Why so little attention towards CMS integration?

[Cyburbia]

When I look at open source content management systems, many offer integration with phpBB and SMF, but vBulletin and Invision Power Board integration is almost nonexistent. Message boards on CMS portal sites are often filled with requests for vBulletin integration, with responses usually falling into three categories - "me too". "if you want it so bad, go code it yourself" and "out of principle, I won't code it, even though I could, because it's not open source"".

A common theme in many posts here and at vbulletin.com is content management system integration. There seems to be a huge demand for vBulletin/CMS integration, but there are so few projects out there; the excellent Drupal integration effort, a bridge for Joomla (which doesn't offer true integration), and that's about it.

"Check out vBportal/vBindex/vBadvanced." While I respect the effort that went into vBindex and vBadvanced, they aren't true content management systems. They serve mainly as portals or entrance pages to a forum-dominated site.

"Buy Subdreamer/Storyteller/Miraserver/Virtuanews/vgPortal/PhpCow/NePHP." Again, they're probably all good programs, but they have a limited userbase compared to the open source content management systems. Some of those programs are one-man projects, development is slow or stalled, and their future is uncertain. Except for vBulletin integration, they usually don't have the feature set or extensibility of most open source content management systems.

"Well, go code it yourself!" The typical response from the Slashdot/ponytail-and-neckbeard types. Unfortunately, most of us aren't expert PHP programmers. The majority of us probably can't program, period. If we were, we probably would have coded our own message boards instead of paying for vBulletin.

"vBCMS is coming Real Soon Now."
So are flying cars, universal health care in the United States, the Second Street subway, discovery of the Oak Island treasure, Godot, the revitalization and gentrification of Detroit, and Duke Nukem Forever.

With the outcry of vBulletin users begging for a CMS, why are there so few CMS integration hack/mod projects? Is there even a demand for integration with open source content management systems?

[FleaBag]

I don't really want integration. I've love a dedicated vBulletin CMS, I'd be willing to pay a hundred bucks a year for it if it was up to standard. Nice analysis though, but I expect the main issue is time! People just don't have enough time.

[Reef]

Very good post Cyburbia. I have also wondered the same thing many times.. I currently have vbadvanced stuck up front as a placeholder waiting for a better solution to come our way :)

[Reeve of shinra]

After using vbulletin for such a long time, I find some of the open source CMS systems simply lacking. vbulletin's features like the phrasing and templating systems for example are far supiorer to what most of them offer.

Integrating these features into an open source cms would take a lot of work and it would be easier to start on something new from scratch.

[Cyburbia]

I don't really want integration. I've love a dedicated vBulletin CMS, I'd be willing to pay a hundred bucks a year for it if it was up to standard. Nice analysis though, but I expect the main issue is time! People just don't have enough time.

If they don't have enough time for CMS integration - something a lot of people are begging for -- they certainly seem to have enough time for arcades, shoutboxes, various stat displays and the like. I'm not saying arcades are bad, but it strikes me as odd that such projects are getting so much attention, even though you don't see them on many boards, while CMS integration is practically ignored among vBulletin hackers.

The longest thread in the vB3.5 Extensions subforums is for the Drupal integration hack, with 1,662 posts. It may be amnong the longest on the board. If that's not a sign of a demand for CMS integration, I don't know what is.

I also wonder why there's so many CMS integration projects for SMF and phpBB, but not vBulletin.

I don't really want integration. I've love a dedicated vBulletin CMS

Real Soon Now, just like high speed trains in Florida, the withdrawl of US troops from Iraq, and cold fusion. Let's take off our vB fanboy hats, and admit that a Jelsoft CMS is probably never going to be released.

[amykhar]

I have considered creating a CMS several times and then backed off because Jelsoft has been hinting for years that they are making one. I have no desire to spend hundreds of hours coding, refining features and such and then have Jelsoft come out with one.

So, blame Jelsoft for a lack of free CMS projects. If they weren't really serious about doing one, they shouldn't have started hinting more than 2 years ago that they were. When the CMS talk first started, they made it seem like it was coming out directly on the heels of 3.0. The buzz and the hype killed off any inclination on my part to take on such a massive undertaking.

[Princeton]

You really don't need to integrate a CMS with vbulletin...
all you need is an imagination, good coding skills (PHP/MYSQL), creating a usable interface, and money (note: time is money).

What exactly are you looking for?
Drupal is a good CMS ... why not try that integration?
(I haven't tried the integration but I do agree that it is a popular thread.)

just curious..

[Brad]

I have not found a CMS that will suit my needs after years of looking around the net. When I do I will attempt to integrate it but until then I'm not looking into it. I've looked into more CMS systems then I can remember, most of them open source. There was always something in each one of these scripts that didn't sit right with me.

Some were so complicated it took me hours to understand how they worked, if I even got that far. Others were poorly coded, or had bugs I couldn't live with. The rest were overkill for my needs.

[msimplay]

vbcmps works great but it needs an article module to make it a real cms.
The reason i say that is because u don't really manage any content with it u just use it as a frontend to vbulletin

[amykhar]

A truly great cms will allow us to create modules that are totally integrated into the forum. Search will work across all the modules (quizzes, articles, blogs,etc.) Comments on content would have the same UI as the forum - but wouldn't necessarily be in the forum.

Ideally, we could have content in many different categories - not just one. An article on Linux networking could be found under Linux and Networking.

If we could just get cross-posting and modular search into vbulletin, I'm not sure we would even need a CMS. It would just be a matter of careful modification design.

[msimplay]

A truly great cms will allow us to create modules that are totally integrated into the forum. Search will work across all the modules (quizzes, articles, blogs,etc.) Comments on content would have the same UI as the forum - but wouldn't necessarily be in the forum.

