Questions concerning features of vBulletin

[Irvine]

Hello, we will set up a new forum and although we probably buy a license for vBulletin in any case, we still have many questions of what we can expect when we have purchased vBulletin and use it. For the past year, we have used phpBB (3.0.x) as free forumsoftware, but our community became somewhat bigger and due to some problems, we want to start a new, ‘clean’ forum. We were satisfied with phpBB at the start, but we encountered many bugs ; bugs that the phpBB staff could not solve. However, phpBB of course also had many good things we liked, and due to our ‘past’ in phpBB, we want to know what is going to change. Therefore, we have brainstormed about many questions whether things were possible with vBulletin, to know what we will be facing. There are, quite a lot of things (sorry for that -.-) of which we were wondering if those were possible, so I think it would be much easier to quote this post and mark a sentence green when it is possible, and mark it red when it is not possible, not even with modifications whatsoever. When a question is formulated not clearly, or when it is hard to say whether something is possible or not because it differs per case, please explain what is not clear or not possible, or what is linked with terms. It is not necessary to say how these features can be made possible, but whether they are possible.

General
- The possibility to install an own wiki(pedia) and use it as a subdomain
- The possibility to take all userdata (logins and their passwords) to subdomains, so that the users only have to register once, but have access to all subdomains. For example, all our users are registered on forum.padam.nl, but suddenly we have another subdomain e.g. wiki.padam.nl or frontpage.padam.nl, and once you are registered on the forum (or on the frontpage), that you are automatically registered on the other subdomains.
- A trash can for posts, and the possibility to disable normal users, moderators and administrators to delete posts. They may only move posts to the trash can, so that a post will never be physically removed from the forum and database, and the total forum post count is always synchronous with the postcount which can be found in the link.

Registration
- The option to allow only (capital) letters, numbers and single spaces in a username. Thus, no weird signs such as *_)@# or double spaces.

Forumindex
- Sort all users on the index at “Currently active users” in a way that the user with the most recent action is placed on the top left, and the user with the last action in the past 15 minutes is placed bottom right.

Profiles
- The option for the administrator to increase, decrease, or synchronize post counts of specific users.

Posts
- The possibility for the administrator to adjust posting times of posts, and the authors of posts.
- Give users a warning when someone has reacted between the time that this user was reading a topic and wanted to post a reply, and ask if they still want to reply (preferably also with the Quick Reply)
- When an image is quoted, not quote the image, but quote the link to it. For example, when a [ img]picture.com/picture.jpg [ /img]is posted, and someone quotes this picture, he will quote [ url=picture.com/picture.jpg]Image[ /url], instead of the whole picture.
- When a post has been edited by a moderator or the user itself, mention by who and on what time it is posted. However, do not mention this when it is edited by an administrator.

Well, that are all the things we could think of and of which we find important at our new forum. Apologies for such a long post and ‘wish list’, but we just want to know what we can expect. It does not matter, if questions are not answered since we are asking so many, of which some very complicated, but we are satisfied with any answer that brings us information concerning these features.

[JVCode]

I'm unable to provide an answer to all your questions, but the majority of which you can test out the functionality for yourself using the VBulletin DEMO

[Irvine]

Allright, that reduced the list by half or something. Still, we could not have tested everything, or find everything as administrator in the demo, so we still have some question marks whether several things are possible. We realize very well that we are asking quite much, but we are satisfied with every answer that helps us.

[beishe8]

We realize very well that we are asking quite much...

Reduce your list of questions,someone might answer them.

[Irvine]

Reduce your list of questions,someone might answer them.

