PimpRig.com
 

I first ran PimpRig via MyPHPNuke and then switched over to vbulletin a year later and used it in conjuction with vbportal until our website traffic got pretty high and vbportal wasn't good at handling the load.

After 3 years and an owned license I can honestly say that I couldn't run the site without vbulletin. It rules the world of forums. Period. We now use a custom CMS developed by an in house PHP guru that integrates seamlessly with VB. All article comments, site news (and comments) are all powered by VB. The forums has some hacks applied to it including the following:

Whitespace Stripper
Awards Hack
v3Arcade
vbStatistic 3.0.0
Blocked hotlinking of images, attachments.php and avatar.php
Integrated with Photopost

The original vb colors were close to what I needed so I only needed to tweak some gradient images and css colors as well as replace buttons and icons... The members seem to really like it. :)

Any and all feedback and/or suggestions are welcome.

http://www.pimprig.com

Link for easier access. ;)

Heheh DUH! I guess I should have done that. :) Thanks.

Hi! A daring move from you: Your site design is even wider than mine:) I didn?t have the guts to go wider than 890px! Yours is really optimised from corner to corner on a laptop screen. I won?t go into the 800x600 debate - that?s old sooo passe:D

Seriously... Nice design - reminds me of many portals related to electronic dance music - especially trance.

Cool to see that someone is really pleased about how vb works a a spine to a portal. I?ve been building my own forum up and vbulletin has indeed been a good investment - I mean so it feels now. I hope these are the feelings a year after launch as well:)

Regs,
-Mika

Yeah I decided to go with a layout optimized for a min of 1024x768 res. The content area is 1000 pixels wide. :) We have been online for over 4 years and get about 7,000 unique visitors per day. Out of all of the visitors about 11% use 800x600. The rest are 1024x768 and higher (stats).

It really is a great system. Even with our hacked threads with high queries (about 16 queries on showthread) at about 200 visitors the server load sits around 0.80 to 1.30 on average. This is on a single dual Xeon server. :)

I am always looking for new ways to optimize the site/server/vb as well as ways to add functionality.

The serverload is really good news for me, as I?ve been wondering what the load will become. My forum rounds at about the same amount with 19 queries by thread.

Regs,
-Mika

It's nice, the scheme is easy on the eyes and the layout is productive. Although with the forum, I feel you do a bit more to alter it's apperance from the stock vB feel.

How about the page load times for you? Decent?

GlitterKill, I have been a frequent visitor to your site for years, always like it.
BTW....interested in some Titan tickets? :p

Asking me? It feels decent if not superior:)

-Mika

You portal is staggeringly nice. Very lovely. I love the tribal designs scattered here and there. And your little trendy PR logo is sweet. I say trendy in a nice way, cause you are taking advantage of some trends, and it looks great.

However, your forum looks only halfway integrated with your site. The default icons blare at me begging to be changed to some sort of tribal design or possibly even your logo. Some sites benefit from simplicity, but yours needs more bling. Get some animation in there.

Good work.

I have made the big upgrade to VB3.5. :) I am LOVING the easier hack installs! Very nice upgrade.

wow why that many sponsors? totaly ruined your site.

brrrr

your site looks real nice. good job

Style is still looking good. :) I would move all the whats going on stuff to the bottom though. Make it easier for users to get to your forum list and not create a scroll.

I tried that and alot of members wanted it back at the top so they can see who;s online easier.