Skinning + Speed

[FlamingMetroidzd]

I've been thinking about purchasing vBulletin for a number of weeks now. Currently, I have a personal forum in severe depression state on InvisionFree. Some of that might be the fault of the current topic (videogame: Metroid) and state of the main website, but I can't help but notice the forum just isn't great at all. My plans are to remake the topic and set up the forum as the main website itself.

I've been through some pretty gruesome situations, so I think I'll be able to get through the import alright... but I have two concerns:

-- Skinning: I'm into computer graphics, and have gotten decent at it... so I hope to make the design nice. I've probed around many vB forums to see examples of skins, and most aren't very good-looking (even when the links say they are). However, there are a few that are very nice. I want to know exactly how hard is it to skin at the higher level. Is it about the coding/setting up/modding, or is it more of a matter of skill on the designer's part?

-- Speed: Some of my research yields that vB isn't very good for fast browsing. How much is a matter of the hosting, and are there methods to speed it up--that aren't insane to implement?

Thanks!

[TomJames]

I've been thinking about purchasing vBulletin for a number of weeks now. Currently, I have a personal forum in severe depression state on InvisionFree. Some of that might be the fault of the current topic (videogame: Metroid) and state of the main website, but I can't help but notice the forum just isn't great at all. My plans are to remake the topic and set up the forum as the main website itself.

I've been through some pretty gruesome situations, so I think I'll be able to get through the import alright... but I have two concerns:

-- Skinning: I'm into computer graphics, and have gotten decent at it... so I hope to make the design nice. I've probed around many vB forums to see examples of skins, and most aren't very good-looking (even when the links say they are). However, there are a few that are very nice. I want to know exactly how hard is it to skin at the higher level. Is it about the coding/setting up/modding, or is it more of a matter of skill on the designer's part?

-- Speed: Some of my research yields that vB isn't very good for fast browsing. How much is a matter of the hosting, and are there methods to speed it up--that aren't insane to implement?

Thanks!

Skinning

In my opinion it's all about the designer, as for making it, well I haven't made a skin yet myself so I can't comment. I think the skin(s) that I use on my site are as attractive as the ones on InvisionFree.

Speed

vB is very fast when setup correctly, some people put far too many hacks on which slow the site in the same way too many hacks on IF does. Again my site is very speedy to browse, especially once you've cached the site on the first visit.


One word of warning, importing from InvisionFree is rather difficult I believe because they use a modified version of IB 1.3. (At least I think they do...)