Please answer/help a newbie to this BB

[ey143]

Few questions;

1. Is it possible to have a registeration facility where users can type in their personal contact details like addresses and phone numbers etc. I am looking to build a community website where users would be happy to give this sort of information.

2. I am really new to all this. Does this vUBB REALLY offer more features than Unfopop's UBB?

3. Can you upload a graphic in a post which is currenly on the user's hard drive?

4. What are the advantages of having a MySQL BB over a normal non MySQL. How would the information be stored otherwise?

5. Does this program take a lot of bandwidth. What about storage space once users start posting heavily.

6. Is there a feature where you can ignore certain users by not displaying their posts?

7. If I was to charge a nominal fee to help recover costs incurred on my site, via an annual subscription, can I prevent registered users from somehow sharing their login name, AND from using the bulletin board from another country where the beginning IP address is different?

8. When this forum loads, why does every column start shifting, it looks a bit "strange/funny". Can it not load without shifting about?

9. Can this vBB work in a framed site?

Pls ans all questions in point format, ur help is appreciated.

Cheers

Dan


[Edited by ey143 on 06-25-2000 at 07:06 PM]

[leah r]

*shrugs* No one else is speaking up, so I'll take a shot at this. Most of it you can learn by simply browsing through the vBulletin site and this forum, FYI.

[b]1. Is it possible to have a registeration facility where users can type in their personal contact details like addresses and phone numbers etc. I am looking to build a community website where users would be happy to give this sort of information.[/b]

Custom fields in user accounts aren't yet supported. You/your programmer would need to hack it into vBulletin, or wait till the next major release of vB this summer, which we're told may include this feature.

[b]2. I am really new to all this. Does this vUBB REALLY offer more features than Unfopop's UBB?[/b]

Judgment call. See the threads in the Suggestions and Feedback section of this board for opinions. By the way...it's "vB," not "vUBB." Unless you were being flip. *raises eyebrow*

[b]3. Can you upload a graphic in a post which is currenly on the user's hard drive?[/b]

vBulletin doesn't include that ability from-the-box (so to speak). However, Moonwolf's Avatar Hack ([url]http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=981[/url]) may include the upload feature soon.

[b]4. What are the advantages of having a MySQL BB over a normal non MySQL. How would the information be stored otherwise?[/b]

MySQL bulletin boards store information in databases instead of flat text files (i.e., TXT files). The advantage is that you only have to wait for the server to select the specific pieces of data it needs instead of trawling through entire TXT files looking for the relevant information. An [admittedly bad] analogy: a database stores information like a pillbox—everything is compartmentalized. Flat text files are like pill bottles—you can't get to the pills on the bottom without dumping the whole thing out, whereas with the pillbox, you can go straight to what you need without dallying with anything else. Again, for more opinions, see the other boards, specifically Suggestions and Feedback.

[b]5. Does this program take a lot of bandwidth. What about storage space once users start posting heavily.[/b]

The scripts themselves weigh in under 200K zipped, and 100-odd K comprises the template set-up script which you delete from your server after installation. As for once posting starts, storing information in a database is more compact and efficient than storing it in a text file. No matter the size of your board, it will take up less room than an identical flat-text-storage-based message board (i.e., UBB) simply because of its medium. For actual statistics, take a look around this board; many regular posters operate successful, highly-trafficked forums.

[b]6. Is there a feature where you can ignore certain users by not displaying their posts?[/b]

Currently, no. This has been requested, and I believe it's on John and James's [vB's creators] to-do list.

[b]7. If I was to charge a nominal fee to help recover costs incurred on my site, via an annual subscription, can I prevent registered users from somehow sharing their login name, AND from using the bulletin board from another country where the beginning IP address is different?[/b]

IP banning is permitted, but vB doesn't supply a full-blown IP banning tutorial, so you'll need to know how to implement it yourself. As for preventing the sharing of login names...are you saying you don't want any usernames to be visible or known [i]at all[/i]? I think this goes far beyond the realm of message boards...

