vbDrupal vs. vbAdvanced vs. vbPortal vs. Joomla

[emaij]

I'm newbie and must decide which CMS to get if I go with vbulletin. Please tell me the pros and cons of each. I'm overwhelmed with info at the point and need advice. Thank you. What would you do?

[nexialys]

first, you need to make a list of the features YOU need... each portal is built different and provide different results... vBadvanced is the only one to be really built from vBulletin.. the others are transitions points or bridges...

[emaij]

How do I compare what features each of them have? It would be great to see a list of things I might want to use so that I can make those decisions. It's tough because I have never administered a forum before.

[Delphiprogrammi]

joomla is full of security holes you should not use that unless you want your server flooded with exploiting attempts

[kushal]

why not try 'Subdreamer' as an option for CMS.

[Clayton]

Hi emaij, I am quite a strong supporter of vBdrupal basically due to the Drupal platform and its ability to integrate very well with Vbulletin

there is a steep learning curve with vbdrupal however it is well worth the time invested. A little warning beforehand, the chances of wanting to give up are high and perseverance is needed.

The developers of vbdrupal do things voluntarily however most thoroughly, there is no rushed process and what they deliver is of the highest standard

the features are too numerous to mention in such a space however

Blogs
full CMS

are available

Cheers

ps.. I also use vBadvanced with my set-up, however vBadvanced is not CMS and cannot be compared to vBdrupal, there is no comparison. I use it mainly for display of vBadvanced blocks on my forums however vBdru has its own block system as well, so there is no need for me to actually use vBadvanced however I also have other hacks functioning with the forums

[soletrader]

why not try 'Subdreamer' as an option for CMS.

I dont recommend it.

[ZenithRS]

I dont recommend it.
That's an interesting comment.

Why not?

[Razasharp]

Don't forget Logicians webTemplates - VERY good :)

[InfoNirvana]

Don't forget vJoomla ! www.vjoomla.com - it's a Joomla! and vB integrated setup with Joomla! using vB templates !

[Shazz]

vBA. :)

[soletrader]

That's an interesting comment.

Why not?

Its a piece of crap.

[ssslippy]

Subdreamer is the easiet of any CMS ive used however its missing alot of key features other intergrated CMS's have.

[InfoNirvana]

vjoomla will be better than vbdrupal ... as vbdrupal is quite hard to use.
vbportal is plain jane and if you should probably just use webtemplates. vbportal hasn't had any meaningful advancement for 3 years.
vbadvanced is what it is. Reasonable, but nothing great. It's much better than jelsoft's offering (nothing).
vBCMS exists, it's no better than vdadvanced, and it's in german.
Subdreamer ? No idea.

[Jelmertjee]

I would go with VBAdvanced, it's quite easy to customize, and robust, a short while ago version 3.0 was released, which makes customization even easier. Now you can add custom module positions anywhere you want.

i'm not sure about comparing it with other systems though, i don't have a lot of experience with them, all I can say is that I'm very satisfied with vbadvanced.

[ShawnV]

VBA :up:

[RvG2]

vjoomla... i can see lots of possibilities here. Let's wait and see. :up:

[sonichero]

vBA. :)

Seconded. Hacks still being made and 100% free.


www.vbadvanced.com

[Michael Morris]

joomla is full of security holes you should not use that unless you want your server flooded with exploiting attempts
One of the main reasons vJoomla uses vbulletin to control session authentication.

Still, as of version 1.0.12 Joomla has no known security issues that I know of. Care to cite any, or are you simply spreading F.U.D. for the fun of it?

I'm newbie and must decide which CMS to get if I go with vbulletin. Please tell me the pros and cons of each. I'm overwhelmed with info at the point and need advice. Thank you. What would you do?
Note - I am the author of vJoomla. I'll keep this free of bias as I can, but I want to be upfront about this.

Of the portal's vPortal is the only one I would certainly stay away from for the reason others have already given in this thread - no real updates for it have been done in 3 years. That leaves three.

vBAdvanced / CMPS
Advantages: This is vbulletin's only native CMS at present. This means all it's modules will work without compatibility issues arising out of bridging techniques. The product has had solid support over it's history and will continue to enjoy it I believe.
Disadvantages: Very small pool of modules when compared to Drupal or Joomla! vBadvanced still holds static pages in the template library which is, frankly, an odd place at best to put them, and a terrible spot if you need to have multiple people working on them. There is no timed publishing of content items.

