Jerry @ Hoop.la: Hello, thank you for visiting. Can I help you in any way? me: there? Jerry @ Hoop.la: Hi. me: is this the ubbthreads? Jerry @ Hoop.la: This is UBB forums. Are you looking for .threads? The old php board? me: I thought they were the original. Is that correct? Jerry @ Hoop.la: This is the company that started UBB. no, They are not. We are. They bought .threads from us years back but we are the original company I don't think they even make it anymore. me: ok.. can you import threads? Jerry @ Hoop.la: certainy can, yes.
Curious thought. Did you really get a email or did a search and got spammed. It is exactly just like eve or ubb.x All the ubbthreads faqs are like two years old.
Blue Man Group There is no such thing as stupid questions. Just stupid answers
I got the message too and came here to see what was going on. I find it ethically iffy for Social Strata to be naming their new product UBB if they sold the UBB name to Rick. To have two products in the "forum software" world both called UBB sounds quite infringing to me. It would be like Hostess selling the rights to Twinkie to someone else, then a few years later starting up a new Twinkie-style product and calling it Twinkie Cake. It would infringe on the rights they sold, and create confusion in the marketplace.
I wonder if Social Strata figures that nobody has the money to sue them for doing this.
Also, I got two promo emails from them - one at my BellaOnline account and one at my WineIntro account. How did they have access to knowing about both of those accounts? Wouldn't rights to my account information have gone with the sale of UBB to Rick? Did they actually retain rights to keep using the data? If they just scanned this forum here, I only post with my BellaOnline username.
I find this incredibly sleazy. Unless, of course, the new UBB owners really did sell rights to a hosted version of UBB, in which case it's going to be quite confusing if the hosted version and the non-hosted version are showing up on two completely different websites.
It was an email; I got this from Dave at Social Strata:
Quote
Since I know people are going to ask: Rick bought the UBB.threads product and only UBB.threads. He also received the ubbcentral.com website as part of the sale.
Anything and everything else related to UBB, Ultimate Bulletin Board, or UBB.classic was not a part of this sale. We retained everything else.
Social Strata, formerly Groupee, formerly Infopop, formerly Madrona Park, etc. still owns the Ultimate Bulletin Board name and it was not part of the sale; Rick purchased rights to UBB.Threads from Groupee and only UBB.threads.
Also, I got two promo emails from them - one at my BellaOnline account and one at my WineIntro account. How did they have access to knowing about both of those accounts? Wouldn't rights to my account information have gone with the sale of UBB to Rick? Did they actually retain rights to keep using the data? If they just scanned this forum here, I only post with my BellaOnline username.
I got two as well, one to my UBBDev license and one to my "normal" license email (which all of my other licenses fall under).
Now I'm fully confused. Too much names, too much renames. I sit back and wait what happen after the X-mas holydays. Maybe the I have a clear view about this.
It was an email; I got this from Dave at Social Strata:
Quote
Since I know people are going to ask: Rick bought the UBB.threads product and only UBB.threads. He also received the ubbcentral.com website as part of the sale.
Anything and everything else related to UBB, Ultimate Bulletin Board, or UBB.classic was not a part of this sale. We retained everything else.
I am not aware of the legality of the issue But since most all of us started with Ted using classic I am sure he held on to that database. I for one am not interested in a hosted service. It is strange that Ted went from classic to Eve to ubb.x,social strata and then ubbforum. Sounds to be phishing for ubbthreads users.
Blue Man Group There is no such thing as stupid questions. Just stupid answers
Well, it's pretty simple, as it stands UBB.threads brand name is "UBB.threads"; did Rick ever refer to it as "Ultimate Bulletin Board Threads" since he purchased it?
Well, it's pretty simple, as it stands UBB.threads brand name is "UBB.threads"; did Rick ever refer to it as "Ultimate Bulletin Board Threads" since he purchased it?
C'mon Giz - everyone associates 'UBB' with this place.
It's funny how these guys want to use the UBB name, but when they owned the product they completely threw the project in the garbage until they sold it to Rick as they flailed around in the social software arena.
Well, it's pretty simple, as it stands UBB.threads brand name is "UBB.threads"; did Rick ever refer to it as "Ultimate Bulletin Board Threads" since he purchased it?
In index.php:
Quote
// Ultimate Bulletin Board // Script Version 7.5.7 // // Copyright (C) 2012, 2013 UBB Systems, LLC // // You may not distribute this program in any manner, modified or // otherwise, without the express, written consent from // UBB Systems, LLC. // // You may make modifications, but only for your own use and // within the confines of the UBB License Agreement // (see our website for that at http://ubbcentral.com). // // Note: If you modify ANY code within your UBB, we at UBB Systems // cannot offer you support -- thus modify at your own peril
and ubb.classic is also available in the members area
C'mon Giz - everyone associates 'UBB' with this place.
