VB Blogging system

[pokerie]

Hi there,
Were looking to offer our users the chance to create have their own blog with their VB login. We're currently using VB 3.5.4 and our forum can be seen here: http://www.poker.ie/community/

We'd like all the features of our current forum (card and suit icons, a you tube button) and all other regular VB features.

We'd like a custom blog url, for example, www.poker.ie/blogs/cormie or http://cormie.poker.ie rather than something like: http://www.poker.ie/community/forums...howjournal&j=2

We'd like users to be able to link to other users and or sites, have archive and post history, an about me snippet of text etc with a side menu like there is here: http://99grandtogo.blogspot.com/

This is all I can think of at the moment. There may be a few more bits and bobs we'd like too.

I've had a search on the site and have seen a few different journal mods, which would be the right one for me and which could do what I need, if any?

Also, just using this VB blog as an example: http://www.gamerseuphoria.com/forums...howjournal&j=2 I can not seem to read the user comments on the bloggers entries. How can this be done?

I'd like the blogs to be as customisable as possible by the user themselves too


I'd appreciate any feedback on this.

Kind regards,
Cormac O'Sheehan,
www.poker.ie

EDIT: I just saw something about a wordpress blogging system mod. Our web designer highly recommends wordpress. Is there any update on this?

[Murty]

I think this would be the closest thing https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=97341

[Adrian Schneider]

Hi Cormac,

I've been working on a blog for 3.5/3.6 the past few months, and it is approaching completion. The rewritten URLs won't be part of the v1 release, and I don't think we ever plan to have the "card and suit buttons" (?) nor the you-tube button (elaborate... sounds interesting).

If you want more information, you can check out my site: http://www.siradrian.com/

[pokerie]

thanks for the replies. Sir Adrian, unfortunately we need this right away so I can't really wait are you basing yours on a mod that's already out there or does yours have new features and uses a different approach to blogging?

[Adrian Schneider]

It's all from scratch... Nothing new to blogging, but far more powerful than the other vBulletin blogs available...

The only other ones I know of are vbJournal (which I have an importer for), the Drupal bridge, and finally the wordpress one in development.

Wordpress is definitely the best, but I'm not sure if this will stand true with the vBulletin integration.

[pokerie]

Hi again and thanks for the feedback. My webdesigner has had a quick look at each of the mentioned blogging systems. He thinks going with yours would be the best option. Have you any idea when it will be complete for release and would the rewritten URLS be something you would consider adding any time soon and how would you intend to do it? Would the URL be written upon member signup to the website, so if they choose "bobby" as a username on the VB system, there blog address could be bobby.poker.ie or similar, or would you prefer the URL to be custom, so that bobby can make a "bobbysbrilliantblog.poker.ie" address when they log in to their blogging system?

By the way, the youtube button and card and suit buttons are just features we currently have on our forum, the buttons are just smilies actually and the youtube just allows you to embed a video from youtube to the actual forum page and not have to have users direct away from your site to watch a video

So just two things I need to know:

1. how long is it likely to be until release?
2. What advantages does your system have over vbjournal/drupal etc? What exactly do you mean by 'more powerful'?


Regards,
Cormac

[Adrian Schneider]

The youtube things are just bbcodes? If so, they would work just fine as mine would use the same bbcode data that vBulletin does.

URL rewriting... not sure. I'm not even thinking about it until a stable release, but I can't see it taking that long.

1. Within a month for beta (beta should be more stable than most, because we've been bug testing it for over a month now!)

2. I can't comment on Drupal because I've never used it, but I can vbJournal. Here is a summary of what it has: http://www.siradrian.com/showthread.php?t=1. By more powerful, I mean it has at least 8x more code (and functionality). Many more options, usergroup permissions, etc.

If you are eager, go with vbJournal for now, and you can import the vbJournal data when it is released.

[pokerie]

Thanks again for the reply. Yes, the youtube is just a bbcode addition

Your product sounds good and I'm looking forward to the beta release.

We need this asap on our site to go ahead with other things we have to do, I'm just curious, would you suggest Alpha 1.0 which it says is available in your sig now, or to just go with VBjournal and use the importer when the beta is ready? What are the advantages/disadvantages of both options?

Also, are there any disadvantages to using the importer rather than starting a fresh with your version and having to wait rather than using VBjournal?

If you would eventually be interested in doing the URL rewriter, would it be an automatic process so that all members are given www.poker.ie/username for their blog address or would it have to be manually done for each? Also, if it wasn't implemented when we first install the blogging system, would all the old users need to manually do it when/if a version with url rewriting is released?

I'm not sure if the URL rewriter can be done without it being in your version seperately. I forget what my designer said regarding this. So for example, if we have your blogger installed, you don't need to have installed a rewriter function, it can be done seperately for users on the poker.ie DB.

I look forward to hearing from you again

[amnesia623]

do a search for vbJournal here at vbulletin.org. I have this integrated on my site and use it for blogging for my users. You must read the entire vbJournal integration thread to get it to work with 3.6 as there are file updates embedded with the replies. It works great for me at lakehavasucity.net (but I reqire to be registered to see the journal system).

[Adrian Schneider]

Do not install the alpha version on a live server. That can't be stressed enough...

Go with vbJournal. It can work in 3.6, there are a few updates you have to make though (I think I cover most of them here).

The rewritten URLs version would probably just be a different XML package (and new PHP files) to fix all of the links, then the rest would be up to .htaccess mod rewrite rules.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by that last part...