Drupal
Advantages Drupal has the best taxinomy / content sorting system I've ever seen in any CMS. It's reasonably easy to install and setup. Version 5 has, I've been told, considerably cleaned up the module install, deinstall process. However vbDrupal has some compatibility issues with a handful of modules last time I checked. I also do not know if vbDrupal is on Drupal 5 yet or not. If it isn't I would hold off on installing it until it bridges to Drupal 5.
Disadvantages Drupal 4's administration is nightmarishly complex compared to either of the other two CMS systems listed here. Also, the strength of Drupal is in it's blogs - yet Jelsoft is getting ready to release a blog extension that may outperform any of the current solutions in this manner.

vJoomla
Advantages Joomla has, hands down, the most powerful component/module library of any of the three CMS systems listed here. It's backend administration is easy and intuitive to use as well.
Disadvantages:vJoomla is in beta -- and how many of the modules and components will actually run with it remains to be seen. Even when it does see release sometime near the end of next month it will be in the shadow of Joomla 1.5. Joomla 1.5 is rebuilt from the ground up and promises some real performance enhancements, but vJoomla will lag about 6 months behind. Finally, as a project in it's infancy vJoomla have the support base either of the other two projects here have - though Joomla itself has help files and support to make up for this somewhat.

[vcruiser]

I have two subdreamer licenses. The skins are hard to come by and they are not easy to make. I wanted a skin similar to vbulletin. Two quotes one for $400. another for $1500.
I am using vbadvanced and it is great.

[Clayton]

OK first things first

vBjoomla

when a site tries to compete with others I believe they should really iron out their own structure set-up

The links are not working and when trying to register the following occurred

Fatal error: Only variables can be passed by reference in /www/vjoomla.com/production/htdocs/forum/register.php on line 384

I will try to register again however I do have my reservations about a structure when such things happen

as mentioned previously, I am a fan of vBdrupal and one of the reasons is they do a professional job and don't rush things thru to please the masses, they do their job thoroughly. Of course I am frustrated to be waiting for vBdrupal 5 however I know that they will have done the job properly

there are so many persons out there who consider themselves coders and they put out hacks etc etc however the moment someone takes a look under the hood they discover that it is put together with selotape

here's hoping for more real coders and great hacks, scripts and mods

[Lyte]

Howdy,

I've been interested in adding a CMS to PC101 for sometime now! I've been leaning towards Drupal but I have a quick question before I decide which CMS to choose.

Can I add Drupal (or any of the other CMSs pieces of software) if my forum software is not the most current? And... if I add it now (before updating my VB software) am I going to have problems with it later as I continue to add the VB updates?

Thanks!

Lyte

[vcruiser]

I was a subdreamer user, switched to vbadvanced...WOW great product, easy to install, easy to use. The guy who runs the VBadvanced board is on the ball. Gets back to any questions right away. It's FREE! If you can believe that. He should be selling it. He also has a links program that is developed for VB.

Hey man... give VBa a try

Pura Vida

[tazzarkin]

One of the main reasons vJoomla uses vbulletin to control session authentication.

Still, as of version 1.0.12 Joomla has no known security issues that I know of. Care to cite any, or are you simply spreading F.U.D. for the fun of it?


Note - I am the author of vJoomla. I'll keep this free of bias as I can, but I want to be upfront about this.

Of the portal's vPortal is the only one I would certainly stay away from for the reason others have already given in this thread - no real updates for it have been done in 3 years. That leaves three.

vBAdvanced / CMPS
Advantages: This is vbulletin's only native CMS at present. This means all it's modules will work without compatibility issues arising out of bridging techniques. The product has had solid support over it's history and will continue to enjoy it I believe.
Disadvantages: Very small pool of modules when compared to Drupal or Joomla! vBadvanced still holds static pages in the template library which is, frankly, an odd place at best to put them, and a terrible spot if you need to have multiple people working on them. There is no timed publishing of content items.

Drupal
Advantages Drupal has the best taxinomy / content sorting system I've ever seen in any CMS. It's reasonably easy to install and setup. Version 5 has, I've been told, considerably cleaned up the module install, deinstall process. However vbDrupal has some compatibility issues with a handful of modules last time I checked. I also do not know if vbDrupal is on Drupal 5 yet or not. If it isn't I would hold off on installing it until it bridges to Drupal 5.
Disadvantages Drupal 4's administration is nightmarishly complex compared to either of the other two CMS systems listed here. Also, the strength of Drupal is in it's blogs - yet Jelsoft is getting ready to release a blog extension that may outperform any of the current solutions in this manner.

vJoomla
Advantages Joomla has, hands down, the most powerful component/module library of any of the three CMS systems listed here. It's backend administration is easy and intuitive to use as well.
Disadvantages:vJoomla is in beta -- and how many of the modules and components will actually run with it remains to be seen. Even when it does see release sometime near the end of next month it will be in the shadow of Joomla 1.5. Joomla 1.5 is rebuilt from the ground up and promises some real performance enhancements, but vJoomla will lag about 6 months behind. Finally, as a project in it's infancy vJoomla have the support base either of the other two projects here have - though Joomla itself has help files and support to make up for this somewhat.

To: Michael Morris

I have been reading for hours and this was the best read so far. Thanks for spending the time to explain it.

[nyunyu]

@Michael, If there is a thank you button, I'd hit it. The info you gave was the one I'm looking for. Trying to find the best CMS to link with my forum. Only to ask one more question. Does vdrupal can be customized so that it can look like a normal website? or is it worth the try using cutenews?

