vBaGallery & PhotoPost

[mjm]

err I should take offense at = no community at PP, but will stop short that your assuming my going on 4 years here at PP = no life = bummer

I never had the pleasure of spending time at vBaGallery as it simply did not provide me what I wanted as a gallery software.

I intend, when I get a chance, to look into this software, and will see how it measures up to all the oohs and ahhs.
The only thing I see now is a few making a stink of a gripe about issues not related to my use of the product.

~ Mark

[Lizard King]

Originally Posted by ScottW

That sounds like a good reason to acquire a quality piece of gallery software and hopefully encourage that gallery's community of developers to come over too, and to revamp our support infrastructure to prevent such a market slippage again in the future. It wasn't so much our support that caused many customers to switch to vba, as it was that PhotoPost just couldn't do what many customers wanted at that time (although it is much closer now with the vb3 enhanced version) and those customers became frustrated with us and our product.

Still, 6000 customers in 4 years (we launched in 12/2001) is 1500 customers/year, compared with vba's 1600 or so in their first year. I think that's pretty comparable. We aren't perfect but we had to be doing something right for 6,000 people to buy our product - believe me, our marketing is not that great, so the product and our service has to be good despite the rhetoric of the past day.

Scott as far as i know Photopost doesn't allow their users to sell their licenses. Most of that 1300 users switched from photopost to vba gallery because their support is way better then photopost. So you must decrease that 1300 from 6000.

As for myself i'll not change my copyright information until i saw that photopost will support its products better. You needed to purchase vba gallery because you were loosing customers each other day and it was causing you money. So why not changing your support way from today. Just try to support your products as Brian did. Trust me the main reason i choosed vba gallery against photopost is the support. Not only one but a lot of people are claiming the same thing. You may believe your support system is perfect but your customers dont believe this and sadly the important thing is what customers think. Hiring Kevin was a perfect step and congrats to both of you but you must keep your customers happy otherwise sooner there will be another option and we'll move to the other option. You may buy the other software also but instead of buying why don't you just try on better Support.

I dont want extra features for vba gallery i just want good support from you guys.

[V-Rodforums]

I sure hope you guys do better with the vbagallery than you did photopost. I am one of the many photopost gallery owners that stopped using it and switched because the support was so bad and the scripts ridiculously difficult to deal with. Please please do not do to the vbagallery what you did to photopost.

[rbl]

Originally Posted by ScottW

It wasn't so much our support that caused many customers to switch to vba, as it was that PhotoPost just couldn't do what many customers wanted at that time (although it is much closer now with the vb3 enhanced version) and those customers became frustrated with us and our product.

Maybe you are right but I don't think so. There's not much use for hundreds of features when the whole thing doesn't work altogether in a consistent manner. The vB3 enhanced version made it even worse. The time I was running 4.7 was more or less stable compared to what happen from that point on.
When your flagship product misbehaves continuously in a lot of user sites, your 2 person support staff (where 1 has also developer chores) fail miserably to provide the most basic support to your thousands of users across your 3 product line, no matter how well intended they are and how much they bust their "behinds" doing it.

Originally Posted by ScottW

Still, 6000 customers in 4 years (we launched in 12/2001) is 1500 customers/year, compared with vba's 1600 or so in their first year. I think that's pretty comparable. We aren't perfect but we had to be doing something right for 6,000 people to buy our product - believe me, our marketing is not that great, so the product and our service has to be good despite the rhetoric of the past day.

Comparable if you ignore the fact that you had almost no competition in all those 4 years and that a large number of those vBa's where PP dissidents and people that chose not to see for themselves if the PP horror stories were true.
If you take that into account, not only vBa had a rocket like ascent but they were kicking your "behinds" at the same time, and do they have a better product? Some might say they do (at least integration was way better) but the real magic, and also the reason why there was such a huge community behind it, is that Brian worked hard to make all customers happy providing them custom code at demand, simple (and not so simple) things that made their galleries exactly like they wanted.
Why doesn't this happen here? Why didn't the ppdev.com community grew? Because there's no real incentive, starting with the support staff that really has their hands full at all times and lack the necessary time and mental space to attend to all these people.

[rbl]

Originally Posted by mjm

err I should take offense at = no community at PP, but will stop short that your assuming my going on 4 years here at PP = no life = bummer

Mark, I don't know what you did in these 4 years here but I wasn't targeting anyone in particular. What I meant was that even though there were almost 5x more users and 2 sites dedicated to support and mods, there is no real community after 4 years, otherwise ppdev.com wasn't closed and the general ambient here was much more different. The forums are filled with disgruntled posts from unsatisfied users and sadly the current situation made it 10x worse.

