New forum guidelines -- what do you think?

[Lazerus]

yeh ok thanks, i am gonna purchase vB, hopefully very soon, im just saying that right now this second, i would love to be installing hacks and testing em, but i got to save up, and that aint easy when your 18 and a student.

[Admin]

If you are 18 and don't make money, don't run a board. If you can't afford a car, will you go stealing one? And it doesn't matter if vBulletin is material or not. Everything in the world is material. Go burn your computer then try to find vBulletin. You won't, because it was stored on a material hard disk. And when you download vBulletin from your favoriate Warez site, it gets to you using material fibres and wires. So don't go the 'material' route, you will get nowhere.

[Daniel P]

Yeah FireFly, ya got a point there. I will buy vBB soon and as i saw this Forums, the vBB software is great. If you will limit users to the Pre-Sales Forums, we won't be able to see the feautures of vBB. Just don't let us access the hacks 'n' stuff. That's why i'm gonna buy vBB.

[powerkills]

I think the poll numbers speak for themselves. I was especially compelled to vote when I saw posts from someone like this:

Originally posted by Lazerus
yeh ok thanks, i am gonna purchase vB, hopefully very soon, im just saying that right now this second, i would love to be installing hacks and testing em, but i got to save up, and that aint easy when your 18 and a student.

When just back in November 2001 the same person posted with this question:

Originally posted by Lazerus
Hey im new here, great site by the way, anyway im trying to put background images behind the forum selections of the home page(if you can understand whati mean) but i don't want background images on them all, so i went into the forum description, and added some html which would normanlly work, but it didn;t. the html btw was <td background="img src"> anyone got any other suggestions on ways to accomplish this? thanx in advance.

Being a software developer by trade, I have some pretty strong feelings about warez and it's derivatives. Now I am not trying to say anyone in particular is a software pirate looking for a weakness to exploit. Just showing an example of the kind of things that make people like me that payed hard-earned cash for vB go "hmmmmm.... Shoot them!".

I saw several very good suggestions in this thread as to how to accomplish this. I am sure I will be pleased with whatever is decided upon.

[LiquidWorm]

Well I understand the want to close the board down to registered users only. But as a possible purchaser of the product in the very near future I would like to point out something.

Currently I am in the market to possibly purchase vbulletin but before buying would like to know if it will be able to do what i want it to do. Simply put I feel you should at least leave one forum without code in it for folks like myself to ask qquestions about mods which they are looking for and may point them in a direction towards purchasing your product. I going over the posts on mods in the general discussion forum I have narrowed down my selection on which board to run down to three with vbulletin on top. If I did not have access to knowing whether or not vbulletin could do what I wish for it to do I would probily have scrapped it from the list.

Just my 2 cents...

See you all soon in the registered user section

BTW:
By saying I need to know if it will do what i want it to do doesnt mean im going to pirate the software install the hacks then buy them. Its just nice to know that after spending the money on the board for a site that makes no money and is just a hobby that i will be able to do what i want to do and before hand ask questions on how well a hack works, if its available and so on.

Maybe if you keep open a forum for only mod listing (not distributing) and commenting and questions maybe a few demos and so on and nuke the how do i do this posts...

[Admin]

LiquidWorm - That's why we will open a Pre Sales forum if we do go this route. And when we say closed we mean it will be closed for posting (but open for viewing).

[LiquidWorm]

wow that was fast was adding to a comment

One question though if I have a question as to what i need to run a mod and so on.

I honestly see where you guys are coming from aas far as not wanting to distribute mods to non registered users but as a shopper a place to ask questions such as can this product do this would be great.

Before buying a car to soup up its nice to know there is a supercharger able to fit the engine

--------------------------------------------------------
Ahh ok cool move then miss read your post
--------------------------------------------------------

A forum to ask questions but not download hacks would be great to see a list of hacks but not be able to download would be a good selling point.

[Andy Z]

I believe that the hacks database would be open for viewing as well if they do choose the option of closing everything else.

[UltimaKing]

Originally posted by nakkid
personally, i think the best way is to restrict everywhere the access to non-licensed users, except the pre-sales area.

i don't know how, but i noticed an increased demand from tyro hackers stating: "why i cant download the hacks? can you email me the hack?? pleaseeeeee..." i would pin in the pre-sales forum what you need to access the protected areas..

the forums layout is good. people can see the hacks, but they cannot read the thread content.

What he said

[Lionel]

You should be able to find a way to restrict registered members who are not licenced to send PM. In a couple of occasions, I got people requesting me to send them hacks. Why would they if they have access to them? Non licenced registered members should not bother licenced registered members.

In both cases I simply instructed them to make a search, knowing that they will not be able to access the hacks... but you will eventually find some naive guy who will want to be helpful.