How can I achieve this with Vbulletin

[Dannyboy1]

Hi, I need to ask how could I achieve the following with Vbulletin:

I have a website where different products are reviewed; it is an affiliate website, but all products listed are sponsored, I mean the product owners are submitting them for review and once they pay some small "activation" fee their products get listed; if the fee is not paid the products remain not visible on the website.
So I want to add a vbulletin forum to this website, where every single product has a dedicated folder. I want everything to be automated though. Here is how the process works:

step 1 - product owner submits productA for approval
step 2 - I review it and approve it; once I approve it an e-mail is sent to owners e-mail address that contains username and password for the website, he logs in and pays the fee; once it is done the product is getting listed automatically and shows on the website - in this step though I want that a folder for productA is created in Vbulletin once I approve it and remains invisible until the payment is confirmed automatically trough the payment interface; once the payment goes trough another welcome e-mail is sent to the product owner that will contain some welcome text and the link to his folder as well, if possible also a dedicated forum username for him too; in the same time after the payment is confirmed the folder goes from invisible to visible state.

Is that possible at all with Vbulletin and if you don't ming can you point me to which files I should modify to achieve this?

Thank you very much in advance for your help.

[GameWizard]

Well there is no modifcation that does exactly what you seek to achieve. However, you can be creative and create your own system.

For example, you can have them register first. Then use the form hack to submit their product. It would send the product information into a thread awaiting moderation. Once approved, you would guide the user to subscription area of your website, they pay the subscription and they enter a special usergroup and their thread activates in the forum ready for review.

That's about as creative as you can get, and initially it wouldn't be automated, but you can definitely create hacks or modify existing ones to allow this to work.

[Dannyboy1]

Thank you for your suggestions.

Well, I am a good developer, but I am really not very experienced with vbulletin, its structure and its modifications; could you please point me to which ones I am about to use in this situation, besides the form hack, I will modify them to make them as automated as possible while my goal really is to achieve 100% automation; if not it will be easier for me to develop my own forum (not as classy as vbulletin ofc).

As per your suggestion, do you think it will work like that:

step 1 - product owner submits productA for approval
step 2 - I review it and approve it; once I approve it a username/password is assigned to product owner and same username/password are written to vbulletin database; product data is autofilled in the form hack and thread is created that will be awaiting moderation as you suggested; so far I think that will be easy
step 3 - now product owner comes to my website, logs in, pays the activation fee and once I get the confirmation call from the payment system (PayPal for example) the product gets listed; now what worries me here is how will the product thread auto activate on the forum? Which vbulletin files should I look into for that?

I guess there will be some value that represents the status of the thread - awaiting moderation or active or etc. - where exactly can I find this value in vbulletin? Will it work if it is getting automatically changed after I receive the call from PayPal about successfull payment?

Also - will it be possible to auto-stick threads (for example if product owner pays additional fee) and where can I change that?

Thank you in advance for your suggestions.