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Sita

Customer
Hello! I'm sorry if this is the wrong place for this post. Please move it if this is the case.

I am currently setting up my own new website and have spent the last few days looking around and installing mods. And then I come here and find everything I have been installing, except as fully supported versions. I find this to be a very good thing, even if it does mean I'll likely have to end up starting from scratch with all my mods.

Anyway, moving on. I want to do this right the first time and get the mods up and running and useable. Well, I have done that with the stuff I've been getting from vb.org - mostly. Problem is, most of that stuff appears to be no longer supported and all of it is a few years old. It isn't THAT big of a deal in the sense that they still work as intended, however, Being that I just bought my vb5 license, I'd be out of luck and stuck with vb4.2 because I'm sure the current mods are likely not going to be updated.

So, here I am looking for mods like your vbcredits/vbarcade, as well as ANY other mods that integrate in with the points system. I want users to be able to buy credits directly as a form of donations. I want these credits to be useable/spendable with all kinds of other plugins, like I'm finding here.

HOWEVER! I feel that I might be getting in to this at a very bad time with the new VB5 just around the corner. So my main questions are:

Will all mods from here be forever supported/updated so long as your coders are active?
Will all mods be eventually updated to be fully compatible with vb5, leaving me able to upgrade at any time with the full ability to keep all current user data in tact upon upgrading?
Does your version of the arcade allow me to earn money from people playing games, just like the current version of v3arcade does? <--- Huge bonus
Does vbarcade give credits to users in conjunction with vbcredits for scoring submissions?
Does your vbcredits give me built in potential to earn money by selling credits to users to which to buy them for whatever reason? Or does this require other mods?
Am I able to start off with LITE versions of every mod, and then later if I decide to get the paid version - can this upgrade ALWAYS be done with no impact on the users statistics for whatever mod it may be?

I noticed in another thread that this SEOVB hosting gives me discounts on products from here. I visited them and they advertise a 20% discount. This is a huge bonus, so if possible, I would really like to have an opinion on their hosting service, because it sounds perfect and I can easily make the switch.. I think!

I'll leave it at that for now. Being a new webmaster I'm going to have lots of questions about mods, I'm sure. Sorry for any inconveniences.

I'm going to take any mods I see in effect here as examples of the ones your selling.
 
Hey Sita,

I'm Fillip, co-Founder and Lead Programmer for DBTech :)

This absolutely is the correct forum for this thread, and I'll handle what I can answer and ensure other people are made aware of things I can't answer so that they can get back to you ASAP :)

Will all mods from here be forever supported/updated so long as your coders are active?
"Forever" is a dangerous word ;) But I can tell you that for as long as DBTech is in business, we will continue to support our products.

Will all mods be eventually updated to be fully compatible with vb5, leaving me able to upgrade at any time with the full ability to keep all current user data in tact upon upgrading?
We are moving towards having our entire portfolio ported to vB5 where possible. The majority of features in vB Optimise, for instance, are found in vB5 natively, so we need to re-imagine that mod before we can port it, and it won't be a direct upgrade.

Additionally, some mods may not be able to preserve their data if core functionality has changed or the data storage method has been updated. The only known and foreseeable example of this is vBShout, in which I took the vB5 version as an opportunity to correct a design flaw (hey, I was young once :p) that plagues me to this day but cannot be resolved without making upgrades impossible.
However, we'd never dream of doing this with mods like APTL or vBArcade, where your data is of the utmost importance. I don't believe the same can be said for shoutbox shouts :p

Does your version of the arcade allow me to earn money from people playing games, just like the current version of v3arcade does? <--- Huge bonus
If by money you mean forum credits:
While I don't know for certain, considering both vBCredits and vBArcade were written by the same person ( Darkwaltz4 ) I'd be shocked if there were no integration between the two.

If by money you mean real money via ads: Darkwaltz4 will let you know for sure but I believe the arcade works in conjunction with any profit-sharing accounts you have with the sites distributing the games, yes.

Does vbarcade give credits to users in conjunction with vbcredits for scoring submissions?
IIRC some games do not support this, namely the ones where time played is the only valid scoring method. If the game doesn't tell vBArcade "hey I'm done, they got X points" then we also cannot give credits for that.

Does your vbcredits give me built in potential to earn money by selling credits to users to which to buy them for whatever reason? Or does this require other mods?
PayPal purchases of credits is a feature of the Pro version :)

Am I able to start off with LITE versions of every mod, and then later if I decide to get the paid version - can this upgrade ALWAYS be done with no impact on the users statistics for whatever mod it may be?
Lite to Pro upgrades are in all scenarios just a matter of re-uploading the files and re-importing the product XML file - all database changes exist in the Lite version :)

With our first 2 products we used to have this weird system where Lite and Pro were separate mods - worked in theory, but was a pain in the arse for people to deal with, so I had to toss that system :p

I noticed in another thread that this SEOVB hosting gives me discounts on products from here. I visited them and they advertise a 20% discount. This is a huge bonus, so if possible, I would really like to have an opinion on their hosting service, because it sounds perfect and I can easily make the switch.. I think!
I'll leave that up to our Managing Director Cosmic to answer, I personally don't know anything about their hosting services, only their vB SEO service :)

I'm going to take any mods I see in effect here as examples of the ones your selling.
We run all the Pro versions of our mods here (which is why forum home is a bit slow - we are investigating ways of alleviating that) so that is indeed what we're selling :)

Let me know if you have any further questions :)
 
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Heya,

Regarding SEOvB - we've never had any bad feedback about them, and we have had nothing but positive dealings with the company ourselves when using them for SEO optimization services. We do not host with them so I can't give you any opinions based on personal experience about their hosting services unfortunately.

