Using vB as a CMS?

[Adan0s]

Hi there,

i'm currently looking for something like an Forum-CMS. and as here are most of the guys which knew everything about vBulletin i thought i might ask some things here.

is there already a mod/plugin or are there plugins which can be used together to provide following features for the mainsite:

• create news/article categories
• read news from a forum to the mainsite together with an assigned category
• read articles from a forum together with an assigned category
• user should be able to assign categories in the specific forums.
• some kind of downloadbase with the possibilty to create main- and subcategories (a option to submit downloads for users should be there but not necessary)
• creating menu's with links to the different article-pages should be easily possible

well, to make it more clear what i really want:

i want to create a site which reads (almost) all of it contents from the forum. user xy should be able to create a thread in a special newsforum and assign a newscat to it which then gets approved by an admin. if it is approved the news should be shown on the frontpage together with the assigned category (cat-images should also be possible).
the same procedure should be with articles but for them it would be the best to have a content-forum with subforums for the content-categories.
the system then should create a link to the content-categories that shows a overview of the created articles.
the articles itself shouldn't show the posted comments but a link to it.

i know that's not that hard to write it for myself but i really don't want to hack anything into the vB-core as the system should be updateable at any point.

i also know that i demand a lot but since i know that there are atleast 2 systems which provide (almost) exactly those functions for phpBB2 i thought there may be similiar mods/plugins for vBulletin.
(well i could also just use those phpBB2-systems but to be honest..i don't like that forum and it's really old)

best regards,
Sven

(if some things are unclear please ask. i'm not a native english speaker.)

[Jase2]

You can use GARS for articles, reviews, ect: www.thevbgeek.com

vBulletin is just a community based software, allowing members to create threads, answer questions ect. It isn't a CMS system.

On the other hand, you can use vBDrupal, which integrates with vbulletin: www.vbdrupal.org

[Adan0s]

Originally Posted by Jase2

vBulletin is just a community based software, allowing members to create threads, answer questions ect. It isn't a CMS system.

i know. therefore i'm asking if there are any mods/plugins which enable it to act like one.

it sesms for me that i'm really the only person who is demanding such features. seems that no one but me is interested in having categories etc for news.

[Jase2]

That's why I suggested vbdrupal: http://www.vbdrupal.org/

It integrates with vBulletin and there are lots of plugins for it

[iceytdot]

you can run Joomla (CMS) with vBulletin, there is a bridge script which will port your members from the vBulletin onto the Joomla (and the reverse) the bridge is called "VBulletin Duo Sync Bridge".

only thing i couldn't do with it yet, was pull vB threads onto it. however you can make article posts -- than inside link it back to the thread on the community.

another alternative for you. you can get joomla here www.joomla.org

[Adan0s]

Thanks!

But again, not what I'm searching for. I looked at vbDrupal and it really seems to be great but also again there's no option for creating pages/news with assigned categories from a forum.
It can read Threads/Posts from the forum but can't assign it to categories.
There are dozens of Plugins for Drupal but i can't really find much for vbDrupal.

[Jase2]

Most drupal plugins will work with vbdrupal. Please, just ask over @ their site and they will help you out.

[Adan0s]

Yeah right, but those Plugins are for Drupal and "just" add Features to the Drupal-System and don't provide new Features together with vBulletin.

I've thought a bit more about it. There's a Plugin called vbNode which enables adding the contents of a Thread as a page on the Site. I then just could add the category manually - better than nothing.
Now there's only that thing left with a assigned category to a News. I could just create dozens of Subforums in a Newsforum and then use the ID of the Subforum to assign a newscat-image...requires me to hack the vblist-plugin but also shouldn't be hard.

OK, i will look a bit more into vbDrupal. Thank you so much so far.

BTW congratulations to your 1000. post

[Jase2]

Hehe, no worries and thanks.

[ChrisChristian]

Subdreamer will do almost all features you want and will fully integrate the member database. But it?s not free: http://www.subdreamer.com