[Clayton]

I am still on the road towards vBdrupal however I can say that the work done with Jafo makes the integration of Wordpress a good one

Wordpress can be used as a CMS too

I actually use both vBdrupal and Wordpress in different capacities

[mccollin]

I will contribute my $0.02 here. I have been a long time user of GARS together with vBadvanced. Together with an unsupported connector available at the GARS site, you can do a lot of cool stuff with this setup, and create some custom content types. The biggest complaint people raise is no timed release of content, but this can be worked around by having staging forums that allow you to work on content before its moved to the production forums. But a few months ago GARS fell unsupported so I started looking for another direction (thankfully, GARS now has a new owner and should be fully supported as a commercial product again). I am liking vbDrupal a lot. In the great comparison by Michal Morris, he questioned its compatibility with Drupal modules and I don't think this is an issue. I have loaded a lot of custom modules in my testing, and thus far had no problems. Based on their website, the difference between Drupal and vbDrupal is very minimal and shouldn't be a problem for most modules. Here are some things that may not be evident from the high level search...

vbDrupal is complex, but at the same time its not really that hard to get going given some of the great video tutorials that are out there. Very few books on it though. When you are looking for help, look for Drupal stuff, not vbDrual as most of it applies. What vBDrupal gives you that is additional to Drupal is the following:

- Integration of user administration. It pulls all users from vBulletin into vbDrupal and uses vBulletins user adminstration going forward. If you register or login, you are always doing it in vBulletin, regardless of which side you do it on. I haven't tried it yet, cut supposedly this extends to vBulletin groups being able to be used for vbDrupal permissions and such... very powerful, and "safe" to the vBulletin person going in.

- Addition of vBulletin blocks in vbDrupal. You get blocks that let you show your latest threads and I believe even whole forums in vbDrupal.

- Ability to show vbDrupal blocks in vBulletin. I haven't tried this yet, but you can have your blocks from vbDrupal go back onto the vBulletin side as well. This means you can have a consistent look and feel on forum pages and non-forum pages.

- Adoption of vBulletin style into vbDrupal. This one I completely missed, but when you install this, it actually lets you use your vBulletin style in vbDrupal. This is a complete departure from the vbDrupal themes, and I've not completely figured this one out yet. You can still select other standard Drupal themes if you want, but you can also have it use your vBulletin style... and I believe you can modify it in vBulletin templates. I need to sort that out, because I am not sure if I want to stay with that or just go with a standard Drupal theme. I think you may give up some things like breadcrumbs over to vBulletin if you don't use the vbDrupal vBulletin style. Bottom line, is that out of the box you can get a site with vbDrupal that looks similar to a vBadvanced type site.

The biggest drawback with any of these approaches is that your content is now split... you can't do a single search of forum and non-forum articles. With GARS, you can. But with vbDrupal, you gain a world of capability because you can build just about anything with it and have to write very little code to do it.

[Clayton]

here is an example of a site 'supposedly' built on vBdrupal

http://www.alltforforaldrar.se/

[mccollin]

here is an example of a site 'supposedly' built on vBdrupal

http://www.alltforforaldrar.se/

Hmm... I don't see a forum on that site at all, so I'd guess its more likely Drupal than vbDrupal. There would be no point if they don't have a forum. I did my best to find a forum, but since I don't speak that langauage I may have missed it.

[Clayton]

yes .. that was why I put 'supposedly'

however I have spoken to the developer and he said he used the 'defaultangy' theme

here is his thread on vbdrupal

http://vbdrupal.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1172

I am working to see if it in fact can be done with the 'defaultangy' theme

on Drupal it mentions using the Zen theme for designing your own theme upon that

[m002.p]

VbAdvanced is flexible, robust & an outstanding product.

The only one worthy of being a CMPS ;)

Credit where its due to those guys :D

[mccollin]

VbAdvanced is flexible, robust & an outstanding product.

The only one worthy of being a CMS ;)

Credit where its due to those guys :D

I'm sorry, but you are totally wrong in this statement. I use vBadvanced on my websites today and it is a flexible, robust, and outstanding product, but that doesn't make it a CMS. vBulletin is also a fleixble, robust, and outstanding product, but its not a CMS either. A CMS manages content... vBadvanced doesn't manage content at all. In fact, vBulletin is closer to being a CMS than vBadvanced. It at least manages posts, which are one form of content. A CMS has to be able to handle the input, management, and output of content. vBadvanced is more accurately described as a portal. It can organize blocks of information that is stored in vBulletin, or allow you to create custom blocks that have nothing to do with vBulletin. The other scripts being discussed... Drupal, Joomla, etc., are in the CMS category. Not everyone needs a CMS. You can have any of the CMS scripts behave as a portal like vBadvanced does, but you can't have vBadvanced operate like a CMS on its own. Together with GARS, and the GARS-vBadvanced connector, you can get some CMS like capabilities in that you can at least have it present other content types besides posts... but even that lacks much of the management capability and relies on some custom coding to make it work.

