Does vbulletin help me "build" my website?

[914turboford]

I am contemplating starting a vbulletin automotive forum. When I purchase vbulletin, does the software walk me through the process of building the actual website? How much time should I expect to spend on this considering that I am probably a 2 or 3, where 10 would be Steve Jobs.

[feldon23]

vBulletin is a forum. If you want some kind of website glued onto the front of vBulletin, there are portals like vBAdvanced and CMSes like vBDrupal.

[914turboford]

Let me be more specific. Can I create something like Turboford.org or
d-series.org with vbulletin alone?
Brian

[feldon23]

vBulletin does not give you these features on the Ford page:
front page
FAQ
Photo Albums
Download Links
various other content pages
Contact Us pagevBulletin is JUST a forum. It does have a built in Calendar.

If you want a front page, you can either write one from scratch in HTML, use one of the dozens of web page builder programs, or get a content management system like vBDrupal which can be bolted onto vBulletin forum and users only have to login once to access both products. Gallery is something else. There are several galleries (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=92875) that you can add on to your website which are integrated with vBulletin.

D-Series.org is running vBAdvanced, Flashchat, vBArcade, vBPicGallery, and TimeSlips database.

I know of no prepackaged website building kit that contains every possible accessory and add-on you'd want.

FlashChat: $5
vBAdvanced: free
vBArcade: free (thanks simsim!)
vBPicGallery: free
and all integrate very nicely with vBulletin.

[simsim]

vBArcade is absolutely free.

[914turboford]

Thank you for that detailed response. You clearly put some time in answering my question. It sounds like it might be necessary for me to hire someone to start my site. What would be the best way to go about finding someone? Or is this a task I might accomplish myself with enough determination?
Brian

[feldon23]

Just installing all those components is pretty quick. d-series.org looks like a pretty straightforward install of vBulletin and other components with color scheme changes. He didn't go crazy changing a lot of other things and moving things around.

You could be up-and-running with a website like d-series.org in maybe 4-8 hours?

[manny0131]

im looking forward into the same thing, here is a famous car site here in PR using this same vBulletin version, its in spanish so my bad if you dont understand:(
http://www.carrito.net/board/index.php

[914turboford]

Is there a "how to build a website" website out there?
Brian

[feldon23]

I am not sure how to say this.

Building and setting up a website is one thing. It requires learning FTP, some HTML and scripting, how to login and upload your files, etc. Then it requires learning either how to write your own pages in HTML or using a program like Dreamweaver to create web pages.

That is not the solution I am discussing. The solution I am discussing is literally bolting a bunch of components together. It is not really "Creating a web page" in my definition, but instead installing a bunch of software and making it work together. I consider the skillset of setting up a site d-series.org to be more akin to installing Windows XP and several accessory programs and making sure everything is all synched up and working, rather than creating a website.

I do not want to trivialize the work involved in this, but it's different from actually building something and requires different skills.

If you have questions installing ANY of those modules, you can get a lot of help at the websites of the people who created each one. There is no 1 place to get help for installing all of them.

The great thing about something like that, where you bolt pieces together, is you can get back to focusing on giving your visitors something to look at. I am talking about News Articles, postings, files to download, test results, etc. and less time learning HTML. That is why I finally broke down and dumped HTML in favor of Joomla for powering my website a few months ago. Now, I edit everything on my website from a control panel.