UBB.classic
| Developer(s) | Social Strata, Inc. / Mindraven |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 7.5.5 / December 12, 2012 |
| Development status | Discontinued |
| Written in | Perl |
| Type | Internet forum |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | UBBCentral |
UBB.classic (formerly Ultimate Bulletin Board or UBB) was an Internet forum software package originally written by Ted O'Neill of Social Strata, Inc. in 1996. It was written in Perl and used a flat file database. The last version of the software was 6.7.3, and was maintained by Charles Capps until he left Social Strata (then known as Groupee) in early 2006.
End of life
At one time the hallmark of all message board software, UBB.classic has seen its market share steadily decline, largely due to the growing number of database-driven forum software written in PHP, such as the UBB-like proprietary vBulletin and Invision Power Board, the free software phpBB, and others. In 2001, Groupee (then known as Infopop) acquired WWWThreads, which was renamed UBB.threads and was written in PHP and used a MySQL database. Despite the WWWThreads acquisition, Infopop/Groupee failed to gain back most of their lost market share, and consequently, many UBB.classic and even WWWThreads/UBB.threads forum owners continued to move to competing forum software packages. In the summer of 2005, Groupee announced plans for a new product that was supposed to replace UBB.classic as well as UBB.threads, and would use PHP/MySQL like UBB.threads. The last version of UBB.classic was 6.7.3, released in 2005.
On March 30, 2006, Groupee, Inc. announced that the previously announced replacement product would be called UBB.threads v7 and not a completely new product.[1] However, much of the code of UBB.threads v7 is completely new since version 6 and incompatible with previous versions, and any "upgrade" from a UBB.classic or UBB.threads v6.x board would require an import as if it were a completely new product. UBB.classic became an "end of life" and was no longer sold or supported on June 15, 2006.
On January 1, 2010, UBB.threads was sold to Mindraven, Inc., with developer Rick Baker assuming full management of the product. The sale of UBB.threads to Mindraven included all former UBB.classic licenses as part of the sale, and thus all existing UBB.classic licenses are now managed by Mindraven.