[TigerWare]

Found this as I am totally confused by the term 'Content Management System' which may not actually mean the same thing between different people. This wiki article smooths off some of the rough edges [LINK (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system)]

[mccollin]

Thats a good overview, and it also links to a list of CMS systems... which gets further complicated by the fact that the list includes things like POSTNuke and wikis that aren't really comparible to the classic CMS. I think that a lot of people throw around the term "CMS" when they really don't mean CMS. The vast majority of forum owners are looking for a way to add a useful home page and some static non-forum pages. They want to be able to show news on the home page, being fed by a forum. This isn't really even the correct definition of a portal, but it probably fits that better than CMS. If you don't intend to add other types of content outside of forum threads, then you don't need a CMS. With vBulletin adding blogs, they start to blur the lines.

[TruthElixirX]

vBDrupal all the way.

http://audiosubculture.com <-- I just made this with vB Drupal. I can also add galleries, blogs, audio for users, the list goes on and on.


vB Drupal stays up on security updates and is already working on getting Drupal 6 to work.

[m002.p]

I'm sorry, but you are totally wrong in this statement. I use vBadvanced on my websites today and it is a flexible, robust, and outstanding product, but that doesn't make it a CMS. vBulletin is also a fleixble, robust, and outstanding product, but its not a CMS either. A CMS manages content... vBadvanced doesn't manage content at all. In fact, vBulletin is closer to being a CMS than vBadvanced. It at least manages posts, which are one form of content. A CMS has to be able to handle the input, management, and output of content. vBadvanced is more accurately described as a portal. It can organize blocks of information that is stored in vBulletin, or allow you to create custom blocks that have nothing to do with vBulletin. The other scripts being discussed... Drupal, Joomla, etc., are in the CMS category. Not everyone needs a CMS. You can have any of the CMS scripts behave as a portal like vBadvanced does, but you can't have vBadvanced operate like a CMS on its own. Together with GARS, and the GARS-vBadvanced connector, you can get some CMS like capabilities in that you can at least have it present other content types besides posts... but even that lacks much of the management capability and relies on some custom coding to make it work.

Well thanks for the essay but that was a simple mistake "CMS" instead of "CMPS". Furthermore I didnt think it warranted such a response as that is off topic and irrelevant.

I may be wrong but this topic is named Vbadvanced VS other portal systems. It wasnt named Vbadvanced vs Vbulletin CMS? LOL

[Clayton]

Well thanks for the essay but that was a simple mistake "CMS" instead of "CMPS". Furthermore I didnt think it warranted such a response as that is off topic and irrelevant.

I may be wrong but this topic is named Vbadvanced VS other portal systems. It wasnt named Vbadvanced vs Vbulletin CMS? LOL

one word of advice

don't jump out of planes they are made for flying in

:D

--------------- Added 1197041154 at 1197041154 ---------------

vBDrupal all the way.

http://audiosubculture.com <-- I just made this with vB Drupal. I can also add galleries, blogs, audio for users, the list goes on and on.


vB Drupal stays up on security updates and is already working on getting Drupal 6 to work.

you better sort the database out though ;)

[m002.p]

one word of advice

don't jump out of planes they are made for flying in

Is that a word or a sentence? ;) LOL

Look I wasnt after a confrontation, I was stating a point but appreciated mccollin pointing out my typing error :)

[mccollin]

Well thanks for the essay but that was a simple mistake "CMS" instead of "CMPS". Furthermore I didnt think it warranted such a response as that is off topic and irrelevant.

I may be wrong but this topic is named Vbadvanced VS other portal systems. It wasnt named Vbadvanced vs Vbulletin CMS? LOL

Glad you think my reply was funny and off topic. :confused:

The title of the topic is actually "vbDrupal vs. vbAdvanced vs. vbPortal vs. Joomla ", not "vbAdvanced VS other portal systems". Since two of those products are in the CMS category (and the first one in particular), your use of the acronym CMS was taken for what it was. The six replies prior to yours were specifically talking about vbDrupal which is a CMS. Replacing "CMS" in your reply with "CMPS" doesn't even make any since because CMPS is a product name, not a category of software. Of course vBadvanced is the "Only one worthy of being a CMPS.", because its product name is CMPS. So I think its fair for me to have assumed originally that you intended CMS for its real definition. Your original statement was that vBadvanced was the "only" one in the list of four "worthy" of being called a CMS. In fact, Joomla and vbDrupal are the only ones in the list worthy of being called a CMS. The others are not. So that was the motivation for my reply, and explanation.

It amazes me that people come to forums to supposedly discuss things and learn, and when someone corrects a statement, they get accused of being "off topic" and laughed at. Based on the following replies to mine, there is confusion on the term CMS and so there was value in my reply. This is how people learn... by sharing their views on something. It would have been nice if you just replied back that you meant "CMPS", not "CMS", rather than attacking my post.

