BuddyPress.org

Unfortunately, vBulletin decided that a vBulletin WPMU bridge was not in their commercial interests and locked the thread, despite 30 of their licensed users expressing an interest. The thread, http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=196906, remains readable but not new posts can be made and, therefore, can no longer be used to rally together all the vB users who would like to see it happen.

I swapped a few emails back and forth with vB and they took the time to explain their position. I don’t agree but I guess I can understand their panic; WordPress is one of the few Open Source products that has wiped out commercial products in it’s sector, blogging, and they’re desperately worried that there is no longer that much difference between their $180 product and the free alternatives.

There is, of course, nothing to stop any of you being a bit cheeky and starting your own threads on http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/, innocently asking why there isn’t a vBulletin WPMU bridge

Personally, though, I’ve deciding to transition away from vB – I’ll be keeping my existing vB sites going but, for new projects, I don’t see the point of buying any more vB licenses.

bbPress is pretty bad but I’m optimistic that they will improve over time, especially now that BuddyPress is advancing so quickly. I like the way in which, in BuddyPress, the forums are spread among the groups within the social network – it makes a lot of sense, sort of like wrapping each section of your forum in it’s own homepage, featuring the users who “hang out” in that section.