By the end of 2008, my love-hate relationship with vBulletin had become intense hate. Between the difficulties in working with the product and my loathing of how I’d been treated as a loyal customer (I controlled three licenses by then), the breakup had started.
If you’re not familiar with Icrontic’s history, we’re an 11-year old community that’s always used vBulletin. The entrenchment is as deep as it goes. A member since 2002 (this was my first online forum!), I’ve been working heavily on the site since 2003, and became a co-owner in 2005. We have numerous, intricate customizations (especially our in-house WordPress integration) and I’m the only developer. Change around here happens at a glacial pace, because they often involve monumental migrations. And I love it to death.
Ditching vBulletin
In early 2009, I started combing the Internet for a forum replacement and stumbled across Vanilla (version 1). I immediately loved it, but it became apparent it would be a tremendous amount of work to migrate to it. Vanilla is a simplicity-driven product focused on using plugins to customize your experience. A lot of the plugins I needed simply didn’t exist. Luckily, like WordPress, Vanilla is an open-source product, which means anyone can jump in and start working on it. So, I started tinkering.
Fast forward to August 2009 when Vanilla 2 source code was first released. This was a big leap forward over Vanilla 1 and I decided this was my new forum software. But the same problem existed: it was a pre-release product with precious few plugins. There wasn’t even an importer for vBulletin. So I rolled up my sleeves and began to code. As a long-term vBulletin user, I wrote the vBulletin importer for Vanilla 2 from scratch, then re-wrote it. Perversely, because Icrontic has gone through so many upgrades over the years, I was able to code in every anachronistic detail about how vBulletin has stored data over the years—it still makes my brain hurt to think about it.
Helping to build Vanilla
By December of 2009, I had a working copy of Icrontic running on Vanilla 2. It was nowhere near complete, and ugly as heck, but it worked. Having been unemployed for several months, I’d had time to complete the major legwork to get things moving. Then, a terrible thing happened in January: I got a new job. I worked at a web agency for a year and nine months, and it ate my life. I learned a tremendous amount, but long hours and burnout meant progress slowed terribly. But I pushed forward, inch by inch.
Somewhere along the line, I realized I loved working on forum software. Not only that, but I’d been running communities since 2003 and realized I actually knew what I was talking about when it came to forum software and community management. I had (intense, vitriol-laced) opinions about where it should be going, and Vanilla 2 was running my playbook.
December 2010 saw my other community NewBuddhist move to Vanilla. Throughout 2011, I’ve been checking off the hurdles listed in my notebook as the Vanilla team and I knocked them down: Improving the importer, custom Vanilla/WordPress integration, an achievement system, better category management, moderation logging, better spam control, and much more. I finally joined the Vanilla team full-time in September, and recently rolled out my custom WP/Vanilla integration on IntoDetroit and then NewBuddhist.
In 2008, a mediocre PHP developer set off in search of better forum software. Three years later, I find myself working for a funded Internet startup doing the best work of my life on what I’m most passionate about: you guys. I stumbled into this place nine years ago, never suspecting it would be the most important thing I did that year (and it was the year I graduated high school and started college).
But you know what I still haven’t managed to do? Migrate this damn site to Vanilla. Well hold onto your butts. It’s happening tonight.