Now, if its OK, I'd like to add something to the vbDrupal discussion that was going before.

I've been testing vbDrupal for a few days now. Its interesting that the Drupal template files have been moved into the vBulletin template system. I'm not quite sure how they are doing it, but it seems to work pretty well. You can readily swap between this "defaultangy" template which uses the vBulletin template system, and the normal Drupal templates that have nothing to do with vBulletin. This gives a lot of flexibility. I would like to understand better how this works exactly because it may introduce some limitations. I know one thing is that I've struggled with my forum templates for some time with incompatibilities between Firefox and IE, and now I'm right back into that with defaultangy. I was hoping to have a clean fresh start. Does anyone know if its possible to pull the defaultangy template information out of defaultangy and put it in a separate Drupal skin, once its generated? Then I could severe the connection in the templates, but have them starting in the same place. My problem now is some of the classes that are used in this I can't easily change because the change may not work right in all the places the class is used in vBulletin. Not sure if that makes sense or not. Anyone tried to do that?

[scruff2]

Interesting discussion to say the least.

I don't care that much about CMS vs Portal, but something all seem to lack is a "bypass flow valve" in case of huge traffic.

I run a webbsite with 225,000 members and they will flow on occasion to the site by the 1000s, bottlenecking and bringing the site to a crawl.

I'd need a portal/cms front end, that shuts down and redirects to the forums main page when SERVER loads defined are exceeded, then resumes itself without redirection once things calm down again.

Do any of these products do this?

[mccollin]

My site gets about 500K uniques a month and I understand your concern. One thing I did to help with congestion was to split my ad server (OpenAds) off onto its own server, and that helped tremendously. So... one server for vBulletin and one for OpenAds.

If you are on the same server, I'm not sure how it would benefit you to redirect people to the forum's main page if the server is overloaded, because the forum index page will be a load too, right? vBulletin has a setting in the config to let you specify a server load level after which users will be told that the server is busy, and to try later. So, any of the products that really sit on vBulletin should be able to use that. I can speak to vBadvanced because thats what I currently use. It is a plug-in to vBulletin, so it uses the same overload tool. I would expect vbPortal to use the same one. I haven't tried vbPortal in several years, but it was pretty "heavy" back then, so I wouldn't recommend it. I think it is also a dead project and hasn't been updated in a long time.

vbDrupal has configuration settings to help with overloading, although I've not tried them. They call it their "Throttle" tool. It lets you automatically scale some things down, and you can do it by user group... so that registered users don't get throttled the same as anonymous users... a nice feature.

I don't know about Joomla, but I would expect them to have similar capabilities.

If you expect a heavy load, you may want to put your CMS on a different server than vBulletin. I am not positive if this can easily be done with vbDrupal because it uses the same database. There are a couple of other vBulletin to Drupal hooks that do it differently and may work better with dual servers.

[m002.p]

Your original statement was that vBadvanced was the "only" one in the list of four "worthy" of being called a CMS.

Better get some specs then mate as you are way off as I changed CMS to CMPS, and yes Vba is the only CMPs hence my statement. Now if your off topic reply wasnt enough, that certainly was enough to make me laugh :)


It amazes me that people come to forums to supposedly discuss things and learn, and when someone corrects a statement, they get accused of being "off topic" and laughed at. Based on the following replies to mine, there is confusion on the term CMS and so there was value in my reply. This is how people learn... by sharing their views on something.

Im all for people learning from forums especially this forum, but im not for members who think they know it all and take one statement as offensive as the person was wrong and "they know better". Even if I didnt know CMS was or wasnt, I thought your reply was quite offensive to those who cant help the fact they are all not web coders like myself or you. People on my forum dont know what PHP code is or the difference from HTML etc, but I dont go about it in a negative way as if they "should know". That, that is not learning. My point is, there is a way about giving feedback like that.

So in the future, you may want to change your tone when writing as you never know who you are speaking to and what they do / know ;)

[SEOvB]

One of the main reasons vJoomla uses vbulletin to control session authentication.

Still, as of version 1.0.12 Joomla has no known security issues that I know of. Care to cite any, or are you simply spreading F.U.D. for the fun of it?


from http://vjoomla.com


Greetings. This morning an exploit was discovered that has been used to attack this server. The vJoomla modification has been withdrawn until the nature of the attack can be ascertained and the rest of the server can be analyzed and upgraded as necessary to prevent further abuse.


Irony building.

[RC CHOP]

The security flaw was found in the plugin, not joomla or vbulletin itself. They way they wrote the bridge opened up some nasty little holes that could potentially corrupt the site if exploited. I too am currently looking at a way to "bridge" my vbulletin and joomla. What I am trying to accomplish is a matching theme and also having user permissions across the site. So basically I either need joomla to pass the vb info over or have Joomla preload the vb session info. Matching up the theme will take some work in changing the navbar/header area to load the joomla header (trying to get away from the wrapper as it sometimes invokes scrollbars, bleh). That will be the trick. Once things are loaded up from vbulletin, I could potentially load up content based on eser/usergroup permissions.

