vbulletin论坛_采访– vBulletin的John Percival
vbulletin论坛
Sitting high atop the director’s chair, John Percival has a lot to be proud of. As an integral part of Jelsoft, and the creator of vBulletin, John has taken a dream and made it into quite a stunning reality.
约翰·珀西瓦尔(John Percival)高坐在导演椅上，值得骄傲。 作为Jelsoft的组成部分以及vBulletin的创建者，John拥有一个梦想，并将其变成了一个令人震惊的现实。
Many sites around the world — thousands in fact — use vBulletin. Packed with features, it’s user-friendly and quite scaleable, and is arguably the best PHP/MySQL forum software on the market today.
世界上许多站点(实际上是数千个站点)都使用vBulletin。 它具有丰富的功能，用户友好且可扩展，并且可以说是当今市场上最好PHP / MySQL论坛软件。
How was vBulletin created? Why was it created? And what are some of the plans for the future? John Percival unveils nearly all…
vBulletin是如何创建的？ 为什么创建它？ 未来的计划是什么？ 约翰·珀西瓦尔(John Percival)几乎揭幕了所有……
SP: Firstly, can you tell us a bit about yourself? How did you get into software development? What were you doing before you started work on vBulletin?
SP：首先，您能告诉我们一些关于您的情况吗？ 您是如何进入软件开发的？ 在开始从事vBulletin之前，您在做什么？
Sure. I’m John Percival, and I’ve been working for Jelsoft now for 5 years. I originally came on board to help out founder and co-owner, James Limm, run a Website for Visual Basic developers. This involved writing articles, code snippets and reviews for the site, and keeping our Q and A forums lively and active. I was doing that up until February 2000, when we decided that our existing message boards didn’t make the cut, so the decision was made to develop some new ones in PHP/MySQL.
当然。 我是John Percival，现在已经在Jelsoft工作了5年。 我最初是在董事会上帮助创始人和共同所有者James Limm为Visual Basic开发人员运行一个网站。 这涉及为网站撰写文章，代码段和评论，并保持Q和A论坛的活跃和活跃。 直到2000年2月，我一直在这样做，当时我们决定不削减现有的留言板，因此决定在PHP / MySQL中开发一些新的留言板。
SP: What originally inspired you to write vBulletin? How long did it take you to put together the first version?
SP：最初激发您编写vBulletin的原因是什么？ 您将第一版放在一起用了多长时间？
As I mentioned, our existing message boards were not holding up under the strain, and neither James nor myself were familiar with the board’s code, so we were unable to modify it to integrate it with the site. We made a decision to develop a completely new system in PHP, so that we could integrate it much more tightly with the rest of the VB-World Website.
正如我所提到的，我们现有的留言板并没有承受太大的压力，James和我自己都不熟悉留言板的代码，因此我们无法对其进行修改以将其与站点集成。 我们决定使用PHP开发一个全新的系统，以便我们可以将其与VB-World网站的其余部分更紧密地集成。
Having written a similar content management and feedback system for VB-World in PHP, I already had a lot of code to work from in building what was to become vBulletin. Our new forums soon picked up a bit of interest from the bulletin board world, and we were persuaded to develop it further and release it. The total time between first decision to write the software, and the first version being released was about 2 months.
在用PHP为VB-World编写了类似的内容管理和反馈系统之后，我已经有很多代码可以用来构建要成为vBulletin的内容。 我们的新论坛很快就引起了公告牌界的关注，并被说服进一步发展并发布了它。 从初次决定编写软件到发布第一个版本之间的总时间大约为2个月。
SP: Why did you pick PHP and MySQL? What other combinations did you consider?
SP：为什么选择PHP和MySQL？ 您还考虑其他哪些组合？
The main reason that I chose PHP and MySQL was because that was what I knew how to use. I did not have much Perl, C(++) or Java experience, so they were not really options. I had previously written VB-World’s content management system using the PHP/MySQL combination, so I was confident that they’d live up to the task.
我选择PHP和MySQL的主要原因是因为那是我知道如何使用的东西。 我没有太多的Perl，C(++)或Java经验，所以它们并不是真正的选择。 我以前使用PHP / MySQL组合编写了VB-World的内容管理系统，因此我确信他们能够完成这项任务。
Also, PHP and MySQL had very active development communities, so we were guaranteed that they would be supported and developed for the foreseeable future. In the end, we didn’t seriously consider any other options, as PHP/MySQL was what was right for us at the time — and we didn’t consider releasing it to the public until after the main part of development had been done.
