[footose]

While I realize that, I also can see where some admins would be upset by advertising. If they have vendors that advertise with them, they may see this as stealing the vendors revenue. Perhaps a branding free sort of option is necessary.

This very well could be an option in the future if it comes down to it. Right now, I tried to supply the most non-obtrusive way to handle this type of advertising. I know it's kind of a pain and could compromise some advertising issues. I plan to revisit the whole advertising scheme at some point.

I do hope you get these issues worked out and such. I'd hate to unveil this for my users only to find out that you have to close up shop in 6 months and that leaves me, and all the other admins, scrambling for a different solution. This is the reason why I haven't gone with vBgarage. It hasn't been updated, as far as I know, and I don't know when it will stop working with vB. Probably when vB4 comes out.

I've had similar reservations regarding vBgarage, which is actually how this whole idea came about in the first place. I started to modify vbGarage heavily, to the point where it was no longer vbgarage. I had several requests from users asking for the plugin and I started coding it as such. I came to realize that the need for this type of plugin was really larger then I expected and didn't want to get into the situation where I stopped supporting it and left my users "hanging".

I can't sit here and tell you that I can guarantee to offer 6 months, 1 years, 5 years or X years of support on this product, because no one can offer that on a free plugin.

That being said, take this into consideration.

I have been running http://www.GenerationDub.com for the last 7 years. (starting as GenerationIV.com) It's never made me any serious money, not enough to quit my job, not enough to buy a car. I usually operate at a loss. People always ask me why I do it, and I say "For the community". Granted, the costs of running a sub 250,000 Pageview site is less then that of running vHoist which could potentially enter the millions, however, until one of these sites can provide me an income I still need to work my hardest at my day job. I'm already typing this from my office and I should be getting back to work! I will support vHoist for as long as people will use it, and in the absolute least fashion, I will keep it for as long as www.GenerationDub.com is active, which I would never get rid of as it's my baby

I also don't want to give away my entire "business plan" on http://www.vHoist.com, but there is potential to bring this to the next level, where vHoist will have enough users to not only be a plugin site, but also a stand alone site. I'm hoping to eventually take on the other "big" car hosting websites, and then offer this plugin WITHOUT advertising to the people that started supporting it from the get-go.

Speaking of which, what about updates to vB? I don't mean for you to look into a crystal ball as to how vB4 will work but if you could give us some idea of what you have planned as far as those who update to vB4 vs those who hold on to the vB3 series a while longer, I'd appreciate it. As it is, I haven't updated one of my forums past 3.6 because some of the mods that we use are essential but have not been updated to work with 3.7.

I have coded this in such a way that I can support multiple versions of sites, not just vBulletin. One of the "good" things about this plugin is that it doesn't actually modify any part of your site. As long as there is a way to access userid's and usernames [and really, we only need those because I figured people wouldn't want "Fred" from your site displaying as "Fred123" that they registered on vHoist.com], and a way to display information on the site using templates, then I don't see a problem with me coding in the future for vb4, or any other version. If you know anything about coding, take a look at the php file and see that there isn't much "front end" coding that is taking place.

I decided to code it for vbulletin, because this is what I use for my website. I understand that phpbb users would probably be more accepting towards the advertising because of the nature of "free software" - but again - I wanted it for my own site mostly. I'm trying to keep the ad's as unobtrusive as possible.

Finally, I want vHoist to work. I want you to keep vHoist up and going for a long time to come. And I've been looking for something like this. But I obviously still have my reservations.

Oh, and I'll be needing a version for snowmobiles, ATVs and dirt bikes.

I want it to work too I've actually spent 6 - 9 months developing this, and over a year in the idea phase (original concept and coding of a stand alone plugin included in that time frame).

I hope I answered most of your questions properly. If you have any more, let me know and I'll do my best to answer them. As for the ATV's, Snowmobiles and Bikes... this really isn't a problem since the way I designed it, any "object" can really be added. That being said, my current knowledge of these things is very limited, so I started with what I know best... Cars. Specifically Volkswagen's, and moved on from there. I'd be more then happy to start adding makes and models for these types of vehicles as well, but I would need to compile a list somewhere so that I can support it properly.

Excuse me , why does it load in one site, then take you to another site ??????

Hey there, sorry I may have not explained the plugin fully enough and I apologize, sometimes I get 'excited' and maybe babel on about certain features that don't really explain the software fully.

Basically vHoist is a "cloud" application; where the data is stored on a separate server away from your own. The idea process behind this can be found in the brief description above or on http://www.vhoist.com/faq.aspx . I've tried to "limit" how much this actually makes a user log into vHoist.com so that the entire site looks like it is being pulled from your site, however, there are limitations to this for things such as 'commenting' and 'rating' - as the user needs to be logged into vHoist.com to take advantage of those 2 features.

The great thing about cookies and sessions though, is that once the user is logged into vHoist, the rating and comment systems will never ask your user to "leave" your site, and will work all in union.