What's the best CMS for vBulletin?
 

Hi all,

Currently I'm looking for a CMS bridge (a good CMS, I don't want soemthing like LOLCMS) or a just-for-vbulletin CMS.

I'm not sure which is the best, but I just installed Joomla and I'm really liking it so far. It is taking a little time to figure everything out, but it seems to be great so far. There is also a way to integrate your vB users with it, so I'll be working on that as soon as I figure everything else out.

Good luck :)

Let us know how the integretion works for you and what you end up using, if you don't mind that is ;)

Any luck integrating with Joomla? I'm trying to figure out if I want to use a CMS system or just do my own thing. So far everything I have read looks like it will probably be more work than it's worth to integrate.

whoops, posted under the wrong screen name :ermm:

I just got around to integrating it today. I have not tested all functionality just yet (as far as new users signing up and such) but, so far, everything seems to be working great. All the user tables seemed to integrate with no problems. :) I really, truly love Joomla. I've tried so many other types of CMS and Joomla is the only one I've really been able to use the way I want to.

Brandi,
I would be interested in knowing what bridge you used, I am currently having a Mambo (Joomla is Mambo, but the core developers split recently if my understanding is correct) site custome made and want to integrate it with my forums, so your findings interest me very much ;)

Big update....

I was using the bridge found here http://forum.joomla.org/

BUT, I have had to uninstall it due to numerous problems ranging from member's passwords being screwed up (and I was unable to reset them through the database or admincp) to joomla creating numerous accounts each time a person logged in or out. People with special characters in their name or password were getting database errors. It was a huge mess and I'm still trying to clean up the passwords issue :( I tried reinstalling three times and kept getting the same problems. So, I finally just gave up on it. Such a shame too.

Now, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I love Joomla but would really like to be able to use it WITH my vB. I dunno what I'm going to do from here.

Good to know, Brandi - thanks for the update. I think I've pretty much ruled out using Joomla at this point (though it looks like the best CMS).

I use and think Coranto has a very tight bridge with vBull.

I use it along with vBadvanced and it generates a very functional news thread create and comment system that can be controlled/ edited from either side (CMS or vB)

I would like to add that Coranto is not an out of the box solution, it does require some configuration and reading to get working. The more you put into it the better it will look and feel. But... it has the power to produce CBC/CNN type of content styles and as I mentioned earlier has a good bridge with vBulletin.

It is in my oppinion the best vB/CMS solution out there.

I just switched over to subdreamer because I wanted to make it easier for those who help me to carry the load for running the site. As far as ease of use I have not seen anything that can touch it. I have staff people that have zero html knowledge and they manage to get things done. It sits on top of vbulletin and integrates with it fairly well. I just made the move during christmas but it was pretty easy to get everything converted over and running. www.subdreamer.com is the address. I think there are a couple others on here using it.

We used Subdreamer for 3 months however we didn't find it to our best solution, if you don't know programming it can be difficult for it to work with your site.

We are currently looking into a custom CMS solution.

BrandiDup'
Thanks for the update, much appreciated.

I had quickly added VBexternal to my temp HTML main site and it works pretty well for the little time I invested in setting it up, can't help but think if one could find a solution for user accounts from Vbulletin to what ever CMS one chose, you could use VBexternal to bring in content FWIW. I am not a web programmer so I could be all wrong with that train of thought.

I used to use it back when it was NewsPro, but switched over to a custom CMS and now to vbadvance because I wanted to encorp the community into the site more. Could you PM me a link to your site so I can see what you have achieved with Coranto and how it ties in with the board?

Thank you.

Ive been messing around with vbadvanced for some time now, and really, it is a good CMS once you get the hang of it, and obviously, it works perfect with vB.

It took some custom coding, but here it is so far, still a work in progress as I get ideas:

http://www.streethop.com

Looks good, I use VBadvanced also, but wanted a better way to do reviews, interviews, etc. so I am going the full featured CMS route. I like how you have limited the info on the latest post etc., much less cluttered than the standard layout :cool:

Another update :) While searching the joomla forums, I came across a few people who said they were having problems with the bridge also but recommended a link for a paid script that basically did the same thing (but much easier, supposedly). After all the problems I had with the bridge, I was willing to definitely pay a few bucks for something to make my life easier since I am really dead set on using Joomla. Low and behold, I found a script for $20 which includes a year of updates and support on the forums. I bought it, installed it with absolutely ZERO problems and it works like a DREAM! It was soo sooo easy and fool proof. You upload a couple files to your JOOM and vB directory, run the script and walah! The only thing I needed to do before running it was merge my databases which was simple :D It took less than 10 minutes for me to do everything, including the configuring and it works exactly the way I wanted it to!

This is the link in case anyone is interested http://www.bbpixel.com/modules/news/...php?storyid=54

I'm very happy and have not had any errors or problems at all.

Thanks, very good news. I wish I was better at the database stuff, not sure how to merge databases! LOL

Brandi, can you post a link to the site where you implented using this script? What was involved in merging the databases? Were any file modifications and/or template modifications required on the vB end?

The site I use it on is www.navysos.com

Merging the databases was really easy for me (took about 2 minutes) BUT my Joomla database was pretty much empty b/c it was a fresh install. So, I didn't have a ton of data to merge. All you have to do is export your Joomla database, then import it into the vB database. I just copy and pasted it as text since it really wasn't that large. Like I said, it took about two minutes tops.

As far as file and template modifications, all I had to do was overwrite a couple of the admin cp files (since your Joomla users are managed through your vB admincp) and a couple other basic files that would obviously need to be modified such as log in, index, profile and newthread.

With the script also comes a few really nice and useful modules and components such as a news bridge that posts news from your vB to a module on your Joomla, top posters, newest registered members and last posts made on a specific forum.

the ONLY bad thing I've discovered so far is that, for some reason, since integrating, people with comma's in their usernames are getting database errors saying there is a syntax error. I fixed this simply by just taking the commas out of their username. However, I am almost 100% positive that it's only giving me the error b/c my host is running an older version of mySQL and PHP. They are upgrading this week though, so I'm thinking that will fix things.
Edited to add: none of the other special characters have given me problems. Its just the commas for some reason.

Thanks, Brandi - I'll be looking into this option since it sounds like a pretty good solution. I really like Joomla a lot as well so if this can do the trick it will be the best CMS option for vb that I've seen so far.

I think Drupal makes a nice CMS alongwith vbulletin. You can find it in these forums. :)

Just wanted to let you know that they already updated the script for 3.5.3 and it's working perfectly so far. :)

I went ahead and purchased their script today as well. I hope it's as good as you say it is, Brandi! :)

for a great CMS VBulletin solution I would suggest that you look at Drupal. You can see a full integration of it here at http://www.westcoastbikers.com. Works well, and is very powerful.

John