另外，PHP和MySQL具有非常活跃的开发社区，因此我们保证在可预见的将来会为他们提供支持和开发。 最后，我们没有认真考虑任何其他选择，因为当时适合我们的是PHP / MySQL，并且直到开发的主要部分完成后，我们才考虑将其发布给公众。
SP: Can you tell us a bit about the programming environment — both physical (your office space) and onscreen — in which vBulletin was created?
SP：您能告诉我们一些有关创建vBulletin的编程环境-物理环境(您的办公室空间)和屏幕上的信息吗？
Sure. I tend to work in a fairly quiet environment with as few distractions as possible. Music on in the background is good, although I’m often concentrating so hard that I don’t notice the CD finishing :-) During the time in which I originally developed vBulletin, I tended to work quite late, and solidly for hours at a time, before taking a considerable break and getting some sleep. I found that I was more productive over solid, concentrated periods of time, rather than little bits here and there.
当然。 我倾向于在一个安静的环境中工作，尽量减少干扰。 背景音乐很好，尽管我经常专心致志以至于没有注意到CD的完成：-)在我最初开发vBulletin的过程中，我倾向于工作很晚，并且在一段时间，然后稍事休息并入睡。 我发现在固定，集中的时间段内，我的工作效率更高，而不是到处都是。
Most of the design work for vBulletin was done on computer, but I always have a pen/pencil and paper handy in case I need to make notes or to sketch something out. Most of the development work was done using TextPad (textpad.com), which I now swear by for all my PHP work. It’s an excellent, handy little text editor that does everything I need, without being over complicated, over-pretty, or clunky.
vBulletin的大部分设计工作都是在计算机上完成的，但是如果需要做笔记或画草图的时候，我总是随身带笔/铅笔和纸。 大多数开发工作都是使用TextPad(textpad.com)完成的，我现在对我的所有PHP工作都发誓。 它是一款出色，方便的小型文本编辑器，可以完成我需要的一切，而不会过于复杂，过于漂亮或笨拙。
Testing work was done on my local machine, with Apache and MySQL running under Win98 (now Win2k). The great thing about PHP is that you don’t need expensive development tools — a simple text editor is all that’s required, and PHP/MySQL/Apache are all free, so it’s a very low-cost solution.
测试工作是在本地计算机上完成的，Apache和MySQL在Win98(现在为Win2k)下运行。 PHP的优点是您不需要昂贵的开发工具-只需一个简单的文本编辑器，而PHP / MySQL / Apache都是免费的，因此这是一种非常低成本的解决方案。
SP: When you launched vBulletin, UBB was leader of the pack. How did you go about introducing vBulletin into a market dominated by UBB? And did you ever see yourself actually rivaling and becoming better than them?
SP：当您启动vBulletin时，UBB是该套件的领导者。 您如何将vBulletin引入UBB主导的市场？ 您是否曾经看到自己实际上在竞争并变得比他们更好？
When I first developed vBulletin, it was just a personal project for use on VB-World. However, a few UBB users were concerned about the direction that their software was heading, and were pleased with this breath of fresh air that we provided. They got in touch with me, and persuaded me that there might be a market for it if we were to release it. So that’s just what we did. We had nothing to lose by doing so, and we were very surprised that it took off so fast. It was an instant hit, and picked up a very vocal and dedicated following of users very quickly.
当我第一次开发vBulletin时，它只是一个用于VB-World的个人项目。 但是，一些UBB用户担心其软件的发展方向，并对我们提供的这种新鲜空气感到满意。 他们与我取得联系，并说服我说如果我们要发布它，那么它可能会有市场。 这就是我们所做的。 这样做没有什么可失去的，我们感到如此惊讶如此Swift就感到惊讶。 这是一时的热潮，很快就吸引了用户的热烈关注。
These guys and the ‘hacking’ community have contributed a huge amount to the success of vBulletin. For the first little while, we had no marketing budget, and it was just promoted through word of mouth. We never saw ourselves becoming market leaders (not that we are yet — I’ll leave that decision to the independent reader), and the speed of success caught us by surprise several times. It has been a challenge to expand so quickly, but one that we have taken up and, I think, succeeded at.