Please do not reply with posts if you only are frustrating us instead of helping. I could also open 20 topics with every question seperately. As you can read in the openingspost, we are satisfied when parts of the openingspost are quoted and sentences is marked in green when the feature is possible, and in red when it isnt. For example that someone quotes like this:

Posts
- The possibility for the administrator to adjust posting times of posts, and the authors of posts.
- Give users a warning when someone has reacted between the time that this user was reading a topic and wanted to post a reply, and ask if they still want to reply (preferably also with the Quick Reply)
- When an image is quoted, not quote the image, but quote the link to it. For example, when a [ img]picture.com/picture.jpg [ /img]is posted, and someone quotes this picture, he will quote [ url=picture.com/picture.jpg]Image[ /url], instead of the whole picture.
- When a post has been edited by a moderator or the user itself, mention by who and on what time it is posted. However, do not mention this when it is edited by an administrator.

This would not take too much effort to answer all of our questions, was our idea. Also, I have said that it is no problem when you can't answer all questions, so your reply is only irritating. Could a moderator delete this post and the post I am quoting btw, because it kinda slows the topic.

[Coreye]

1) Is it legal to purchase vBulletin when you are younger than 18 years, or should I ask an adult to register for me?

The payment processor you use to purchase vBulletin may require you to be 18 but I don't think vBulletin does. They don't say it any where in the license agreement. I would ask the payment processor you plan on using.

2) Some forum softwares are ‘Free and Open-sourced’, and others, such as vBulletin, are not. What is exactly the difference? I have read that Free and open-source means that you do not have to pay for the software and you can look through, modify and restribute the sourcecode, but I do not exactly know what I have to understand. What are exactly the restrictions when you are not ‘Free and Open-sourced’, apart from that you have to pay for it?

vBulletin is visible source. You can see the source code and make modifications to it at your own risk. Modifications to vBulletin are unsupported. Open Source software is usually free. vBulletin is not.

[trojan646]

2) Some forum softwares are ‘Free and Open-sourced’, and others, such as vBulletin, are not. What is exactly the difference? I have read that Free and open-source means that you do not have to pay for the software and you can look through, modify and restribute the sourcecode, but I do not exactly know what I have to understand. What are exactly the restrictions when you are not ‘Free and Open-sourced’, apart from that you have to pay for it?

Generally, Open-Source software is software that you may redistribute, modify and mold it into your own creation. However, some "Open-Source" licenses allow you to repackage and sell the source code.

vBulletin has some similarities to this, the first thing (this is my understanding, if I'm wrong, just point it out) that you are not allowed to use, or modify the source of vBulletin without buying it. Unlike with Windows where you're not allowed to look at, or modify the code, even if you bought it.

If you however own the license or whatever, you're allowed to modify the code for your own personal use, or make extentions to the vBulletin code itself (like a plugin). Unlike Open-Source software, you are NOT allowed to redisturbute the source of vBulletin, you may not give out copies of it and you are not allowed to take the code, rename it and call it your own.

Hope this helpped

/considering buying vBulletin for my ever-expanding forum

[Irvine]

Ok, I think we understand. Thanks for answering both. The only things that we have to ask then is whether the features are possible or are not. I removed everything from the openingspost of which we know the answer about.

[feldon23]

- The possibility to take all userdata (logins and their passwords) to subdomains, so that the users only have to register once, but have access to all subdomains.

vBulletin Login System is currently a sealed box and there is no support for opening it up to other scripts, add-ons, etc. Obviously this is a serious problem and the response is always "vBulletin does not support this type of setup and would require a substantial code modification, sorry!"

Hopefully vBulletin 4.0 will be a bit more open, since everyone needs CMS, eCommerce, WebMail, and vBulletin needs to talk to all of it otherwise people will have to switch to something else!

vBulletin is the best, most professional forum software out there. People have dumped $10,000 forum software and switch to vBulletin because it is better, BUT the user system is "Closed". Perhaps you can modify or find a Plugin for MediaWiki to talk to vBulletin to have one shared login.

- A trash can for posts, and the possibility to disable normal users, moderators and administrators to delete posts.

Create a "Recycle Bin" forum and hide it from all but Administrators.

You can allow users to "Soft Delete" (keep a copy) or "Hard Delete" at your discretion. vBulletin 3.7 also adds Post Edit History so you can retrace user edits on a post.

- The index of the administration panel has an own elaborate “Currently active users”, with all active users, their location and IP-adresses.

