Using vBulletin + Addons as a CMS for a large website

[Cynthia]

Does anyone use vBulletin to run their entire website, beyond their forum? We are contemplating this and would like to know if there are any medium to large websites out there doing this but with a design and functionality something like www.yogajournal.com and www.fitpregnancy.com

Anyone? Thanks!

[NegativeSmoke]

You can use vBAdvanced CMPS which is a CMS/portal for vBulletin for your site, it seemlessly integrates into your vB installation

[Cynthia]

Thanks for your reply. Do you know of any site doing this with the design and features in the sites I linked to? And is the look and feel of those sites I linked to possible with vB and vBadvanced?

[Reeve of Shinra]

If you are looking for something with those elements, try joomla and there is a bridge which I forget the name of at the moment to link it to vbulletin.

[Cynthia]

We had plans to use Drupal but even if we chose Joomla we did decide we do not want to fork our vB.

vBAdvanced was suggested as a way to achieve what we want without having to use a separate CMS solution. I want to see that it is possible, with the sites I linked to as similar to what we want to achieve in look and functions.

[ManagerJosh]

After contemplating a bit, I don't think vBadvanced meets a lot of sites needs. It still feels too much like a forum.

[KW802]

We had plans to use Drupal but even if we chose Joomla we did decide we do not want to fork our vB.

vBAdvanced was suggested as a way to achieve what we want without having to use a separate CMS solution. I want to see that it is possible, with the sites I linked to as similar to what we want to achieve in look and functions.

It really depends on the actual information you're trying to display. For example, here is an example of a site using vBa CMPS...

http://www.haitiwebs.com

... that has been tweaked with custom modules and some creative thinking by the site's admin. Out of the box vBa CMPS will provide a quick method of getting a portal up & running with content being pulled from your forums, but depending upon your vBulletin style and what information you want to display, you may need to get some custom coding done.

[Wayne Luke]

After contemplating a bit, I don't think vBadvanced meets a lot of sites needs. It still feels too much like a forum.

This isn't really the fault of the software but a lack of imagination on the part of the person doing the implementation. I do know of one site that used vBAdvanced to achieve something like in the examples. I do not think they still do though, not because of layout and design issue but the fact that vBAdvanced doesn't have any true content management capabilities. That is it isn't designed for many articles to be entered though it can handle a few pages here and there. I don't know if the vBDynamics has this capability or not.

Using either Drupal or Joomla would be an option as would Wordpress. All three can easily make sites like the examples. They would require addons to both pieces of software though for it to integrate.

[KW802]

... I don't know if the vBDynamics has this capability or not. ...

Dynamics can handle it.

... but (and this is the part I stress to everybody) just because vBa (CMPS and/or Dynamics) *can* do something does not mean that a site will look like any of the given examples out of the box (aka: a fresh install). Often custom work needs to be done to both the vBulletin style and vBa modules to give each site that truly unique look & feel.

[Cynthia]

We recognize that a lot of custom work will need to be done to avoid the vB forum look. I guess I'm trying to find out if our redesign and functionality we want can be done with vB and vBa + whatever else INSTEAD of using another CMS. We have 200,000+ pages of html content on our website that would need to be migrated into whatever we set up and add upwards of 50 pages a month. Can vB Dynamics handle that?

My thinking in considering this is that we have a large vB forum existing alongside our static HTML website. We want the dynamic functionality that a CMS offers. We do not want to integrate our vB using vbDrupal or any other sort of fork or bridge. So it sounds ideal to stay with vB and add on to it whatever we can to achieve the same functionality we would with Drupal.

I guess I need to know if vB + vBa would work just as good as Drupal or if there is something that it cannot do that Drupal can.

[TheComputerGuy]

I use wordpress. I like it!

[Cynthia]

Would someone choose Wordpress over a more sophisticated CMS like Drupal if they have a very large website to run?

We have a very large vBulletin forum, hence the suggestion to extend the use of vB to the site and bring a more direct connection of the community to the site and gain a CMS in the process.

[Deriel]

If you want to have a good integration with vB (ok, as good as it gets...) today we have a few options:

* Drupal using vBDrupal (= Drupal 5 + vB)
* Joomla using BBPixel or JFusion
* Wordpress (not a CMS!) with some vBorg plugins
* Vivvo (paid!)
* SubDreamer (paid!)

I think that's it. I don't like Vivvo no Subdreamer. I'm using Joomla 1.0.x with BBPixel and I'll move to Joomla 1.5.x with JFusion soon.

[Cynthia]

Thanks for the suggestions. We looked at all of those options and decided we'd rather keep our site and forum separate rather than bridge to integrate our vB and face potential issues.

It's the idea of vB + vBAdvanced + other addons as needed to achieve desired functionality and design for our website needs that is being considered.

[Wayne Luke]

Would someone choose Wordpress over a more sophisticated CMS like Drupal if they have a very large website to run?

If you are not a PHP programmer and do not have one available, then its possible. While Wordpress was originally created for blogs, it is very capable of being used to create sites similar to your examples and can handle the article load without problems. You would need plugins but there are dozens of tutorials and themes available for using Wordpress as a CMS.

I am actually building a site using Wordpress as the backend CMS simply because I didn't find Drupal or Joomla to fit my needs. Instead of creating code with Wordpress, I am creating content.

If you want to use vB and addons. Then look at the Dynamics demo at vBAdvanced.com. However I did think of another alternative. This site is vBulletin powered: http://www.hystersisters.com/.

They used an addon called WebTemplates by Logician. It is available at www.vbulletin.org. I don't know whether it will fit your needs but its free to look into.