这些家伙和“黑客”社区为vBulletin的成功做出了巨大贡献。 最初，我们没有行销预算，只是通过口口相传来推广。 我们从未见过自己成为市场领导者(不是我们还没有-我将把这个决定留给独立读者)，而成功的速度使我们几次感到惊讶。 如此快速的扩展一直是一项挑战，但我们已经接受并成功了。
SP: To what do you attribute vBulletin’s success?
SP：您将vBulletin的成功归因于什么？
There are a number of things that I can point to immediately, but I think that the biggest one of all is people: our customers have been invaluable in helping us improve the software, providing constant suggestions and bug reports, as well as passing on information about vBulletin by word of mouth. Also, the ‘hacking’ community has been a huge bonus for vBulletin.
我可以立即指出很多事情，但是我认为最大的一件事是人：我们的客户在帮助我们改进软件，提供持续的建议和错误报告以及传递信息方面非常宝贵。关于vBulletin的口耳相传。 此外，“黑客”社区对vBulletin来说是一个巨大的收获。
These people create code modifications for the plain vBulletin software, to add new features, or to improve existing ones. vBulletin is distributed with full source-code, so the customer is free to take the code and modify it as much as they like. People like this a lot, as they can customize it to fit in their situation, rather than having to use a one-size-fits-all solution. Despite that, we’ve done our best to create the most well-rounded solution possible.
这些人为纯vBulletin软件创建代码修改，以添加新功能或改进现有功能。 vBulletin附带了完整的源代码，因此客户可以自由获取并随意修改代码。 人们非常喜欢这种方式，因为他们可以对其进行自定义以适合自己的情况，而不必使用“一刀切”的解决方案。 尽管如此，我们仍竭尽所能来创建最全面的解决方案。
vBulletin 2 was released just under a year ago, and this made vBulletin much more secure, much more stable, and increased our feature-base a lot. vBulletin’s template system is also a big hit — particularly the ability to modify the complete look of the forums from within an online Web control panel, and the ability for the user to get down and dirty with the HTML too, if they want.
vBulletin 2于不到一年前发布，这使vBulletin更安全，更稳定，并大大增加了我们的功能基础。 vBulletin的模板系统也很受欢迎-特别是能够从在线Web控制面板中修改论坛的完整外观，以及用户也可以随意使用HTML。
vBulletin has a host of administration tools that make it a lot easier to maintain, and many features for the user too, which make it popular for bringing the community together, and centralizing the focus of a Website on the forums. The users like the experience, so the administrators like it, and so they tell others about it — and I think that has been the key to vBulletin’s success.
vBulletin具有许多易于维护的管理工具，也为用户提供了许多功能，这使其在将社区聚集在一起以及将网站的焦点集中在论坛上而广受欢迎。 用户喜欢这种体验，因此管理员喜欢它，所以他们告诉其他人-我认为这是vBulletin成功的关键。
SP: There’s been an influx of forums software onto the market, and the interest in open source software grows all the time. In future, will you continue to charge users for licenses, or are you looking at other ways to generate revenue as the market becomes more competitive?
SP：论坛软件已经大量涌入市场，并且对开源软件的兴趣一直在增长。 将来，您会继续向用户收取许可费用，还是在寻找其他方法来随着市场竞争的增加而创收？
vBulletin has the huge advantage over open source projects in that we can pay people to provide support. Therefore, if you purchase a license, you are guaranteed that we will provide you with support in all ways we can. This can involve logging on to people’s servers, offering help by email, and liaising with server administrators to improve performance.
vBulletin与开源项目相比具有巨大的优势，因为我们可以付钱给人们提供支持。 因此，如果您购买了许可证，则可以保证我们将竭尽所能为您提供支持。 这可能涉及登录到人的服务器，通过电子邮件提供帮助以及与服务器管理员联系以提高性能。
Despite the fact that the market is becoming more competitive, vBulletin continues to gain popularity. We’re not sitting back and resting on our laurels, but rather continuing the exciting development of vBulletin 3.
尽管市场竞争越来越激烈，但vBulletin仍继续受到欢迎。 我们不是坐立不安，而是继续vBulletin 3的激动人心的发展。
SP: There are all kinds of sites on the Web — from hobbyists to large enterprises. How does vBulletin fit into the Websites of these different classes of customer?
