building a large system around vb
 

This should probably go into the hacking/heavy modding forums, but I'm not allowed to post there http://forums.offtopic.com/images/smilies/hsugh.gif, so here it goes. I plan to build a very large community-centered system with a database of information, and greatly expand on the profiles. The main reason for using a bulletin board backend is for the handy user/login that's already built in, and the commenting can be extended to, say, news articles postings or photos. Think of it as my own PostNuke, starting with vB barebones.

Some questions

- How receptive is vB to changes and how friendly is it to the average programmer? There is no developer documentation for what I've seen, but there does seem to be a healthy community and effort here.
- Is the copyright concern especially stringent, as in, will I have trouble actually using a lot of separate databases with vB's code and login system, or will it allow for a lot of extra coding on it?
- Has anyone built or know of sites that have greatly expanded on vB's structure? I've seen a journal/blog type thing implemented, and that's part of what I want to do, only to a lot further extent.
- What's the best forum software suited for this? Off the top of my head, I can think of vB, Invision Power Board and phpBB. Anyone have experience between these (or others) and recommend the most well documented, well coded and receptive system? From what I see it seems to be vB.

I guess my only worry is that I'll never understand the details of the vB code without the proper documentation https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2010/01/19.gif

Oh, and is there any way to actually build the additions around vB so as to allow for upgrades in vB versions. Probably not, right? So whichever version of vB I start to work on, it'll be frozen for the rest of my site's existence. Oh goody. Is this a drastic thing?

You can change nearly every aspect of the board and especially vb3 is very friendly to an average programmer.


If you are a bit expierienced in coding it is not problem to upgrade your board without loosing any of your modifications, there are tutorials around on this board :)

no not really.

[high]* Faranth sraches head[/high]

ive seen someone make a full site from the ground up on vBulletin alone so its more than possible.

if you start hacking theres no reason you cant continue to the next version very ezily :)

vB is farily ez to change granted your change isnt a drastic one, i my self knew almost no php code a while ago and now im writing my own hacks :)

i dont think Invision or phpBB would be suited nearly as well for the tasks. if your going to be building directly off of vB you can use vB's built in templates and conditinoals, which will allow you to also use the login (via the template system)

Oh, so I can only use vB's login system with its templates and conditionals?

no no not what i was saying, however it is very simple to do, ive already written a tutorial on how to use the template sytem and eval templates as varibles for vB3. using the template system just makes things very much ezier