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Interview with Ted O'Neill, creator of UBB
(Click here to view the original thread with full colors/images)
Posted by: OTS Staff
<b><font color="#FFFFCC">EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH TED O'NEILL</font></b>
<i>Creator/Developer of Ultimate Bulletin Board and CEO of Infopop
<font size="1">Conducted on July 3, 2001</font></i>
OTS: Tell us your background. Who are you and what do you do?
Ted O'Neill: I am the CEO of Infopop Corporation. What do I do - I guide the direction of the company, oversee the product development efforts, and manage a fantastic, talented group of professionals.
OTS: Tell us a little history of UBB, like what made you decide to create it and what factors led to the creation of this forum script?
TO: I wrote the first version of the UBB in 1996, primarily then as an experiment in CGI programming for the web. I was also very interested in the communication channels opened up by the web and saw that message boards were one of the most powerful mechanisms for conversing with others about areas of shared interest. Most of the effort I put into UBB was due to the fact that existing message boards were so hard to use and did not create the proper environment for real conversations between people.
Before the UBB caught on, the linear style was not very common (if it was even used at all). Typically, users had to click on a separate link for every single post, for example. It was tedious to say the least. The UBB was my attempt to do things right, based on my own experience as a message board user and based on the experience and input from our growing army of UBBers.
OTS: What do you think makes UBB better than the competition?
TO: Frankly, I have yet to see any real competitors. We have a lot of imitators, some of which are better than others. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? No one else is really innovating, however, like we continue to.
What makes us better- we created the entire look and feel that is currently being copied by every other message board company. We were the first to give admins such control on the back end, without having to be a programmer. We were the first to include automatic smilie conversions (what we call Graemlins) in posts, the first to have hop-to menus, the first to have topic icon indicators, the first with posting icons, the first with Wordlets, the first with a caching system for a flat file system, the first to be truly cross-platform, the first with style templates, etc.
What else makes UBB such a compelling choice? Our large, enthusiastic community of users (and developers). We have so many customers and many have been customers for so long that the support group for the product extends way beyond anything that we at Infopop could do on our own.
We also offer fantastic customer support. We view each customer as a partner and we have enjoyed watching many of these sites become very popular. We have internal procedures in place to ensure that each customer that contacts us is responded to as quickly as possible... and that we follow-up, as necessary, to make sure each customer is satisfied.
OTS: How hard is it to develop a script like this?
TO: Very hard. The front-end (the part that users see) is usually the easiest part of the job. Most of the work goes into the under-the-hood parts and the back-end control panel.
Keep in mind that we have been working on message boards now for over 5 years. We know what works and what doesn't work. We know all of the security issues that can exist, we know how difficult it is to program a server-based product for which you cannot control the hosting environment (quite a challenge!). We also know what it takes to support your customers. We will not release anything unless we are confident that we can properly support it.
OTS: What do you think about the other forum scripts that are available out there? Do you sometimes wish you had a feature on your forum that is visible on theirs?
TO: As I stated above, we are the leaders in terms of feature-set. There are a few imitators who create UBB knockoffs and then add a few new features on top of that. Always be wary of those operations... the odds are that the new features have not been very well tested and that the imitation that they created is all facade. Most of the really good ideas for new features come from our existing customers.
Sometimes, there are features we would like to put into the UBB but we are not able to because we are limited by the design parameters of the UBB. What I mean by that is that our one requirement with UBB is that it must run on all major server platforms without having to customize the script in any way. The UBB must be portable. Some of the really cool ideas we have simply do not work well under this constraint.
This is also the reason we created OpenTopic last year. OpenTopic is our hosted message board application. It can look just like a UBB, but it is not a UBB at all. Because we control the hosting environment with OpenTopic, we can add the highest possible level of functionality AND we can guarantee scalability. By giving OpenTopic customers complete export access to all data, they have just as much access under our hosted environment as they would have if they ran the program on their own servers. OpenTopic is also just as customizable as UBB.
OTS: What do you think of UBB's script-hacking community. Do they significantly help you improve your script?
TO: They contribute a lot of ideas. We've never actually used a hack, but we have definitely used ideas. The energy from the script-hacking community is fantastic.
OTS: Will you be sticking with the current programming architecture of your forum script, or have you got something big planned for it? If so, how about giving us a hint?
TO: For UBB, we just did a complete overhaul of the code in UBB Version 6, which was released a few months ago. UBB6 is really an amazing optimization of the code and it added new functionality like Wordlet technology, which allows admins to easily customize any wording used on the front end. We release new versions of UBB pretty frequently- usually at least one new version per month (though not all of those releases involve major changes). The next release is 6.1, which adds a few new features and some more optimizations. That version should be out within the next few weeks.
We are also releasing a new version of OpenTopic in July. Version 2.0 of OpenTopic is perhaps our most significant release ever. It adds a host of new email-oriented features- like subscriptions and notifications, including a new MyPop area for tracking information of interest to members. And what really makes it unique is the sheer power of the application. The new features are powerhouses.
Aside from UBB and OpenTopic, however, we are working on a major project that transcends message boards. Our code name for this is Sasquatch; we are fairly convinced that it has a chance to revolutionize the way people interact online. We still have a lot of work to do on Sasquatch, however, and it will likely be rolled out incrementally- so incrementally that the full scope of the project is not readily apparent at first. I can't give specifics yet, for competitive reasons. You will start to see, very soon, that Infopop is much more than just a message board company (though we will continue to be the very best message board provider, as well).
OTS: What part of UBB would you have re-done or improved if you had the chance to do it all over again? Are you planning any further enhancements and/or improvements for the current version of UBB?
TO: As mentioned above, the recently released UBB6 was a complete rewrite of the UBB. Thus, everything that we wanted to improve internally over the years was done in that release. It is also was done to allow us to more easily modularize the program, facilitating easier modifications in the future. We are always improving the UBB, however, and this process will continue!
OTS: What do you do in your spare time, if you have any?
TO: I've always been a big movie-goer. This summer, most non-work time is going to yard work and playing on the Infopop softball team.
OTS: If you were asked to describe your forum script in one sentence, what would it be?
TO: The Ultimate, of course. 
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Many thanks to Ted O'Neill and Infopop Corporation for this interview.
Visit Infopop.Com for more information on their great forum script.
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