Running vB on large site worthwhile?

[nuller]

Hello!

We have decided on using vbulletin for one of our major websites. This site has anywhere between 500 and 1000 concurrent users at any given time and is rising daily. We would like to implement forums into the website, but before we get too deep into developing modifications for vB, there are a few questions maybe some one out there can answer:

1. All of our members have to log in before they would be able to see the forum, we have their email address, username, password and a bunch of other information that could be used on the message board. How hard would it be to integrate the existing users into vB's authentication & profile system?

2. We have a setup of 4 load balanced webservers, does vBulletin use flat files for anything at all or is it *completely* mysql based?

3. How does vB respond to heavy load? I was reading another thread where people were saying there were something like 20+ QUERIES on some of their pages, we have enough problems keeping our database server from not bogging down all of its processors and exhausting gigs of memory. Why so many queries? I find it hard to go past 4 or 5 queries on a page, if I do that I have done something wrong.

4. Does vB support a mysql replication type setup? Idealy we would like to have a list of slave servers and a master it would cycle through.

5. We would like to implement message filtering, there are certain topics, spam, etc that we need to hold to be approved. How complicated would it be just to get something like this into the current system? The filter isnt the big deal, it's the actual implementation.

So the big question is -- can vB handle what I'm talking about or do I just need to write my own software?

Thanks for your time!
Nuller

[shad-gt]

1. All of our members have to log in before they would be able to see the forum, we have their email address, username, password and a bunch of other information that could be used on the message board. How hard would it be to integrate the existing users into vB's authentication & profile system?

thats not very difficult. You must only write a script that takes your users in the vbulletin database. The vbulletin is mysql based.


2. We have a setup of 4 load balanced webservers, does vBulletin use flat files for anything at all or is it *completely* mysql based?

its completely mysql based.


3. How does vB respond to heavy load? I was reading another thread where people were saying there were something like 20+ QUERIES on some of their pages, we have enough problems keeping our database server from not bogging down all of its processors and exhausting gigs of memory. Why so many queries? I find it hard to go past 4 or 5 queries on a page, if I do that I have done something wrong.

The vbulletin has many features. You can reduce the queries if you set some features of. Many features needs many queries.

HTH

greetings,
shAd

[KuraFire]

Hello!

We have decided on using vbulletin for one of our major websites. This site has anywhere between 500 and 1000 concurrent users at any given time and is rising daily. We would like to implement forums into the website, but before we get too deep into developing modifications for vB, there are a few questions maybe some one out there can answer:
There are plenty of large vB-powered forums with 1000 online users at any given time. so rest assured you wouldn't be the first to try this.

3. How does vB respond to heavy load? I was reading another thread where people were saying there were something like 20+ QUERIES on some of their pages, we have enough problems keeping our database server from not bogging down all of its processors and exhausting gigs of memory. Why so many queries? I find it hard to go past 4 or 5 queries on a page, if I do that I have done something wrong.
20+ queries is from the days of vB2. vBulletin 3 has 4-5 necessary queries per page (+1-2 shutdown queries), and depending on what page you're looking at, and several other conditions, this can go up to 10 and 15 in situations where Everything is enabled.
vB3 is much more efficient and server-friendly than vB2. :)

4. Does vB support a mysql replication type setup? Idealy we would like to have a list of slave servers and a master it would cycle through. You'd do best to ask that over at vbulletin.com, the official vB forums. vbulletin.org is a hackers community, first and foremost.

5. We would like to implement message filtering, there are certain topics, spam, etc that we need to hold to be approved. How complicated would it be just to get something like this into the current system? The filter isnt the big deal, it's the actual implementation.
It doesn't have entirely advanced filtering, but you can choose on a per-forum and per-usergroup basis if those posts need to be moderated first.

So the big question is -- can vB handle what I'm talking about or do I just need to write my own software?


Thanks for your time!
Nuller
vB can easily handle what you want, nearly all of your desires are perfectly met in vB3. For further technical details, contact the staff at vbulletin.com - there's a Pre-Sales Questions forum there too that you can use :)

[nuller]

Great, thanks for your replies!

I'll try posting on the official forums, but it sounds like vB is what I'll be working with. Thanks Again!

[KuraFire]

Great, thanks for your replies!

I'll try posting on the official forums, but it sounds like vB is what I'll be working with. Thanks Again!
I can really recommend using vBulletin. I've used it for several websites by now, and I've been a member of several/many vB-forums for years now. Whenever a support site or some other site has a forum that isn't vB, I generally don't post there at all because it's just never as nice as a vB.
As for admining, I've tried to admin a YaBB, an IPB, IkonBoard and a phpBB, and all of them pale compared to vB. It's just so much more intuitive...

[muse.mu]

I can really recommend using vBulletin. I've used it for several websites by now, and I've been a member of several/many vB-forums for years now. Whenever a support site or some other site has a forum that isn't vB, I generally don't post there at all because it's just never as nice as a vB.
As for admining, I've tried to admin a YaBB, an IPB, IkonBoard and a phpBB, and all of them pale compared to vB. It's just so much more intuitive...
Invision is possibly my favourite after vBulletin. But yes, like the man said, vBulletin will not do you wrong.