SP：Web上有各种各样的站点，从业余爱好者到大型企业。 vBulletin如何适合这些不同类别的客户的网站？
From a technical point of view, vBulletin can handle sites of all sizes — from the smallest bulletin board to the largest community — given the correct hardware. We have several customers with millions of posts in their database, so there are no scaling issues. This is all achievable on run-of-the-mill hardware too.
从技术的角度来看，只要具备正确的硬件，vBulletin就能处理各种规模的站点，从最小的公告板到最大的社区。 我们有几个客户，他们的数据库中有数以百万计的帖子，因此不存在扩展问题。 这也可以在常规硬件上实现。
Our low price makes the product very attractive for small-medium sites. We’re also working on providing more solutions for our enterprise level customers, with more inclusive Support options and support for other enterprise-level database engines.
我们低廉的价格使该产品对中小型站点非常有吸引力。 我们还致力于为企业级客户提供更多解决方案，并提供更具包容性的支持选项以及对其他企业级数据库引擎的支持。
SP: I understand that you’re rewriting vBulletin for the version 3.0 release. You just rewrote the core engine for vBulletin 2.0 – why rewrite it again? What sacrifices did you have to make in order to improve the performance of vBulletin in version 2?
SP：我了解到您正在为3.0版本重写vBulletin。 您只是重写了vBulletin 2.0的核心引擎–为什么要再次重写它？ 为了提高版本2中的vBulletin的性能，您必须做出哪些牺牲？
vBulletin 3 is not going to be a complete rewrite in the same way vBulletin 2 was. We’re looking at what we have learnt in creating vBulletin 2 — we’ll keep the best bits and making them better, and take the not-so-good bits and rework them. The code is being designed with performance and scalability in mind, while keeping things as modular as possible. The only sacrifices that we make in order to improve performance is developer time — if a feature is going to be included we make sure that we spend the extra time on it, ensuring it’ll perform under all different conditions.
vBulletin 3不会像vBulletin 2一样完全重写。 我们正在研究创建vBulletin 2时所学到的知识–我们将保留最好的位并使它们变得更好，并取下不太好的位并进行重新加工。 在设计代码时，考虑到性能和可伸缩性，同时使内容尽可能保持模块化。 为了提高性能，我们做出的唯一牺牲就是开发人员的时间-如果要包含一项功能，我们将确保我们在其上花费额外的时间，以确保该功能可以在所有不同的条件下运行。
The biggest improvements that we were able to make on the vBulletin 2 were the SQL queries — this is how vBulletin and PHP interface with the database. We were able to improve the way these queries were made, and the number of queries the system could handle, so that the code was a lot faster.
我们能够在vBulletin 2上进行的最大改进是SQL查询-这就是vBulletin和PHP与数据库的接口方式。 我们能够改进这些查询的方式以及系统可以处理的查询数量，从而使代码更快。
SP: Do you have any recommended resources for PHP/MySQL developers who want to learn how to optimize their code for high performance conditions such as those to which vBulletin is regularly exposed?
SP：对于想要学习如何针对高性能条件(例如vBulletin经常暴露的条件)优化代码PHP / MySQL开发人员，您有任何推荐资源吗？
The MySQL Website is a good place, and the Paul DuBois MySQL book is a good reference too. However, the best experience is gained by actually trying and tinkering with code yourself. See what kind of code works, what doesn’t, and learn by trial-and-improvement. You’ll soon start to pick up a few tricks. One thing that we’ve learnt in developing vBulletin for its varied environments is to have as few queries on the page as possible.
MySQL网站是一个不错的地方， Paul DuBois MySQL书也是一个很好的参考。 但是，通过亲自尝试和修改代码可以获得最佳的体验。 查看哪种代码有效，什么无效，并通过试验和改进来学习。 您很快就会开始学习一些技巧。 我们在针对各种环境开发vBulletin时了解到的一件事是，在页面上的查询尽可能少。
SP: Where do you draw the line between incorporating user-requested features, and optimizing the product’s performance?
SP：您在合并用户要求的功能和优化产品性能之间的界限如何？
User-requested features are usually included based on how popular they are. If a feature proves to be very popular, we’ll start to look at ways to include it in the vBulletin code in a way that won’t hit the performance significantly.
通常根据用户的受欢迎程度来包括用户要求的功能。 如果某个功能被证明非常受欢迎，我们将开始研究将其包含在vBulletin代码中的方式，而不会显着影响性能。
There are almost always several different ways to implement a feature, and we always look at the best-performing method, over the easiest-to-program method. If there’s going to be the possibility that people are not going to want a particular feature, or it might be a bit too resource-hungry for some people, we put in an option so that the administrator of the board has the final choice.
