Blog Comments

nice blog about your surgery Iain!
and nice updates here

It is a pretty kick ass skin.

Thanks for the positive feedback Trek.

Excellent update! The MMO skin is one of my requirements for moving to VB5, so it's good to see that being done! Also it's really good to see Belazor taking over vbArcade! Nice work all around and it's good to see DBT still kick'n ass every week. =)

Yeah it does not happen that often, but I have seen it, so I figured release the mod. Hopefully some people will find it useful. Just as a FYI I have released some mods on vb.org under my own name, before Decado encouraged me to release small mods like that under the DBTech name. You can find them by doing a search on there for [ozzy47] They are just as supported as any mod from DBTech.
Two of them are up for MOTM but I think only one, [ozzy47] Separate Sticky Threads Collapsible has a chance at winning. It is currently in second place of this month's Mod of the Month poll!

As always, you are encourage to vote for your favorite modification - even if it's not any of mine. It just helps to show the nominees that people care, and support the developer for the time it takes to release mods for free. You can vote here.

There's been a few times when stopping a user over reporting everything has been needed. Usually they stop when infracted. Pretty cool feature tho.

Glad Belazor is taking over the arcade.

We can rebuild him!

Thanks for the positive feedback.

A+ to DBT and the entire team for the batch release of free mods. Nice to have free mods released that are actually useful.

The shitty community is the #1 reason I went back to vB. A shitty company is easier to deal with than a shitty community. Sure, there are good people there, but as mentioned, the loud mouthed jackholes pretty much run the place.

That's what happens when you have mods that aren't paid and have no structure between how they each do their jobs. I blame Kier, Mike and Ashley, it's their business and they are running it like shit when it comes to their moderation / community efforts.

Final update on this: We were going to try a crowdsourced launch of a vBShop port, certain elements of the community over there have made it clear if we enter the market they will do everything they can to slander us and make our lives more difficult.

Sorry to say that the market is so small that it's just not worth it. We've decided against releasing any mods to the xenforo modding community for the forseeable future.

If you want DBTech mods the only place to get them now is vBulletin v3, 4 or 5.

Originally Posted by hornstar

There are definitely a few people who are ganging up on you guys in that thread. On a positive, there was a lot more people supporting you in that thread tho.

The way I look at it is, XF still has a fairly small market share compared to vBulletin. However even with the amount of money IB have and the amount of advertising they pour into it, the place feels so quiet and empty compared to what it used to, and each new major release keeps getting worse attention and more people wanting to get out. If this trend continues there has to come a time when sales will slow down and make the market share much smaller. Now I believe you guys are still doing really well (with the best day ever 4 weeks ago) however I am not sure I would want to only be involved in vBulletin right now. I'd be making my way into XF for several reasons. 1. Make a presence early. 2. Build a good reputation and show not only those few people but everyone on XF what dbtech is truly about, a great modification company. 3. Build the dbtech brand name further. There will come a time when XF is not a small market share. I'm seeing so many people come to it from other platforms (IPB, phpBB, vbulletin, etc) and to be honest the feeling I get in the place is very positive, kind of what vbulletin.org was like before IB came.

I also like the idea of crowd sourcing, what a great way to get your foot in the door and release a mod at no risk of losing the initial outlay of time. As people buy it and you make profit, than you can work out how much time would be worth investing furthering the product (a little or a heap).

There are some really great vbulletin mods, that are still not on XF. Just because you may not make it for vbulletin (because it is already made on vb) does not mean you can't go and make a new mod for XF (which does not exist on xf). That's one thing i'd be looking into. I'd also be taking a little time on XF to get to know the community outside of just a business mode and promoting your name (like Shaun aka Digital Point) does.

Honestly unless i'm off with my calculations even if vB managed to completely destroy their market and have half their customers leave long term instead of switch to vB5, it will still be over 5 years before xenForo is close to the currently installed userbase of vBulletin.

If i was to examine it from a purely business perspective, touching xF is a terrible idea. There's no profit in it short or medium term, long term relies on the market unfolding the way we need it to and we're going to have to sink a lot of time and investment into the place - not to mention the potential damage to our brand and name from all of the people over at xF determined to spread lies and rumors about us.

