vbDrupal vs. vbAdvanced vs. vbPortal vs. Joomla

[SEOvB]

That site even looks like every other vbadvanced site.

the only difference is the huge flash banner that took 45 seconds to load and almost crashed firefox.

[Michael Morris]

Originally Posted by FRDS

from http://vjoomla.com



Irony building.

Yeah, I'll eat my hat. Pass the salt.

That was last May. Since then I sat down and wrote an entirely new framework from the ground up that is capacle of running itself without interfering with vbulletin in any way. It's taken 9 months and as much of that development was funded by my current employer I still need his permission to release any of the code which may never happen. However my own vbulletin website is being converted over to it at long last and things are going smoothly.

The framework is called Pam here in the office - that stands for PHP Ajax Multimedia framework. Pam is very flexible and powerful - but difficult for a non-programmer to use. That's sort of the point though - each and every one of these frameworks is built with an eye on making getting the site up and running as quickly as possible. None of them are easy to build modules are components for. Pam is different in that rather than make things easy on the end user Pam makes things easy on the programmer (who is in turn expected to make life easy for the end user - that's his job).

Building a module for Pam is easy - drop it in. Pam can even run vbulletin in its entirely as a module. How much (or little) a program is integrated into the framework is the programmer's choice. No other PHP framework online can make the claim that vbulletin, Joomla, vbulletin, and phpmyadmin will run underneath it. Pam can.

But this thing is not ready and will not be ready from prime-time for awhile yet. My pride was greatly burned by the whole vJoomla fiasco. I won't release anything I'm not confident in yet. While I'm confident Pam can run a site with me administrating it and fixing it, I still have to go into the core libraries on occasion and fix things. Until that stops happening any deployment won't occur.

[scotsmist]

Originally Posted by Chris-777

I use vBAdvanced, and the only real gripe with it is that every vBA site, mine included, looks pretty much the same (with a couple of exceptions of course, like this site).

It the freakin' tables that kill me. Tables, tables, tables, blocks, blocks, blocks. Big center blocks, small side blocks, same nav, same options, etc, etc. I've redesigned my portal a dozen times and it still looks just like every other vBA site out there, and it's far and away my least favorite part of my site. One of these days I'll break down and just hand code a proper one, but for ease of use my vote goes to vBA as well - even if it's overused and generic now.

My .2c of course, fwiw.

vizdepot.com although running vB 3.0.x still is a really good example IMHO what can be done. I don't think first look, you wouldn't know it was running vbPortal.

[hjmaier]

I am using vBDrupal: www.midgard.forum.de

If you want to look at the forum and see how the Drupal blocks are included, chose the style Admins Spielwiese when you enter the forum.

I switched over from vBPortal to Drupal because I needed a CMS which can manage content and not only posts. Something only a real CMS can provide. vBAdvance was not a soloution for me.

I also needed a powerful search engine. The Drupal taxomony module is the thing I really need. The main issue with other CMS i know is, that you can easily add content there, but how will you manage the search for it?

Best regards
Hans-Joachim

[Clayton]

Hans are you sure that is the correct url you gave, please?

[scotsmist]

Originally Posted by hjmaier

I am using vBDrupal: www.midgard.forum.de

If you want to look at the forum and see how the Drupal blocks are included, chose the style Admins Spielwiese when you enter the forum.

I switched over from vBPortal to Drupal because I needed a CMS which can manage content and not only posts. Something only a real CMS can provide. vBAdvance was not a soloution for me.

I also needed a powerful search engine. The Drupal taxomony module is the thing I really need. The main issue with other CMS i know is, that you can easily add content there, but how will you manage the search for it?

Best regards
Hans-Joachim

vbPortal does not use threads and posts for articles, it has its own tables and permissions. Users can post articles and reply. There is an advanced (powerful) search that will search all articles - just like the advanced forum search and it allows you to select criteria and order your results. There is also an advanced search for the journal blogger and for the bug tracker module. There have been many updates, which was the point to my first post. I'm not arguing for or against anything, I just wanted to correct the other persons post that completely misinformed anyone reading it that vbPortal was a 'Dead' project. vbPortal is not a dead project, there have been thirty six upgrades since vBulletin 3.0.0 was released three years ago.