几乎总是有几种不同的方法来实现功能，并且我们总是在最容易编程的方法上寻找性能最佳的方法。 如果将有可能人们不想使用某个特定功能，或者对于某些人来说可能有点过于浪费资源，那么我们可以选择一个选项，以便董事会的管理员拥有最终选择权。
SP: Can you share with us some of the new features of vBulletin 3.0 that haven’t yet been made public?
SP：您可以与我们分享尚未公开的vBulletin 3.0的一些新功能吗？
We’re not revealing too much right now, as a lot of it is still being worked on, so we don’t have full details available yet. From the admin perspective, the control panel is being revamped, including a much improved templates system, and a more comprehensive security/permissions system. From an end-user point of view, the interface will be much improved, with the option of threaded views on messages. The user control panel has also been enhanced, but we can’t say much more than that yet!
我们目前还没有透露太多信息，因为很多工作仍在进行中，因此我们尚无完整的详细信息。 从管理员的角度来看，正在对控制面板进行改造，包括大大改进的模板系统和更全面的安全/权限系统。 从最终用户的角度来看，该界面将得到很大的改进，可以选择消息的线程视图。 用户控制面板也得到了增强，但是我们不能说太多了！
You never know, but before long you might find vBulletin powering your whole Website, not just your forums! ;-)
您永远不会知道，但是不久之后，您可能会发现vBulletin为整个网站(不仅仅是论坛)提供了动力！ ;-)
SP: A little trivia: what’s the largest number of users that have ever used a vBulletin system at the same time? What sort of hardware was required to accomplish this feat? What’s the largest community that’s running vBulletin that you know of?
SP：有点琐事：曾经同时使用vBulletin系统的最大用户数量是多少？ 要实现这一壮举，需要哪种硬件？ 您所知道的运行vBulletin的最大社区是什么？
Unfortunately, I can’t mention the names or URLs of our customers. However, we have seen forums with more than 1100 users online at the same time, another with over 170,000 registered members, and another with in excess of 3 million posts. So it should handle most day-to-day forums without too much trouble!
不幸的是，我不能提及客户的姓名或URL。 但是，我们看到论坛同时在线拥有1100多个用户，另一个拥有170,000注册会员，另一个拥有超过300万个帖子。 因此，它应该可以处理大多数日常论坛，而不会带来太多麻烦！
To power forums that large does require quite a large server setup, though. I’d think that they probably have two servers, one for the database, and one for the Web server. Each would probably be a Dual-P3 1Ghz machine with 2GB RAM, SCSI hard disks. That’s just a guess, but with the falling cost of servers, a server that size wouldn’t be unreasonable for a large site.
但是，要为如此大的论坛提供动力，确实需要相当大的服务器设置。 我认为他们可能有两台服务器，一台用于数据库，一台用于Web服务器。 每个可能都是一台具有2GB RAM和SCSI硬盘的Dual-P3 1Ghz计算机。 这只是一个猜测，但是随着服务器成本的下降，对于大型站点而言，如此大小的服务器并非没有道理。
SP: What are the plans for vBulletin’s future? Will you be sticking with message boards and related systems, or are there plans to branch out into other products or services?
SP：vBulletin的未来有什么计划？ 您会坚持使用留言板和相关系统，还是计划扩展到其他产品或服务？
Well I think that I’ve dropped a couple of hints through the other questions, so go back and have another read! We plan to stick with Website development tools for the near future, along similar lines to what we’ve done so far. We’ve been working on a few deals with ISPs over the last few weeks, so watch the vBulletin Website for an announcement and more details very soon!
好吧，我认为我在其他问题中留下了一些提示，因此请回头再读一遍！ 我们计划在不久的将来坚持使用网站开发工具，其方式与我们到目前为止所做的类似。 在过去的几周中，我们一直在与ISP进行一些交易，因此请立即访问vBulletin网站以获取公告和更多详细信息！
vBulletin will continue to be actively developed, and we will be trying to keep on the cutting edge of technology, making sure that our customers are fully supported, and have the most comprehensive bulletin board available to them at a low cost.
vBulletin将继续积极发展，我们将努力保持技术的最前沿，以确保我们的客户得到充分支持，并以低成本为他们提供最全面的公告板。
vbulletin论坛