Compatibility Question ..

[TexasTornado Deb]

I know this a quite general question; but I have to ask .. Do all the mods you have currently work on Vbulletin Suite 4.1.9 and are they compatible with vbSEO?

 

[Fillip H.]

We are using both of those products here on DBTech, and the only issue is that vBSEO breaks profile links for notifications like vBAA's new achievements etc, but this is rectified by using vBNotifications

 

[bszopi]

There currently is an issue with links to CMS Content when using vBSlider. As of right now, I am inquiring with vBulletin on the issue. If they don't have an immediate fix, then I will look into another way to make it work w/o having to edit the code. Links to Threads and Blogs work just fine, though.

 

[TexasTornado Deb]

I don't know why I did not look at the version of vb you are using, I guess holiday stress, and such. From the time of purchase, how long would it take to install the vbshout product if I purchased the professional installation too? Also if this is only placed on one page of the forum, for my staff only to use, how much of server load would it cause?

Additionally, after purchase, does a developer send me a message for the ability to login as an admin? I have not done this via a forum before when I had someone do an installation for me. I still am also having issues on the forum with the developer who setup vbseo and upgraded us to 4.1.9. It not only broke mods, but is throwing out db errors. But the chatbox we use constantly as we have to communicate as a group as staff. It's causing a huge drag when I have plenty on my server. I am with SerVint on VPS with 120 GB Storage 2 TB Monthly Transfer 3 GB Guaranteed RAM 6 GB Burst RAM and 2000 members, but only 50-80 active in one days time, with another 300 guests which includes spiders. Yet my forum is crawling incredibly slow. You may prefer to wait until this developer is done.

I'd like to get that slider too. Once that is ironed out, of course. I am not good with messing around with code. I understand some of it. But I can't afford to break a forum where people come to make money every day. It would really hurt me. The last 1 1/2 weeks have been horrible on us with the problems. One thing done, caused 30 issues and all I hear is it's a mod, get rid of them all! I like the mods. I know that ones not supported can't stay. But the ones that do work with 4.1.9 should be fine. I honestly have been so stressed. I read your guidelines on custom work, and wish I hired you guys! lol. I would rather pay for a mod really, than get lite versions, as I appreciate the support and keeping them updated. I am in this for the long haul and want things to go as smooth as possible. I know there are going to be issues on occassion. But I feel like I have been hit with a ton of bricks on a daily basis for the past 1 1/2 weeks, and the guy doing the work is supposed to be an SEO guy who also designs themes. He is on the .org too. If I say I am stressed, his stress is greater, and it's all b/c we keep making lists of the things reported by members who notice that the forum is broke. I am only telling you this b/c it's probably going to be easier on you if you wait until he clears out. I had vshop, but no more. Its broke too. So he uninstalled it.

One more question, do you ever offer package deals where you sell more than one mod together at a reduced price? I am sure you run all your mods here without issues. So I feel more confident about that. Not all the developers are running 4.1.9 right now. So that too gives more confidence.

 

[Fillip H.]

Let's see if I can pick out all the questions.. if I miss some, then I do apologise, feel free to re-ask them (I like numbered lists, they are easy and fun xD)

From the time of purchase, how long would it take to install the vbshout product if I purchased the professional installation too?

That varies greatly on when exactly it is you purchase it. If you purchase it between 6pm and 12pm GMT+1 (CET) then it should be completed within the space of 20 minutes assuming all the information provided is correct, has the required permissions, and I can find your AdminCP login form.

Should I have any issues performing the install, I'll PM you, so it's advisable to turn on emails on new PM if you aren't sitting here staring at the forum xD

Also if this is only placed on one page of the forum, for my staff only to use, how much of server load would it cause?

That is impossible to tell.

I'm telling you this for future reference with other developers as well: Never, ever ask a developer "how much load does this add?".

There are literally millions of server configurations (if not billions or trillions); hardware, software and server type (shared, VPS, dedicated, multiple servers), other software running on the servers... The list goes on.

Load is not a figure that's measurable like KB / MB of disk space. Sure, I could say "vBShout adds 512 KB of disk space usage" (random number) but that's because disk space is a constant.

