new appreciation for SMF after trying vBulletin

[permutations]

In looking back over the thread, I see now that the guy was a "customer support manager."

I think I know who you mean. I had a problem with an exceptionally obnoxious and not-too-bright person there who signed his messages with the title "Customer Support Manager". He's kind of a control freak, not very technical (he didn't know what a session cookie was), and goes by the assumption that anything that goes wrong is the fault of the customer. I had such a problem with this guy that I asked to be passed along to someone else for tech support. He was one of the reasons I returned vBulletin for a refund.

The "Customer Service Manager" I'm talking about would be fully capable of sending a message like the one you received - arrogant, accusatory, and never acknowledging any kind of error. That was one of the many things that drove me crazy about him - nothing was ever his fault or vBulletin's fault. When vBulletin's email server went down for three days (it just happened again, too), he insisted it was my server and not theirs. One of the vBulletin developers said it was their problem and he was working on it, but the Customer Service Manager would never acknowledge it. His messages were infuriating.

Calling his mistreatment of you a "communication problem" is absurd. If it were a communication problem, then when he understood that he'd wrongly accused an honest person of underhandedness and stealing, he should have been falling all over himself with contriteness for being so offensive, regardless of who you were. But even if he isn't evolved enough to say "mea culpa", you'd think he'd apologize (however insincerely) upon realizing he'd offended someone in a position of power. Or maybe he's too dumb to realize that press people are in positions of power.

I'm curious whether it's the same guy. PM me his name, if you feel like it. After trashing him so thoroughly in a public forum, I wouldn't now post it.

[jdougher]

No, no, I wouldn't post his name. I don't see a PM feataure here.

I actually doubt now that vbulletin has a dedicated PR person, much less dept., which may be one of the problems.

[ÞħÞ]

PM System

[permutations]

No, no, I wouldn't post his name. I don't see a PM feataure here.

I sent you a PM.

[permutations]

Postscript (in case anyone reading this thread is interested)... It was the same guy.

[bloc]

oh, yes. Quite interesting.

[IMPAQ]

vBulletin's paid subscription feature turned out to be so lame

Really?! Wow.

That's the only reason I'm considering vB for that feature alone. I'm blown away.

Any progress on your paid subscriptions mod? I know hxxp:craftster.org [nonactive] has one set up on their site, but the person wasn't gracious enough to share the mod here. Will you be sharing your version of the modification?

[permutations]

Quote from: permutations on July 14, 2005, 07:47:53 AM
vBulletin's paid subscription feature turned out to be so lame

Really?! Wow.

That's the only reason I'm considering vB for that feature alone. I'm blown away.

Use the Google toolbar to do a search on "paid subscriptions" within the vbulletin.com Web site, and you'll get a nice big eyeful of all the limitations and problems. Short list:

- It's not integrated with forum registration. Worse, the subscription link is buried in the user control panel - who's going to find it there?

- They support a bunch of different payment methods (more were added in v3.5), but their method of integration is antique. All these payment processors have the ability to send post-back messages to your site so you can respond immediately with a script. But vBulletin uses a cron job to check every so often whether payment has been made.

- vBulletin offers no way to integrate with your own database tables. I am setting up an online store as well as the subscription service, and I want everything together in the database so I can track financials.

- Everything is controlled by user groups, and there are serious limitations in how user groups can be assigned as a function of subscription payment. For the gory details, see the vbulletin message board. Don't try the docs - the paid subscription feature is very poorly documented. Read the posts.

- Until v3.5 (that was close to release when I returned the program), they did not even have automatic renewals. Their cron job sent out reminder messages.

- You can't email members according to their subscription status - e.g. about to expire, etc.

My paid subscription implementation will integrate tightly with the forum and the rest of my Web site, and will be linked with the SMF registration process. SMF has some SSI functions that allow you to do that pretty easily. I have other e-commerce sites, so I've already written the code to handshake with PayPal (and 2CheckOut, but I dislike their Version 2 software and don't use them anymore). I've already set up my database tables to talk to PayPal, and have read enough of the SMF Web site and source code to know how to go about coding this. So I've done most of the thinking. I just have some code to write.

I'm simultaneously working on a post moderation mod (that I'm almost done with) and the paid subscription mod. These are the two pieces that I'd originally bought vBulletin to get, but I so disliked their implementation that I decided to write them myself. I have a tight deadline because I intended to buy these features rather than code them.

Any progress on your paid subscriptions mod? I know craftster.org has one set up on their site, but the person wasn't gracious enough to share the mod here. Will you be sharing your version of the modification?

It's not a question of "graciousness". A paid subscription mod is far more work to get into a distributable state than your average mod. I'm happy to write something for myself, and then spend another few minutes to package it up and share it. But to write this mod in a general enough way that it doesn't require the user to be a programmer would be significant work - the type I like to be paid for. The subscriptions are tied to a custom template I'm using for my site, and also the code is tied to a database I created for the requirements of my individual business. Maybe after I finish writing it, it won't look so hard to generalize, but right now it doesn't look too likely that I'll publish this.

I'll definitely package the post moderation mod to share with others.

[Elijah Bliss]

Hmm, member statistics have existed since YaBB, so it should be in all SMF versions...  It's on the Board Index under [More Stats]. 

Here's the direct url for it on this forum: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?action=stats 

Also if you want to see the posting trends of individual members you can click: Show general statistics for this member. in their profile.

