While it has taken a bit longer than we'd hoped we're getting close to a full on private beta with public testing coming afterward. We're definitely over 3/4 done. The actual business transition was one of the primary setbacks as there were a few things we had to work through that took away from development time, but needed to be done to set us up solidly for the future.

A rough ETA would be about the end of the year I think. If it were to happen to go over that, we will backdate the release to the end of the year. So anyone that purchased at the beginning of this year will still be able to download without needing to renew their members area access, but we hope that won't be necessary.

For anyone that might be thinking that the hosting is taking away from development time, it just isn't so. It's being run mainly by Erin, who isn't developing UBB, and others on staff fill in on the support roles during off hours when not developing.

Rick and crew just took over from the previous owners and have been actively working on the CURRENT version (7.5.5, 7.5.6); and v8 (and v8 is actively in alpha testing).

There has been no announced ETA due to previous short falls and people freaking out because of them, it'll be out when it's out, we all want a quality product, not something that's been rushed.

Rick has been actively providing screen-shots and updates via the announcements forum, it's not vaporware, we can all see that it's being actively developed.

While I can appreciate your frustration I think you honestly need to lower your expectations a bit. $59 to upgrade a license is nothing compared to the nightmare of having a forum software that is constantly not working, or hacked for that matter. Long time ago we too looked at going to a different forum, in fact twice (no offense Rick), but the reality was the grass was not greener on the other side, it was usually worse. Rick has taken over UBB from Infopop and hired developers....... during a major recession. He deserves a lot of credit for believing in it this much. This isn't vaporware, it's a huge upgrade. Did you throw your window computer out the window every time Microsoft didn't deliver a release on time? Which happens to be every time?

Cheers.

If you go to vBulletin 4, you will greatly regret it. vBulletin 4 is very buggy, slow, and unstable. Just wait for UBB.threads version 8. Rick has stated that if v8 doesn't get released by the end of the year, he will date it to the end of the year and you will still be able to download v8 even if you don't renew your license.