Hi all,

You know, I’m a long time user of UBB “Classic” (before it was called “Classic”) and have witnessed so many changes in the software that I’m really confused as to who the real UBB is.

First it was one thing (can’t even remember now, maybe it was simply Ultimate Bulletin Board), then it was changed to “Infopop”, then to something called “Groupee”, and I have no idea who owns it now. Plus there was a split in technologies, giving us two separate products called “Classic” and “Threads”, then a 3rd split to a fully managed and hosted solution.

Now I understand that both Threads and Classic will be a thing of the past with “7.1”.

I guess my questions are, Who owns “7.1” and where is it going in the future? Seems like when “Groupee” took things over they wanted to move in the direction of fully managed + hosted message boards, which I have little interest in.

Is this the direction we are moving in or are we back to privately owned and privately hosted boards again?

Also, why should I stick with “7.1” rather than go with new companies such as “VBulletin”? I’ve always liked the “UBB” product and don’t mind doing something a little different than what everyone else is doing, but at the same time I’m not clear on the future of this product.

Inputs? Comments?

Thanks,
Paul.

Hi Paul,

I totally understand your confusion as we have a long history with some interesting twists along the way. A couple years back it was decided that it just didn't make sense to continue developing to separate downloadable forum products, so we took the path to rewrite a completely new product and discontinue both UBB.classic (formerly Ultimate Bulletin Board) and UBB.threads.

As this progressed we realized we were using a lot of the foundation of UBB.threads so we continued with the name. It is compltely rewritten in the front end, but uses a variety of the existing scripts from the 6.5 version.

Groupee owns UBB.threads. We still have the hosted application, Eve, and the Social Network 'Groupee', while we continue to develop UBB.threads.

Where's it going? There are many plans for the future of UBB.threads. I'm the primary developer. I've been with the product now for about 10 years. Some features we're looking at for upcoming versions are photo gallery forums, user blogs, payment integration and a variety of others.

So the future is very bright. As to sticking with UBB.threads against going with another product. That really boils down to a personal decision. I'm the developer, so naturally I'm biased

Please let me know if you have any other questions, or if I need to clarify some of my answers further.

Threads 7.1 is owned by Groupee

Threads 6.x and UBB.Classic (previously known as Ultimate Bulletin Board) are now both EOL, which were also owned by Groupee.

Groupee was previously known as Infopop and previously as Madrona Park. When they were known as Infopop, in 1991 they purchased a product known as wwwthreads from Rick Baker and changed the products name to UBB.threads.

Threads 7.x is a brand new product and is not simply a newer version of UBB.threads.

I think with this new version Groupee have signalled their intention to promote and develop the downloadable forum product, and the plans that Rick Baker has backs up this theory.

Hope that helps

Rick beat me to it

Well hello Rick, Ian,

Thanks for the replies. Rick your vision of the future sounds pretty good. A photo gallery and a chat room (I guess people call it “blogging” now), along with pay integration have all been features I’ve wished the product had supported from the very beginning. (and I don’t mind paying a little extra for them either!!!)

I’ve stuck with the UBB Classic for so long because it is so easy to work with and customize. It’s also very stable, although the latest version seems to have a lot of bugs.

In addition to the features mentioned above, probably my main concern is just how much work it’s going to be to upgrade from 6.7.3 to 7.1.

But I am looking forward to it!

With best regards,
Paul.

I converted from Classic 6.7.2 to Threads 7.0 in October. The only real "work" besides feature settings involves reseting all your avatars, graemlins, etc, and customizing your style (if you desire) to match your old site. The import of data is mostly hands-off, but will take many hours if you have a large forum. Other than that, it's a piece of cake (usually ).

It's certainly more work than a simple UBB.classic upgrade. That's to be sure. It's a LOT easier and more complete than it previously was to go from .classic to .threads. The results are worth the extra effort. And the extra effort is a lot less than it used to be.

And upgrade is easy, a complete breze; it can take a little bit of time depending on your size, but it's all automated.

I've come from UBB.Classic to UBB.threads and I must say, if you're into customizations, UBB.threads makes things much easier.

I was with UBB.Classic since there was just one UBB product as well (can we say freeware anyone?)

UBBDev is still around for new features, styles, coding, etc. for UBB.threads.

Myself, I love UBB.threads, I've actually had the oppertunity to play with other products (vBulletin, IPB, phpBB, SMF, etc) and UBB.threads has the cleanest code which is in more logical places, it's also a lot easier to work with, and the people who help with support are great people (no i'm not tooting my own horn :looks around:).

But ultimately, as Rick said, it's all up to personal preferance, but I for one am loving it

So Rick wrote threads and sold it to infopop who then hired him to be the lead developer on it.

/hi5 Rick.

well, that's the short form. But pretty much. Rick created threads and it's still Rick working on it. That's the important part.