New to vBulletin and VERY disappointed - Need advice
 

Hello everyone,

I just bought a vBulletin licese. I am new. This is my first post in here. I am from Thailand.

I am everything but tech savvy.

VERY disappointed wiht the product and service so far as a new customer. VERY DISAPPOINTED.

The reason I got vBulletin is that I got hacked into my old SMF Forum. As I got more popular the spammers managed to get control and I could do nothing but watch. I bought a license on 19 Decmeber with the profesional installation.

I read the user manual. But got stuck when I reached the templates and styles part. There it is suggested that I start learning html and css. I can't. I am far too busy.

All I want is be able to have a forum just like this one or the other one I think it's v.Bulletin.com and get my hudreds of waiting customers back online. I promised that I will get the new forum up and running by Christmas. Now, I am letting my customers/members down:(

8 hours ago I submitted a ticket through the support system. I explained that I needed urgent advice because of the time difference with the UK and Thailand. 8 full hours sitting here behing my computer and waiting but no reply.

I am so disappointed. Had high expectations, read good feedback about vBulletin and I just have to wait and wait and wait......:down:

I am giving up on them. So is there anyone out here to please please please give me some pointers on:
1. how to start a new category
2. how to add a new board
3. how to get the color of the template which I notice is blue here changed to dark red

THANK YOU FOR ANYONE WHO'S WILLING TO HELP ME OUT

vBulletin let me down I hope someone in here can help with some advice.

Hi and welcome to VB.org

As the saying goes good things comes to those who wait and its true with starting your own forum, You will never be happy with just the default forum so you will need to take time to learn and customise the product to what you want.

You state that your too busy? Then you'll have to slow down a bit and plan what you really want from your forum, rather than simply rush into it and ending up with something you don't want.

Its really easy to set up the boards from your ACP, You'll need to have a play around and see what works best for you, but normally you should be a least able to set up your boards and categories without much hassle.

Once you have a basic setup you can then think about adding skins and changing layouts, again read up on this, cos if you rush you'll make mistakes.

We're all here to help, just ask, You can't say your dissapointed in VB just yet, you havn't started ;)

Take care

1. how to start a new category

Create a new forum, and set "Act As Forum" to No

2. how to add a new board

AdminCP -> Forums & Moderators -> Add New Forum

(in vB terms a "board" is the entire installation. 1 installation can have multiple forums)

3. how to get the color of the template which I notice is blue here changed to dark red

vBulletin 3 Style Reference

See the paragraph on CSS.

When you get the time, spend a few minutes taking a look at the manual. It really is a great place to start when you are stuck. And, when you get a bit adventurous with your forum, just ask us and we can help you do what you want.
Online vBulletin Manual

Consider hiring someone who can do the tech savy stuff for you. There are plenty knowledgeable members here that would be up for this.

I would also recommend this. If you don't have the time to learn even basic HTML and are not a tech savvy person, I can't help but wonder why you would go start a forum...

The forum will act as a part of an existing website. As I mentioned earlier I had SMF but got hacked into it, new members would get a porno redirect instead of in their mailbox as their confirmation to their successful registration with us, and basically I had no option but to spend 1 hour a day approving/disapproving new members.

My website has nothing to do with adult stuff. It's tourism and stuff we're doing. So it was a little bit of shock fininding out that members who had just registered were emailed a porno confirmation/link as opposed to a "real" confirmation from us. How the hackers managed I am not sure, but I did catch some of them at 3am trying to ask for help with xumer or something on our forum. And apparently that it was caused the flood of what seemed like automatic advertising and spam sent to our forum from all over the world.

But anyway, thanks to the wonderful tips from all of you guys. I managed to get the categories up and add forums.

The only thing that I will need to do now is learn how to "unlink" the title in the category as for some reason all titles are "clickable" something I don't want. And I need one of these "jump" to the next forum features most forums have at the bottom right og the page.

Anyone here with additional tips for me?

Thank you so much.

And yes, I am starting, albeit slowly, to like vBulletin!

:up:

I'm also new to vB but want to tell you vB is the best BB on the market with tons of mods available , so let me tell you , I've previous experience with phpBB and IPB but vB is different and better , so what I did was simply baying a book where everything is clearly explained , enjoy :

http://www.amazon.com/vBulletin-Conf...0388370&sr=8-1

You know, I'd be interested to find out more about how your SMF got hacked. If I was to guess, was it thru a hack you had added to your SMF forums?

You're posting to a forum for customizing/hacking another forum software that you're now using, so I bet you'll be adding a few things to your new forum too, like your old forum.

Here's a tip, SMF, like vBulletin are both secure software for the most part, it's what you add to them that raises your chances of being hit somehow or other.



The manual should have answered a lot of questions for you, the very helpful stuck threads at vBulletin are also priceless, IMHO, for grasping how the basics work.

You being here seems to me jumping a step or two ahead before even barely being able to make a forum. ( which was covered in the manual I believe)

Lots more to read, you might start with basics, like these two links for example:

Forum Robot Spam Prevention Recommendations
vBulletin 3.7 Questions, Problems and Troubleshooting

Keeping it secure and free of spammers is a lot of work that will never, ever, end. You will have to make time, or you can probably expect more of the same, no matter what software you use.

My 2

To make it 'unclickable', you will need to do a template edit. Go to you admin cp > Styles & Templates > find your style in the list > Edit templates > Expand All (<<>>) > forumhome_forumbit_level1_nopost > find this:
change to this:
I think that should work for you, but test it out cuz I haven't tried it.

As for the Forum Jump menu, go to admin cp > vboptions > general setting > user forum jump menu > Yes