Need some help w/ features

[DesignerDani]

I am 98% sure I will be purchasing vBulletin, but there are a couple of features I am unsure about.

I will be running a website with
forum (vbulletin)
articles (vbadvanced dynamics)
blogs (deciding between vbulletin and vba dynamics)
vendor review (vbadvanced dynamics - I think)

Here is my sticky point. This forum is going to be mainly regular users, with paid vendors able to respond to questions posted.

I want those in the premium vendor usergroup to each have a page which describes their business. (business name, address, e-mail, few paragraphs on what they do, picture, logo) This info could be pulled from custom profile fields or somewhere else. I'm just not sure how to set this up and am wondering if there is an existing mod out there or something I can tweak to do what I want. I know I can set up custom profile fields, but I want this to only be shown to those in the vendor group - is that possible? Anyone have ideas or guidance on this?

I also want regular users to be able to post a custom date field in their profile which pulls off to a separate calendar. I've looked and don't see a hack for this, but I'm not always great at finding things. Also, I see I can set up other custom fields, how large of a text field can I add?

I'm looking for all possible solutions, existing mods, theories on mod I could create or a paid solution. I have some php programming experience but time is tight since I want to launch mid Aug and my baby is due mid July :D. Budget is also tight, but there is slight wiggle room.

Thanks to any who take the time to read this :)

[DesignerDani]

Well, I seem to have figured out one of the issues. The about me section in vbAdvanced will allow those with blogs to input extra data so that should work perfectly, I think. I'm assuming I'll be able to designate that only those in xx usergroup can have a blog.

I'm still looking to see if there is a way to add a custom date field to the profiles and have that pull to a separate calendar so if anyone knows if this can be accomplished I'd appreciate it.

[Lynne]

I don't understand what you mean here - "add a custom date field to the profiles and have that pull to a separate calendar". Can you explain that a bit more?

[DesignerDani]

I don't understand what you mean here - "add a custom date field to the profiles and have that pull to a separate calendar". Can you explain that a bit more?

Sure -

Part 1 - I'd like to have a custom field in each regular member's profile that is a date - an anniversary they define. So far, when I view the documentation and demo, I see I can do custom profile fields for other types, just not dates. Which makes me wonder why? Is there a reason why a custom date profile field won't work? Or was it just never included and no one never needed it? I've looked hi and lo through mods and articles and haven't found anything although I saw a few unanswered requests. But sometimes I miss blatantly obvious things... :o

Now, once i have the custom date field in the profile (if it's possible), I want to both have the date shown in the post bit (found this handy article here :up: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=118896&highlight=custom+date+profile+field - even though I can't read the code, I see it can be done and that's all I need before I buy) and...

Part 2 - I'd like to have a calendar populated with that data, so user's can easily see which users' anniversaries are in the coming month, etc. I'm not sure if that's possible or easily hacked either.

So I guess this is a 2 part question. :erm: Does that make sense now? Part 1 is really necessary for me and possibly a deal breaker if I don't know I'll be able to do it because the date is integral to the members. Part two is something I'd really like to have but if nothing's available now I would live - and fiddle with it or hire someone later.

[Lynne]

Part 1 - You are right, there isn't a way to specify that the field you created is for a date. However, there is an options to require it to "match a regular expression (PCRE (http://www.php.net/manual-lookup.php?function=preg-match))". I would guess you could force the users to enter a date in a certain format using a regular expression - like YYYY-MM-DD or whatever you want. (I'm not an expert on regular expressions though.)

Part 2 - I think that will have to be custom code. I am barely familiar with the calendar (I just don't use it much), but I'm thinking that you can grab the date at the time the profile field is successfully entered and then add something to the calendar at that point. You'd want to also make it so when/if a user changes that date, that the old one is removed, and the new one added. I can't think of any reason why this couldn't be coded.

[DesignerDani]

That sounds like a good way to get around it. Thanks for your help!

[DesignerDani]

Just in case anyone searches and finds this thread later - a great resource for regular expressions, for those of us who get headaches thinking about them :) is http://www.regexlib.com/Default.aspx