any pricing indication, but surely that can come . What they have definitely mentioned that the code is being rewritten. There is still no alpha or beta and no exact time given for us to view it.

Over the past 2 weeks , we have developed vbulletin skins for 2 different websites / clients . One for a flower discussion community forum and now currently a Spanish fantasy gaming website . The 2 new templates that have been developed are quite a bit more colorful than before , especially the Spanish forum .

Developing custom templates is naturally costlier than regular templates, because they are uniquely designed for 1 single customer to maintain their individuality . These templates we do not allow for download directly from our website. Among the last 2 clients i was mentioning, one of them provided their own PSD and our work involved converting the Photoshop design into a fully coded vbulletin template , which could be imported on their existing forum , which also used vB CMPS , along with 13 other vbulletin Addons / Plugins / Modifications. The odd thing , however , is that both times the client / customer requested their “unique vbulletin template” to be a clone of a existing forum site design !!

I have been discussing about the legality of doing this design with a few web designer friends of mine and have also posted on webmaster forums . As of yet , people are of the idea that since the liability of the content – design and text copy , is of the owner of the domain , it should not concern me , as the designer. However , as the designer it should be in my best interests to let the customer / site owner know that he is opting towards probable legal hassle. My friend suggested that i get at least a email confirmation , if not in writing , that it is by his idea the design is being cloned . Furthermore, he also suggested that I should not include a link back to my website / portfolio page – proudly claiming that the vbulletin clone design was done by me / us, thus alienating ourselves from any complaints or such.