منتدى استراحات زايد

This morning* I* too* received the mail. Here's some of my thoughts on the matter.

I'm truly excited to see that as an existing customer I'm entitled to a significant discount. Sure* I have to pay a bit* but for that price I do get extra functionality that until now required extra (third party) addons* or purchasing extra products (like blogs* which I'd like to have* but simply at the moment cannot afford)* and at the same time* the support period of my license will be extended.

However* there's quite a few things left unaddressed that have me a bit edgy.

1) My forum relies quite heavily on third-party addons. As an example* we currently use vBAdvanced as a portal. Will there be any form of conversion tools that will allow me to easily port existing articles and what not into the new vb4 system? The answer to this question will be a major factor in deciding whether I will upgrade now* or wait.

Luckily my forum was only started recently* and yet* already* I foresee many long nights of porting ahead (despite being quite fluent in SQL) to get things converted 1 on 1..

2) Why is there no beta or demo released yet? As pretty much all forums out there use styling in some sort* or any number of the thousands of add-ons that have been released* basically you are asking us to either completely destroy the identity of our forums* or sit idle with our brand new licenses while we wait for all developers and coders to port their styles and systems to vB4* and we'll at the same time be forced to wait and see whether any of the functionality we use now will be subject to a pricing overhaul.

Some of these conversions could take weeks* if not months* and I'm sure not everyone will work for free. I just spent money on 2 PhotoPost licenses* and now I cannot even be sure that will work when I migrate to vB4 (actually* by the wording of your own articles* most likely* it will NOT work* and most likely* I will have to spend even more money to be able to use the product after I convert).

By not releasing a demo or beta* none of the coders will be able to predict whether their products will still work under vB4* something which again* will ensure lots of forum owners such as myself will rather wait than upgrade. At the very least* release a list of all the template names and hooks in there. That way* we could at least start documenting and estimating how much time exactly we shall be spending when we convert.
Alternatively* try and sneak on over to vBulletin.org yourself* and try and test whether the most popular or installed mods there will work on vB4* and let us know! Put people's minds at ease.

3) Why is the opening window for the discount only 2 weeks* especially considering what just was described in point 2? At least give us a demo of what to expect. Let us get enthousiastic about things. Let us see that porting mods and styles will be p*ss easy* and that most concerns are based on fear* rather than fact.

Cheers.