The one thing the vBulletin modding community is lacking is the most important part: hackers. I see there is a new owner now, and I hope that he will make the necessary changes to make this place thrive.

Change 1

I suggest removing the modifications... completely. Modifications are for vBulletin.org. Actually, I think they would be better off at vB.com, but that's for another thread. If you want a vBulletin hacking community, get rid of the modifications. They should be at vB.org with the 125,000 vB customers. Why manage 2 copies? Why only have them here?

Having the modifications system attracts the people who just want to download and install it. The point I'm getting to is I'd like a community of vBulletin hackers. A place where people can learn to hack, share code, and work together.

I think this single change would be enough to fix the "problem" with this place. In it's current form, I just see it as a copy of vb.org with a tiny fraction of the userbase. Not very appealing...

Change 2

I love helping people. It's just the way I was brought up. I'm not saying I am a master coder or a saint, but you get the idea. I would like to see a system put into place that encourages people to help each other out. Isn't this what commmunities are for?

Say if we had a mentor system, (yes this could easily be accomplished with a few silly ranks or usergroup changes), we could track who is learning and who is helping everyone out. Give them a gold star, like we got back in kindergarten. That sure made me feel great.

I'm sure with a community as small as this, this could be done manually, but why cut ourselves short? We are a group of hackers, afterall. (This is another thing that bugs me about vb.org - how with 125,000 coders and a few hundred experts, none of that talent gets put to good use improving the site.) Using the reputation system, this could be accomplished quite easily. Even using that priciple and tweaking it to our needs we could do it.

Example:

Coder Bill has helped another person out! Wow, what a nice guy. Let's add 3 points to his 1337-ness score. Whoa! He passed the divider between Coder and Advanced Coder! What a guy!

Obviously we should use better ranks than that, but that's the jist of it.

I'm not sure how many of you are SitePoint frequenters, but I like the way they have it setup. Basically they have "Mentors" and a few other similar ranks that show people who constantly help others (and are good at their field, such as MySQL or PHP).

Split things into such categories. PHP, MySQL, and HTML would be a good start.

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Anyway, these are two ideas which I have fairly strong opinions for. I would like to see a real hackers community. I thought this was the right place for it, but if not, I'm sure another site will be it soon.

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Adrian / vBHackers.com
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>> Beta 3 released with SE-Friendly URLs!

the mentor idea was already floating around few weeks back (brought by Colonel Ingus) to discussion @ staff forum.
we indeed like the idea & are still awating the new owner to put his final word about it.

tbh, last few months we had a lot of other good ideas & suggestions brought to discussions @ staff forum, on how to make place really a better place, but since "new owner issue" floated around for the past 2-3 months (yes it was way too long if you ask me) nothing was done about it much (since none of us know if this is the direction new owner want's it to be).

about the first suggestion - i have to disagree there. we have already started (& intend to keep it up as time goes by) to release certain hacks that will only be posted here (& not vb.org). also sometimes to have smaller community when people actually help you rather than vb.org with over 125,000 users like you said, having to write something that after 5m gets to be 3rd page, and have it get no attention...

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Idan / vBHackers.com
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Don't agree with you on the first point: why have hacks here and at vb.org, well because of the fact that some people just prefere having one forum for all. I for one only go to vb.org, if I can't find it elsewhere.

The second change I like a lot ;)

You wouldn't. It would be the same version, so it wouldn't matter where it was 'downloaded' it from

There are a lot of mods here that are only avalable here at vBHackers. This is because there are coders that simply don't want to deal with .org for various reasons. vBHackers is proud to give all coders an outlet to share their hacks with the vB community. Simply put, if vBHackers didn't offer this outlet, then some of these vB hacks simply wouldn't exist anywhere, and that would be unfair to the rest of the vb community

That will change in time. As soon as the new owner comes on board and we can get everyone on the same page we plan on being the premier vB website. As Idan has previously mentioned, the staff here has already been discussing many exciting new things to make VBH the best vB community possible ;) We plan to lead and not follow. What helps us a lot are great members like yourself who bring innovative new ideas to us. That helps the entire vB community, and that's what vBHackers is all about

thnx for the input SirAdrian, and we will always listen to our members views.
But i have to say we do already try to help people learn to code here. More changes will be coming soon i guess with new owner due anytime

And as already stated above some of your ideas have already been mentioned within the staff forums about a month or so ago. So keep calling by and lets hope we see things change for the better.

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Butcher / vBHackers.com
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chAos styles

I only suggest that you change the layout a bit, there's seems to be too much content on the main page and it looks confusing imo.

Thanks for considering...

Anyway about point 1, I think your view on this will depend greatly on your current role. As a coder I want a place for coders...

Point 2 would just be a nice touch that would hopefully encourage a stronger community, which is one thing that the vB. group definitely needs.

I also agree with EasyTarget... the homepage is a bit confusing. I just squint my eyes and ignore the whole right column as well as the modifications and announcements at the top. But again, this is someone who doesn't care about the modifications.

Of course I didn't mean to sound like this place is terrible ("~ a lesser version of vb.org ~") - I won't even get started on the problems with that place. ;)

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Adrian / vBHackers.com
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>> Beta 3 released with SE-Friendly URLs!

And here I always thought that it was only me that felt that way :p The links at the top also need to be streamed down and simplified. Hopefully we'll be able to work on the main page, and I'll be sure to bring it to the new owners attention for everyone


LOL :nervous:

The right column can be disabled in here: usercp\Settings & Options\Edit Options\Miscellaneous Options\New Release Side Menu

after that it's allready a lot clearer ;)

i think we need maybe to make some more easy accessiable shortcut on top bar enable/disable this one.
too "deep" for anyone to find out unless he'll read this in thread like this.