Good cms to use along side vb?

[FASherman]

Well, it was easier than I thought.

The thing about phpNuke is there are so many darned blocks available, but I just don't have the real estate on the page to show them all. For example, there is a block for movies that gives ratings, reviews, basic plots and show times according to your area. But I don't want to waste page space displaying that everywhere.

So the idea to restrict blocks to portals is appealing. I could restrict that block to show only on the entertainment page.

Anyway, take a look at this:

http://devsite.daily-web.info/index....rtal=entertain [Displays HOROSCOPE block]
http://devsite.daily-web.info/index.php?portal=sports [Displays SPORTS SCORES block]
http://devsite.daily-web.info/index.php?portal=business [Displays STOCK TICKER block]

So now I have ALOT more page space to manage. Every portal can have unique blocks, unique news, unique polls, display unique forum info (new threads, most active threads, etc)

For those of you that exchange/sell banner advertising...thats a whole lot more pages for page impressions.

[FASherman]

Pictures being worth 1,000 words, etc...

Here is the block admin modified to display blocks only on select forums...

[Reeve of shinra]

Would you need to edit the functionality of the nuke plug ins or does it still retain the drop in functionality? What you've done so far looks great. How is it query wise? yeah I know it depends on the blocks - its just that ive always heard nuke was horrible with that.

[FASherman]

Originally Posted by Reeve of shinra

Would you need to edit the functionality of the nuke plug ins or does it still retain the drop in functionality? What you've done so far looks great. How is it query wise? yeah I know it depends on the blocks - its just that ive always heard nuke was horrible with that.

The standard Nuke modules/blocks will continue to work without any need to "port". That was one of my biggest complaints about vbPortal. I had to try to port standard Nuke blocks/modules to their format and it wasn't always successful.

What I've rewritten is VERY query friendly in the user space. In mainfile.php I try to read in as much info as possible at one time and then carry it forward as global variables.

I wish I could say the same in the administration portion, but thats not user facing so it isn't queries multiplied by concurrent users, etc.

[dreamhost]

I have also looked into many diff cms throughout the years. I ended up choosing postnuke as my cms of choice. The only problem I found was that phpbb really didn't have the power that vbulletin has. I then looked at the vbulletin cms, but that was so lacking in the type of modules that I needed that I droped that as well. So we decided to to build a script-connector for the two applications.

My main focus was to not touch the core of postnuke or vbulletin at all, that way updating is easy and would not mess up my system. The only changes are a few include statements to the vb files themselves that make the call to the script connectors.

It took a few months to get everything working the way I wanted it to, but finally we have vbulletin as a "true" module for postnuke. Next we will tackle turning photopost into a module. There is nothing wrong with the way that photopost grabs the header/footer info from vbulletin, but that's quite weak in my opinion, especially if you are trying to maintain the same look and feel throughout the entire website. I suspect that photopost will be totally finished within the week. Just need to fix their horrible authentication code.

Here is a list of requirements that I had before starting.
1. I wanted only one registration system for both pn/vb, we chose to use vb as it's much better, and more easilly modified.
2. I wanted only one login for both systems. Sites that run 2 separate engines that require diff logins or even diff user/pass are just plain tacky.
3. I wanted the system to recognize that if someone changed their profile information in vb that it would reflect the changes in pn. Things like if a person changes their password, it should auto change in both systems.
4. I wanted a seamless integration of vb into postnuke so that the header/left navigation/footer from postnuke would show properly on all vb pages. NO, iframes were not used, that's even tackier.... LOL
5. I wanted a true postnuke block to display the most recent threads on the pn homepage
6. I wanted built in group switching, so that if i promote a person to moderator in the forums, they also become a moderator in the postnuke side, or vice versa
7. I wanted spider friendly url's for at least the top level cats and threads.

Basically when you narrow it all down, I wanted to make vbulletin into a module for postnuke without really having to touch either system code wise, as we upgrade each time there is one.

If you would like to see it in action goto
www.annointed.net

Please respect that this is a live site.

[[H]Dazz]

Dazz]I currently use vbPortal at www.swgbounties.com and have been since 2.x. 3.x is currently in beta 2 but there are no major bugs at all. Works beautifully. They are currnetly tweaking the system a bit and adding more features. Overall I think it's by far the best cms out and specifically made to be used with vBulletin.

[djohn]

Try Subdreamer(http://www.subdreamer.com). Nice cms for a news site, with good skins and modules. Has both vB3, vB2 and phpBB integration, can display latest forum topics.

[dreamhost]

Originally Posted by [H]Dazz

I currently use vbPortal at www.swgbounties.com and have been since 2.x. 3.x is currently in beta 2 but there are no major bugs at all. Works beautifully. They are currnetly tweaking the system a bit and adding more features. Overall I think it's by far the best cms out and specifically made to be used with vBulletin.

Yes I also did use vbportal at first. It is a decent cms, especially if you are not able to bridge other management systems. I just found that if you are trying to run a very diverse website with many different types of content that the nuke type cms are much more robust.
To the best of my knowledge, I have not seen any video, audio, shopping cart type of modules for vbportal. There are just so many more features that the nuke cms offer that it was well worth my time to have the applications bridged.
I would say if you are only looking to extend vbulletin with a few extra news type of mods then vbportal does the job great. If you are looking for a huge amount of tools to offer your members, then nothing at this point compares to the nuke type of content management systems.
The integration between the two engines is completelly seamless in our setup. A person who comes does not notice any difference of operation of the two separate systems.
view it live at www.annointed.net