Something i'm not sure Fillip mentioned is that there will be a small charge for updating vB4 mods to their vB5 counterparts, here are the details:

Upgrade: You may upgrade your existing vB3/4 license to a vB5 license for 25% of the cost of a new license. For most mods this will be in the $10-20 range. You will no longer be able to run the product on a vB3/4 site. This is necessary to cover the cost of porting the modification (many mods will require extensive rewriting) as well as the extra support load.

Discount License: You may purchase a new vB5 license of any mod you currently own a vB3/4 version of for 50% off. This allows you to use the mod on a vB3/4 site AND a vB5 site at the same time should you so wish.

New Licenses: New licenses purchased will be either vB3/4 or vB5 only. There are no plans to change the pricing at the moment, the vB5 versions will cost the same as the existing vB3/4 versions.

Let us know if you have any other questions :)

Kind Regards,

Cosmic Kidd,
Managing Director,
DragonByte Technologies Ltd
 
Thanks for the responses so far guys.

I'm getting the understanding that buying a lifetime license is a waste right now if I have to buy the vb5 license as well.

Just to be sure I'm getting this right, does this mean I can buy the 3 month option now, and then upgrade to the lifetime version later on when I decide to upgrade to vb5?

This is all for now, off to work!
 
Thanks for the responses so far guys.

I'm getting the understanding that buying a lifetime license is a waste right now if I have to buy the vb5 license as well.

Just to be sure I'm getting this right, does this mean I can buy the 3 month option now, and then upgrade to the lifetime version later on when I decide to upgrade to vb5?
You could buy a 3 month licence now and then either directly buy a vB5 Lifetime licence later, or upgrade your existing one to vB5 and then upgrade that converted 3 month licence to a Lifetime version :)
 
Ok, have another one.

I see both vbCredits and vbAwards/Activities awards points for what appears to be the same things. Are these two completely separate points? If they are, then what would be the reason for having both of them?

It looks as though the Awards gives achievements and trophies while the Credits does not. Is Credits just a manager of some sort?
 
There is a lot of overlap between the two, yeah.

vBCredits is a mod designed to be able to be used in conjunction with shop mods, whereas vBActivity is used to display "activity levels". We only added the ability to integrate vBActivity points with other mods (without affecting activity level) due to popular request - it wasn't designed that way from the ground up like vBCredits is :)
 
Alright, thanks.

I hope that I can play around with all your mods before upgrading to Pro without losing any statistics. You guys have lots of cool stuff here to keep users engaged. Please keep user content oriented mods coming! :RpS_thumbsup:

I'm going to have to decide which one or (maybe) two to buy first. Until I make back some money I have already spent getting this website going. Any suggestions? I'll take close looks at what you think.
 
If you're looking at a way for users to earn and spend credits, I'd recommend vBCredits and either vBShop or vBArcade depending on if you want to sell cool stuff like coloured usernames / forum permissions / increased PM space / pretty much anything else found in Usergroup Manager, or if you want to sell access to Arcade games.

vBCredits Pro also lets you buy forum credits, so you could technically use that to sell advanced forum features or indeed new usergroup promotions.

You would do this by creating a new currency in vBShop & vBCredits, turn off all points accumulation / trading for it and only allow it to be buyable via PayPal, then create new items in vBShop that are buyable with this currency.

That should help you recoup the cost providing that you make the RM buyable items interesting enough :)
 
Alright, thanks.

I hope that I can play around with all your mods before upgrading to Pro without losing any statistics. You guys have lots of cool stuff here to keep users engaged. Please keep user content oriented mods coming! :RpS_thumbsup:

I'm going to have to decide which one or (maybe) two to buy first. Until I make back some money I have already spent getting this website going. Any suggestions? I'll take close looks at what you think.

vBDonate will help you recoup the costs in no time usually.

vBOptimise Lite is a good idea to keep your site fast without having to overspend on server resources - you can upgrade to pro if you start getting a lot of "guest" visitors or just need some more caching in general.

Advanced User Tagging is a good mod to have from the get-go as it means members learn quickly to use the tagging feature and really helps keep your community together and active - great for growing it.

vBShout can be good for keeping members around on your site while they wait for replies etc, it can be a good way to increase activity on the site early on to keep it looking busy.

Credits or Activity coupled with the shop is great for adding an extra reason for members to make posts and threads and can really help encourage them to populate your forum in the early going.