My goal is to have a fluid site navigation much like this one Xbox Live Nation (http://www.xboxlivenation.com). Some of you may recognize who runs that site.

Anyone got any tips.? Currently running vbulletin 3.6.8PL2 and Joomla! 1.0.13 (considering leaping to the 1.5RC3 of Joomla!)

P.S. My site (which is a mess at the moment) is HERE (http://www.theroguecell.com).

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Please post in one of the coding support questions. This is not something that can be answered in a Pre-Sales thread.

[henrikhansen]

But with vbDrupal, you gain a world of capability because you can build just about anything with it and have to write very little code to do it.

I have installed vbdrupal recently and is very, very impressed.
Drupal is the best and most flexible CMS out there and has won several prices recently for best CMS.

If you can think it, you can do it in Drupal.

Vbadvanced cmps is also great, but you cannot have several users posting content in vba cmps, editing each others content, giving other users right to edit own content, ect.

[HALF MOON]

vBadvanced CMPS ^_*

[gforce75]

vbadvanced is the way to go. Makes my site awesome :)

[scotsmist]

.....I can speak to vBadvanced because thats what I currently use. It is a plug-in to vBulletin, so it uses the same overload tool. I would expect vbPortal to use the same one. I haven't tried vbPortal in several years, but it was pretty "heavy" back then, so I wouldn't recommend it. I think it is also a dead project and hasn't been updated in a long time.....

Just posting to mention, since this statement is incorrect, that vbPortal is not a dead project and is updated almost every time vBulletin release an update.


Interesting discussion to say the least.

I don't care that much about CMS vs Portal, but something all seem to lack is a "bypass flow valve" in case of huge traffic.

I run a webbsite with 225,000 members and they will flow on occasion to the site by the 1000s, bottlenecking and bringing the site to a crawl.

I'd need a portal/cms front end, that shuts down and redirects to the forums main page when SERVER loads defined are exceeded, then resumes itself without redirection once things calm down again.

Do any of these products do this?It would be a simple file edit to redirect to the forum when the load is too high, rather than display the usual splash screen that the server load is too high.

[Guest210212002]

I use vBAdvanced, and the only real gripe with it is that every vBA site, mine included, looks pretty much the same (with a couple of exceptions of course, like this site (http://www.koww.net/portal.php?)).

It the freakin' tables that kill me. Tables, tables, tables, blocks, blocks, blocks. Big center blocks, small side blocks, same nav, same options, etc, etc. I've redesigned my portal a dozen times and it still looks just like every other vBA site out there, and it's far and away my least favorite part of my site. One of these days I'll break down and just hand code a proper one, but for ease of use my vote goes to vBA as well - even if it's overused and generic now.

My .2c of course, fwiw.

[SEOvB]

That site even looks like every other vbadvanced site.

the only difference is the huge flash banner that took 45 seconds to load and almost crashed firefox.

[Michael Morris]

from http://vjoomla.com



Irony building.
Yeah, I'll eat my hat. Pass the salt.

That was last May. Since then I sat down and wrote an entirely new framework from the ground up that is capacle of running itself without interfering with vbulletin in any way. It's taken 9 months and as much of that development was funded by my current employer I still need his permission to release any of the code which may never happen. However my own vbulletin website is being converted over to it at long last and things are going smoothly.

The framework is called Pam here in the office - that stands for PHP Ajax Multimedia framework. Pam is very flexible and powerful - but difficult for a non-programmer to use. That's sort of the point though - each and every one of these frameworks is built with an eye on making getting the site up and running as quickly as possible. None of them are easy to build modules are components for. Pam is different in that rather than make things easy on the end user Pam makes things easy on the programmer (who is in turn expected to make life easy for the end user - that's his job).

Building a module for Pam is easy - drop it in. Pam can even run vbulletin in its entirely as a module. How much (or little) a program is integrated into the framework is the programmer's choice. No other PHP framework online can make the claim that vbulletin, Joomla, vbulletin, and phpmyadmin will run underneath it. Pam can.

But this thing is not ready and will not be ready from prime-time for awhile yet. My pride was greatly burned by the whole vJoomla fiasco. I won't release anything I'm not confident in yet. While I'm confident Pam can run a site with me administrating it and fixing it, I still have to go into the core libraries on occasion and fix things. Until that stops happening any deployment won't occur.

[scotsmist]

I use vBAdvanced, and the only real gripe with it is that every vBA site, mine included, looks pretty much the same (with a couple of exceptions of course, like this site (http://www.koww.net/portal.php?)).

It the freakin' tables that kill me. Tables, tables, tables, blocks, blocks, blocks. Big center blocks, small side blocks, same nav, same options, etc, etc. I've redesigned my portal a dozen times and it still looks just like every other vBA site out there, and it's far and away my least favorite part of my site. One of these days I'll break down and just hand code a proper one, but for ease of use my vote goes to vBA as well - even if it's overused and generic now.

