Need Some Feedback in Consideration of a Potenial Purchase

[MacaroniDuck]

We are a small (~500 members and growing), local community hobby group. I've been searching for some time now for a hosted or pre-built solution for a community web site. We are looking for most of the standard features like user profiles, forums, subgroups, events, etc. We've struggled to find a singular solution that meets all of our needs. The one sticking point that comes up continually is this:

We need to be able to have SubGroups that can be private and can create their own private events. Additionally, all events on the site, both in the main group and SubGroups must be able to recurring events (i.e. "every other Monday", "Every Tuesday @ 6pm", etc.) We also need people to be able to RSVP/Signup for events.

Like so many of the other solutions we've looked at vBulletin can't actually do that out of the box. SubGroups, for example, can't create their own events, though I've seen that there are mods available that provide both that and RSVP functionality.

It's important to note that there are only a couple of us working on this project on a volunteer basis. While we both have a technical background, neither of us is fluent in PHP, CSS or any of the tech that would allow us to do advanced customization.

Our current stance, though not written in stone, is to develop our site in Drupal. All of the functionality we seek is available through mods and it's free. The drawback is we're building something that only we, or someone else we train can administer.

The attraction to vBulletin is that it is mostly functional out of the box and has a user-friendly interface that many could pick up easily. The drawback is that a) we'd have to add mods to have the functionality we need and b) It's not inexpensive (at least not considering our almost non-existent budget).

I'd be interested in hearing any feedback from others in similar situations or who might have helpful insight. Specifically, would it be worth it to look into vBulletin, despite the need to use mods? Would we be stuck with the basically vanilla look of vBulletin unless we found something with very strong theme/CSS skills? any other helpful feedback would also be welcomed.

Probably the biggest sticking point for us is that it would appear that we would have to front the money to even begin to see if it will work for us. I've looked through the demo and feel that I could comfortably learn the ins and outs of administering the site as is. Unfortunately, there appears to be no way to install it someplace where I could tinker on an extended basis (demo only lasts 24 hours) as well as install some plug-ins to be SURE we could have the functionality we need.

We simply can't afford to throw out $300 only to find we can't use the product. If anyone is aware of a potential "sandbox" environment or other way we can find out if this is a potential solution for us, please do let us know!

[Digital Jedi]

Unfortunately, no, the licence of vB wouldn't allow for a sandbox environment, other than the demo.

You're not stuck with the default style, as you may notice from the demo, you customize your forum colors from the Admin CP controls. Or you can just pick up one of the free skins here. Or you can buy a professional skin. I've seen them range from $30 to $50. Or you could hire a coder here to make you a custom one in the Paid Requests section. Lot of options there, really.

Usergroup permissions are feature rich, sometimes to a fault in that a lot of users don't realize what they can do with them. Permissions themselves go pretty deep and can even be on a user by user basis. I don't see you having a problem there.

Events are controlled via the Calendar, and even as far back as vB3 they've had Usergroup based permissions. Those permissions are not quite as in depth as the forum permissions, but they still would do what you've mentioned here. Base creation, deletion, editing and viewing on a permission basis. Also, you can create events on a reoccurring basis based on X number of days if you need something other than the preset Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly and Every weekday settings.

The only thing you would probably need a modification for is if you wanted the Calendar events posted in a forum automatically. I don't recall if vB4 does this. I know I have a modification installed on vB3 that does this automatically, so you'd probably need to search for Event Forums in the search bar. Also, I'm not sure what you mean by RSVP, but that would probably need a mod, too.

But other than that, I don't see you asking for anything that vB doesn't really do out of the box. Customizing colors doesn't really require any coding, just patience (especially in vB4) and time. Plus this community is pretty helpful when it comes to helping you find what you need. I'm not saying we answer or even know every question, but we have a pretty good ratio of helping out when we can.

[MacaroniDuck]

Jedi, thank you for the thoughtful and useful feedback. It's especially good to hear that modifications beyond basic colors, etc. might not be particularly expensive if we go that route.

I perhaps should have clarified more in my original post. By "SubGroups" I meant what vBulletin appears to refer to as "Social Groups", not "user groups". We need our club members to be able to create unlimited social groups for the purposes of organizing and holding events (Think Meetup.com). So, we need people within each SubGroup to be able to create private or public events for that SubGroup (social group). I believe I've seen mods from a user called Farcaster that address these things as well as RSVP, etc.

By RSVP, I mean a way for people invited to an event to indicate whether they will be attending or not. Again, something not in vBulletin core, but available in a mod. This completely boggles me since the core of any local/regional social community is holding events/meetups. It seems like a lot of Internet Social Community developers are overlooking that their products might have a huge market in such groups or at least missing the strong need for this kind of functionality.

Are installing mods fairly straightforward? Or is that dependent on a given mods documentation? I see that most of them include instructions in the forums. Unfortunately, because I'm not a license holder I can't see specifically how detailed or complicated they are. The thing that concerns me most is that many of them appear to require that you go in and modify code yourself in order to get them working. Since vBulletin.com doesn't support mods and we don't have strong php skills, this is a dicey area for us. I take a bit of comfort in hearing from you that the support community here is strong and helpful, however.

[Digital Jedi]

It does appear Farcaster has done a few mods to handle Social Group Events and the like. Hrm, actually, I should look into that more. vB has only implemented the Social Group aspect into it's core in the last couple of years, so the functionality is meant to be pretty basic at this point. Be interesting to see what they might add down the road.

It's not terribly hard to install modifications, however, it depends on the modification. But if you know the basics, there are few, if any, products here that require in depth editing. The vast majority are upload this, import that, put this line of code in this part of your template. Check the link in my signature to "How to Install Mods" for Beginners. That pretty much breaks down everything you would need to know and clarifies a few things that we call "modifications" but that really aren't. These days, there's not a lot that will actually modify code, and modifications can be globally disabled a couple of different ways.

[merk_aus]

MacaroniDuck,
First of all Digital Jedi has given you some fantastic information there, and it is great that we have people like DJ on this forum.

I wanted to write to you as someone who has been in your position before.

I was starting a sports website, it had been in the planning for about six months and it came to the point of implimenting, so I started looking around for a forum software.

I tried Drupal setups, Express Engine, Phpbb, MyBB more or less everything that was out there - and eventually settled on vBulletin.

While PHPBB was the best of the free alternatives it was still alot of work to install hacks/mods to add functionality, to change colors to add new themes etc.

So when I looked at vBulletin - it had a large range of userbase permissions straight out of the box, the skins/themes/styles were either free on this site or relatively well priced elsewhere so you weren't stuck with the default look and style of the software.

And when it came to inserting modifications, this community right here vb.org is the best in the planet they have everything you have ever thought off - and if they don't then no doubt someone is working on it.

To install a modification it is as easy as an upload here/ import this here and edit the settings and your away.

Although it is a fair chunk of coin to hand over to begin with I swear you will not regret your decision.