Ideally, we could have content in many different categories - not just one. An article on Linux networking could be found under Linux and Networking.

If we could just get cross-posting and modular search into vbulletin, I'm not sure we would even need a CMS. It would just be a matter of careful modification design.


U really do have the idea :P

[mclark2112]

I want this soooo bad. I am using miraserver, which seems to be a dead project. It has great integration, but has zero add-ons. They are fairly easily coded, but I would love a great out of the box solution. I am not a programmer, and don't want to be. An official vB solution would be best, but a good integration would work too.

Drupal is more of a blog than a true cms.

the admin system of phpcow looks good, but they aren't really integrated with vB, just can share user database, like the Joomla patch.

Please vB, will you release a CMS and put us all out of our misery?

[Adrian Schneider]

If anybody would be interested in coding something like this in a months time with me let me know.

[mclark2112]

Anybody have any idea where there is a good resource for cms systems? www.opensourcecms.com is good, but I'm interested in paid solutions as well. Just need to find the best one. Then we can try to integrate it.

[-=Sniper=-]

amykhar; I don't mind of the cms is made by a third party or by jelsoft, so along as its a quality product. invision's power dynamic looks good, I'm sure I saw a quicktime movie showing you could have articles etc

[Cyburbia]

invision's power dynamic looks good, I'm sure I saw a quicktime movie showing you could have articles etc

The screenshots look impressive, and it's far along in the development stage. I don't want to switch to Invision, but if it lives up to the hype, I might be tempted to jump ship. It looks like a full-featured CMS, not a portal hack like vBportal, vBadvanced or vBindex.

I have noticed some animosity of CMS developers towards vBulletin, because it's not open source. There's plenty of integration mods for other content management systems and phpBB, Simple Machines and the like, but those asking about vBulletin usually get a response in the spirit of a Slashdot post about Microsoft. "Use phpBB, comrade!" "Start coding and improve our crappy forum module!" Sigh.

[Princeton]

Ideally, we could have content in many different categories - not just one. An article on Linux networking could be found under Linux and Networking.

If we could just get cross-posting and modular search into vbulletin, I'm not sure we would even need a CMS. It would just be a matter of careful modification design.

Interesting idea ... how does cross-posting work on other CMS applications?
Do they give the user the option to insert in multiple categories (could get ugly if many categories exist)? Is it automatic? Or, is it a search query that displays the titles?

Right away, I see a few problems on all the above options but it could be possible. It's just a matter of looking for the most economical and optimized route.

any comments?

[amykhar]

Drupal does it better than any I've other seen. When a user makes a post, they are presented with a list of categories. They can select from those categories - more than one of them.

If you look at my site http://othehorror.com you'll see how the stories are sorted into appropriate places. A review of a Stephen King book shows up under Stephen King and under book reviews. If it happened to be a ghost story too, it would show up there.

[Princeton]

that's what I figured ... can you provide a screenshot of editing area (as stated above)?

[PennylessZ28]

Personally I think vbadvanced has the potential to do everything you've stated in this thread. It simply lacks the right people working on it. So far its um .... Brian.

Yeah I think thats it. If there were 10 of him writting modules it could be as great as Amy here has been talking about.

IMO.

[amykhar]

Here you go

[Princeton]

thank you amy...

that's exactly what I thought it would be ... however, I don't agree on the multiple dropdown interface ... it's one of the least friendly form elements available

it wouldn't be hard to implement

oh, I forgot to mention ...
the url that you provided is giving me an empty page

[amykhar]

That explains the lack of traffic :D Looks like I broke something the other day and it shows blank pages for logged out users. Off to make repairs...

[TerroRize]

"vBCMS is coming Real Soon Now."
So are flying cars, universal health care in the United States, the Second Street subway, discovery of the Oak Island treasure, Godot, the revitalization and gentrification of Detroit, and Duke Nukem Forever.

Lol, loved your post.

I have been in the market for a commercial CMSfor our site, but after doing the research and trial and error I think we will eventually start to slowely build a custom one.

For our company it's not as much of the integration with vbulletin , but workflow.
We were using VirtuaNews , till we upgraded to 3.6.1 of vb and VirtuaNews decided to spring a leak and stopped working.

[Averkiev]

great speech Cyburbia!
I think, vbteam has a problem with marketing and analyzes.
Not investing in cms is a mistake.
Think a scenario where Microsoft (Bill Gates) ignored to research operating system market and rejected to develop Windows, by focusing just at Office packets working with dos.

[Tigratrus]

I have to agree. My partner and I were just talking about this, we too have been searching for a CMS system to integrate with vB, and would be willing to pay a reasonable sum to get something flexible and **reliable**.

vBulletin should be aware that more and more people are jumping on social networking and lightweight forum systems integrated in CMS' like Joomla/Drupal. vBulletin is the reigning king of forum software, but they are (IMO) in some danger of getting caught in a smaller and smaller market segment as the CMS forum system become more and more capable.

Either fish or cut bait. Build an effective CMS to go with vBulletin, or commit to providing reliable integration systems for the big dogs in the CMS arena. That way folks would feel comfortable using vBulletin WITH Joomla and havng the best of both worlds. We've bought one of the bridges for vB Joomla ($50) but I'm NOT feeling comfortable with the fact that it doesn't work under 3.6.4 atm. Thinking about getting stranded with an inability to upgrade my vBulletin because the Bridge vendor dropped support for newer versions of vB makes me queasy...

At this point I think we've decided to drop joomla, and go back to using vbGeek's GARS system and some customized image handling to build the article system we need. vbGeek's stuff is very cool...

