How do I use vBulletin for news articles?
 

I'd like to use vBulletin for a new article system with commenting. Simple enough, and I know there are mods that even change the look a bit. But I want a very clean look that drops the "forum look" of most skins (tables with colored headings and borders).

I'm migrating my current forums from Snitz to vBulletin. I have an existing news system that I developed myself, however I never got around to coding a comment system. The news articles have a very different look from a discussion forum -- click here for an example showing the current article format.

I'd like to preserve that clean format, but power it from vBulletin. It seems like this should be pretty straight-forward, but I have a few questions.

First, I will have multiple categories of news articles. Would I setup multiple forums, one per category?

Second, I don't want the forums where the news articles are stored to be visible when people are browsing the forums. Is this easily possible?

And finally, I can create a skin that mimics the current look of my news stories, but how would I go about applying that skin ONLY to articles.

Thats a damn attractive site man

Thanks!

I'm still wondering how I would do this though. I'm sure it's possible, I'm just not sure whether it's an easy thing or not.

There is something called v3Articles, but it only "works" with V3.01 of VB properly, and even so its got a bug list thats a huge as.. well I don't know what ;)

For the past 4 months John (creator of the hack) has been promising V3Articles version 2 but it has never come, and I do not expect it too.

I guess there is no other alternative around right now..

Ok, let's assume that v3Articles were stable. Would I be able to easily apply a different skin to the articles than I do for the forums?

You wouldn't need to. vBulletin has an enourmously powerful template system, so hacks and mods like this will more often than not be 100% compatiable and indifferent to the rest of your forums, whilst remaining fully integrated.

You don't understand... I don't WANT the articles to look like the forums. I want them to be different. If you check the links in my original topic and visit my current site you'll see what I mean.

Ok then, using the same template engine, yes you would.

Ok, any pointers on how I would do that? I'm kinda new to vBulletin. :)

I don't think i'm the best guy to be giving them!

First i'd suggest creating your custom templates, and then getting to know the vBulletin template outputter(? lil help coders ?)