Some questions...

[rastachops]

Hi all

Im a webmaster of a small community (about 20ish very active posters) and im thinking of purchasing vBB.

Im currently using OpenBB but its not very refined (like vBB appears to be). It uses PHP & MySQL, like vBB. I know there are converters (posts, usernames etc) for UBB or IkonBoard, are there any for OpenBB? How difficult would it be to convert it? Although I wouldnt be able to code it myself id think it shouldnt be too difficult (anyone willing?).

Second point: ive been dabbling with PHP-nuke, this is gonna be setup soon and I wondered is it possible to integrate both PHP-nuke & vBB, so that users only have to register once for the both of them.

Thirdly and more importantly, when is vBB 3.0 due out and is it worth waiting until this is released until I purchase vBB? ie will it be easy to upgrade from 2.xx to 3?

Thanks

[Chen]

There is currently no OpenBB to vBulletin convertor I'm afraid.

If you plan to use a portal based on PHP, you shoulc consider using vbPortal, which is completely integrated with vBulletin.

vBulletin 3.0 is planned for sometime at Q1 2002, but there is still no accurate date.
I can't say how easy it will be to upgrade, but unless you install any hacks on your board it will be a breeze as always.

[rastachops]

Im interested in PHPnuke as its got loads of hacks for it and its free, is vbPortal the same? (ie free with a good hacks community).

How likely is it that any hacks I apply to the board will interfere with the upgrade to vbb3.0 ? I havent looked at the hacks yet, but I do like adding features to our forums.

[Chen]

Hacks will probably make it harder to upgrade, and you will most likely need to install these hacks all over again after the upgrade, since the code might change drastically.
It will also take a while for the hack writers to update their hacks to support the new version.

vbPortal is itself one big hack for vBulletin actually. Nonetheless it has some hacks as well:

http://www.phpportals.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=55

And yes it's free.

Don't forget that vbPortal was created especially for vBulletin and because of that very easy to install and use.
From what I've heard customizing PHP-Nuke to fit vBulletin is a hard task.

[rastachops]

Well vbportal should solve the problem with integrating the publishing with the forums, now its just a case of how easy it would be to transfer old usernames / posts from the db in OpenBB format to vBB / vbportal format.

[tubedogg]

vBPortal is actually originally based on PHPNuke.