Multiple domain/subdomain forums

[grandfso]

Hello, there is something I wish I had done, but I am not sure how to name it, so I can't be sure if a hack like this has been already made, or not.
Let's say you have your board running on one database, the board is accessible from www.myboardurl.com. On this board you have some categories with some subforums, everything looks like this:

-Category 1
--subforum 1
--subforum 2
--subforum 3

-Category 2
--subforum 1
--subforum 2

-Category 3
--subforum 1
--subforum 2
--subforum 3
--subforum 4

My question is: Is there a way to make your vBulletin engine to serve only one category, with specified skin when the board is being accessed from another url. For example, when you go on cat1.myboardurl.com, you will see _only_ Category1 and its subforums, with customized skin?
or another example: after visiting totally different domain(also parked) like www.fantasticvBulletinBoard.info to see _only_ category 2 and category 3 with its subforums?
And of course when you visit www.myboardurl.com you will see all three categories, with default skin. Threads, users and other settings should be shared.

How can I do this? Thanks in advance!
Kind regards,
grandfso

[enigmarokker]

I too am looking for the same exact type of information. I run a joomla site with other joomla sites sharing the same user databases beneath it, and I also have the vbulletin forum tied into the SAME user database as all of the joomla sites and sub-sites. Why is this potential modification/customization important for some websites? Well for me personally this is why... Please read on and I'll explain the current situation and then what I'd ideally like to be able to do with my forum system.

For example I have a content management system (joomla) site setup as the main page, and from there the users can visit different video game fan sites, like a horror game site, a first person shooter game site, a racing game site, etc.

What stinks is that all of my current joomla game sites were built with a custom vbulletin skin to go along with each site (for example a horror site skin, a battlefield 2 site skin, etc) and I primarily want to setup main categories for each site within the same forum such as shown in the post above.

So the layout would be:
Main Site => Default vBulletin Skin

Categories:

Horror Site => Only shows horror site skin when inside of this category
Battlefield 2 Site => Only shows BF2 site skin when inside of this category
Racing Game Site => Only shows racing site skin when inside of this category


If it's possible to make it so that only the specific game's categories are shown while within a certain domain name, that'd be cool too but I would require this as it seems a difficult programing job to start messin with if/then's on domain names. I really dont care what forums are displayed depending on what URL that I go to.

Rather, I really want to make it so that I can specify what skin goes with what main category (and make each main category skin un-alterable to users). Of course, the main site also has it's own vBulletin skin which would be the default-visible-skin until a different site's category is clicked on, thus a different category has a different default skin.

I want to be able to assign a different default skin to each category from the vBulletin back-end and not have to hack tons of core files, I'd rather patch core files as long as the files I'm over-writing wont have stock vbulletin variables altered or deleted (other than the skin variables being added to) I'm willing to pay money for this. Please email me at enigmarokker@comcast.net and send me a quote, the sooner this can be done the better. Thanks in advance!

<subscribing>

[JohnBee]

Originally Posted by grandfso

Hello, there is something I wish I had done, but I am not sure how to name it, so I can't be sure if a hack like this has been already made, or not.
Let's say you have your board running on one database, the board is accessible from www.myboardurl.com. On this board you have some categories with some subforums, everything looks like this:

-Category 1
--subforum 1
--subforum 2
--subforum 3

-Category 2
--subforum 1
--subforum 2

-Category 3
--subforum 1
--subforum 2
--subforum 3
--subforum 4

My question is: Is there a way to make your vBulletin engine to serve only one category, with specified skin when the board is being accessed from another url. For example, when you go on cat1.myboardurl.com, you will see _only_ Category1 and its subforums, with customized skin?
or another example: after visiting totally different domain(also parked) like www.fantasticvBulletinBoard.info to see _only_ category 2 and category 3 with its subforums?
And of course when you visit www.myboardurl.com you will see all three categories, with default skin. Threads, users and other settings should be shared.

How can I do this? Thanks in advance!
Kind regards,
grandfso

Recently, someone mad a hack that split foruhome across pages. In an support email jelsoft expressed that a modification very similar to this would be in violation of licensing. I think the issue is where a similar forum would provide services under multiple domains. However, I'm not entirely sure if jelsoft is entirely serious about upholding such conditions since we seem to be entering a gray area between user permissions and licensing distribution.

