VB or not VB
 

I need some advice. I've been a VB lover for 3 yrs now. I love what i can do and love the profile management and I also love all the wonderful hacks made for it. My question is...as a programmer do you guys actually recommend using VB as the backbone of a website?

With all the updates, betas, and hacks that become obsolete would anyone really recommend using VB and portal software to run their sites? I keep feeling like someone will hack into my site or do something crazy once a version gets compromised. Plus with all the advances in programming such as ajax, flex, etc most of the hacks might not work if I upgrade. Plus who wants to pay to upgrade every year?

Should I just use vbulletin as a bulletin software and forget the rest? Like galleries, directory lists, etc.

If you follow the API, you do not need to plan the upgrades of your sites based on vB upgrades... the API is not changing, it is evolving slowly... slow enough so your site will be obsolete anyway when you have to change your API access...

using vB as your backbone, why not... there is already a lot of scripts made to make your site independant but using vBulletin as a core... like the portals, image galeries, etc...

vB is no worse than many other comparable, extensible, community driven systems, and it's a lot better than some. How secure it is is pretty much down to you, especially being careful about what mods you install - look at the history of the mod, how long has it been around, has the author been updating it, when were they last online, read the thread to see if others have had problems,how quickly were the issues resolved, etc. And keep vB and your mods up to date.

The main issue is really, does vB give you the look and feel you want? Until such time as vB properly supports CSS, even with something like vbAdvanced CMPS to provide better integration with non-vB content, it's real hard to make it look or feel like anything other than ... well ... vB.

If you want more control over the overall styling, you might look at something like Joomla, using one of the various Joomla / vB bridges to provide shared registration and single signon between the two. Restrict vB to being your forums, and use Joomla for the rest of your site.

Re: "Plus who wants to pay to upgrade every year? "

People who want vB to be continually improved, have security issues fixed in a timely fashion, and want a well built, constantly evolving product. Isn't that what you want?

-- hugh

Funny u mentioned Joomla. I just installed it on my server and checking things out. So they have a integration for the two? Is it on here?

--------------- Added [DATE]1201211722[/DATE] at [TIME]1201211722[/TIME] ---------------

By the way, thanks for the input.

--------------- Added [DATE]1201211797[/DATE] at [TIME]1201211797[/TIME] ---------------

Wow is this double edit thing something included in VB now or is that a hack? Nice.

There are several vB / Joomla bridges. Most popular are BB Pixel and vB Duo Sync.

All they basically do is provide single signon and registration, so it doesn't matter if you register / login in Joomla or vB - the teo systems share the same underlying user db, and session cookies. They don't do any kind of template integration (last time I looked), so you still have to do some styling work if you want the same general look and feel.

The "merge consecutive posts" feature is a built vB option, and I hate it!!! If I'm responding to two separate posts in the same thread, I want my responses to be in two separate posts, not glommed into the same post just because nobody posted anything else between the two. I wish they'd turn that feature off on vborg.

-- hugh

lol, yea i guess that wud get annoying. So u mean to tell me if u posted something right after me it would join that post with the one before mine?

I built the following site completely on top of vbulletin.

www.eclipserecords.com

The entire site, as well as the backend is all done in vbulletin. So far I haven't had any issues when upgrading, save for a few minor template edits. Most of it uses seperate scripts, and plugins where posible.

Antivirus - Nice site. But it does kind of make my point that it's hard to build a vB site that looks like anything other than vB. Absolutely no disrespect intended! Seriously ... I really do like your site. I'm just hoping Jelsoft are serious about providing a fully CSS built style option in 4.0, so we can start getting a lot more creative with overall site styling without 3 months of rewriting templates.

shadowdancer - yes, that's exactly what it does. Try it and see.

-- hugh