Oh, I know and totally understand, I'm just saying that Rick wasn't sold the UBB brand name, just rights to the "UBB.threads" brand... Groupee retained all rights in the deal according to what I'm hearing from David...
I don't like Social Strata's technique here. They start with:
"We created the original Ultimate Bulletin Board (UBB) in 1996. You probably knew our company as Infopop when you purchased your first UBB."
So they specifically say it's the software we bought and use. Then they go on to say:
"And now we have brought it back big time, this time as an entirely hosted service ..."
So the mindset they create is "you bought UBB from us and now we have our new version out" as if it's tied into the UBB software we're currently using.
They even say:
"The new UBB Forum has the following benefits ..."
We call this software here our UBB forum. So it completely creates the impression that this is a new version of our UBB forum software.
I was very confused by the old company's E-mail too. I thought that as I had to renew my licence to get 7.57 last week after the long wait for full updates, I thought that UBB Threads 8.0 was a while away from development.
I then started laughing heartily when I realised it was the former company hawking for business, and I continued laughing to the point of incredulous disbelief when I saw the pricing at $75 A MONTH! Cough, choke... A MONTH!?!?! Are they off their heads? For forum software? LMAO. And for that money, *I* would want control.
The only words in my head at that moment were "Epic" and "Fail".
Confusing the public with naming issues (as Bella and others remarked upon above) is one thing but when VBulletin, UBB Threads and the rest out there already having cleaned up the market, this will be a dead donkey before it even leaves the stable.
I made the decision to stick with Threads and will continue to do so!
Mark J.Cairns Producer, Airwolf Themes CD soundtracks
Add me to the initially-confused list. I was actually kind of excited when I saw the email's subject ("Re-Introducing The UBB") but quickly noticed it was from Social Strata.
The features sound nice, but the price doesn't. I'll wait here, thanks.
GangsterBB.NET (Ver. 7.6.1.1) PHP Version 5.6.40 / MySQL 5.7.23-23 (was 5.6.41-84.1) / Apache 2.4.54 2007 Content Rulez Contest - Hon Mention UBB.classic 6.7.2 - RIP
I knew I wasn't the only one to receive that email and I am not very impressed with it either also thinking the monthly price is ridiculous. Perhaps they thought UBB.Threads was finished? Very suspicious in my opinion. VIVA LA THREADS!
Ford diesel master technician by day... Webmaster by night! FordDoctorsDTS.comrunning UBB Threads 7.5.4.2p2
It was an email; I got this from Dave at Social Strata:
Quote
Since I know people are going to ask: Rick bought the UBB.threads product and only UBB.threads. He also received the ubbcentral.com website as part of the sale.
Anything and everything else related to UBB, Ultimate Bulletin Board, or UBB.classic was not a part of this sale. We retained everything else.
hmmm even so...
Originally Posted by BellaOnline
I find this incredibly sleazy.
+1. well dodgy.
As much as I like Navaho (and Ted and his family), the email was in poor taste.
With their constant name-changes over the years and meandering business plans, it really isn't surprising tho.
I am sad to say I am the most confused person in ALL of this!
Question: Is Rick involved in ANY of this anymore? He's the only person I've ever worked with in terms of licensing, updating our board and all other tech support and discussion. So what's up?
Questions: If he is involved, how do we reach him? If not, who is running it now and who did the recent security update?
Question: For someone who wants tech support to update our site from 7.02 to current while keeping the current coloring etc. scheme, how do we get that done? Rick sold us the top of the line license (in fact, we bought a brand new license for the same site which he said was cheaper than paying him to just update from the original license. He also said we had tech hours coming to us from that license which would cover another update. Will those still be honored? If not, what is the cost of having this done because it is beyond our technical ability plus we fear losing data which is vital to our organizations archives.
We waited for years like many of you for the magical version 8.0 and all the goodies it would bring. That's why our version is so outdated. We'd love to enter the world of the current and safe latest version as the chinese fake registrations pour into our site relentlessly causing all sorts of problems and we're a sitting duck security wise.
Help!
Brian
PS: I still don't understand how our board, which we started using in 1999 does not qualify us to have the UBB10YEARS graphic?
Ok Brian I will help out as much as I can to answer the questions.
Rick isn't involved anymore (as far as I know). For tech support I would recommend speaking with the new owner (Brooks) by submitting a trouble ticket for the questions about the licensing and what he (or she) plans to honor..