Why would you go to the AdminCP for this? "Currently Active Users" link on the FORUM HOME page contains all the details you mention. You can control "Advanced Who's Online" information for certain users (Admin) and not Users.

- The possibility to adjust the PHP-files via the administration panel. If this is not possible, the possibility to adjust them via FTP.

Nobody edits PHP files in vBulletin unless absolutely necessary. phpBB, you have to make massive hacks to PHP files to accomplish what you want. In vBulletin, 99% of the time, you write a Plugin or Template Modification without editing ANY files. If you really must edit PHP files, then you do that through FTP.

- The option to allow only (capital) letters, numbers and single spaces in a username. Thus, no weird signs such as *_)@# or double spaces.

Yes, there are Valid and Invalid Username Characters. This is done as a REGEX.

- An option where spambots are not smart enough to register, in a way that registration is not experienced as annoying for new users.

vBulletin has the most advanced anti-spam now. It has GD2 multicolor, multifont, multipattern with multiple backgrounds, it has ReCaptcha (which I like the best), it has question-response (What color is a Stop sign?), and it also supports the very expensive Akismet antispam 3rd party solution.

- Sort all users on the index at “Currently active users” in a way that the user with the most recent action is placed on the top left, and the user with the last action in the past 15 minutes is placed bottom right.

You would have to write some kind of Plugin for this functionality.

- Filtrate the posts of a user in a certain topic, to give a overall picture of all posts of a certain user is a certain topic

This is not built into vBulletin. I think you would have to do some pretty substantial modifications to accomplish this.

- The possibility to resize avatars to 100x100, no matter what the original size was, en no matter the users want to have his or her avatar smaller or bigger than 100x100

This is not built in, since the avatars would look stupid/ugly. But you can just make a simple template edit to force 100 x 100 pixels if you really want.

- Show genders in profile

Add custom profile field and display it. There are also add-ons at vBulletin.org.

- A maximum signature of two rules

There are over 20 options for Signature font, size, lines, pictures, etc.

- The option for the administrator to increase, decrease, or synchronize post counts of specific users.

You can edit post count for a user, but if you Rebuild Users, then it goes back to the actual # of posts of that user.

- The possibility to mark all posts in a certain subforum as ‘read’

This is built-in.

- The possibility for the administrator to adjust posting times of posts, and the authors of posts.

This is a 3rd party add-on at vBulletin.org

- Give users a warning when someone has reacted between the time that this user was reading a topic and wanted to post a reply, and ask if they still want to reply (preferably also with the Quick Reply)

There might be an add-on at vBulletin.org. This is built into phpBB. Hopefully it comes to vBulletin some day.

- When an image is quoted, not quote the image, but quote the link to it. For example, when a [ img]picture.com/picture.jpg [ /img]is posted, and someone quotes this picture, he will quote [ url=picture.com/picture.jpg]Image[ /url], instead of the whole picture.
- When a post has been edited by a moderator or the user itself, mention by who and on what time it is posted. However, do not mention this when it is edited by an administrator.

Might be some add-on at vBulletin.org, I don't know.

2) Some forum softwares are ‘Free and Open-sourced’, and others, such as vBulletin, are not. What is exactly the difference? I have read that Free and open-source means that you do not have to pay for the software and you can look through, modify and restribute the sourcecode, but I do not exactly know what I have to understand. What are exactly the restrictions when you are not ‘Free and Open-sourced’, apart from that you have to pay for it?

vBulletin is Viewable Source, but it is not free software. Open source, you get the software for free, but you are on-your-own for tech support. Which is what you are experiencing with phpBB. You cannot redistribute the vBulletin software. You purchase vBulletin and agree to install it on ONE website. If you want to move it somewhere else, then you can do that, but you must notify vBulletin. You cannot take one vBulletin and install it many different places.

Apologies for such a long post and ‘wish list’, but we just want to know what we can expect.

I prefer 1 list to multiple threads by 1 person. It's better to have it all in one place.