My .2c of course, fwiw.

vizdepot.com although running vB 3.0.x still is a really good example IMHO what can be done. I don't think first look, you wouldn't know it was running vbPortal.

[hjmaier]

I am using vBDrupal: www.midgard.forum.de

If you want to look at the forum and see how the Drupal blocks are included, chose the style Admins Spielwiese when you enter the forum.

I switched over from vBPortal to Drupal because I needed a CMS which can manage content and not only posts. Something only a real CMS can provide. vBAdvance was not a soloution for me.

I also needed a powerful search engine. The Drupal taxomony module is the thing I really need. The main issue with other CMS i know is, that you can easily add content there, but how will you manage the search for it?

Best regards
Hans-Joachim

[Clayton]

Hans are you sure that is the correct url you gave, please?

[scotsmist]

I am using vBDrupal: www.midgard.forum.de

If you want to look at the forum and see how the Drupal blocks are included, chose the style Admins Spielwiese when you enter the forum.

I switched over from vBPortal to Drupal because I needed a CMS which can manage content and not only posts. Something only a real CMS can provide. vBAdvance was not a soloution for me.

I also needed a powerful search engine. The Drupal taxomony module is the thing I really need. The main issue with other CMS i know is, that you can easily add content there, but how will you manage the search for it?

Best regards
Hans-Joachim

vbPortal does not use threads and posts for articles, it has its own tables and permissions. Users can post articles and reply. There is an advanced (powerful) search that will search all articles - just like the advanced forum search and it allows you to select criteria and order your results. There is also an advanced search for the journal blogger and for the bug tracker module. There have been many updates, which was the point to my first post. I'm not arguing for or against anything, I just wanted to correct the other persons post that completely misinformed anyone reading it that vbPortal was a 'Dead' project. vbPortal is not a dead project, there have been thirty six upgrades since vBulletin 3.0.0 was released three years ago.

[webgeek247]

I agree about vba/vbportal and the like being just portals. I wouldnt class them as a CMS as many have said in this thread already. A proper CMS allows your users to make content like by submitting articles, upload files, make blogs etc.

My experience/opinions:

Joomla - A proper CMS but is 100% mind boggling to use. For me anyway. I just dont get it. The framework used or whatever its called is just weird. Mambots blah blah blah. Very strange imo lol. Maybe I didnt spend enough time trying to use it : s

Mambo - Same as above, obviously.

Anyway, I run a community for djs, producers and music lovers. Not a big community mind but still gets a lot of traffic and ranks well. Suppose its more of a place for info. but id like to change that by offering my members to upload dj mixes and was looking for a CMS that could allow this so I didnt go for vba/vbportal or similar because I needed a proper CMS where users could submit articles, upload music and which would skin my vbulletin forum so they both match. I tried loads of CMS/Portals from opensource as well as from other places but they just didnt offer what I wanted.

I then tried a lot commercial CMS with one being Jamroom, keep in mind I already have vbulletin/vbseo so MUST have forum integration of some kind that like shares usergroups or something heh. Unfortunately, Jamroom was a bit tricky to work with to and I couldnt get the forum integration to work properly.

In the end I put in for Subdreamer CMS Pro even though I knew many say bad things about SD I thought well the hell ill risk $99

At first I found it a complete nightmare trying to position the plugins : s after a while I sussed that. Then I found out of about 200 subdreamer skins available only one of them passed as valid xhtml but the design/template was way too tricky to edit due to the amount of images used etc. Im not very good with the design side of things so left that skin. In the end I found one that had the right layout and was set as strict xhtml which was wrong as it should have been xhtml 1.0 which is a good compromise. I changed it to xhtml 1.0 and fixed the remaining warnings/errors using the w3c checker and customised the design/layout etc and finished the main skin and forumskin and after just skinned the vbulletin forum using Subdreamer and everything work a charm : D

I still haven't managed to setup a proper member uploading/downloading system yet, hopefully ill be able to use the download manager plugin once theyve improved it and just change the code a little. But apart from that am pretty much happy with Subdreamer now. Since I joined theyve constantly been releasing new skins that seo friendly, good design and the support is excellent. Subdreamer CMS is very sef too. Nice neat urls that with vbulletin and vbseo works a treat. No point having a site if it doesnt rank well right.

So…if your after a site that is similar to mine then I recommend you try Subdreamer CMS Pro.

Im still looking into other cms/scripts though to see what extra I can add to my site. Will have to try vbportal/vbdrupal etc on localhost and have a play.

DJ Passion - Dance Music Community - Home (http://www.djpassion.co.uk)

Hope my info helps some out.

Chris.

[Clayton]

Chris, you should consider taking a look at Elgg

this may work for what you trying to achieve

:up:

[scotsmist]

I agree about vba/vbportal and the like being just portals. I wouldnt class them as a CMS as many have said in this thread already. A proper CMS allows your users to make content like by submitting articles, upload files, make blogs etc.