James

[SaN-DeeP]

vBulletin is the reigning king of forum software, but they are (IMO) in some danger of getting caught in a smaller and smaller market segment as the CMS forum system become more and more capable.I do agree to this comments, Vbulletin should look beyond forums now, integrating Vbulletin with other CMS products....

[wtrk]

ive wanted a dedicated vb cms forever. i use subdreamer for now. its alright, it uses vb users/groups and can force its own skin over vbulletins so it looks integrated, but its not really integrated because you still have separate admins and the only skin changes are that it adds a header. but, it does have some plugins, but most suck and are useless.

id pay $100+ even as much as $200 or $300 if it was top notch and worked and had an active development community behind it (not just one or two people doing it in their free time).

[chatfan]

Subdreamer is not too bad, but I would like to see a serious intergration project with PostNuke .8 this new PN version has some very cool features and is, in my opinion, more advanced then most CMS's out there. The only problem with postnuke is that its community almost died.

Postnuke is the only one with a well figured out template system and easy to use backend. For me the backend has always been the problem with CMS's like joomla/drupal/typo3 I want a simple category or topic module and basic links.

[SaN-DeeP]

For people who are serious about a real CMS integration check this:
http://typo3lab.ru/en/typo3-services/integration-vbulletin-to-typo3.html

Typo3 + Vbulletin Integration

[Smoothie]

For people who are serious about a real CMS integration check this:
http://typo3lab.ru/en/typo3-services/integration-vbulletin-to-typo3.html

Typo3 + Vbulletin Integration
Price: ?250 (USD 300)

I'll pay $300 when the sun don't shine anymore.......:rolleyes:

[ryans]

I bought a copy of Subdreamer. I'll glady sell my license for cheap. Also same goes for vbportal too. As an online magazine they're just not powerful enough for me.

I'm currently working on a CMS system that will integrate with vbulletin. The CMS is different but will pull the user info and login from vbulletin. if someone is a good designer and would like to make a template I'll give them a copy of the software. I have an eta of about 2 months. I'll see if I can get a live demo up. The software works great as it is, just need to make the bridge now.

What features are you exactly looking for? Just to allow certain users access to write articles on the front page?
Admin - add/edit/lock articles,add/edit categories, moderate comments
Writers - add articles
Users - can comment only.

[Romeos Tune]

Is anyone using PHPFox? It looks kinda cool and promises VB integration and I had a little corespondence with the coder and they are working on more integration.. I still haven't bought it yet though.

[familyhistory]

Hi folks,

What a great thread Cyburbia!

I have been using firstly Mambo and more recently Joomla. Great piece of work with thousands of addons - components, modules and mambots. The support is great, the community is great and supportive. You can easliy modify how you present your site. There is a lot of integration with many other Opensource products.

I originally had SMF bridged with Mambo/Joomla, which worked well having users and members logged in through the site, with comments linked from editorial (joomla) to the forums via a mambot. Users could log in/out easily. Members could be administered easily within SMF backend.

Then I saw VBulletin and after asking about integration bridging with Joomla and getting confirmation in the forums, I went ahead with the purchase. I love VBulletin but I am really stuck with no integration with Joomla. I have tried VBadavanced, but it is no where what I require.

Have a look at the site (http://www.familyhistory.uk.com) - It looks and feels integrated - yet I have had to knock off the joomla login/out to all just to log into VBulletin. Cannot have them logging in twice!!
I am not any good at PHP so have not the ability to integrate these two great products.:up:

And like Cyburbia, VBulletin needs and requires a good CMS to go with!
Lets hope it happens soon,

All the best,
Dave

[SaN-DeeP]

VBulletin-Wordpress Bridge for 3.64 (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=133107) now testing this integration, if it works we have a very good solution here. :)

[s25]

vbPortal I think could be the answer if more people worked on it, Personally I really like it of course there are a few things that bother me like it says make new post or whatever for adding an article but over all I think it really is great :) though I still hope that someday joomla will be fully intergated and ready to work :) Or maybe even a vbCMS to be hones this type of thing makes me wonder about switching to IPB...

[mclark2112]

Miraserver is back in development, with a new version in the works. I have been Beta testing it, and it is great. The integration is top notch, and it has everything you could want in a CMS, except for being free. But I think the price is fair at $99, and the team is very good at helping to customize the product further for whatever you need.

I have been a paying customer for over 3 years now.

www.miraserver.com

[amnesia623]

Personally, I'd like to see more development of vbAdvanced. Having a portal that adapts to vbulletin with login, styles, etc... is a great asset. Having a system that works into vbulletin rather along side is the way I think a cms solution should be handled.

[Rich]

Hello,

I may have not followed this thread correctly because what I have read seems like it can already be done, using current vBulletin features and a few mods.

I am thinking along the lines of GARS. It allows for the creation of modules, can use different templates that you create, and can be easily organized using the current forum structure. (It simply allows you to alter forums to use a completely different set of user defined templates.)

It has the ability to be used for reviews, articles, stories, etc. The possibilities are endless with it and only stops at your coding level and imagination.

It is based off of vBuletin code, so to me it seems like an ideal solution though it isn't a true CMS. It certainly can be used as one!

[KW802]

Personally, I'd like to see more development of vbAdvanced. Having a portal that adapts to vbulletin with login, styles, etc... is a great asset. Having a system that works into vbulletin rather along side is the way I think a cms solution should be handled.If you haven't already, post any ideas you have for vBa CMPS over at vBadvanced. Brian/Tigga is working on the feature sets for the next couple of releases. ;)

[pcoskat]

I bought a copy of Subdreamer. I'll glady sell my license for cheap. Also same goes for vbportal too. As an online magazine they're just not powerful enough for me.


