VB features vs IPB
 

I currently use a SMF board but I want to select a board for the future.

I looked on the IPB site and they listed a couple of features that I liked.

First is their site integration feature. Right now I have a front page separate from the forums and a separate part powered by Wordpress (although I don't really care about integrating wordpress with the forum).

The front page displays a blog like thing which grabs the posts from a category in the forum where I post news. And comments are the replies.

Another feature I currently have with SMF is implementation of the login box outside of the forum, and the ability to show where the visitors are on my site outside of the forum as well as inside.

These are the main features I'm looking for in a message board, however if vBulletin has even more integration features that'd be great.

Also, do I have to pay a subscription to access the mods?

Thanks,
Chris

It's 35 dollars a year to renew your license which gives you access to the Mod/Hack section, and future updated releases to VBulliten, which are mainly security updates and other features.

There are hacks such as vJoomla which integrates Joomla and Vbulliten together which is quite nice. Joomla being a widely used program for main portals on websites. There is also VBadvanced CMPS which you can enable as your main page as well and it displays recent posts in certain sections of your forum.

The main reason I chose VB is because I'm more comfortable with the security issues. As a board grows its wiser to have stable security setup for all the hackers that want to ruin your site/forums.

I'm actually trying to move away from all those and just have a forum and this custom script i'm going to write to list videos and for the front page. So is there something like an API that I can use to grab stuff from vbulletin with a line of php code?

the latest versions of vb make it very easy to do things like integration with their datamanagers. Including vb's global.php file gives you access to the vb database and user information which you could use for validation purposes.

I dont know how much of the forum you can see without a liscense however if you are able to i suggest looking at the articles section for an idea on what can be done. You might also be able to look through the modification section to get an idea on what already exists.

If the features don't work out for me, could I get a refund?

vBAdvanced isen't part of vBulletin itself its just a free mod to go on with it

I'm not planning to get vbAdvanced. I'm planning to get a forum and integrate it's database, forum, and other stuff into a custom site with PHP. Of course I'm not well versed in PHP so I need something simple to get started with. I was asking if I will be able to get a refund if vBulletin doesn't work out for those needs.

I dont think they offer a refund, do your research first ;)

I have used ipb in the past, and vb is much better. More security, more options, and better support.

I have a current version of IPB and VB. VB has more custom hacks and is much easier to modify the templates (styles). Hands down VB is better and easier to work with. The only thing that I do like is IPB's new profile (it's like myspace) but there are plenty of hacks to make VB's the same... ;)