[webgeek247]

I agree about vba/vbportal and the like being just portals. I wouldnt class them as a CMS as many have said in this thread already. A proper CMS allows your users to make content like by submitting articles, upload files, make blogs etc.

My experience/opinions:

Joomla - A proper CMS but is 100% mind boggling to use. For me anyway. I just dont get it. The framework used or whatever its called is just weird. Mambots blah blah blah. Very strange imo lol. Maybe I didnt spend enough time trying to use it : s

Mambo - Same as above, obviously.

Anyway, I run a community for djs, producers and music lovers. Not a big community mind but still gets a lot of traffic and ranks well. Suppose its more of a place for info. but id like to change that by offering my members to upload dj mixes and was looking for a CMS that could allow this so I didnt go for vba/vbportal or similar because I needed a proper CMS where users could submit articles, upload music and which would skin my vbulletin forum so they both match. I tried loads of CMS/Portals from opensource as well as from other places but they just didnt offer what I wanted.

I then tried a lot commercial CMS with one being Jamroom, keep in mind I already have vbulletin/vbseo so MUST have forum integration of some kind that like shares usergroups or something heh. Unfortunately, Jamroom was a bit tricky to work with to and I couldnt get the forum integration to work properly.

In the end I put in for Subdreamer CMS Pro even though I knew many say bad things about SD I thought well the hell ill risk $99

At first I found it a complete nightmare trying to position the plugins : s after a while I sussed that. Then I found out of about 200 subdreamer skins available only one of them passed as valid xhtml but the design/template was way too tricky to edit due to the amount of images used etc. Im not very good with the design side of things so left that skin. In the end I found one that had the right layout and was set as strict xhtml which was wrong as it should have been xhtml 1.0 which is a good compromise. I changed it to xhtml 1.0 and fixed the remaining warnings/errors using the w3c checker and customised the design/layout etc and finished the main skin and forumskin and after just skinned the vbulletin forum using Subdreamer and everything work a charm : D

I still haven't managed to setup a proper member uploading/downloading system yet, hopefully ill be able to use the download manager plugin once theyve improved it and just change the code a little. But apart from that am pretty much happy with Subdreamer now. Since I joined theyve constantly been releasing new skins that seo friendly, good design and the support is excellent. Subdreamer CMS is very sef too. Nice neat urls that with vbulletin and vbseo works a treat. No point having a site if it doesnt rank well right.

So…if your after a site that is similar to mine then I recommend you try Subdreamer CMS Pro.

Im still looking into other cms/scripts though to see what extra I can add to my site. Will have to try vbportal/vbdrupal etc on localhost and have a play.

DJ Passion - Dance Music Community - Home

Hope my info helps some out.

Chris.

[Clayton]

Chris, you should consider taking a look at Elgg

this may work for what you trying to achieve

:up:

[scotsmist]

Originally Posted by djpassion

I agree about vba/vbportal and the like being just portals. I wouldnt class them as a CMS as many have said in this thread already. A proper CMS allows your users to make content like by submitting articles, upload files, make blogs etc.

.....

Chris.

See my post above yours, that is exactly what vbPortal supports - users can post articles, news, reviews, classified ads, upload files and create a blog.

quote

A content management system (CMS) supports the creation, management, distribution, publishing, and discovery of corporate information.

It covers the complete lifecycle of the pages on your site, from providing simple tools to create the content, through to publishing, and finally to archiving.

It also provides the ability to manage the structure of the site, the appearance of the published pages, and the navigation provided to the users.

quote

The idea of a portal is to collect information from different sources and create a single point of access to information - a library of categorized and personalized content. It is very much the idea of a personalized filter into the web.

I agree that vbA is not a CMS but that it is a portal.

[Zachariah]

Scotsmist .... !!!!!! hey dude, they let you out of the code cave I see.
Do you have your Super "D" long underwear and utility belt ?

see ya on phpportals