Beyond Entry Level - vBCloud for something basic?

[Jimco]

Apologies in advance for posting something so basic, and for sure I don't want to demean vBulletin along the way. That said, for the moment I'm here to gather basic opinion about vBCloud for use as a strict communication medium only.

I've recently joined a Board of Directors that oversees nothing more than the main private roadway and electric gate access at our semi-private community built in a canyon. The organization is called the Placerita Canyon Corporation (PCC). Today and same as it's been since the inception in the mid-90's, the Community can only communicate with PCC via voicemail at a generally unmanned but monitored telephone number. The PCC controls gate access privileges via application and renewal, available to any and all bonafide community members as well as some renters with the proper proof of residency. The gate access application and renewal process currently happens via paper and payment by check only. Yes this is happening in 2018.

So at our recent annual meeting I agree with several of the community members that communications and method of payment between the Community and the PCC needs to improve. That said, this is a small community of approximately 250 homes, and the PCC is not an HOA. The Board is volunteer only and currently 5 members. None of us has time to make this a job, and strangely in the eyes of most forums we're not looking to increase forum attendance because the audience is fixed.

I'm a fan of many technical and hobby forums, so I generally know how they work. I'm not an electronics techie, so as I'm the one to volunteer the new communication effort, actually building a forum will not be a breeze. Our goals are ridiculously simple. 1) Provide an open communication medium between the Community and the PCC for purposes of road and gate discussion only. We are not interested in any form of social media otherwise, though we do need to foster mobile access to the forum. 2) Hopefully through the forum provide the ability and a path to the gate access application for electronic transfer both directions. 3) Hopefully through the forum a link to PayPal in an effort to provide an electronic way to submit and receive payments. That's it.....period.

Hopefully I'm making sense here. Big picture, the Board has determined that a website is not necessary. I'm interested in any again basic opinion of vBCloud toward our simple and purposely limited goals.

Happy Thanksgiving.

[BirdOPrey5]

Hello,

Generally it sounds like vBCloud would serve your needs. One issue would be how to limit registration to only the members of the community, there is no great way of doing that. You can set a custom question that must be answered correctly during registration, something only community members would know, or even some code you setup that you email to the community if you have such a system in place, but you may not.

Other than keeping the membership restricted you could certainly make separate forums for your various needs. There is a setting in the Admin CP -> Channel Management -> Channel Permissions that you can edit for any channel (AKA forum) and set "Can View Others Topics" to "No" for Registered Users. This means in those forums register users can submit applications or or whatever you want and only the Administrator(s) and the person who submitted it can see the content, other regular users will not be able to.

You could put instructions on what to submit in a Notice or Announcement for that channel.

I would strongly suggest you try our free 7 day demo, see if it is working as your expect, and if so you can easily transition that directly to a vBCloud membership. If you start with a monthly payment there really isn't much risk. Once you're sure it works you can switch to annual payment for extra savings if you're so inclined.

The trial is available at: https://www.vbulletin.com/en/vb5-trial/

[Jimco]

Thanks for your response Joe. I'm glad you bring up the registration issue, because it could be problematic for the Board. Our goal is to allow entry to and participation in the Forum only by those residents of the community that are current gate card holders in good standing. This means they would have a PCC application on file with us, and we would allow registration to the Forum with the use of their real name as it appears on the application only.

There are a small number of community residents that do not have application with the PCC because they choose not to hold a gate card. These people are residents, they just can't access the community via the gate on the east side of the canyon. The west side of the canyon is open to all including the general public, they just can't get in or out the east end.

So for sure we will definitely need a way to accept and deny registration and entry to the Forum, for which the Board intends to screen every registration request. If there's not an easy way to automatically and/or generically limit the registration, could all requests go to Admin and/or Mods for approval or denial? Please elaborate if you're able.

Thank you.

[BirdOPrey5]

You can screen every request, yes. This is called "User Moderation" and each user needs approval by an Administrator after registering. If you are OK with that manual verification step then it is no problem.