Why so little attention towards CMS integration?

[Smoothie]

One of the bigger issues for me is skinning the front page to resemble the rest of the site. I think that's why many people chose vBadvanced. While I tried Drupal some time ago and was slightly impressed with it, the thought of having to re-skin the front page did not thrill me in the slightest.

Does Drupaltin allow for skins used on the forums to integrate with it?

[RedGTiVR6]

I've tried drupal - twice now...I don't think dislike is a good word for it...

[acitrano]

but the problem, keyz, is that Drupal is so fugly.

[Keyz]

Again I should reiterate - if you found previous versions of Drupal to be low on usability, or to look bad, then try Drupal 5. I disliked the previous versions too, but changed my mind when I saw Drupal 5. In version 5 they made a major point of focusing on usability, and on improving the look of the default theme (as well as made many improvements to the theming engine so that it would be simple to theme). A variety of contributed modules have reached new levels of functionality and integration with the core, that bring Drupal up to a new level of possibilities. I'd be happy to share a more detailed list if anyone's interested, but just to name a few must-haves... CCK, Views, Workflow, Actions, Panels, Pathauto (instant SEO'ed URLs), Modr8... and many more. Version 6, which is already well on the way, has goals of full support for interoperability and open standards.

Here's an online demo of Drupal 5 for you to take for a spin:
http://drupal5-0.highervisibilitywebsites.com
Be sure to check out the built-in color changer, that lets you re-color the whole theme dynamically and save your own color themes for the site (including the graphics)... just go to this link once you're logged in. Since it's open source, the new theme has already been ported to Wordpress and other CMSs, and is very popular (though I don't think the color changer is ported). It's possible to set up the color changer to be reused for any theme in Drupal, not just the default one.

It's true there aren't as many great looking "free" themes for Drupal as some others, such as Wordpress and Joomla, but it is just as easy (or easier in my opinion) to make it look any way you want it to. Not all, but a good number of great themes have been ported - have a look at the Themes section (e.g. Amadoue, GlossyBlue, Plain 2, SEO Position, SpreadFirefox, TerraFirma). Don't mean to convert this into a Drupal thread haha - but just to help illustrate how Drupal can be themed, here are a few good examples of well-designed and/or famous Drupal-powered sites to start, and you can view my full list here:

adrenalinehub.com
artistshousemusic.com
asia.playstation.com
askaninja.com
concreteideas.com
Flock.com
MTV.co.uk
TWiT.TV
ubuntu.com
terminus1525.ca
... again, see my extensive full list.

Right now Drupaltin does not yet support integrated theming (e.g. your vBulletin theme carrying over to the Drupal site, or vice-versa), though that is on the list of upcoming features. The ability to skin Drupal with vBulletin styles is already available in the vbDrupal project (which as I mentioned, is powerful but not my #1 choice since it requires hacking Drupal core and is not available for Drupal 5 yet). The Drupaltin developer is studying their implementation of that feature and plans to release his own version. In the mean time, my personal quick-fix is to place my "static" portions of my site design into header.php and footer.php files, and include those around both Drupal and vB - works pretty well for now.

Anyhow, I hope this info helps some people. Feel free to ask me any questions and I'll be happy to try to help.

[InfoNirvana]

Originally Posted by pcoskat

Hmm, that's really interesting.

I'm looking around their site [added: Vivvo CMS - www.vivvo.net ]now, and I see that they're using vB, but does their CMS actually integrate?

No unfortunately.

[tuslic]

nobody has tryed to use coranto with vbulletin?

[Ohiosweetheart]

vBAdvanced has so far met all of my needs.

1. It's free
2. It takes on the appearance (i.e. skin and graphics) of the forum.
3. It's highly customizable, with templates, modules, webpages, etc.

[RedGTiVR6]

vBAdvanced doesn't work for many types of sites. For instance, on our site it doesn't give the impression we want of our business.

Joomla allows us to do this.

I thought I would note that bbPixel seems to have dissapeared. Anyone have any ideas?

[InfoNirvana]

The best CMS (Joomla!) is now going to be integratable with vBulletin

http://www.vJoomla.com

Very Awesome !

[jhei21]

Originally Posted by InfoNirvana

No unfortunately.

Vivvo does integrate with Vbulletin now and has a shared login. I am seriously looking at purchasing. If anyone has any good or bad experiences with it i would love to know.