Does vBulletin fit the bill for ME?

[SymbioticDesign]

Recently, I installed IB and although I have only just started setting it up, I have completely outgrown it. I am in the market for a real community solution. Though I am angry that such a working solution is quite honestly what I consider for the license fee as exorbitant. Part of my discust is directly related to working with IB. I have some concerns over working with any forum system, now. And yet it's need is so apparent to my sites that there is no way to avoid such a solution.

My experience with IPB has taught me that even if a system is configurable and customizable to look and feel exactly like your website, that doesn't mean it can or should be done. I asked Invision only if I would get the support I would need in customizing the board with a new skin/theme/template so as to be able to effectively incorporate it into my site. The response was that they would NOT support a designer who was interested in supporting their product even if I did register. All documents were available and online and they were all 2 versions old (or more).

Invision's quagmire of customization files is pathetic, at best. With no documentation or instructions and no possible way to make the process intuitive, I consider the system a joke. Obviously, I need a professional solution. Gee, that's what I always thought. I've been trying to find such a solution for at least 2 months, now.

From the buzz I get you are my next stop. I visit quite a few boards and see that vBulletin is used in a great variety of top professional sites. However, I have actually delayed even stopping by to check you out here, or at vBulletin.com, because I have never seen the text input actually work. If I select a portion of text to bold and hit the button, I expect the selected text to be surrounded with bolding instruction codes. Instead, a window pops up and asks me to type-in what I need bolded. On top of that, if I actually enter the text I want, it appends it at the end of the message, not inserting it where I am working within the message. I consider this absolutely useless. I have never seen a vbulletin reply function actually work on any vbulletin board that I have ever visited.

I checked out the user manual and the custom skinning documentation is sparse. Perhaps vBulletin is more intuitive than Invision. All I need to know is which files effect what, what the constant (global) and area specific IDs are, what limmitations I have, and anything that isn't standards compliant. Obviously, with XML you can invent a whole lot of your own stuff, which is great. But without documentation on that neat XML event/function/variable/parameter/unifier/customizer/what_have_you, the license user holds no clue.

I honestly think that Invision makes it's money by offering expert support because the only way you seem to be able to get it to work the way you want it is to hire someone else in the Invission Power Board "expert" business. If this is the case with vBulletin, just warn me so I can find a real solution. I think anything beyond a $120.00 for a professional application of the caliber I am expecting is outrageous. The $30/year for updates is reasonable. But I have no choice because I have wasted 2 months trying to get a working solution.

My IBP stopped adding categories after 8. I was going to try to work around that, but it has since stopped adding forums. They show up OK in the admin panel, but not for the user. Even if the user is admin. Perhaps it's disabled, but without any way to design and customize it myself it's absolutely useless. I only link to it to keep a support forum open.

But here I am having a problem with vBulletin. I preview the post and I get an error message. I got a couple earlier loading in new pages. I am running XP Pro on a 3 GHz Dell and using IE 6 to surf.

From memory:
A Runtime Error has occurred. Do you wish to Debug?
Error on Line: 5## (536?)
Object Expected.

As a designer I do keep debugging on in IE just to tell me there is a problem, should I need to fix anything on my site, or my cliente's site.

With this kind of stuff, I expect I have to move on and find something even more horrificly expensive. I am getting a professional application so that I won't have to waste time fixing it and tweaking it, so that I can actually get on with the business at hand. Just trying out one solution and trying to hunt down another has hurt my business dramaticly. I see why decent reliable, functional and secure applications that are in demand are can charge just about anything.

I am not a big guy. I do this out of my house. I work with other freelancers and we are all barely scraping by. But it looks like the only solution is to put your hands up in the air and fork over your wallet to a guy who is selling snake oil, at this point. I am not good at settling and hoping for the best when I am shopping.

I am not trying to be rude or impolite here. Even though I hated and still hate the lack of inuitiveness in using the reply/post function, I have seen such unique and creative designs in vBulletin based forums that I was ready to cough up the cash as soon as I found that it is an amiable solution for me and my clientele.

OK, this is a hack/mod site. Something went wrong in one of your hacks/mods, perhaps. But can I hack/mod the post/reply function to do as it should (something I have never seen done on a vbulletin based system?

If so, can I actually make it look like I want myself without hiring an outsider using Dreamweaver, Flash, HTML, CSS & some XML?

[Brad]

You can hack the posting functions to work any way you want, as long as you know how to code. IIRC the problems you pointed out in the posting fetures have been around for along time, in most all bulletin board systems. There where some hacks for vb 2 that 'fixed' this and inserted the smilies/bbcode where the cursor is currently at.

And yes you can make vBulletin look like anything, all templates and style variables are stored in the database and all can be edited from the admin cp. I have used ibf 1.x myself and I find vBulletins template system much easyer to work with.

[SymbioticDesign]

Cool. I've gotten so frustrated with IPB that I can't stand it anymore.

OK, so I don't care about my database, I will just go in and save all the posts currently online to a text file and re-enter them into vBulletin with a simple cut and paste. But I want to keep the same address for vBulletin.

So once I have all the messages archived into text files on my local computer (amending each one to [archive originally posted on ___], first), I wipe out IPB and start over with a fresh vBulletin install in the same dir.

But then I like it, so I decide to keep my BulletinBoardSys.com domain with some type-in traffic instead of selling it on Afternic. Is my license transferable to the new Domain as long as I only have one copy running under the license?

Thanks... I do appreciate the help. I've just been so frustrated with IPB.

[Brad]

Yes you can use the board anywhere you want, there is a place in your members area where you give the url of your current installation (this is to verify that your board is legit if they need to check it).

And you can save yourself alot of tourble if you use the import script, it will allow you to go from ibf -> vB and keep your posts/members

[sujan]

Testing