Starting a sports site/forum
 

Hello all, first let me apologize for the length of this post. I am starting a sports discussion website which is geared mainly towards college sports fans. I had a few questions about vBulletin before I committed to purchasing a license.

The site will be mainly forums, but also needs a "homepage"/website end where the staff can post articles, etc.. I also need a way to add some other interactive features into the website.

1) Is there a fully integrated solution for a main website page? Like a CMS. I have heard of vBAdvanced.. would that be sufficient?

2) Does vBAdvanced support articles? How are articles added? Is it a totally seperate posting system or can I post threads in the forum and then mark them to appear on the main page?

3) How does the skinning for vBAdvanced work? Do you have to skin it seperately or is it considered a "component" of vB.

4) What is the best reputation system?

5) Is there a system which allows the owner to input games/matchups and the users can pick who they think will win and are awarded points? I have heard of vBPool.

6) Is there a "awards" system? A way to award users "poster of the month", etc.

7) What are some popular modifications which would be good for a sports website.

Thanks a lot for reading and I thank you in advance for any answers.

1. Yes there are multiple ones, as well as integration to other things such as Joomla and drupal

2. You can make threads to appear on your front page, and you can also make seperate pages with ease with vbACMPS

3. Most skins will automatically skin vbA.

4. The built in one?

5. Dunno

6. Yes

7. Dunno

Regarding...

2. Can you select threads from any forum or do they have to be in a certain forum?

4. There is a built-in Reputation system in vBulletin?

And if anyone has any more information about #5, please post.

Thanks

Yes, there is a built-in reputation system in vBulletin. It is very mature and works very well.

I beleive you can set a whole forum (like a new forum) or you can select threads from any forum, or multiple threads from multiple forums.

Can anyone verify this?

I mainly need to be able to assign topics from multiple forums to be displayed.

Also, does anyone know of any sports-based skins for vB?

Thanks a lot.

I have one more question, sorry about all of this haha.

I have seen on http://www.GridironFans.com, when you click on a news item in the left column, it takes you to a thread in a regular forum, but on the first post, instead of displaying it as a normal post, it only says "news posted by: x". I was wondering which hack enables this and is it forum-by-forum basis or thread-by-thread. I cannot PM the owner, SBlueMan, for somereason. I guess you have to have a license which I have not bought yet.

Thanks for any information, and if SBlueMan is reading this, please reply.

Thanks again.

check this out.. sportsinferno.com

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