They mod market there is VERY unattractive just now for a professional developer partly because of the economics and partly because of how hostile vocal parts of the community are to anything they disagree with (copyright footers, pricing etc). Any professional company going in there has a job to do turning the tide of opinion and fighting against those people on top of the difficulty in breaking even financially.

I was kinda hoping there would end up being another vocal group bigger than the negative group to offset that, but it seems the negative group are much louder and more influential than the positive group. The fact the threads degenerate into people insulting each other and completely ignorning the thread topic while doing so without any punishments being levied (other than the thread being closed so people who WERE following the rules can't have a conversation) worries me as well.

I guess i'm just not seeing the friendly side of the xF community for whatever reason, which is a worry.

Basically I have to decide if the potential gain long term is worth all the headaches and money loss short term. To be honest, right at this very moment, I don't see how it could be. Still, i've not made my mind up yet though, so we'll see if something changes it

There are definitely a few people who are ganging up on you guys in that thread. On a positive, there was a lot more people supporting you in that thread tho.

The way I look at it is, XF still has a fairly small market share compared to vBulletin. However even with the amount of money IB have and the amount of advertising they pour into it, the place feels so quiet and empty compared to what it used to, and each new major release keeps getting worse attention and more people wanting to get out. If this trend continues there has to come a time when sales will slow down and make the market share much smaller. Now I believe you guys are still doing really well (with the best day ever 4 weeks ago) however I am not sure I would want to only be involved in vBulletin right now. I'd be making my way into XF for several reasons. 1. Make a presence early. 2. Build a good reputation and show not only those few people but everyone on XF what dbtech is truly about, a great modification company. 3. Build the dbtech brand name further. There will come a time when XF is not a small market share. I'm seeing so many people come to it from other platforms (IPB, phpBB, vbulletin, etc) and to be honest the feeling I get in the place is very positive, kind of what vbulletin.org was like before IB came.

I also like the idea of crowd sourcing, what a great way to get your foot in the door and release a mod at no risk of losing the initial outlay of time. As people buy it and you make profit, than you can work out how much time would be worth investing furthering the product (a little or a heap).

There are some really great vbulletin mods, that are still not on XF. Just because you may not make it for vbulletin (because it is already made on vb) does not mean you can't go and make a new mod for XF (which does not exist on xf). That's one thing i'd be looking into. I'd also be taking a little time on XF to get to know the community outside of just a business mode and promoting your name (like Shaun aka Digital Point) does.

Ah!, I am glad you guys going to test things out with XenForo!

@hornstar you might want to check this out to see first hand just what the "community" at XenForo is really like: DragonByte Tech add-ons not coming to XF anytime soon | Page 2 | XenForo Community

It's such a shame because Kier, Ashley and Mike are such great guys, yet such a poisonous community seems to have built up around their product.

Originally Posted by hornstar

I'll miss the mention and thread tags the most I think. Next would probably be the shoutbox (by users), I'd love to have the new ad mod and I'd probably get the arcade.

Also what is the difference between a general absence of leave and an absence of leave?

Has darkwaltz4 left?

Mostly just the length of time. Leave of absence means we're not sure when the person will be back working a full DBTech schedule, general leave of absence means we know it's not going to be in the near future.

Both Brad and John are extremely busy with new day jobs and raising young kids etc at the moment so their DBTech work has been taken over by other developers to ensure the mods continue to get the attention and support they deserve while those guys get everything settled in their own lives.

Neither guy has quit/been fired and we're very hopeful that they'll both make full DBT returns sooner rather than later.

I'll miss the mention and thread tags the most I think. Next would probably be the shoutbox (by users), I'd love to have the new ad mod and I'd probably get the arcade.

Also what is the difference between a general absence of leave and an absence of leave?

Has darkwaltz4 left?

Originally Posted by hornstar

I look forward to hearing your new xenforo plans and am glad you have reconsidered it sooner rather than later.

I wouldn't get your hopes up to be honest, the research hasn't been very positive. I've been re-examining the financial aspect since i've had a few people tell me the community is different now etc. So far it's still looking far from profitable. I've got a couple of requests outstanding for some data before I make a final decision though, so we'll see.

I look forward to hearing your new xenforo plans and am glad you have reconsidered it sooner rather than later.