Company Intranet Setup

[2FASTGT]

Hello,

As a prospective customer, I wanted to ask some questions about implementing vBulletin within my company's Intranet for use by our employees. I am looking to get preliminary requirements and pricing together to present to my boss.

1. Can the site be hosted within the company Intranet? Or is there a limitation to only work on Internet websites?
2. Can users profiles (usernames, passwords, personal info) be imported from a prepared roster via SQL? We would want to avoid having each employee register with the site.
3. What do you recommend to be adequate server requirements for 10,000 employees? System specifications? Approximate price?
4. Will one vBulletin installation and one MySQL database be sufficient?
5. What type of license would I need for MySQL, Commercial or an Open Source license?
6. Are their any other items that I should be concerned with?

Thank you for your help.

Chris

[Steve Machol]

1. Yes.
2. If you can export this data to a text CVS file, then you can use our Impex import system to import this to vB.
3. This really depends on the number of users online at one time.
4. Should be.
5. That I don't know. Sorry.
6. You should be running the latest stable versions of PHP and MySQL.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

I will try to answer some of your questions:
1. It will work on any webserver that can handle php & mysql (check the minimum specs). There is no real difference between internet or intranet, as long as the members (employees) can reach the webserver.
2. There are some import possibilities using ImpEx (included in your purchase). You can import using a CSV-file for example. This would work for the first import of your members, not sure if this would work to register new employees regularly, but if needed something could be created for that (please check our modification community vbulletin.org for customisations, you might need to pay someone to do the job if you don't have a php-coder in your company).
3. How many concurrent members online and how many posts expected? Do you plan to have a lot of attachments?
4. Yes. (might need a second database server depending on the answers on question #3)
5. Please check at www.mysql.com (http://www.mysql.com) (sorry i really don't have a good answer for you, although one of the Jelsoft staff members might be more experienced in this)
6. Not based on the info you gave until now.

Edit: I should have known that Steve would beat me.

[Reeve of Shinra]

1. You can host it on your intranet with no problem.

2. You can import via a csv file with impex. You could import directly via sql but there are certain fields that need to be populated and you would have to be sure hash the password w/ salt. The required fields was posted around here somewhere with the hashing method but offhand I dont have it handy.

3. How many employees do you expect to be browsing the forums at one time? That would help determine the server you would need.

4. I think 1 install of vbulletin w/ 1 mysql db should be enough depending on the server specs and expected load.

5. vbulletin has 2 liscences. 99% its best to go with the owned.

Leased - You pay $85 yearly to use and run the software.

Owned - You pay a one time fee of $160, you can run it forever and you get one year of updates free. After that year, its $30 to renew your subscription for another year to download the latest versions.

6. Not off hand.