There are certain terms used through out the documentation that you should understand:
- Board - your installation of vBulletin. This includes all of your categories, forums, threads, posts and users. You may run one board (installation of vBulletin) for each license you have purchased.
- User / member - someone who has registered or posted a message on your bulletin board. As an administrator, you are a user who has administrative priveledges.
- Post - an individual message posted by a user. It can be made up of plain text, or HTML code, depending on the options that you have set.
- Thread - a group of posts usually on a certain subject. On most boards, users can start new threads.
- Forum - a group of threads again usually on a certain subject.
- Category - forums can be grouped into categories
- Control panel / admin area - this is the area of your board that only administrators can access. From here you can control almost all factors of your board.