IntegraMOD conversion?

[tekguru]

I know from reading the forums and talking to suppor a few months ago that it looks possible to upgrade from IntegraMod (IM) to vBulletin.

I've now been talking to my co-Admins about the prospective change over and they've raised some queries.

- We currently have an extensive portal (ww.4winmobile.com) and would like to know if similar functionality exists in vB.

- At the moment as IM is PhpBBS based we are able to use a Mod called M2F which allows users to subscribe to forums. Once a user is subscribed they are emailed a copy of each post made. If they reply to that post via email the Mod will post that message into the forum. We use this extensively - does vB suppor such a feature?

[Steve Machol]

1. There are no official poratls for vB. You can either create your own, or use one of the 'portals' which are add-ons that can do this. However these are third-party add-ons that we do not provide or support. You can check the Premium Modifications forums at www.vbulletin.org for information about these.

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=99

2. That is currently not an option in vB. The available email options are to receive:

- an email on the next new post in a thread the member has subscribed to, and no mor e email until the members logs in.
- a daily digest of new posts in a forum they have subscribed to
- a weekly digest of new posts in the forum

[tekguru]

Thanks for that data, that email forum handling is not available is a major blow but hopefully we could survive it. Good news that third party portals are available.

More Q's I'm afraid:

- Mobile version - As we run a PDA orientated site we get a lot of users accesing via Mobile Devices, so area and lo-res themes available?
- Sticky last read after log off - Can Last reae posts be set to survive a user logging off, if they have not read the post(s) concerned?
- Are any of the themes Search Engine friendly, i.e. not using dynamic page addresses?
- Advertising banners - Is there any inherent advertising banner system and if so can it record clicks/hits? And again if it exists can it be used within posts?
- I saw that Donations were supported - what about Subscriptions?
- Inline code - Can this be used at all to retrieew content from advertisign services / shops?
- Can links be made to external pages i.e our shop portal?
- Announcements - in there a standard forum specifc announcement system, and to compliment that global announcements?
- News posting - Are we corret that as there is no portal there is no way of posting news articles?
- How easy is it to upgrade to vB from PhpBBS systems? Is it possible to upgrade to a vB test system while w complete configuration and then once it is ready (theme / style) to reimport the users / posts from the PhpBBS based system?
- As we do a lot of product reviews we make extensive use of a 'Table' BBCode to structure reviews - is any such functionality available in vB?

Cheers again. Looking forward to any replies.

[feldon23]

- Mobile version - As we run a PDA orientated site we get a lot of users accesing via Mobile Devices, so area and lo-res themes available?

One is not included in vBulletin. There are a couple of in-progress projects over at vBulletin.org including Mobile Alabama but nothing that I would consider finalized.

- Sticky last read after log off - Can Last reae posts be set to survive a user logging off, if they have not read the post(s) concerned?

This feature is built into vBulletin 3.5.

- Are any of the themes Search Engine friendly, i.e. not using dynamic page addresses?

It's not so much a "theme" as a core modification to vBulletin. You're talking about something that rewrites the URLs to look something like http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/pre-sales/1110049/. It can be done with significant modifications which are not supported by vBulletin. Some mods are available for free at vBulletin.org. If you want premium search engine optimization, there is an add-on product vBSEO by a 3rd party.

- Advertising banners - Is there any inherent advertising banner system and if so can it record clicks/hits? And again if it exists can it be used within posts?

Ad banners are not built into vBulletin but there are banner ad rotators available at vBulletin.org including an implementation of phpAds. It is reasonably easy to edit templates to add the appropriate bits of javascript, html, etc. Template mods can be made to insert ads after the 1st post of a thread and at other frequencies.

- I saw that Donations were supported - what about Subscriptions?

The feature is actually called Subscriptions.

- Inline code - Can this be used at all to retrieew content from advertisign services / shops?

You can include PHP scripts by writing a Plugin and outputting the contents into a template. You can create your own bbCodes although you'll have to do some programming to get them to retrieve data from other sources.

- Can links be made to external pages i.e our shop portal?

The navigation bar (navbar) is one of the easiest templates to modify and links can be hidden or shown based on usergroup and/or guests/registered.

- Announcements - in there a standard forum specifc announcement system, and to compliment that global announcements?

Announcements are forum-specific. To do a global announcement, you may want to create a custom template or consider some of the free add-ons over at vBulletin.org for this.

- News posting - Are we corret that as there is no portal there is no way of posting news articles?

vBAdvanced.com makes a portal that is closely tied to vBulletin which available for free. It uses hidden forums which admins and mods can post to, to provide news on the front page of your website.

- How easy is it to upgrade to vB from PhpBBS systems?

Upgrading phpBB requires massive modifications to the PHP source code just to re-implement basic functionality. Upgrading vBulletin, provided you have not modified the core PHP files, is not nearly as disruptive. If all of your extensions and add-ons to vBulletin are contained within the Plugins/Products system, then security and minor upgrades to vBulletin should be trouble-free.

Is it possible to upgrade to a vB test system while w complete configuration and then once it is ready (theme / style) to reimport the users / posts from the PhpBBS based system?

You can set up a vB test forum and then import phpBB users and posts at a later date. You can also export a complete style (including all relevant templates -- vB uses ~150 templates or HTML snippets to generate forum pages) as an XML file which can be reimported later.

- As we do a lot of product reviews we make extensive use of a 'Table' BBCode to structure reviews - is any such functionality available in vB?

You can invent the same kinds of bbCodes as phpBB, but as always, explaining how to do a table to an end user is fraught with complexity.

You can certainly do some bbCodes like (examples, may need tweaking!):
[table][/table]
which turns into
<table style="border-width: 1px solid blue; background-color: #DDDDFF;" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4">{option}</table>
and
[table_column][/table_column]
which turns into
<tr>{option}</tr>
and
[table_row][/table_row]
which turns into
<td>{option}</td>
etc.

For example:
[table]
[table_column][table_row]Type:[/table_row][table_row]Brandywine Tomato[/table_row][/table_column]
[table_column][table_row]Description:[/table_row][table_row]Pink Beefsteak[/table_row][/table_column]
[/table]


There is an add-on at vBulletin.org which allows you to turn on HTML within posts but only for certain trusted usergroups like Administrators and maybe a group you create called "Authors" or "Reviewers".