[PixelFX]

Seems like their is only one thing left to do .. after reading through all this .. FOR ALL USERS, AKA LOGIN to the new photopost members area here, and download and install the new version of photopost vbgallery ..

We all can agree or disagree to agree that we're not happy about the short notice of the sale of vba gallery script, but reguardless of that, we access have support forums here, and we have access to downloads for the script again, I'll be happy when I can buy a new branded/licence of the script, but I'm sure thats comming, and a full year of membership was a nice touch thanks ..

Reguardless of why brian did what he did or didn't do with vba gallery and photopost or someone else we should respect his desion and move on .. after all he did leave us with a very cool system.

I'm looking forward to seeing what brian will be able to create now he'll have more time on his hands, Again we should all be greatful he took the time to make gallery platform that intergrats so pefectly with vbulletin and is easy to hack/code etc. And be greatful that photopost is keeping the project going .. Like any new business venture you can't keep/make everyone happy but I think with with the fact photopost already has support forums up and downloads is pretty darn good, and fact that they managed to keep up with all the replies in a professional manner for the most part in this massive thread is a miricle and good support.

Rather than bitch about this anymore, and kicking the dead horse anymore, it would make more sence to start working on contructive wish lists for what each of you want out of Photopost vBGallery and what you don't want ..

Peace!

[Atlaua]

Originally Posted by ScottW

The terms of the deal are confidential because we are a privately held company. Privately held companies do not disclose the terms of acquisitions, and both sides agreed that the deal would be confidential.

There's a difference between not disclosing details and total gag's on one party. There's nobody out here who doesn't think you bullied Brian into doing something he didn't want to. It's always a good idea to make sure nothing can be discussed when you're throwing your weight around with innocent college kids.

All you've managed to do is buy yourself a lot of hate and distrust in the vb community.

[Michael P]

It's called a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) and is standard in every aquisition deal and applies equally to both parties. I've taken companies public and I've sold companies to both public and private companies; NDAs are like handshakes and you almost always carry one to any meeting you have.

Originally Posted by Lizard King

As for myself i'll not change my copyright information until i saw that photopost will support its products better.

We're offering an incentive to change it sooner rather than later, but there will come a time when you will need to update the copyright since PhotoPost now owns the product. It's not really an optional thing, it's something that will need to be done and we'll provide the tools to make it easy for our customers.

[Atlaua]

Originally Posted by Michael P

It's called a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) and is standard in every aquisition deal and applies equally to both parties. I've taken companies public and I've sold companies to both public and private companies; NDAs are like handshakes and you almost always carry one to any meeting you have.

Here's a clue for you. When a happy merger or aquisition goes down, public or private, the parties shake hands tell the public things about how this was the best for both parties etc.

When someone with bigger wallets forces someone else into to selling their hard work, then they say things like "I cannot comment for legal reasons."

As I said, anyone can tell the difference between not disclosing details and a complete gag in a settlement. You guys have bought a lot of bad blood and are doing absolutly nothing to help.

[Michael P]

I wouldn't call 15 pages of discussion a "complete gag". Everything you are saying is conjecture and nothing more and since we've already told you that we are bound by NDAs, there isn't any more information to be shared.

[Atlaua]

Originally Posted by Michael P

Atlaua, are you a license holder of either product?

Yea, I am. But my transfered account cannot post or pm so I created a new one.

[Michael P]

Can you PM me your details so I can check your account status? We found a problem with the vB ImpEx import we did where a large number of users were set to usergroupid of 0, that has since been fixed; so either your other account should now work or I can check it for you.

[PixelFX]

impex is a fun tool to use :P

wonders if anyone read above .. nda's are fun to .. yup .. can't we all be friends and move on // (I've been awake far far too long) *twitch*

[Michael P]

It worked pretty well, although when it was done the forum relationships were all messed up and there were usergroup issues. I think everything has been resolved.

The new members area is online and you can manage all your licenses from a single login; you dont have to close your browser as we don't use htaccess anymore and later today we should have a system to identify licensed users in the forums. As you can see, we've also opened up our support forums to the public (versus having them in the members area).

vBGallery users have been offered a free one year extension on their licenses and the price of vBGallery hasn't changed since being moved here. It took less than 36 hours to get everything in place and make improvements and more are yet to come; but we're off to a good start, IMHO.

What's done is done and what's been said speaks for itself. I understand this is an emotional issue for some people and we've given you room to vent here and we're doing our best to address your concerns.

[Michael P]

Thank you everyone for particiating in this discussion; I think that we've covered every possible topic and at this point we can close out this thread to avoid repeating the same things over and over.

Happy Thanksgiving!