PHP Programming Language - OpenLibra

vBulletin 342
On July 4, 2007 Jelsoft announced that Jelsoft had been acquired by Internet Brands, which promised significant
investment in software development. [3]
In 2009, long-time developers Kier Darby, Mike Sullivan, and Scott MacVicar left the company. Kevin Sours, Don
Kuramura, and Ray Morgan took Darby's place as lead developer, product manager, and general manager,
respectively. [4]
Forum product
Since the initial release of the vBulletin forum product in 2000, there have been many changes and improvements.
Below is a list of the major revisions and some of the changes they introduced. The current version is 4.0.3.
vBulletin 1 and vBulletin Lite
Development of vBulletin 1 is no longer active, nor is it a supported release.
vBulletin 1 was the initial release of vBulletin, sporting the same features as UBB.classic. The release was very
popular as it was one of the first systems that was written using PHP and MySQL that had the features of UBB.
vBulletin Lite was a degraded version of the 1.x series that allowed potential customers to test their server for
compatibility with vBulletin. The product was discontinued after vBulletin 2 because there were security issues and
it was out of date, and Jelsoft did not want to spend resources into maintaining a non-commercial product.
vBulletin 2
vBulletin 2 is no longer under active development, except for security updates. When this version was released, it
had numerous new features over vBulletin 1, which it replaced. Improvements include private messaging between
users, attaching polls to threads, unlimited forum nesting, user avatars, and a user control panel.
vBulletin 3
Initially, version 3.0 was intended to be an extension of the 2.x release that would improve performance and user
experience. However, as time progressed, it proved to be a complete rewrite. Some of the key advantages over
vBulletin 2 are as follows:
• The templates and style were updated to use XHTML and CSS
• Hard-coding of English text was eliminated
• Support for multiple languages by use of phrases
• A WYSIWYG editor for users to post with
• Paid subscriptions that allow administrators to charge for certain features of their site
• Multiple views for threads: Linear (a flat system), threaded (display of the entire thread tree), and hybrid (a
combination of both).
vBulletin 3.5 addressed some of the problems users had with version 3.0. Some of the changes are as follows:
• A plugin system was introduced, that allows for modifications of the software without the need to edit the
program scripts. This allows a forum operator to keep their modifications (called "hacks" or "mods" in the
vBulletin community) and not having to re-edit scripts after upgrading.
• Inline editing of thread titles and post content was made possible via AJAX.
• An inline moderation system was provided, allowing forum operators to manage threads and posts on their board
without having to go through intermediary steps. An API system (referred to as "data managers") was created to
let third-parties integrate more easily.
• A template history and comparison system was introduced where administrators can store a specific revision of a
template into the database, which can be arbitrarily compared against each another.
• A MySQLi wrapper was added, which added support for MySQL 4.1.