CMS Customization

[AzzazelCyC]

Hello everyone,

I'm running a vb 4.2.0 site, and the CMS is kind of..."not what I want", so I'd like to have it customized for different things:

Firstly, the "articles" I don't want them to be "articles" but previews of threads from different sections of the forums, so that, when a new thread gets posted in those sections, they get automatically sent to the Home Page, showing the title of the thread, a thumbnail (attached image added to the thread), and a short preview of it, so that when a user comes to the site, they see these previews, click on the title and get directed to the thread. I got no idea where to start with this idea, and hence, searching for any guidance.

Also, all of the "widgets" or "sections" that are shown...well...I don't see them all being really needed; and I'd love to have just two widgets -at least by now- that can show "Recent Tweets", showing the tweets done from the site's twitter account, and -perhaps- one for Facebook posts as well.

Any ideas on where to start on this, or how to accomplish these customizations?

Thanks beforehand!

[AzzazelCyC]

So, I'd assume this is either way too complicated to accomplish, or simply nobody has ever tried...that's sort of sad...but oh well, I'll have to keep scratching the source to see how is this done then

[ForceHSS]

This is something that would need posted in paid section to much custom work

[AzzazelCyC]

I've asked about this in there, they sent me here...guess that even though I've seen something like this on some sites, it is some complete personalization and a lot of work...

[tbworld]

Break your project down and do one thing at a time. Some of your items you can do yourself, other parts will require someone well experienced with vbulletin. It is very difficult for a professional programmer experienced with vbulletin's code to ever make any money on a large custom project. So maybe if you break that large project down you can accomplish what you are looking for.

Suggestion: It might be easier to port and arrange the new threads to another custom page, not embed them in articles to the CMS. You would only have to deal with the forum software and not the CMS, effectively creating your own portal page. Moving widgets to another page is not that difficult -- tying everything in to work seamlessly with the CMS, that is going to take some time.

Good Luck!

[AzzazelCyC]

I've been thinking about coding a whole new home page, because the CMS and its article-based system is not of my liking. You are totally right on this fact, after poking around this code, it seems quite complex and might be a good idea to have it coded from scratch and differently. I'll try to get this done and added to the site, and hopefully, it will attract even more users to the site!

[tbworld]

I actually do not hate the vBulletins CMS system for a simple board. The CMS does suffer from some serious resource issues that large boards might have a hard time getting around.

When you want something so custom it is more expedient to create a new page in your own coding style to get the job done. You won't have all the vbulletin conventions to worry about --Besides modifying all that vBulletin code, what a testing headache. This way you will only have yourself to blame! Have fun!

[AzzazelCyC]

Definitely right on that!

Still some things would be needed to be taken from vbulletin in order to get everything done right on that home page, to be fair, I never touched the source until now, and it is pretty complex, seems like you'd need to take a course to understand vbulletin properly...hopefully I'll be able to get this homepage done as it is quite important for the site.