Well .. if you want my blunt opinion: they're tacky and I kinda dislike them as the educated forum admin and webmaster I consider myself to be.

BUT ... I did have some changes of mind with a forum of mine for women. I put a link in a topsite, just because I had nothing to do that moment. Imagine I got quite a traffic from that :D

So ... conclusion: they might work if you have the "good" demographic. I think my webmaster members would laugh themselves sensless if seeing such a button on my forums, but the girls who are not web designers had no problem following those links.

KNOW your demographic :)

About six months later, your 'upcoming release' is kinda ironic. But never the less:

They're good for some sites, and not so good for others. I mean, hosting a Topsite isn't a tacky thing, and you get free links and popularity from a ton of related and unrelated sites and forums.

My suggestions though are generally:

1. A layout more like the Aardvark Topsites versions would be nice, since the typical vBulletin topsite script seems rather more like a mini GARS article system than a topsite or a directory.

2. Similarly, a few features like that script would probably be good.

3. Permissions, including guest joining and adding a site, or for members only. Because many free scripts have pretty much awful spam protection, and a vBulletin integrated one is often better in that sense.

4. .htaccess? Maybe for things like a folder on your site outside the forum directory, since /topsite would probably look better than /topsite/topsite.php or /topsite.php. Or a subdomain type thing.

5. Editable settings. Like an easy way to choose the link image and specific link code given.

6. PHP 4 version and a PHP 5 version. Many scripts are one OR the other, and I like vBulletin's compatibility with both versions of PHP. This is evident when considering all other topsite scripts seem to be PHP 5 only.

uh, this was a really old thread you know, and cm-those are great suggestions, but i think i will lose them if you leave them here >.<

Cleaned thread from 2 recent spam posts that bumped this old thread.

As this is already 1.5 years old, closing this thread now