I agree. I'm using Subdreamer for a smaller community site that is more 'community-driven' than content.

But for my larger Content-driven site, I need something more powerful like Expression Engine. I'd pay GOOD money for EE/vB integration. (I have no interest in EE's bulletin board.)

[COBRAws]

You should take a look at Vivvo http://vivvo.net/

[pcoskat]

You should take a look at Vivvo http://vivvo.net/

Hmm, that's really interesting.

I'm looking around their site now, and I see that they're using vB, but does their CMS actually integrate?

[Big-K]

Hi Your site is lovely.

Just to let you knopw I have Joomla and VB integrated on my site (http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/board/)

I use bbpixel to integrate users and vbridge to integrate comments to articlesHi folks,

What a great thread Cyburbia!

I have been using firstly Mambo and more recently Joomla. Great piece of work with thousands of addons - components, modules and mambots. The support is great, the community is great and supportive. You can easliy modify how you present your site. There is a lot of integration with many other Opensource products.

I originally had SMF bridged with Mambo/Joomla, which worked well having users and members logged in through the site, with comments linked from editorial (joomla) to the forums via a mambot. Users could log in/out easily. Members could be administered easily within SMF backend.

Then I saw VBulletin and after asking about integration bridging with Joomla and getting confirmation in the forums, I went ahead with the purchase. I love VBulletin but I am really stuck with no integration with Joomla. I have tried VBadavanced, but it is no where what I require.

Have a look at the site (http://www.familyhistory.uk.com) - It looks and feels integrated - yet I have had to knock off the joomla login/out to all just to log into VBulletin. Cannot have them logging in twice!!
I am not any good at PHP so have not the ability to integrate these two great products.:up:

And like Cyburbia, VBulletin needs and requires a good CMS to go with!
Lets hope it happens soon,

All the best,
Dave

[imported_infitech]

Hi folks,

What a great thread Cyburbia!

I have been using firstly Mambo and more recently Joomla. Great piece of work with thousands of addons - components, modules and mambots. The support is great, the community is great and supportive. You can easliy modify how you present your site. There is a lot of integration with many other Opensource products.

I originally had SMF bridged with Mambo/Joomla, which worked well having users and members logged in through the site, with comments linked from editorial (joomla) to the forums via a mambot. Users could log in/out easily. Members could be administered easily within SMF backend.

Then I saw VBulletin and after asking about integration bridging with Joomla and getting confirmation in the forums, I went ahead with the purchase. I love VBulletin but I am really stuck with no integration with Joomla. I have tried VBadavanced, but it is no where what I require.

Have a look at the site (http://www.familyhistory.uk.com) - It looks and feels integrated - yet I have had to knock off the joomla login/out to all just to log into VBulletin. Cannot have them logging in twice!!
I am not any good at PHP so have not the ability to integrate these two great products.:up:

And like Cyburbia, VBulletin needs and requires a good CMS to go with!
Lets hope it happens soon,

All the best,
Dave
Any luck with the integration?

[Tigratrus]

We've spent a LOT of time digging into the options and finally settled on a system combining vBulletin, GARS, GAL, vBlogetin and vBGallery. We may use vBa CMPS as well, but it's not the mainstay of the system, vBulletin + GARS is. GARS is incredibly powerful once you get into it and figure out how it works. Check it out at http://www.thevbgeek.com/... It's amazing what you can do with it.

[CSS59]

vb advanced is the only thing i can tolerate, but still need a lot of work to give a page a more professional feel

[msimonds]

I am willing to share my custom CMS if anyone is interested


read more... (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=134881)

[acitrano]

I have to agree. My partner and I were just talking about this, we too have been searching for a CMS system to integrate with vB, and would be willing to pay a reasonable sum to get something flexible and **reliable**.

vBulletin should be aware that more and more people are jumping on social networking and lightweight forum systems integrated in CMS' like Joomla/Drupal. vBulletin is the reigning king of forum software, but they are (IMO) in some danger of getting caught in a smaller and smaller market segment as the CMS forum system become more and more capable.

Either fish or cut bait. Build an effective CMS to go with vBulletin, or commit to providing reliable integration systems for the big dogs in the CMS arena. That way folks would feel comfortable using vBulletin WITH Joomla and havng the best of both worlds. We've bought one of the bridges for vB Joomla ($50) but I'm NOT feeling comfortable with the fact that it doesn't work under 3.6.4 atm. Thinking about getting stranded with an inability to upgrade my vBulletin because the Bridge vendor dropped support for newer versions of vB makes me queasy...

At this point I think we've decided to drop joomla, and go back to using vbGeek's GARS system and some customized image handling to build the article system we need. vbGeek's stuff is very cool...

James

Fully agree with the sentiments herein (and the whole thread.) A full year later and cyburbia's list of options and his take on each is still very accurate.

vBulletin is the best; they need to seize a commercial opportunity and offer a CMS add-on. I have been struggling with this - for the moment have settled on vbPortal as a way forward - but it's inelegant and not easy (and the template edits are just the beginning...)

Would love to see JelSoft offer something more tightly integrated. As many have said, my money is ready.

[ryans]

My CMS system will be done in a few weeks. It will let you select a usergroup from VB and make them authors for you main site. When it is done i'll post up the url. :)

[vbpenguin]

amykhar; I don't mind of the cms is made by a third party or by jelsoft, so along as its a quality product. invision's power dynamic looks good, I'm sure I saw a quicktime movie showing you could have articles etc

IPS (Invision Power Services) is not really a company that you would want to go with. I am fine with companies charging a fee for product upgrades, but they go a little overboard. They charge 6 month update fees, which is just not fair. You end up paying a lot in maintenance a year compared to Vbulletin. I am sure they have a new licensing scam for IPDynamic will be just as bad, if not worse.