Basically, load is like CPU usage in Windows Task Manager. Back home, I have a i7-2600k @ 3.4 GHz, and it can handle anything I throw at it without breaking a sweat. Sans fullscreen games I have never seen it peak 100% load. However, on this laptop, I have a shitty arse Centrino vPro T9300 @ 2.5 GHz, and if I have the audacity to ask it to open a program while I have WLM, Firefox, Thunderbird and Steam open it goes "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!" and completely locks up Windows for about 3 seconds, then takes an additional 20 seconds to open the program.

Even if the program is only Notepad.

However, if I close those open programs and THEN open Notepad, it's fine. My computer's load is just higher because I ask a worse processor to do more work.

Additionally, after purchase, does a developer send me a message for the ability to login as an admin?

You are asked for that information during purchase, before you are redirected to PayPal, should your shopping cart contain Professional Installation for any product

You are asked for FTP server, username, password, and AdminCP username, password. The AdminCP account needs at least Can Administer Plugins.

There are also optional fields for .htaccess protection you may have in place for your AdminCP directory.

If you have any special means of accessing your forum (i.e. not just "ftp is ftp.somesite.com so I go to www.somesite.com and see either a forum link or the forum itself" - one guy had an "intranet" login required), then please send a PM to me (nobody else on our team handles Pro Installs regardless of what product it is) with instructions for how to access it and any additional access login information that may be required.

You may prefer to wait until this developer is done.

In that case I suggest you wait with purchasing until he is done, as Pro Installs are handled ASAP

One more question, do you ever offer package deals where you sell more than one mod together at a reduced price? I am sure you run all your mods here without issues. So I feel more confident about that. Not all the developers are running 4.1.9 right now. So that too gives more confidence.

We don't sell specifically bundles, but when you buy multiple products you receive automatic bulk discounts.

In addition, your past purchases entitle you to Loyalty discounts.

The thresholds needed for both those discount types can be found here: Discounts - DragonByte Tech | vBulletin Mods & Addons


Hopefully that's everything

 

[TexasTornado Deb]

Fillip, thank you for your answers. I do have another question, and it may be a bit strange. I ran a test on your forum for performance and you guys score a 95/100. That's better than any other forums I ran this on. This has many factors. To let you know, I did it here is a screenshot:

Here's mine before this SEO expert came along and messed it up:

Here is is now, look at the score changes:

Plug-Ins Enabled:

Without Plug-Ins Enabled:

Now, I did go a bit further and I have found some troubling things. Like CSS is from things he added not where it should be. I used YSlow to do an analysis. This SEO guy, who is supposed to be an expert actually made my site worse. And a lot of it is coding he did. So much is broke, all I want to do is cry. Database errors all the time and before I had none. This expert too supposedly knows vbulletin really well as he does mods on vb.org. Which is strange, because he said I had to get rid of all of mine, due to him saying that the developers were inexperienced, and your name came up too. But I find it hard it believe that you guys are not good with scores so high on what I am seeing when checking your forum. Gosh, you beat out vbSEO and Digital Point Forums.

I have two options now, since the guy cannot fix his errors he created doing this job for me. One, since the pages load so slow, no one is going to use my forum and I'll eventually lose members is just give up. I am not a coder or two, I have to hire someone to clean up this guy's mess.

I read your thread above about Custom Work. Where do I go from here?

 

[Cosmic]

Fillip, thank you for your answers. I do have another question, and it may be a bit strange. I ran a test on your forum for performance and you guys score a 95/100. That's better than any other forums I ran this on. This has many factors. To let you know, I did it here is a screenshot:

Here's mine before this SEO expert came along and messed it up:

Here is is now, look at the score changes:

Plug-Ins Enabled:

Without Plug-Ins Enabled:

Now, I did go a bit further and I have found some troubling things. Like CSS is from things he added not where it should be. I used YSlow to do an analysis. This SEO guy, who is supposed to be an expert actually made my site worse. And a lot of it is coding he did. So much is broke, all I want to do is cry. Database errors all the time and before I had none. This expert too supposedly knows vbulletin really well as he does mods on vb.org. Which is strange, because he said I had to get rid of all of mine, due to him saying that the developers were inexperienced, and your name came up too. But I find it hard it believe that you guys are not good with scores so high on what I am seeing when checking your forum. Gosh, you beat out vbSEO and Digital Point Forums.