SD has done most if not all of the recent patches and the new release (/upgrade). You could PM him or Gizmo as they would probably be the safest bet (imho) to upgrade your boards properly. That said I have also seen here (and not through any personal experience) heard that Tom at Express Hosting is also very knowledgeable about the software and has done some upgrades for people as well. I also heard that he was had friendly and good customer service. (So I guess based on what I have read here in the past few months about him, he should get an honorable mention as well).
I hope that helps...Oh BTW for the UBB10Years graphic, I think that it is also one of those you have to speak to Brooks about. (It is on my to do list as well but I haven't gotten around to it either).
Question: Is Rick involved in ANY of this anymore? He's the only person I've ever worked with in terms of licensing, updating our board and all other tech support and discussion. So what's up?
No, Rick is not with Groupee (or whatever they're called now), and he's no longer involved in .threads development.
Originally Posted by JPFolks
Questions: If he is involved, how do we reach him? If not, who is running it now and who did the recent security update?
UBBSystems is the owner of .threads, he is able to be reached via the support system here on UBBCentral.
Originally Posted by JPFolks
Question: For someone who wants tech support to update our site from 7.02 to current while keeping the current coloring etc. scheme, how do we get that done? Rick sold us the top of the line license (in fact, we bought a brand new license for the same site which he said was cheaper than paying him to just update from the original license. He also said we had tech hours coming to us from that license which would cover another update. Will those still be honored? If not, what is the cost of having this done because it is beyond our technical ability plus we fear losing data which is vital to our organizations archives.
You would either hire a 3rd party developer (such as myself or several others here) or hire UBBSystems to preform it for you via the "pricing and order" link. Questions directly to the powers that be usually need to go through the support system as these forums are more of a user to user support system.
Originally Posted by JPFolks
We waited for years like many of you for the magical version 8.0 and all the goodies it would bring. That's why our version is so outdated. We'd love to enter the world of the current and safe latest version as the chinese fake registrations pour into our site relentlessly causing all sorts of problems and we're a sitting duck security wise.
Well, my Stop Forum Spam modification from UBBDev is now included with the stock software and it should weed out a huge chunk of your spam registrations; the latest version at UBBDev is what was used as the basis of the now stock feature in 7.5.7 (in fact, it was released FOR the basis of the stock feature in 7.5.7).
Originally Posted by JPFolks
PS: I still don't understand how our board, which we started using in 1999 does not qualify us to have the UBB10YEARS graphic?
This is done manually, and the onlyone with access to validate license dates is UBBSystems; you'll need to send him a PT.
You may have recently received an email from socialstrata.com/hoop.la stating that UBB is back as a hosted service located at ubbforum.com.
It's important to note that the product offered at ubbforum.com is NOT affiliated or authorized by our company. It's also very important to be aware that we do not support migration of your existing UBB.threads forums to this product that is NOT authorized or approved by our company. The results of a migration could effect your existing community's structure, search engine rankings, traffic, user experience, as well as potentially increase the costs of running your forum.
As stated above, we are NOT affiliated with ubbforum.com and have retained legal counsel to review this issue.
We have recently released UBB.threads version 7.57 and encourage everyone to upgrade their board to take advantage of the new features and security enhancements. We are also working hard on the next major release, version 7.6, that should be in beta testing in the next few weeks.
If you have any questions or concerns, please send us an email at info@ubbcentral.com
I'm not surprised at all to have received that email from Social Strata, given all the speculation on this board about the future or non-future of UBBthreads. Also, I'm not surprised at their price either, due to the fact when they became Groupee their hosting plans skyrocketed. They are probably hurting, just like every other forum producer for customers due to the popularity of FB and other social forums. No matter what, I don't plan on going with them.
Greg AKA Virgil Earp at the OK Corral Tombstone, AZ
Well, even when Eve first came out it wasn't targeted at threads or classic (which is basically "ubb forum"); I think we all just got the email because they had it, which it's kind of crappy since they sold their rights to us to Rick...
Would you ever "Import Your Content", as suggested in their email (attached below), to a company that cannot maintain stability and renames themselves every few years.
Would any one of your forum members care if you shared their passwords with this sort of company. What is to guarantee that they will not abuse your member's email addresses by selling them off to other spam companies?
What happens to the ownership of that content once it gets imported? Does it now become property of SocialStrata/Hoop.la/Groupee/MadronaPark.
This seems like more than just a simple service from them. It seems a bit shady, or even much like a scam. You give them all of your currently hosted content, user information, user passwords and whatever private conversations from your PM/PT databases, AND you pay them $75 a month. If you stop paying, you loose everything. Giving them anything is close to giving up your rights to all of it.
Am I wrong?
Attached is a screen-capture of their email sent from support_bot@socialstrata.com on Friday, Dec 21, 2012. Saved for posterity.