[jasbell]

Thank you Cyburbia, and ALL of you for discussing this angle. Its funny because I am really looking for a "group centered" online community platform. It just happens that ANY social network has got to include a forum, and VB is the leader. There are other alternatives, but when you look at whats in the admin console alone, its obvious that the VB people have been paying close attention to users for the last 4 years.

I started by looking for a CMS (CMS Matrix (http://www.cmsmatrix.org/matrix)), soon decided on Drupal and began looking for forum plugins etc. Problem was developers had to know Drupal in an out to do the careful surgery thats required in really doing what you want with it. EX: The equivilant of "User CP" in Drupal sits in a menu that to move into another menu would require careful surgery. I know because I ran into this with a major Drupal developer. I figured, "screw this", there has got to be something better that is farther along.

I then considered online offerings, many of which were free and had forums:

www.multiply.com
www.facebook.com
www.collectivex.com
www.orkut.com
www.myspace.com
www.vox.com

These were limited because I couldn't control the "branding", couldn't track users, couldn't customize the profile info, and most were "individual centric" as opposed to "group centric". All of them put a ceiling on how well you were able to reach and expand on your constituency.

Then I ran into this posting (http://scobleizer.com/2006/12/14/i-dont-get-marc-canters-product/#comment-202157) (see Gideon Marken comment) a month ago and went on a new tangent. After further searching I cam up with this list for "do-it yourself" social networking software:


http://www.spartasocialnetworks.com
http://www.communityserver.com/
http://www.crowdfactory.com/
http://www.fiveacross.com/
http://www.kickapps.com/
http://www.phpfox.com/
http://www.smallworldlabs.com/
http://www.socialplatform.com/
http://www.socialnetworkserver.com/ (Gideon Marken's own platform - www.gideonmarken.com)
http://zoints.com/ (at the time I couln't figure out what this was exactly)
http://www.dzoic.com/
http://www.phpizabi.net/
http://www.2coolcode.com/ourspace/index.shtml
http://www.vastal.com/full_desc.php?soft_id=39
http://www.esnips.com
http://www.boonex.com
http://www.barnraiser.org/index.php?item_id=25
http://www.onesite.com/
http://elggspaces.com
http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com
http://www.trampolinesystems.com
http://www.acadaca.com/Social-Networks.html
http://www.alstrasoft.com/efriends.htm
http://www.webscribble.com/products/webnetwork/index.shtml
http://www.me.com/
http://www.xceog.net/aboutmeproduct.php
http://www.sossoon.net
http://www.socialclix.com/
http://www.corespeed.com/site/index.html


Many of these were 10-15k per yr. Some were $300 + a yearly upgrade fee. Some were either free or $300/month but they put advertising on your site and shared advertising revenue. Some were reportedly buggy and working on developing a brand new system. 97% OF THEM DID NOT EVEN RETURN MY REQUEST FOR INFORMATION AFTER SUBMITTING A REQUEST TO THE SALES SEPT. (Imagine what their support would be like).

In the end I decided to try PhpFox, which was economical ($300), no questions money-back within 30 days, and seemed to have all that I needed. After doing some searching I started to read a lot of complaints about them. Within days I realized that a tree was more responsive, and that their user profile was not really customizable by any reasonable expectation. After 10 days of futzing around I got my money back only after having to call my credit card company to file a dispute.

I had thought of VBulletin in the past however, but wanted more than a Forum. I had knew that they were the leader and had a powerful platform. I was looking for the capability of customizable profiles and a forum. It turned out that VB had even more, and actually 90% of what I needed. I just want to brand and customize it.

This leaves me where you all are now, and where I am as well. How do I extend VB, use its powerful control features, authentication, authorization, and build the rest of my community around it? I now need an invitation mechanism as well, and I am having a hard time with that decision.

I am willing and interested to share my experiences with ANY of you, and I would like to be able to speak with any of you regarding your specific experiences with VB add-ons, products, hacks, integrations, and ESPECIALLY APPROACHES..

If interested in any of this please send me a PM with your contact info...I prefer Skype.

Jonathan

[RedGTiVR6]

I'm desperately looking for a solution to integrate vBulletin, Joomla, and......COMMUNITY BUILDER!

Why is this so hard? Of the 4 pages or so I've done in the past few years, this has been the holy grail of ideas for sites for me...yet nothing seems to be out there....:(

[mclark2112]

I am about to go with Joomla! for the front end, and I think I will have to go with bbPixel for the integration, but what does community builder give you? I never really understood that module. It seemed to do things we can already do with vB.

[RedGTiVR6]

community builder allows your users to create a more indepth profile.

for instance, a user specific gallery, blogs, more detailed user information. I suppose you can do much of it with plug-ins in Joomla....

[mclark2112]

OK, I use vB, Photopost Gallery, and the vBDrupal for the blogs. I use vB as the heart of my site, Everything else must plug into it. I think there are some hacks to have a more user controlled profile in VB, so community builder may not be for me, but a good simple integration would be the best.

[RedGTiVR6]

I'd be interested in some hacks for user profiles in vbulletin...guess I'll start looking!

