slobizman
12-31-2006, 05:15 PM
I need to put up a community site for a mid-sized town/county. We lack any good online community sites. I don't understand vBulletin enough yet, and while I'm techie enough to with time, do it myself, I want to hire out to create this site--I want it done right and I don't have the time myself. But I have a lot of questions of if I can even got the vBulletiin route, or if I need to go with Drupal or Drupal/vbulletin. (I also know nothing much about Drupal, except after researching CMS's I've narrowed it down to that).
I own many of the domain names for the city/county, such as [city_name].info, [city_name]Blogs.com, [city_name]Forum.com, [city_name]Gallery.com, [city_name]Reviews,com, [city_name]News.com and others. All prime names in need of development.
I do not know if I should make one site under something like [city_name].info with all the things I want together, or separate them out. It really depends upon not only makes makes most sense logically, but what the scripts can do for me, and how they might work together, or if one can do it all. I'm looking to create the following applications:
- user blogs by city/county residents
- forum
- extensive gallery of photos; it's a beautiful county and I'd like to categorize uploaded photos in a hierarchal manner as to pretty much photo document the county.
- reviews (comments) and ratings (compiled by users) of pretty much everything from restaurants, to hotels to hikes, to our huge number of wineries, to churches, to doctors, etc. This is a very important component.
- free Classifieds
- Optional: Info everything, like a wiki sort of (but I hate wikis, and much of this will be part of the above parts, so I may not do it).
- I know I'm missing something else.
You get the idea I think. So, I'm exploring everything, trying to figure out if I should combine it all into one huge site and if so, what is the foundation -- Drupal? VBulletin? Both? Something else? Or, if I should set up mostly separate sites since the scripts for each area I want to cover is so much more sophisticated than the components I can put together in a combo site (for example, vbulletin is more sophisticated than Drupal's forum).
I was really going the route of finding a Drupal developer when I discovered http://www.vblogetin.com/. It make vbulletin an seemingly incredible blog system. It's new, but it seems to work very well. So, I started to research of perhaps vbulletin eith add-on modules can be the basis of much or all of what I'm trying to do. I do not know this yet.
If I went the separate route I could use vbulletin/vblogetin to do a blogging site only, or a blogging site, plus the forum -- [city name]Forum.com or [city name]Blogs.com. I could use a review/rating script for [city name]Reviews.com. I could make a super -sophisticated gallery site with something like Coppermine for SLOGallery.com. Etc, etc, etc....
So, I'm confused as hell! I want to make the best choice to start with.
How much of all this do you think I could do with vBulletin and various modules? Have you seen any community sites such as I am describing done with it? If so, please provide links for me. I do like the idea of the forum as a base, because it is so "tight" with user memberships and privileges. And a forum is so central to a community site.
And, very importantly, I do not want coding mods. I know there is a very minor one to get vblogetin to work with vbadvanced cmps to work together, and I'd have to accept that for something so important. But I've been through owning a forum that had coding hacks all over the place and upgrades were a nightmare. Plugins (or add-ons or whatever they are called here) are fine if I just "plug them in".
So, in conclusion, 1) how much of what I mentioned above do you think a vbulletin platform with modules can do? 2) looking for recommendations on vbulletin experts that can piece together the components and design the template for either a blog using vBlogetin or a blog/forum?, or more, or the whole darn wish list.
I own many of the domain names for the city/county, such as [city_name].info, [city_name]Blogs.com, [city_name]Forum.com, [city_name]Gallery.com, [city_name]Reviews,com, [city_name]News.com and others. All prime names in need of development.
I do not know if I should make one site under something like [city_name].info with all the things I want together, or separate them out. It really depends upon not only makes makes most sense logically, but what the scripts can do for me, and how they might work together, or if one can do it all. I'm looking to create the following applications:
- user blogs by city/county residents
- forum
- extensive gallery of photos; it's a beautiful county and I'd like to categorize uploaded photos in a hierarchal manner as to pretty much photo document the county.
- reviews (comments) and ratings (compiled by users) of pretty much everything from restaurants, to hotels to hikes, to our huge number of wineries, to churches, to doctors, etc. This is a very important component.
- free Classifieds
- Optional: Info everything, like a wiki sort of (but I hate wikis, and much of this will be part of the above parts, so I may not do it).
- I know I'm missing something else.
You get the idea I think. So, I'm exploring everything, trying to figure out if I should combine it all into one huge site and if so, what is the foundation -- Drupal? VBulletin? Both? Something else? Or, if I should set up mostly separate sites since the scripts for each area I want to cover is so much more sophisticated than the components I can put together in a combo site (for example, vbulletin is more sophisticated than Drupal's forum).
I was really going the route of finding a Drupal developer when I discovered http://www.vblogetin.com/. It make vbulletin an seemingly incredible blog system. It's new, but it seems to work very well. So, I started to research of perhaps vbulletin eith add-on modules can be the basis of much or all of what I'm trying to do. I do not know this yet.
If I went the separate route I could use vbulletin/vblogetin to do a blogging site only, or a blogging site, plus the forum -- [city name]Forum.com or [city name]Blogs.com. I could use a review/rating script for [city name]Reviews.com. I could make a super -sophisticated gallery site with something like Coppermine for SLOGallery.com. Etc, etc, etc....
So, I'm confused as hell! I want to make the best choice to start with.
How much of all this do you think I could do with vBulletin and various modules? Have you seen any community sites such as I am describing done with it? If so, please provide links for me. I do like the idea of the forum as a base, because it is so "tight" with user memberships and privileges. And a forum is so central to a community site.
And, very importantly, I do not want coding mods. I know there is a very minor one to get vblogetin to work with vbadvanced cmps to work together, and I'd have to accept that for something so important. But I've been through owning a forum that had coding hacks all over the place and upgrades were a nightmare. Plugins (or add-ons or whatever they are called here) are fine if I just "plug them in".
So, in conclusion, 1) how much of what I mentioned above do you think a vbulletin platform with modules can do? 2) looking for recommendations on vbulletin experts that can piece together the components and design the template for either a blog using vBlogetin or a blog/forum?, or more, or the whole darn wish list.