So you would like to become an alpha tester?

محروم.كوم · #1 09-09-2010, 06:10 AM

As part of an effort to improve our communication and incorporate more customer feedback into our products direction, I would like to announce that we are currently accepting “applications” to be an alpha tester for vBulletin. Anyone who has a current vB license (3.X or 4.X license) is welcome to apply to be part of this group.
We are looking for 5-10 customers who are enthusiastic about vBulletin and are interested in providing direct feedback on the product to us. Ideally you will have some familiarity with the vBulletin product, and irrespective as to whether you like it, or loathe it, you care about it

Being an alpha tester will provide you with the following:
A direct feedback channel to our development and QA staff

A complimentary non-transferable full vB4 suite license for the purpose of evaluating our Alpha releases – available for the duration that you are a tester.

Ability to confirm known bugs in the software (also known as “bug scrubbing”)

Ability to “flag” bugs that contain fixes that you have confirmed do work.

Ability to access alpha/beta releases of our software

Be first in line for evaluating any additional products that vBulletin may wish to develop/release in the future.

Participate in focus groups and have greater influence over vBulletin’s future direction – we regularly will provide alpha testers with mockups/ideas/concepts, to share with you what we are thinking about in terms of our product’s direction, and attempt to get your feedback on them.

In return, what we will be asking of you:
Download and evaluate our alpha releases and provide feedback/report issues on them in a timely manner

Agree to and sign our non-disclosure agreement

Assist in prioritizing (scrubbing) outstanding bugs that have been raised in vBulletin

That you participate in the group with the best interests of the vBulletin community at heart. Having access to greater information about the future direction of vBulletin may be beneficial for your own website needs, but we ask that this is not the sole reason that you participate in the group, and instead you utilize it as an opportunity to assist in furthering the development of the software.

To submit an application, we would ask that you complete the following questions:

(there are no right or wrong answers!)
How long have you been a customer of vBulletin?

How did you find out about vBulletin originally?

How many vBulletin licenses do you currently hold?

How would you describe your technical ability with both coding and database infrastructure?

How would you describe your UI/designing skills?

What version of mySQL and PHP do you use? Explain your hosting environment in detail

Are any of your forums in languages other than English? If so, is the language RTL? Is it UTF8?

What do you feel are vBulletin’s software’s greatest strengths?

What do you feel are vBulletin’s software’s biggest weaknesses?

What do you foresee are vBulletin’s greatest opportunities for improvement?

Would you recommend vBulletin to a friend? (why/why not?)

Why are you interested in being an alpha tester for vBulletin?

Being accepted into the alpha testing group will be based purely on the merit to your responses to the above questions. Unfortunately we expect the number of applications to greatly outweigh the number of testers we are currently looking for, and we apologize in advance if we don’t have a spot for you. If in the future we are looking for additional testers we will place you in consideration.

If you are accepted into the alpha group – continued participation in the group is at the discretion and agreement of both parties (vBulletin Solutions and yourself).

To submit an application please start a thread with your responses to the above questions in the following forum:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum...g-applications
(your response will go into moderation, you will not be able to view/edit your response once submitted, nor will you be able to view the responses of others - you must be a current licensed customer to be able to post in the forum)

We will be accepting applications for the coming 2 weeks, at which point we will review the applications and reach out to you. We look forward to hearing from you __DEFINE_LIKE_SHARE__