Just about to purchase - should I ???

[TheMusicMan]

Hi Folks ...

Just thinking of purchasing vBulletin for a mates site Martial Arts & Fitness centre where the forum and guestbook services provided by the Hosting Company are not up to much.

Here's a couple of questions...

1. I have had a quick look at the Admin Demo on the vBulleting home pages but I can't seem to find out how to easily change the forum overall look and feel. There are style areas, but these look really complicated. How easy is it to change the general colour scheme in vBulletin to say, the colours used in this forum? it looks like a lot of work to me?

2. Are there freely available 'templates' available that one could use to make the colours look OK?

3. What's the general amount of admin time required to maintain a BBS with say up to 100 users? I'm doing this as a favour to my mate but have not got limitless time to spend on site admin so some advice of some experts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.... :classic:

John

[Gardener]

Since I just purchased VB about 2 days ago I thought I might be able to offer some insite into setting up and customizing VB.

First of all, installing VB is very easy. It took me longer to read the install directions than it did to install. Five minutes tops, 10 if you have a slow FTP connection.

As far as changing the look of VB, it is a little harder getting started than some other forums, but the forums here and at vbulletin.com have a lot of advice.

Most of the free styles I have seen around are either out of date, or don't work well with the webdesign you already have. Don't worry about that. It doesn't take that long to learn and customize it the way you want. Take a look here to see what I have done with mine in less than two days. There is still a lot more that I would like to do, but right now I'm working on getting several more scripts up and running to finish my site.

[TheMusicMan]

Hey Gardener

WOW! .... and in just 2 days, I'm impressed. I love the colour scheme you have used - real easy on the eyes and also really easy to read.

Thanks for your reply, much appreciated. I have just posted another question in this section - any chance you could have a look at that one for me as well - or am I being toooooo pushy?? :cheeky:

John