Beyond those it would depend on what kind of site you are running - if you let me know the theme of your site and what users you are targeting etc I can give you some other recommendations :)

Cosmic
 
If you're looking at a way for users to earn and spend credits, I'd recommend vBCredits and either vBShop or vBArcade depending on if you want to sell cool stuff like coloured usernames / forum permissions / increased PM space / pretty much anything else found in Usergroup Manager, or if you want to sell access to Arcade games.

vBOptimise Lite is a good idea to keep your site fast without having to overspend on server resources - you can upgrade to pro if you start getting a lot of "guest" visitors or just need some more caching in general.

Advanced User Tagging is a good mod to have from the get-go as it means members learn quickly to use the tagging feature and really helps keep your community together and active - great for growing it.

vBShout can be good for keeping members around on your site while they wait for replies etc, it can be a good way to increase activity on the site early on to keep it looking busy.

Credits or Activity coupled with the shop is great for adding an extra reason for members to make posts and threads and can really help encourage them to populate your forum in the early going.

Beyond those it would depend on what kind of site you are running - if you let me know the theme of your site and what users you are targeting etc I can give you some other recommendations :)

Cosmic



Thanks to both of you! Right now I am looking at Credits and Arcade. It sounds like these two might be the best to start with, based off the features opened with the pro versions. The shop is a great one too, but I don't think I need the pro version of that just yet when nobody has any credits to spend anyway. I think the LITE version of this will do perfectly fine for now. vbAwards doesn't appear to have as much global use as Credits does, so running the LITE version of this should be more than enough until I want to add in trophies. I'm going to be running Optimize, Advanced Tagging, and most likely the Shout as well. These all look like solid things to have right at the start. And of course I'm going to have other stuff not mentioned here - such as Avatars. People tend to like that kind of thing.

Alright, so aside from Avatars, Arcade, and Shop - is there anything else that can be combined with Credits for maximum use? I'm mostly looking for other things that can help consume earned credits, as a means to try and keep the available credits among users from becoming astronomically high. I would already be adjusting the earned values to lower amounts and raise them if it turns out to be too absurd.

As far as the boards intent - there isn't really one MAIN point of topic that users would be limited to. Basically, it will be open discussion with sections for mature content as well. As of right now, the first planned section of interest will be Japan. This will include child forums for anime, manga, games, the mikumikudance program, and of course a general topic section. I'll have sections for western subjects of interest as well.

Anyway, would Credits happen to come with integrated automatic paypal transactions? And if it does, hopefully I can get it set up with some assistance if needed... Or is Donate the one that does this?
 
Alright, so aside from Avatars, Arcade, and Shop - is there anything else that can be combined with Credits for maximum use? I'm mostly looking for other things that can help consume earned credits, as a means to try and keep the available credits among users from becoming astronomically high. I would already be adjusting the earned values to lower amounts and raise them if it turns out to be too absurd.
I don't believe there are any other products we currently have that integrates with Credits - I could be wrong, with 52 products it's easy to lose track :p

Anyway, would Credits happen to come with integrated automatic paypal transactions? And if it does, hopefully I can get it set up with some assistance if needed... Or is Donate the one that does this?
What do you mean, automatic paypal transactions? Do you mean subscriptions? If so, I don't think that is currently a feature. If you mean automatic confirmation of transactions, I believe that's already handled 100% internally in the code, no setup should be needed on your part (beyond entering your PayPal address :p)
 
I was referring to automatic confirmations. Most of my time is spent away from home and I would like for users that buy any credits to have them as soon as possible, without having to wait for me to come in and approve anything. I ask this because the last mod I was going to use was saying something about setting up a remote url for my IPN in order to have automatic confirmation. I had no clue of where to go about doing that.

Anyway, I know that this game might not be supported at all anymore, but I was wondering if a working version of TT for 4.2 was available. I saw this mentioned earlier and checked it out. Seems like a perfect addition...
 
IPNs aren't needed with any of our mods :) PayPal has a neat feature where you can pass "notify_url" as one of the parameters to the button click that launches the payment, and that will instruct PayPal to ping that URL with all the needed data (same as an IPN ping) once the payment has been completed.

So unless there was some issue with the transaction (such as a thief using a stolen PayPal account and PayPal detects the IP is suddenly from a country far away from the owner's country), payments will come through instantly :)

(And if by some miracle this doesn't hold true for vBCredits, I will personally fix it for you :))

There is currently no version of TT that works on 4.2, sorry :( To make it compatible would be a lot of work in and of itself. There's also certain flaws in the mod that are hard to fix, that would be required for me to feel comfortable supporting it.
 
Ok, thanks for the paypal info.

That's too bad about TT... games like that would be perfect. I certainly hope you guys add more mods that make use of available credits in a fun way. Mods like these will be instantly on my "I need this!" list. If I think of anything myself then I'll be sure to drop a suggestion in and have you guys look at it.
 
We're always interested in new ideas for mods, especially those that easily integrate with our existing mods as well - those are good for us too ;)

We look forward to hearing your suggestions / feedback on each of our mods as you use them :)

But not your bug reports. You can keep those. There's no bugs, only unexpected features. ;)
 
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