.....

Chris.

See my post above yours, that is exactly what vbPortal supports - users can post articles, news, reviews, classified ads, upload files and create a blog.

quote (http://atlanticwebfitters.ca/VendorNeutralWhitePapers/WhatisaCMS/tabid/146/Default.aspx)
A content management system (CMS) supports the creation, management, distribution, publishing, and discovery of corporate information.

It covers the complete lifecycle of the pages on your site, from providing simple tools to create the content, through to publishing, and finally to archiving.

It also provides the ability to manage the structure of the site, the appearance of the published pages, and the navigation provided to the users.

quote (http://atlanticwebfitters.ca/AtlanticWebfittersHome/HelpfulArticles/WhatisaWebPortal/tabid/95/Default.aspx)
The idea of a portal is to collect information from different sources and create a single point of access to information - a library of categorized and personalized content. It is very much the idea of a personalized filter into the web.

I agree that vbA is not a CMS but that it is a portal.

[Zachariah]

Scotsmist .... !!!!!! hey dude, they let you out of the code cave I see. :p
Do you have your Super "D" long underwear and utility belt ? :D

see ya on phpportals

[uberjon]

See my post above yours, that is exactly what vbPortal supports - users can post articles, news, reviews, classified ads, upload files and create a blog.


sounds interesting. care to link me to vbportal?

[webgeek247]

Clayton: the Elgg.org site was down. But I checked out the classic.elgg.org site and had a quick look and must say it doesnt look to bad but atm there isnt a vBulletin integration plugin/mod/hack. The networking side of things looks great though! So I will definitely check that site out when Elgg.org 1.0 is released - I subscribed. Thanks for the link, Clayton.

What id like to do with my site now is offer my members mini sites off of my site. Just like to be able to give them a few good pages to use for promotional reasons. The vBulletin profiles are too basic. This is a good example of what im after http://www.musicv2.com/artist/djbigboy

I check the source code but no generator metatag so stumped as to how they set that up. Guess it must be a custom job. But yup, id like to offer something like or similar to the above example like offer dj hosting, music profiles etc.

I just checked out vBdrupal for the first time and daaam is it good. I wonder if I can use it with subdreamer/vbulletin+vbseo somehow. Still looking into it :D

scotsmist: tbh I havent looked into vBportal to much but at a first glance when checking the site I just assumed it were like vba. My bad. If it does what you say it does though then awesome!! :D I guess vBportal is half CMS and half Portal then aye :rolleyes:

Anyway, im going look into vBdrupal more. Wouldnt mind looking into VBportal more but im skint so would be just a waste of time heh.

Cheers for the info guys :cool:

Chris.

[scotsmist]

phpportals.com (vbportal.com) was started in February 2001, so members see it the other way round, that vbA looks like vbPortal :D

Scotsmist .... !!!!!! hey dude, they let you out of the code cave I see. :p
Do you have your Super "D" long underwear and utility belt ? :D

see ya on phpportals

Hi Zak I have holes in my tights and a few pounds around the utility belt. It happens when 40 knocks on the door.

[Clayton]

Clayton: the Elgg.org site was down. But I checked out the classic.elgg.org site and had a quick look and must say it doesnt look to bad but atm there isnt a vBulletin integration plugin/mod/hack. The networking side of things looks great though! So I will definitely check that site out when Elgg.org 1.0 is released - I subscribed. Thanks for the link, Clayton.

there actually is a rough hack for vB however it makes Elgg the controller which to me defeats the purpose, due to my interest in the development of a few projects music and sound related etc I was looking into Elgg, I am sure with a bit of cajouling we can whittle out a vb integration hack sometime.

I also utilise vbdrupal and if anything has power it is Drupal, this will certainly be the platform of the future, when Drupal 7 arrives it will be massive.

Good luck with your project

:up:

[Mr. Mooney]

Still looking for a good CMS system such as the one www.notebookreview.com uses. It will be for a Tech News, Reviews and forum site.

[ShawnV]

That site even looks like every other vbadvanced site.

the only difference is the huge flash banner that took 45 seconds to load and almost crashed firefox.


45 seconds? unlikely unless the server was under load or a router was down.



I like the look of the vbavanced portal, it may be over used though I agree.

_V

[Carlos X]

I'll reserve judgement on Elgg.org's release of v1.0. Which is summer, so when that happens, I'll test it on my live news site.

Until then, I'm staying with my VBAdvanced installations on three different game console websites.

[Ark del KAOS]

I'm using a custom vbadvance: www.neozeta.com
And, well, if you want something, you can make it.
The code its simple enough to be capable of make some changes without redo everything.
But its a forum making CMS, not a real CMS. And you need to know it. To really know it.
You cant expect to be anything else....without make some big changes in the code.
I like it because for me is more complicated to integrate with the vb, than recode the presentation.