[mclark2112]

<a href="https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=109094&highlight=ajax+profile" target="_blank">https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showt...t=ajax+profile</a>

this is the one I wanted to try. And it should work with 3.6

[Invalid ID]

I really wonder why too :(

[Keyz]

There is currently a very promising project called Drupaltin (http://www.theoverclocked.com/drupaltin), to integrate Drupal and vBulletin in a fully modular way (e.g. no hacks to the core of either Drupal or vBulletin). It's currently an alpha release, but already working terrifically in my tests. I've been following it closely myself and trying to help as much as I can. It's for Drupal 5 (probably not 4.7), supports seamless bi-directional account management, and has a great feature roadmap (http://forums.theoverclocked.com/showthread.php?t=1952).

If any of you have tried out Drupal in the past and didn't like it, I suggest you give it another look now - version 5 is exponentially better than all of the previous versions. If you need a good kick-start on learning a bit about Drupal, here's a thread (http://drupal.org/node/125874) I wrote the other day that lists a number of helpful resources (including articles, lessons, screencasts, etc). I also wrote a thread comparing (http://drupal.org/node/125818#comment-208778) the current 3 Drupal+vBulletin integration options. Drupal's recently been used to make a number of high profile sites such as MTV.co.uk so it's really stabilizing as a great platform for community-centric and social networking sites.

Anyhow, I will be building a pretty large site around this solution (converting my current forum of 18,000 members), have spent months researching and planning it, and it looks like it's going to be "the one" I've been searching for. If anyone would like to head over to the Drupaltin site and offer their feedback and help then that would be excellent (I'm not the developer by the way - just a member interested in seeing the project completed). If you can, check out the plans for upcoming features (http://forums.theoverclocked.com/showthread.php?t=1952), and if you have knowledge in those areas, lend a hand :)

[Smoothie]

One of the bigger issues for me is skinning the front page to resemble the rest of the site. I think that's why many people chose vBadvanced. While I tried Drupal some time ago and was slightly impressed with it, the thought of having to re-skin the front page did not thrill me in the slightest.

Does Drupaltin allow for skins used on the forums to integrate with it?

[RedGTiVR6]

I've tried drupal - twice now...I don't think dislike is a good word for it...;)

[acitrano]

but the problem, keyz, is that Drupal is so fugly. ;)

[Keyz]

Again I should reiterate - if you found previous versions of Drupal to be low on usability, or to look bad, then try Drupal 5. I disliked the previous versions too, but changed my mind when I saw Drupal 5. In version 5 they made a major point of focusing on usability, and on improving the look of the default theme (as well as made many improvements to the theming engine so that it would be simple to theme). A variety of contributed modules have reached new levels of functionality and integration with the core, that bring Drupal up to a new level of possibilities. I'd be happy to share a more detailed list if anyone's interested, but just to name a few must-haves... CCK (http://drupal.org/project/cck), Views (http://drupal.org/project/views), Workflow (http://drupal.org/project/workflow), Actions (http://drupal.org/project/actions), Panels (http://drupal.org/project/panels), Pathauto (http://drupal.org/project/pathauto) (instant SEO'ed URLs), Modr8 (http://drupal.org/project/modr8)... and many more. Version 6, which is already well on the way, has goals of full support for interoperability and open standards.

Here's an online demo of Drupal 5 for you to take for a spin:
http://drupal5-0.highervisibilitywebsites.com
Be sure to check out the built-in color changer, that lets you re-color the whole theme dynamically and save your own color themes for the site (including the graphics)... just go to this link (http://drupal5-0.highervisibilitywebsites.com/?q=admin/build/themes/settings/garland) once you're logged in. Since it's open source, the new theme has already been ported to Wordpress and other CMSs, and is very popular (though I don't think the color changer is ported). It's possible to set up the color changer to be reused for any theme in Drupal, not just the default one.

It's true there aren't as many great looking "free" themes for Drupal as some others, such as Wordpress and Joomla, but it is just as easy (or easier in my opinion) to make it look any way you want it to. Not all, but a good number of great themes have been ported - have a look at the Themes (http://drupal.org/project/Themes) section (e.g. Amadoue (http://drupal.org/project/amadou), GlossyBlue (http://drupal.org/project/glossyblue), Plain 2 (http://drupal.org/project/plain2), SEO Position (http://drupal.org/project/SEOposition), SpreadFirefox (http://drupal.org/project/spreadfirefox), TerraFirma (http://drupal.org/project/terrafirma)). Don't mean to convert this into a Drupal thread haha - but just to help illustrate how Drupal can be themed, here are a few good examples of well-designed and/or famous Drupal-powered sites to start, and you can view my full list here (http://www.absolutecross.com/webmaster/articles/best-drupal-sites/):

adrenalinehub.com (http://adrenalinehub.com)
artistshousemusic.com (http://www.artistshousemusic.com)
asia.playstation.com (http://asia.playstation.com)
askaninja.com (http://askaninja.com)
concreteideas.com (http://www.concreteideas.com)
Flock.com (http://flock.com)
MTV.co.uk (http://www.mtv.co.uk)
TWiT.TV (http://www.twit.tv)
ubuntu.com (http://www.ubuntu.com)
terminus1525.ca (http://www.terminus1525.ca)
... again, see my extensive full list (http://www.absolutecross.com/webmaster/articles/best-drupal-sites/).

Right now Drupaltin does not yet support integrated theming (e.g. your vBulletin theme carrying over to the Drupal site, or vice-versa), though that is on the list of upcoming features. The ability to skin Drupal with vBulletin styles is already available in the vbDrupal (http://www.vbdrupal.org) project (which as I mentioned, is powerful but not my #1 choice since it requires hacking Drupal core and is not available for Drupal 5 yet). The Drupaltin developer is studying their implementation of that feature and plans to release his own version. In the mean time, my personal quick-fix is to place my "static" portions of my site design into header.php and footer.php files, and include those around both Drupal and vB - works pretty well for now.