Thank you Dunny and Gizmo for your help. Previous emails to the apparent current owner here have gone unanswered and even when they post here, they don't engage us directly as far as I can tell. A perfect example is directly above. If you have long time customers asking questions ONLY the current owner can answer and they completely ignore you when they post just below your questions, it certainly doesn't give off a warm and fuzzy feeling of care and support. Previous emails (as instructed above) to info@ubbcentral.com have gone unanswered. In addition, with a new promise of a soon to be coming new major release 7.6, why would we invest in having the site updated to 7.57 instead of waiting for 7.6 which is entering beta? But then version 8.0 was promised for many years in the same way.
Does anyone have any idea what new features will be included in 7.6? Is that listed somewhere?
We're a 100% free and volunteer run organization that has been around since 1985. Funding is especially tough in this economy so it would be helpful to have trustworthy facts on time frames and features and costs. If Gizmo is able and willing to update us from 7.02 to current (and perhaps do some other work based on any add on's you have available since we'd love to have some new features to improve our traffic) please PM me and we'll work something out. It would ALSO be a nice change of pace for the owner (or whoever posted above) to communicate, by name, with us wouldn't it? Is that really too much to ask or expect? We have over 50,000 members and I am easy to find and directly communicate with any of them, usually the same day, year round. It can be done.
I received another pair of email messages this morning from the "new" UBBForum people pushing me to convert to their online system. This despite the fact that I unsubscribed both email addresses last time.
I once again unsubscribed my address and also sent their team a note that if they keep this up I'm going to be reporting them.
Hey Brian, I'm always down for a gig, I'll shoot you a message here shortly.
I generally recommend people contact Brooks through the support pages; I can't talk for how often he may or may not contact users though, I just talk to you all here (but then again I don't own the product).
Yeah Lisa, I came here to ask if anyone else got the new message... Part of me wants to unsubscribe, the rest of me is curious as to when I'll get another one...
In addition, with a new promise of a soon to be coming new major release 7.6, why would we invest in having the site updated to 7.57 instead of waiting for 7.6 which is entering beta? But then version 8.0 was promised for many years in the same way.
It'll make your upgrade far easier (and potentially cheaper). You'll have to be running a current copy of threads to import, so whoever does your upgrade would have the hurtle with upgrading to 7.3 then again to 7.5.7 then to the new version (v7.3's upgrade commonly fails out and is a pain to work with)
We did respond to your email, you didn't respond back with your information requested for us to login and take a look.
Originally Posted by JPFolks
Thank you Dunny and Gizmo for your help. Previous emails to the apparent current owner here have gone unanswered and even when they post here, they don't engage us directly as far as I can tell. A perfect example is directly above. If you have long time customers asking questions ONLY the current owner can answer and they completely ignore you when they post just below your questions, it certainly doesn't give off a warm and fuzzy feeling of care and support. Previous emails (as instructed above) to info@ubbcentral.com have gone unanswered. In addition, with a new promise of a soon to be coming new major release 7.6, why would we invest in having the site updated to 7.57 instead of waiting for 7.6 which is entering beta? But then version 8.0 was promised for many years in the same way.
Does anyone have any idea what new features will be included in 7.6? Is that listed somewhere?
We're a 100% free and volunteer run organization that has been around since 1985. Funding is especially tough in this economy so it would be helpful to have trustworthy facts on time frames and features and costs. If Gizmo is able and willing to update us from 7.02 to current (and perhaps do some other work based on any add on's you have available since we'd love to have some new features to improve our traffic) please PM me and we'll work something out. It would ALSO be a nice change of pace for the owner (or whoever posted above) to communicate, by name, with us wouldn't it? Is that really too much to ask or expect? We have over 50,000 members and I am easy to find and directly communicate with any of them, usually the same day, year round. It can be done.
hey y'all..this is my first post. Ive been using ubb for many, many years running a busy and profitable forum.
I saw the update email and got all pumped and upgraded. Honestly, I thought ubb was dead, and we were gonna switch over to vbul....
I am not technical much, so a lot of the how and what escapes me, but I have to ask a few questions...ubb is strong as ever?
Are there any cool plugins I can use, like the tag feature used in fb and wishlist, where when you refer to another member they get tagged...or any other cool stuff?
thoughts? Also, would love to add, tweak some design elements to my forum....http://www.nobsphotosuccess.com/NoBsWorld/ubbthreads.php/forum_summary.html
I just checked them out at Hoop.la .. they are hosting service using version of UBB, there is no software installation as they host in on their servers.
It's Eve, as Eve always has been (a hosted solution). When Rick was granted UBB.Threads for his stock shares he bough JUST the name "UBB.Threads". "UBB", "The Ultimate Bulletin Board", "Ultimate Bulletin Board", "UBB.Classic" I believe are all still owned by Groupee.