[IMPAQ]

It's not a question of "graciousness". A paid subscription mod is far more work to get into a distributable state than your average mod. I'm happy to write something for myself, and then spend another few minutes to package it up and share it. But to write this mod in a general enough way that it doesn't require the user to be a programmer would be significant work - the type I like to be paid for. The subscriptions are tied to a custom template I'm using for my site, and also the code is tied to a database I created for the requirements of my individual business. Maybe after I finish writing it, it won't look so hard to generalize, but right now it doesn't look too likely that I'll publish this.

I'll definitely package the post moderation mod to share with others.

Oh, I thought we had a tight knit community here. Nevermind.

You know one of the support folks at phpBB stayed online with me through AIM  for 4 hours once trying to sort out a problem. Not saying I'm looking for that. I'm saying I would think I would find the same community spirit here. (Not saying everything over there is perfect, cause they obviously have their own problems.)

Thanks, though.

[permutations]

It's not a question of "graciousness". A paid subscription mod is far more work to get into a distributable state than your average mod. I'm happy to write something for myself, and then spend another few minutes to package it up and share it. But to write this mod in a general enough way that it doesn't require the user to be a programmer would be significant work - the type I like to be paid for. The subscriptions are tied to a custom template I'm using for my site, and also the code is tied to a database I created for the requirements of my individual business. Maybe after I finish writing it, it won't look so hard to generalize, but right now it doesn't look too likely that I'll publish this.

I'll definitely package the post moderation mod to share with others.

Oh, I thought we had a tight knit community here. Nevermind.

You know one of the support folks at phpBB stayed online with me through AIM  for 4 hours once trying to sort out a problem. Not saying I'm looking for that. I'm saying I would think I would find the same community spirit here. (Not saying everything over there is perfect, cause they obviously have their own problems.)

Thanks, though.

Am I being ungenerous, or are you demanding more than is reasonable?

I'm not independently wealthy. If I need a mod for my own use and can publish it without too much pain, I do so. I took the time to update Grudge's Visual Warning mod and have been supporting it. Later today I will be publishing a post moderation mod. Packaging a mod takes time and so does supporting it, but I can afford to give this much time so I do. I cannot afford to spend a very long time writing custom code, without compensation, that I, personally, don't need.

You've described how you have freely accepted the generosity of others - you've installed open source software, and received hours of person-to-person technical support at no cost. How nice for you. Open source authors make their money through tech support, so you got a real bargain. What have you given back to this community? How many mods have you published?

[bloc]

Oh, I thought we had a tight knit community here. Nevermind.

You know one of the support folks at phpBB stayed online with me through AIM  for 4 hours once trying to sort out a problem. Not saying I'm looking for that. I'm saying I would think I would find the same community spirit here. (Not saying everything over there is perfect, cause they obviously have their own problems.)

Thanks, though.

There are still some of us that write code/offer help for free though... even for people that are not programmers( which means most people ). So don't be discouraged , it might be a way yet.

[bloc]

You've described how you have freely accepted the generosity of others - you've installed open source software, and received hours of person-to-person technical support at no cost. How nice for you. Open source authors make their money through tech support, so you got a real bargain. What have you given back to this community? How many mods have you published?

I think its generally understood about this...no need to snap back at someone who is just eager to have a feature?

[permutations]

I think its generally understood about this...no need to snap back at someone who is just eager to have a feature?

It may be generally understood, but not by this individual.

I know from another thread that many people want this mod. If I can publish it without too much hardship to myself, I will. That's all I can say.

I thought I gave a useful critique of vBulletin. I would have liked to have seen this myself before I purchased (and returned) it. But no comments on that. ::sigh::

[permutations]

I had planned to publish my paid subscription mod, but circumstances make this impossible. If you want to know why, see these threads:

why no help?
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=44775.0

typo in wrapping custom actions tutorial
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=43978.msg322514#msg322514

[mennou]

can u find somehow to publish it?   at least us test it  see how it works..

[bloc]

I had planned to publish my paid subscription mod, but circumstances make this impossible. If you want to know why, see these threads:

why no help?
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=44775.0

typo in wrapping custom actions tutorial
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=43978.msg322514#msg322514

Why the hard feelings? There will probably be quite a few thankful people if you do this mod, why not focus on that and forget this other stuff?

[permutations]

Why the hard feelings? There will probably be quite a few thankful people if you do this mod, why not focus on that and forget this other stuff?

This isn't out of malice - not at all. I just posted a message that explains:

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=44775.msg323431#msg323431

Unknown has not been treating me in an even-handed way. He dislikes me, and either ignores my posts (most of the time), or responds with extreme rudeness - very angry and insulting. I'm not imagining this. When I confronted him about this yesterday, he confirmed it openly. The quotes and links are in the message I linked to above.

I wanted to be part of this community and contribute to it, but that's not possible when the Lead Developer is actively pushing me out.

[1MileCrash]

word. When [Unknown] saw "Latest Member: permutations", he said "I think im going to hold a grudge against this guy, just for the heck of it."

[dtm.exe]

This isn't out of malice - not at all. I just posted a message that explains:

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=44775.msg323431#msg323431

Unknown has not been treating me in an even-handed way. He dislikes me, and either ignores my posts (most of the time), or responds with extreme rudeness - very angry and insulting. I'm not imagining this. When I confronted him about this yesterday, he confirmed it openly. The quotes and links are in the message I linked to above.

I wanted to be part of this community and contribute to it, but that's not possible when the Lead Developer is actively pushing me out.

I'm sorry, but your accusations are not true.

-Dan The Man