Its the blueish version of refine style that i added in vB.org. Grab it for free vB’ers
Refine Blue
Demo

So i was wondering one fine day if i had gone greedy by making only premium styles and not offering free styles, and that night i woke up sweating dreading the fact that yes i am getting greedy, so here you go folks, me giving back to the vB community and very quality style which definately speaks DigitalvB Design.

Demo for Refine 3.8.4
Download Refine 3.8.4 at vBulletin.org

Latest vBulletin Style – Sentinal Released
I am very pleased to release the latest style in DigitalvB arsenal titled Sentinal. This style was DigitalVB main style for a long period, initially i was going to release this but got sidetracked with other projects and styles, but constant requests and barracade of MSN messages have prompted me to release this style. You can purchase this style from the DigitalVB Store immediately.
Sentinal Demo
Buy Sentinal vBulletin Style
Support Forum for Style – Members
Pre-Sales Forum

I know, the economy is still a bit wobbly and perhaps churning out cash on internet for web apps isnt part of your monthly budget. You might be interested to try out some free alternatives, for some this option might be out of spite (especially those who feel betrayed by the new vB4 Licensing ). I have tried to make a list of BB which are popular, in process few new upcoming ones would have been left out. You are welcome to add other BB in comments.

phpbb – creating communities worldwide

It probably one of the most recognized and favourite free BB solution out there, over there years it has earned the title of “Been there,Done that” Bulletin Board.

Download phpBB

phpBB Support Forum

Quote – Its easy to use, multilingual, powerful, feature-packed and FREE forum software – Unquote

Download myBB

Community Forums

Simple Machines Forum — SMF in short — is a free, professional grade software package that allows you to set up your own online community within minutes.

Download SMF

SMF Community Forums

YaBB is a leading FREE, Open Source community forum system (bulletin board, message board) written in Perl. Learn how it started, who is on the project team, and what the main features are.

Download YABB

Community Support Forums

bbPress is forum software with a twist from the creators of WordPress.Have you ever been frustrated with forum or bulletin board software that was slow, bloated and always got your server hacked?bbPress is focused on web standards, ease of use, ease of integration, and speed. We’re keeping things as small and light as possible while still allowing for great add on features through our extensive plugin system.

Download bbPress

Community Support Forums

PunBB is a fast and lightweight PHP-powered discussion board. It is released under the GNU General Public License. Its primary goals are to be faster, smaller and less graphically intensive as compared to other discussion boards. PunBB has fewer features than many other discussion boards, but is generally faster and outputs smaller, semantically correct XHTML-compliant pages.

Download punBB

Community Support Forums

E-Blah is a Perl-based forum system requiring very low system requirements making it a fast and flexible forum system. E-Blah is a forum constantly evolving, with new releases several times throughout the year.

Download EBlah

Community Support Forums

DeluxeBB is a powerful open source bulletin board, which helps you create your own web communities in less than 10 minutes.

Download DeluxeBB

Community Support Forums

vBulletin 4 license pricing has been announced, reading the inital reactions there is lot of disappointment with the announcement. Pre-sale license for a product which hasnt been released even in beta or demo and little confusion over situation of current license owners. Seems like the marketing team is promoting this new product as somewhat of a superhero, it expects people to line up and pre-order which will probably be a big marketing blunder. Im expecting the pre-sale deadline to be extended but for now IPB 3 > VB4 when it comes to licensing.

Here’s a simple breakdown for the VB4 License and features.

• Leased License will not longer be available with VB4, there is only OWNED License.
• VB4 Publishing Suite consists of vBulletin 4, Blog and CMS.
• No renewal price to access updates and patches per year, Now a license is valid for one period cycle i.e If you have a vb4 license you get all the updates for it till it reached vb5, once it reaches vb5, you need to buy new license.

If you have an existing OWNED vBulletin License

• You get a FREE upgrade to vb4
• If you need to upgrade to vb4 Suite pay $130 (Presale price) or $250 (Price after presale)
  
• When your license expires you CAN use the vB4 software but you will NOT get updates,patches etc. You have to buy License upgrade for updates of vB4 Series.

If you have an existing LEASED vBulletin License

• You get a FREE vB4 upgrade.
  
• Once your Leased license expires, You cannot run vB4 software and you have to remove vB4. You need to buy upgrade license to vb4 Suite pay $130 (Presale price) or $250 (Price after presale).

If you have an existing LEASED vBulletin License which has expired in last 12 Months

• You get the vB4 Publishing Suite ( Forum+Blog+CMS ) for $190

If you have an existing LEASED vBulletin License which expired more than 12 months ago.

• You get the vB4 Publishing Suite ( Forum+Blog+CMS ) for $210

If you DONT have any vBulletin License and you are a NEW customer

• You can buy new vB4 License for $195 or complete vB Suite for $235

vBulletin has taken an ambitious marketing approach, banking on falling fanbase and trying to compete with IPB. I personally believe the pre-sale event is a NO-SHOW , everyone will be skeptical about buying a product which isnt even available for demo. Looking at screenshots the forum itself doesnt not look visually appealing especially the postbit part looked very pale. The vBulletin homepage revamp looks rather a cheap rip-off of Mozilla website. Launch vB4 Suite with Blog and CMS. Any vB user will tell you if they are already using CMS it most probably is vBAdvanced and they are quite happy with it. vB Blog well, i don’t know perhaps its part of the new bandwagon of social networking but its not a ground-breaking addon. vB4 suite doesnt not have anything in it which would make me pre-order it.

With that said i do like the Licensing part, getting rid of lease and making the upgrades under series cycle and not yearly is a welcome addition. Earlier license renewal required once every year 60$ had to be paid to access updates now its changed to series cycle, in simple words the last vB3 cycle was almost 4 years. So if vB4 series cycle is 18-24mnths, i dont need to pay anything to access its updates. It is definitely a small positive if the vB4 cycle goes for 1-2 years, But if the vB5 software comes within an year, there goes the silver lining.

So far vB4 has disappointed a lot when it comes to license pricing, the hype and anxiety over vB4 seems to deliver bloated results. I havent used vB4 but i do not expect much from it, perhaps it has a better core and performance which cannot be seen through screenshots but vB4 seems to be below par till now as compared to IPB 3.

vBulletin 4 Official presale event announcement

New vBulletin 4 Website, Features and Screenshots

vBulletin.org discussion thread

I have purchased license for IPB with a rather conflicted ambition of starting the DigitalIPB, might also bring them all under one banner of DigitalSkins. The IPB forum is running under DigitalVB’s IPB Forum. The initial idea is to replicate all VB Styles for IPB. It will still take time for this to kick into gear as i have plans to hit 15 premium skins for Vbulletin first before the first wave of VB4 hits the net. Keep a close eye, i’ll update as this project moves

DigitalVB.com main site has been rediscovered under the blog format. I have revamped and simplified certain aspects of the website. The Premium Vbulletin styles are all showcased and classified under Premium Styles menu. DigitalVB has grown considerably in last 4 months and i believe it’s time to promote and expand the site under more options and better service. The commerce shop is still setup under the forum cart and all databases are maintained.