Anyhow, I hope this info helps some people. Feel free to ask me any questions and I'll be happy to try to help.

[InfoNirvana]

Hmm, that's really interesting.

I'm looking around their site [added: Vivvo CMS - www.vivvo.net ]now, and I see that they're using vB, but does their CMS actually integrate?

No unfortunately.

[tuslic]

nobody has tryed to use coranto with vbulletin?

[Ohiosweetheart]

vBAdvanced has so far met all of my needs.

It's free
It takes on the appearance (i.e. skin and graphics) of the forum.
It's highly customizable, with templates, modules, webpages, etc.

[RedGTiVR6]

vBAdvanced doesn't work for many types of sites. For instance, on our site it doesn't give the impression we want of our business.

Joomla allows us to do this.

I thought I would note that bbPixel seems to have dissapeared. Anyone have any ideas?

[InfoNirvana]

The best CMS (Joomla!) is now going to be integratable with vBulletin

http://www.vJoomla.com

Very Awesome !

[jhei21]

No unfortunately.

Vivvo does integrate with Vbulletin now and has a shared login. I am seriously looking at purchasing. If anyone has any good or bad experiences with it i would love to know.

[vcruiser]

Call it a blog, call it a CMS, call it a portal, call it what ever you want. Millions of users, WordPress! You can make that thing do just about anything and its so easy to use. It has a static front page so it's a portal. Visitors and members can post to it, it's a blog by definition and you can manage that information so it can be used as a CMS. Thousands of themes, many are FREE! Why re-invent the wheel? Someone with the right skill set can get this and vb integrated perfectly I am sure.

Check this out: click here ... (http://blog.hostgator.com/)

It doesn't get better than that. I wonder how they integrated their forum?

Food for thought.

Wordpress Competition Is Right Now (http://blog.hostgator.com/2007/06/11/wordpress-plugin-competition/)

[jhei21]

Why re-invent the wheel? Someone with the right skill set can get this and vb integrated perfectly I am sure.

There are a lot of people (like me:confused:) out there who dont have the skills and thats why there needs to be more integration.

[Joe Blow]

When I look at open source content management systems, many offer integration with phpBB and SMF, but vBulletin and Invision Power Board integration is almost nonexistent. Message boards on CMS portal sites are often filled with requests for vBulletin integration, with responses usually falling into three categories - "me too". "if you want it so bad, go code it yourself" and "out of principle, I won't code it, even though I could, because it's not open source"".

A common theme in many posts here and at vbulletin.com is content management system integration. There seems to be a huge demand for vBulletin/CMS integration, but there are so few projects out there; the excellent Drupal integration effort, a bridge for Joomla (which doesn't offer true integration), and that's about it.

"Check out vBportal/vBindex/vBadvanced." While I respect the effort that went into vBindex and vBadvanced, they aren't true content management systems. They serve mainly as portals or entrance pages to a forum-dominated site.

"Buy Subdreamer/Storyteller/Miraserver/Virtuanews/vgPortal/PhpCow/NePHP." Again, they're probably all good programs, but they have a limited userbase compared to the open source content management systems. Some of those programs are one-man projects, development is slow or stalled, and their future is uncertain. Except for vBulletin integration, they usually don't have the feature set or extensibility of most open source content management systems.

"Well, go code it yourself!" The typical response from the Slashdot/ponytail-and-neckbeard types. Unfortunately, most of us aren't expert PHP programmers. The majority of us probably can't program, period. If we were, we probably would have coded our own message boards instead of paying for vBulletin.

"vBCMS is coming Real Soon Now."
So are flying cars, universal health care in the United States, the Second Street subway, discovery of the Oak Island treasure, Godot, the revitalization and gentrification of Detroit, and Duke Nukem Forever.

With the outcry of vBulletin users begging for a CMS, why are there so few CMS integration hack/mod projects? Is there even a demand for integration with open source content management systems?

Sadly, this post is just as relevant today, eighteen months later.

Any advances on the vbulletin/CMS front?

[WEBclay]

Good thread, exactly what I would have posted *g*. I am currently building our mainsite for a online graphical/digital painting community. I need vB to be integrated in the mainsite for displaying the news, articles and everything else like polls, authors, tutorials and more. I have done a big research on every cms that could handle vB as integration.

I think I give wordpress a go along with the bridge for vB. The main reason I choose this is that wp allows you to display a thread as a newspost on the frontend and all comments belong to this posting will be done in the forums as discussion :)

I didn't spent that much hours to have a look how drupal handles all this. But for me wordpress is way easier to modify my template than drupal does.

Bad thing about vbAdvanced is the lack of 3rd party programmers who could do a paid job to get my style working along with this :(

[AntiThesis]

I keep checking back here in the vain hope that something has been done/something new has come up. Every time nothing.

And vJoomla has been shut down due to some random exploit. Don't know when/if they'll be back.

Looks like I'll just be coding my own portal that will only work on my site. Lovely.

[towermatt]

I think vBadvanced works a treat!

[RedGTiVR6]

vBadvanced is not a viable solution for a lot of people. It doesn't present the professional apperance many of us are looking for. Joomla and many other CMSs do.

[towermatt]

Sure, that's a perspective. I believe the fact that it is so user friendly and customizeable makes it a perfect solution.

Since Joomla is MIA--might be something to think about is all.

My Comics News (http://www.thedarktower.com/comictower) page looks as professional as any I have ever seen.

^biased

[joshbond]

I'm trying to integrate vb with joomla. What are the best ways of doing that that are currently out there?

