PHP Programming Language - Cultural View

vBulletin 341
vBulletin
Developer(s) Internet Brands, vBulletin Solutions
Initial release 2000
Stable release 4.0.3 / April 8, 2010
Written in PHP
Operating
system
Cross Platform
Platform PHP / MySQL
Available in Official support for English, German, and Chinese
Type Forum software
License Proprietary, commercial [1]
Website http://www.vbulletin.com/
vBulletin (vB) is a commercial Internet forum software produced by Jelsoft Enterprises and vBulletin Solutions,
both subsidiaries of Internet Brands. It is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database server.
History
In 1999 James E. Limm and John Percival were running a Visual Basic website using Infopop's UBB.classic forum
software on VB Forums [2] . As their site grew, they noticed that their software, written in Perl using a flat-file
database, could not always cope with the number of users they had. In February 2000, the two decided that it would
be better to write their own solution as both were unfamiliar with the software's code and thus unable to optimize it.
Initially, it was designed solely as a rewrite of UBB, in PHP using MySQL, and was meant only for their own forum.
Other UBB owners expressed interest in the solution, and they offered to sell it to Infopop, but their proposal was
rejected. As there was still a demand for the software, Limm and Percival created Jelsoft and released their work as a
paid solution, called vBulletin 1.
After subsequent minor releases of their software, the two decided to start working on a new version that would be
more than a rewrite of UBB: they wanted to turn their software into a competitive solution for forums. Rewriting the
entirety of the product, vBulletin 2 commenced development. Shortly thereafter, Limm became the managing
director and Percival the lead developer. To help with the scale of the project, two additional developers, Freddie
Bingham and Mike Sullivan were brought on to help finish vBulletin 2. Kier Darby was brought on during the
vBulletin 2.0 Beta phase to further development. The release of vBulletin 2 proved to be very successful and is what
made vBulletin popular.
In December 2002, vBulletin 3 was beginning development. Percival decided to step down as lead developer and
product manager, turning his roles over to Kier Darby. vBulletin 3 was under development for a lengthy period of
time—nearly two years—as it went from a mere improvement on vBulletin 2 to a complete rewrite. During this time
Jeremy Hutchings joined the development team, a.k.a. Jerry. However, version 3 was finally released in March 2004.
In 2005, vBulletin 3.5 was released that addressed some of the shortcomings of 3.0 (discussed later on). vBulletin 3.6
was released as a stable version on August 3, 2006.