[b]8. When this forum loads, why does every column start shifting, it looks a bit "strange/funny". Can it not load without shifting about?[/b]

Individual posts in threads are composed of their own self-contained tables. This is so that, for instance, if a user posts an image or long, unbroken string of characters that stretches the cell width past its fixed norm, the only post that will be affected is the one containing the renegade data. All the other posts will fill their normal screen allotment. Having individual tables for posts also means that each post will be rendered as soon as its entire contents are read; for certain browsers (infamously, Netscape), the contents of a table are not shown until the entire table has been processed. If one of your pages is wholly enclosed in a table that contains a thread with 200 posts, a Netscape user will see a blank screen until the document finishes loading fully. Now imagine if some of those posts contained images...

The "shifting" you perceive is most likely Internet Explorer's way of rendering pages—images that do not have their height and width specified will sometimes have a blank placeholder frame as wide as the image's alt text. If you have many images without height/width specifications lined up in a row, such as the toolbar along the bottom of each post here, the table cells will seem to stretch and then contract as the images load and the browser understands how to reposition the screen elements accordingly. You can "fix" this by specifying height and width for every image in your templates.

[b]9. Can this vBB work in a framed site?[/b]

Yes, but you'll need to do some modification; you can't just hit a switch and voila. And frames suck.

[Edited by leah r on 06-25-2000 at 11:49 PM]

[ey143]

Thank you lead for the lengthy and indepth reply. It is appreciated.

I mistakenly said vUBB, not bothering to really see it was vB.

I've read a few threads here about support. Is it as bad as people are making it out to be? How often are upgrade to the software released?

I am tempted to bu vB, although last week I was going to buy UBB. I dont have too much HTML knowledge, and almost no CGI Perl knowledge, but I somehow managed to get UBB trial version working.

I suppose people who create good hacks, will have their code written into the new upgrades, or will everyone be selling their own little hacks?

Cheers

Dan

[manifesto]

I don't think anyone will [i]sell[/i] their hack, though I doubt that all of them will be included into the releases. However, the memberlist hack was included, so we can't really say until the next major release.

I've only had to contact support once, and received a reply pretty much the next time I checked my mail (later that day) which solved my problem. However, that was a while ago, so I can't really say how it is now.

As for upgrades, I don't think we can really say on-average how often they are released, since there haven't been that many of them released yet. I think that bug fixes are released pretty much as soon as they are fixed, which is usually pretty fast, but until we see the summer release, you can't really judge the release time on a true upgrade, in the sense of adding more features.

vB is a [i]lot[/i] easier to setup than UBB, so I would suggest you get vB if you have problems with UBB's install (you don't have to CHMOD this), or are just looking for a good alternative.

[Martin]

to answer your question about bandwidth correctly (no offnese leah), the bandwidth really depends on the activity of your board and how many images you are serving.

I currently use about 1.5-2 Gb/day. I have 3300 VERY active members. That number accounts for an average of about 60k pageviews/day. I also allow HTML in posts, which accounts for about 1/3 of it.

The support here is not what it could be, but the company sort of took off faster than expected. The board was designed by John when his UBB could no longer handle the strain of his board and he needed a faster, more stable solution. When people saw what he had created, we sort of begged, prodded and pleaded that he make a public release of his software and it rocketed out the gate from there.
They are in the process of trying to find some people to help with support, etc.
I will say, though, that they do try to get to everyone and that support is much quicker through the board here than through e-mail.

Right now there are upgrades available about every 2-3 weeks. The software is still fairly new and while all the major bugs are gone, there are little nit-picking ones that crop up. John also adds some new features in about every release. You don't have to upgrade with every release, but it takes about 5 mins to do it, so why not?

If you're stuck between this and UBB, I would definitely recommend this. It has more features, is more flexible, is sturdier, is easier to set up and costs less. What more could you want?

[ey143]

What do they mean when they say "HTML is off" or VB code is on? Are they completely different from each other, what are the pros/cons of each?

Thx

[doron]

vB Code - [url]http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/index.php?action=bbcode[/url]

just makes html easier for newbies.

as for hacks, I hope that the good ones are incorporated. As for selling, I think we are not even allowed, as this would be profiting from a copyrighted product.