[Ascor]

<a href="http://forum.bbpixel.com/index.php?act=home" target="_blank">http://forum.bbpixel.com/index.php?act=home</a>

[mondala]

I find bridges/hacks for forum integration are really iffy... you want to be careful because if you have something that is not well developed or not supported, that of course things might break and you'll left in a panic.

vbAdvanced works very well, phpfox is working on a vbulletin intergation, vivvo has vbulletin integration, the company i work for in my sig, Subdreamer CMS has reliable vbulletin integration. Even interspire article live has sent a recent survey asking user if they would like vbulletin integration so that is also something to look forward to.

My only advice is to go with something that is proven to work and preferably supported. Forum integration/bridging is very complex and it is best to do it right the first time.

[Ian Gordon]

The truth is that this has been in discussion for over 4 years, when vBulletin was still in version 2.5, the problem is most people don't want to do it without getting paid to do the heavy lifting. You would think that a group of competent programmers would release the mod free-of-charge as a group effort for the benefit of every vB owner.

The even more interesting part is that all the code to create pages, categories, articles and all of this is already there, it simply needs to be put together in a meaningful way and the Admin CP needs to be updated to reflect the new functionality of a CMS option.

There is no reason for the delay other than that people don't really want it or can't decide on a basic set of functionality.

I would say that it should:


Pages
Sections
Clean URLS
Image Gallery


These are probably the most requested features and something that isn't even that hard to do. I would be willing to work with a group of no less than 3 or 4 other programmers to implement this system if, we can just have this base functionality with using hooks to add additional functionality.

If anyone is game, please email me at: ian.gordon@gmail.com

I would be MORE than willing to help lay the foundations for a basic page-creating, section-organizing, clean urls-generating, image gallery-having CMS for vB for FREE.

[Evaporate]

You know I really really like VBulletin. I moved from a n SMF/Joomla bridged forum (bridge was rubbish, joomla overkill and not integrated enough, have to use a lot of non integrated features and in the end users did not use the Joomla stuff). SMF was also slow and nowhere near as good as Vb for a number of reasons.

However the one thing I struggle with is a CMS. I've got VBadvanced, Subdreamer (and looking at Vbportal,). I've now narrowed the search to VBdrupal or VBadvanced.

However what I really want is a CMS that can really integrate with VBulletin , showing the modules and exposing any of the VB functions into the portal bits, yet can also look nice and show a good page.

Nothing exists like this. It's crazy. I would pay $150 for some kind of CMS that gave me this feature. I would suspect that 1000's of others would also pay for this .

Joomla is very good and growing all the time in features. Looks like Drupal is also a good contender. In my opinion if there was a VB release that could integrate fully with one of those two options (with a lot of modules thrown in) then they would have a hit on there hands.

I thought Subdreamer might be the answer but there's not enough modules that expose VB data, it does look nice however but lacks (VB calender, photpost/photoplog/vb blogs etc). I don't want to have to code this stuff. I bought a license with the intention of paying for a nice skin, they do some great free skins as well but this lack of VB modules puts me off.

I want Vbulletin to be at the heart of any CMS I use, not an adjunct. At the end of the day my site is my forum and my CMS is just an extension of that. Well it would be if it existed. (I've seen the Joomla /VB integration is doa)

I might well choose the VBDrupal route or get someone to professionally skin a vbadvanced implementation to make it look less blocky. But it's driving me crazy. If Jelsoft owned a decent gallery implementation (Photoplog or photpost) and a CMS addon they would have made another $300 out of me. It would be worth it in terms of time saved. I want life to be easy.

First to get a decent CMS with a decent forum wins I think, Joomla/fireboard is a couple of years off at least to get to a decent stage imo), I also find a lot of the Joomla community builder stuff just overkill as well.

Jelsoft, I will pay good money for this.

EDIT-- I've just seen the post mentioning VIVO and PHPFOX. Doh. Right I have two more candidates to evaluate now. Please someone make my life simple.

[Evaporate]

I've just seen the new phpbb 3.0 stuff, there are some half decent portals being made for that. Another year and they may have a contender. Looked at vivo (re my above post) , a decent CMS but may suffer from a lack of specific VB modules. I might just skin VBA as an interim thing. To be fair the IPB also seems to suffer the same lack of integration. But I really like VB. Please someone help me part with my cash. I just want VB data on the front end, Calender, posts, blog, images and the ability to put up a few decent articles and I'm happy.

[deep_blue]

Looks like there is huge user base (myself included) who want a CMS desperately but nobody is willing to give that!!!

I just wonder why so!!

[Evaporate]

Looks like there is huge user base (myself included) who want a CMS desperately but nobody is willing to give that!!!

I just wonder why so!!

I think it's because the next version of Vbulletin is taking up all the time, and will probably include cms integration in.

I am using VBAdvanced at the moment (www.planetmgc.com) . But I am going to do something much better for the next release of my website (complete custom build!):up:

[ComputerModding]

IN reply to a comment made earlier about why don;t people get together and make a opensource CMS for VB

Well that one is simple, its all to do with the cash, if this was to happen my pockets would certainly be lighter.

I make custom CMS systems for people who want to integrate their website with vBulletin and use the information stored in the vb user table in the other parts of their website.

8/10 times I find that people have already developed what they want as a website with the forum already attached and running but come to me just to get the integration finished off, and the biggest problem as to why alot of people are not doing this??

The programming! I mean if you know how vb works then the integration with your own CMS (say made with Dreamweavers user authentication script) and vb is going to be alot easier than you think.

The main thing you need to know is how the encryption for the vb password field works, as soon as you know that then you got it licked, but have fun trying to find that on here, so far every answer to this question on the site is wrong ......... saying that it is not wrong just written out wrong!!!!

If anybody wants a integration you can always PM me but I do not work for free.

Kevin