I have two options now, since the guy cannot fix his errors he created doing this job for me. One, since the pages load so slow, no one is going to use my forum and I'll eventually lose members is just give up. I am not a coder or two, I have to hire someone to clean up this guy's mess.

I read your thread above about Custom Work. Where do I go from here?

Hi Deb,

If you can send me a PM with exactly what it is you're looking for to be done - for instance a fresh vB install, if you need mods installed (and which), if there are specific goals you have etc and send me an admincp login and FTP login so we can check how broken things are and what kind of time it's likely to take to fix it. Feel free to let me know who you had doing the work before as well, might enlighten us to some things, and gives us a heads up if any of our customers who have issues have work by him. Once we have that info we can give you an idea of time and price =)

I should say that it's unlikely to be cheap though, this kind of thing tends to take quite a lot of time and attention to do properly.

For the record, just between the main 4 man team (Myself, Fillip H., Darkwaltz4 and Dylan) we have over 20 years of experience in vBulletin work, sounds like your man doesn't really know what he's talking about . I don't think any other teams have close to the combined experience we do.

Regards,

Cosmic

 

[TexasTornado Deb]

Hi Deb,

If you can send me a PM with exactly what it is you're looking for to be done - for instance a fresh vB install, if you need mods installed (and which), if there are specific goals you have etc and send me an admincp login and FTP login so we can check how broken things are and what kind of time it's likely to take to fix it. Feel free to let me know who you had doing the work before as well, might enlighten us to some things, and gives us a heads up if any of our customers who have issues have work by him. Once we have that info we can give you an idea of time and price =)

I should say that it's unlikely to be cheap though, this kind of thing tends to take quite a lot of time and attention to do properly.

For the record, just between the main 4 man team (Myself, Fillip H., Darkwaltz4 and Dylan) we have over 20 years of experience in vBulletin work, sounds like your man doesn't really know what he's talking about . I don't think any other teams have close to the combined experience we do.

Regards,

Cosmic

I'll get it together and send you a PM. I'll put who did this in it. Although I feel I not only taken to the cleaners with this guy, and am out $1500, I am not ready to publicly say anything about a person. It's going to be obvious who is he is just one look at my forum. I had considered a paypal dispute on payment. But until an expert tells me something though, I don't want to do that. I'd love to warn others. But, with the knowledge I have I don't want to come across in the wrong way. I've always been the type of person that if I have something to say about a person, they sure know it. I say it to them. But I am concerned he will hurt other forums. And he was not cheap for what I did get and his attitude was horrible. I am ignored when I tell him of the errors. I didn't figure it would be cheap to clean up. But I have very little other recourse. I have some custom mods, that are related to the industry we are in, and one is completely broken, that should not be. A lot was broken when he installed his mods. I think a major problem too is that mods he uninstalled were not done correctly, as they surely do not require just pushing an uninstall in the Plug-in section and expecting no problems. While I trust your team is quite experienced, as not from just tests, but I do go to vb.org quite often. I was not good about reading entire threads at first but soon leaned the necessity.

Thanks, will take time to get together, but sure send you a PM.

 

[Cosmic]

I'll get it together and send you a PM. I'll put who did this in it. Although I feel I not only taken to the cleaners with this guy, and am out $1500, I am not ready to publicly say anything about a person. It's going to be obvious who is he is just one look at my forum. I had considered a paypal dispute on payment. But until an expert tells me something though, I don't want to do that. I'd love to warn others. But, with the knowledge I have I don't want to come across in the wrong way. I've always been the type of person that if I have something to say about a person, they sure know it. I say it to them. But I am concerned he will hurt other forums. And he was not cheap for what I did get and his attitude was horrible. I am ignored when I tell him of the errors. I didn't figure it would be cheap to clean up. But I have very little other recourse. I have some custom mods, that are related to the industry we are in, and one is completely broken, that should not be. A lot was broken when he installed his mods. I think a major problem too is that mods he uninstalled were not done correctly, as they surely do not require just pushing an uninstall in the Plug-in section and expecting no problems. While I trust your team is quite experienced, as not from just tests, but I do go to vb.org quite often. I was not good about reading entire threads at first but soon leaned the necessity.

Thanks, will take time to get together, but sure send you a PM.

If it's who it appears to be I can't say i'm surprised. We've had "compatibility" issues with some of his work before because he has a bad habit of overwriting default variables in his mods...