vBulletin is a proprietary Internet forum software package sold by MH Sub I, LLC doing business as vBulletin (formerly Jelsoft Enterprises and vBulletin Solutions). It is written in PHP and uses a

MariaDB MariaDB is a community-developed, commercially supported Fork (software development), fork of the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), intended to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. Developm ...

MySQL MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...

database server. Similar products include XenForo,

WordPress WordPress (WP, or WordPress.org) is a web content management system. It was originally created as a tool to publish blogs but has evolved to support publishing other web content, including more traditional websites, electronic mailing list, ma ...

Joomla Joomla (), also styled Joomla! (with an exclamation mark) and sometimes abbreviated as J!, is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) for publishing web content on websites. Web content applications include discussion forums, p ...

Drupal Drupal () is a free and open-source web content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Drupal provides an open-source back-end framework for at least 14% of the top 10,000 websites worldwide ...

, MyBB, and

phpBB phpBB is an Internet forum package written in the PHP scripting language. The name "phpBB" is an abbreviation of ''PHP Bulletin Board''. Available under the GNU General Public License, phpBB is Free and open-source software, free and open-sourc ...

History

vBulletin was first launched in 2000 by James Limm and John Percival. Its successor, vBulletin 2, was released in 2001. A third version was launched in 2004. Internet Brands acquired the product from JelSoft in 2007. vBulletin 4 was released in late 2009. The StyleVars system was added to draw CSS variables directly from the vBulletin Template code. In July 2010, the BBC reported that there was a serious flaw in vBulletin software that allows anyone to easily access the database username and password. In October 2010, Internet Brands sued three former employees, just as their new competing software XenForo was to be launched, as well as a second lawsuit in the United States claiming

breach of contract Breach of contract is a legal cause of action and a type of civil wrong, in which a binding agreement or bargained-for exchange is not honored by one or more of the parties to the contract by non-performance or interference with the other part ...

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of Copyright#Scope, works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the c ...

, and misappropriation of

trade secret A trade secret is a form of intellectual property (IP) comprising confidential information that is not generally known or readily ascertainable, derives economic value from its secrecy, and is protected by reasonable efforts to maintain its conf ...

s. In May 2011 it was announced that vBulletin had abandoned an attempt at preventing XenForo doing business, and in 2013 the claims were dismissed. vBulletin 5 was released in 2012. In late 2017, a post by Technical Support Lead, Wayne Luke, confirmed that vBulletin 3 and vBulletin 4 were now considered to be "End of Life" software, with no further development of the series planned. On 18 September 2023, Wayne Luke confirmed that the previously-community run modifications website, vBulletin.org, would be sunsetted and shut down on 24 August 2024; modification creators were advised to post their content on the main vbulletin.com website via the Social Groups feature, or to host them via other means.

References

2000 software Internet forum software PHP software Proprietary software {{Web-software-stub

History

See also

References