[rcadden]

Originally Posted by Dr Longhorn

Hi all

My question is what are the advantages and disadvantages of using vbulletin as my comment engine, instead of the ?spammy? one built into word press. Also will it make any difference from an SEO point of view.

Thanks

The main disadvantage is that this plugin is your only option. While it works decently, and I'm certainly not trying to whine (obviously he does this for free), it *is* a disadvantage that this is the only real option for bridging the two.

For advantages, here's how I see it:

1. Using vBulletin, I've enabled my readers to have ongoing conversations with one another, NOT stemming from a post. This enables and encourages a bigger community, as users can pose their own questions.
2. Using vBulletin, I've basically created a socially acceptable duplicate of my content (the wordpress post, which is married to another page that contains the thread). This means my traffic is effectively doubled, and I have a whole new inventory of ad space to sell. That's good for me.

To be clear, though, before integrating vBulletin, I didn't offer readers any 'account' in my wordpress install. The only users I had were me and 2 other authors, plus a few test accounts. I also run it currently with integration turned off. There's no reason for readers to have access to the wordpress backend, in any way/shape/form.

You can check out my integration at http://www.symbian-guru.com.

I'm currently also struggling with the userid matching issue. However, if you have auto-integrate disabled, everything works, but authors are shown correctly (according to the person who clicked the publish button, though, not necessarily the author of the post).