65 Sites - Forum Based Solution

[cygy2k]

I currently have a vBulletin forum with around 2million+ page-views per month and 5,500 members, 350,000 posts. I'm looking at a business opportunity with a partner that would require us to have around 65 different domains - each requiring a different color-scheme and forums. We're projecting around 325,000 members and guest traffic far above that if our plans work as we hope.

What I need to know is what would be the best software solution to handle such an endeavor? Would individual sites running vBulletin be best (obviously an administrative headahce), one vBulletin installation with permission-based forums (can't do style per forum that I know of) or would running something like Jive or CommunityPortal allow us to have different domains with one installation?

Any feedback would be tremendously appreciated.

Thanks!

[SEOvB]

search for the different domain different style hack (DDDS) it lets you use a different style for each domain or something. It may not be exactly what your looking for, but then again it just might.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Not sure if vBulletin would be the right choice for you. Based on your description you will probably need 65 licenses.

[cygy2k]

I'm not too worried about the licenses (around $7,000) due to the number of mods and great support that I've learned to love at vB.org if it's the right product for the job.

I remembered that I could do permissions for the viewing of only certain forums and I could show styles based on forum but I'm not sure about using subdomains with one installation of vBulletin. I wouldn't mind if each URL redirected to a subdomain of the master website but could different subdomains run off of the same installation for ease of maintenance? I realize I'd still need the 65 licenses but I'm trying to think of around maintaining all the different installations.

[woodysfj40]

Personally, if vB would finally get there system complete to allow multiple front-end domains to work off one database, i'd be happy to pay for multiple licenses...I've been needing this for years, and would prefer it be an "official" plugin or option.

Alternatively, releasing a higher-priced "tabbed" solution like what's run here at vB...lots of folks seem to have ideas on how this is setup, but no one will release the official hack....what I run now isn't perfect....

[GetGamer.com]

Personally, if vB would finally get there system complete to allow multiple front-end domains to work off one database, i'd be happy to pay for multiple licenses...I've been needing this for years, and would prefer it be an "official" plugin or option.I second that motion! I would love to see vBulletin support a single database with support for multiple domains -- each with the ability to have their own forums, or "shared" forums.

cygy2k, let us know what you discover, ok?

[Alfa1]

Checkout what www.internetbrands.com has done for the forums of many of their websites.
Search vb.org and vb.com for more info.

[woodysfj40]

InternetBrands.com still keeps the sites independent...they retain their unique domain names and unique databases. Other than putting all the sites under one owner and one hosting facility, and making some monetization changes, they don't make changes to the sites themselves.