[Ducks]

I have been thinking about such feature too.. But I thought it only could be in violation with the rules as you in some way are hosting several boards with 1 licens. Maybe Jelsoft will come up with something in version 4 where you can buy 2 licens and host 2 boards with same database.

[enigmarokker]

True that would be very nice, but I'd pay those guys to just make it for me right now. Money isn't the biggest issue for me (not to sound like a cocky pr*ck... I just realised that under admin cp=> forum manager => then EDIT the specific forums and categories - the lovely people at Jelsoft already made it so each forum can have its own custom skin so for that I'm intensely grateful.

Now I'm wondering if something exists out there like what the creator of this thread wrote.... that being, can I make it so that only a specific main category can show up if accessing the site from a specific domain name?

For example: "horrorgame.MyMainSite.com" will only show the "horror game" forum category, even though other categories exist and all of them show up in the main websites domain name "MyMainSite.com" for instance

This too I'm willing to pay for, anyone know if this already exists or would like to take on the challenge? Once again my email is at enigmarokker@comcast.net

Someone who i know is EXTREMELY capable of customizing the hell out of vBulletin and Joomla would be a gentleman named "Koudanshi" from www.bbpixel.com . I'm going to ask him tonight if he's able to do this and I'll give him a link of this thread to review. Hopefully he'll get back to me to let me know if it's possible, if he says yes I'll let him know others may be interested for a small fee and I'll post his response here as soon as I find out for myself. So far this guy has been doing lots of work for me and my forum (sorry I'm not showing it off just yet, it's not done obviously), and he does amazing work for an extremely decent price...seriously... and NO I don't work for them or promoting either, I'm just amazed at their work and want to see them flourish for all the help they've provided for me with so far; so I hope whoever see's this will at least check them out too.

Either way, I'll write back here soon. Thanks for reading this people!

[tormodg]

AFAIK this is possible as long as you own a vB license for EACH domain you want to run vB on, even if you only use a single installation.

[kafi]

Well I am also interested to divide my forum according subforum categories like this:

www.myforum.xy whole forum
categ1.myforum.xy
categ2.myforum.xy
categ3.myforum.xy

if anybody willing to do this I am willing to pay for it

[enigmarokker]

Tormodg, Yeah I am running my forum on only one master domain, the rest of my sites are subdomains. Think of GameSpot.com for instance (people who have sought to buy my company if I can continue to roll out a high user base)... They have mutiple "unions" each unions has its own type of forum running, but only see's their own forum, not the entire slew of gamespot forums. I have 4 sub-domains, each has its own type of "look" and specialized game, hence I'd like 4 separate main categories to show on their own page, and the master site to display all of the main categories. Once again, all of my sites are built off of a sub-domain. If anyone is familiar with joomla you'll understand what I mean when i say that I'm running a "multi-site domain/sub-domain joomla installation", and if you don't know what i mean, all you need to understand is that the license was purchased for only one domain, and it's only going to be running on just one domain.

tormodg if you're aware of this type of mod/product could you please PM me or post it here? I'd greatly appreciate it, and I'll also PM you now with the same text that I've typed here. Thanks for making this thread come alive a bit people!!! -enigmarokker

[tormodg]

I am not aware of any such mod, but the vB templating system certainly makes it possible to do. We are working on something similar for our portal, but we don't have "multiple joomla installations" but a custom-built portal system which will incorporate forums for different users in different topics.

It's not really that hard as long as you can use one userbase and can get a programmer who understands vB's templating system.

There are earlier posts on "multiple forums with single userbase" somewhere around vB.org but they often come down to the technical challenge that arises when people sign up (ie if the forums each have a completely different look and feel, it gets confusing). If you however intend to have one name for your entire website, even if each subsection has a different focus it should be clear to the user where they have registered (ala Gamespot as you mention - the user's don't worry about signing up for Xbox 360 forums, they're happy to be Gamespot members).

I'm however not the person who can help you since I am basically a web editor who gets technical help from others so I'm still looking for good examples of sites that do this.

[enigmarokker]

Thank you very much for your input tormodg, it helps us move foward! I wont stop until this is resolved and I'll fully document my mothod in this post. Hopefully my coding guy will get back to me soon to let me know if this is possible- if it is I'll let all of you know and he'll be happy to get more business, right now he codes custom jobs and forum bridges from vbulletin (amongst others) into joomla/mambo. I'll post back again soon! -