What have you been up to whilst waiting for vB4? What are your plans?
 

I hope you haven't just been twiddling your thumbs! :lol:

Personally - we've rearranged our schedule a bit* and come to some realisations.

Current vB sites - short term
Some major updates to these were put on hold (although the design work for each site was completed). You see they all need a CMS system so we've been waiting to see how the vBCMS pans out. Currently the vbCMS does not fulfil our requirements - so we'll wait for the roadmap to see if there's a chance it will in the near future.

New sites
One is currently in beta* forum with stock vB skin - and that will be upgraded to 3.8 with the new look we have designed for it* hopefully by the end of the year. Despite it being designed to be a full SN site* we will only enable forums and profiles as that will make it easier for us to port to another platform if vB4 doesn't shape up by the time 4.1 comes out (or if we feel the need to drop vB for any other reason).

The other is a brand new site that was originally going to be powered by Drupal or CakePHP* but after a lot of research and a lot of learning* we've decided that we're going to use Ruby on Rails (3). Ruby is such a nice language that I immediately felt at home with it* and rails is very* very nice - ideal for the type of sites we want to build. Remember how much I used to go on about how great Drupal is? That's nothing compared to what I feel about Rails and Ruby! :p

Current vB sites - long term
There is a good chance that almost all of our vB sites are going to be ported to custom Rails solutions too. And the main reason for this is flexibility. One thing I've learned is that one solution does not fit all* and I don't think the vBCMS is going to give me the flexibility I want in the time I need - purely because most vB customers just won't need or want that kind of flexibility. Also* by moving away from a platform such as vB or dolphin or elgg - you separate yourself from all other similar sites and immediately stand out* especially if you are quite specific in what you want. I think building from scratch is better than trying to shape what you want from an existing platform - while you save time* you end up compromising too much.

Anyway* I know this kindof sounds like a goodbye thread - but I'll still be keeping an eye on vB as I think it's a fantastic way to get a community up in beta to test the water* then you can see what kind of site that particular market needs and start planning a custom solution (or even just sticking with a forum if that's the best fit). It's been great seeing what my sites need whilst watching them develop as a forum - and they all need different things* even the ones I had first thought would be quite similar.

Unfortunately all this work will take up a lot more time* so I might have to lighten my load a bit and find a new owner for one or two of my sites* perhaps with the appropriate rights to sub-license the designs (which includes front end 'news' based designs as well as forums/groups/blogs/profiles etc).

Anyway* enough about me! What have you lot been up to?