Any large commercial players using VB?

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  • irishdave
    New Member
    • Dec 2001
    • 8

    Any large commercial players using VB?

    Hi everyone :-)

    I am trying my best to convince people where I work that we should migrate to VB from eShare ...grrrr.....

    I have given some examples of large communities in play, but I am being told that they would like to see large, commercial and reputable websites who have implemented VB.

    All I can find so far is Tiscali - http://www.tiscali.co.uk/forums/
    - (large pan-Eurpopean ISP who recently made the move). I would be dead-chuffed if anyone could mention any other heavyweight commercial types who have implemented VB.

    From what I can see so far, VB has been implemented for the most part on both tech and gaming communities.

    Also!.... I really liked how sitepointforums.com implemented an effective advertising platform within their community and would be grateful if anyone has any examples of similar ad pushes.

    My sincere thanks in advance

    Cheers

    Dave
  • Floris
    Senior Member
    • Dec 2001
    • 37767

    #2
    More forums that have chosen to be 'listed';



    I have found many forums of companies with over 10K of members..

    On the frontpage of vb dot com you can see

    Infogrames Community

    vBulletin powers the community of Infogrames, the developers of Unreal Tournament!
    I think that is pretty impressive too!

    And I can think up several reasons why this board beats the rest!

    It is written in PHP
    It has MySQL as back-end
    It is secure
    It is fast
    It is dynamic/flexible enough to totally integrate into existing web site
    etc.

    And so worth its money!

    Comment

    • irishdave
      New Member
      • Dec 2001
      • 8

      #3
      Thanks!

      Hey Scott. Greetings xiphoid. Many thanks for the replies.

      No - what our competitors do is not that important. I know where you're coming from though

      It seems that the price of VB and what it offers compared to the likes of Webx and Infopop's OpenTopic is just too good to be true. They're wondering why large websites such as FT, NYTimes, iVillage, Handbag.com opt for such expensive packages when VB claims it can do much much more and is so damn cheap

      It baffles me why companies seem prepared to pay out so much on the likes of WebX or InfoPop's offering when they can get it all here for next to nothing. I'm sure you understand. Even though Jelsoft don't market their product much, most Community Managers do appear to be aware of it yet many of the 'portal gang' have bypassed it for more expensive a less able products - from what I can tell.

      I love VB and can not get over just how many features there is on offer and I'm desparate to push a migration to VB here where I work. However, given what a shambles our current boards software is turning out to be, I can understand their interest in going with the flow and going with something that's 'big' in the commercial sense of the word...as have FT, NYTimes and so on...

      I'm rambling.... ....... but I will continue my best to convert and may need more help from these boards.

      Cheers - very useful and much appreciated.

      Dave

      Comment

      • qasic
        Member
        • May 2001
        • 77

        #4
        (I'm not familiar with WebX or other BB systems so I'll just compare OpenTopic to hosting your own vB)

        A lot of these large companies use OpenTopic just because it's proven to be capable of handling of tons and tons of traffic. That's why it is so expensive. Some of these factors:

        1) Uses Oracle as the database back end
        2) Hosted @ Exodus Communcations (the same company which hosts Microsoft, Yahoo, and other large companies)
        3) The Exodus Seattle Data Center is very close to Infopop's corporation so if any problems crop up, they can visit the datacenter immediately.

        At such a premium price, you're paying for reliability and stability. The toss up for buying products such as vBulletin is the following:

        1) You can totally customize the layout and integration with your site.
        2) You need to spend a lot of time configuring your database server to get the most of it (do a search for Overgrow for example - he's had to tweak his MySQL settings to make sure MySQL performs efficiently as possible)
        3) You can directly access and manipulate data.

        There's a tons of other things but if you're willing to spend the time (which is most costly for a lot of people), you're better off with vBulletin. If you don't have that much time, you may prefer to look @ other options such as WebX (don't they sell like a complete server package??).

        qasic

        Comment

        • Floris
          Senior Member
          • Dec 2001
          • 37767

          #5
          Originally posted by s.molinari
          That's what's missing. The big price tag. It's the old adage,"If doesn't cost a lot it can't be worth sh.....much." But au contrair.

          Tell your company vB costs $2000 per month and send the "Rent" to my account. Then everyone will be happy. hehe

          Scott
          I think this is true,
          because it is 'cheap' for companies, it doesn't look 'worth it'.
          Let them buy a bulk license

          Comment

          • irishdave
            New Member
            • Dec 2001
            • 8

            #6
            Thanks Qasic for that info. It will be useful.

            Cheers again guys- I'll set up an account now with a rental tag set at £2000 per month ....

            What are ye like?!

            I'll be back in here again, no doubt with more questions but for now - a big thumbs up.

            Dave

            Comment

            • Wayne Luke
              vBulletin Technical Support Lead
              • Aug 2000
              • 73981

              #7
              Internet.com is arguably one of the largest properties on the Internet today. They have implemented vBulletin on their Flashkit.com website.

              Also vBulletin is used by Winamp's site which in turn is owned by AOL/Time-Warner. AOL/Time-Warner is the largest media company in the world.

              Terra Lycos is also using vBulletin on their Asian property.

              Several different performers use our software as well including Courtney Love from Hole and Linkin Park.

              For entertainment companies you can find companies like Infogrames using vBulletin.

              There are many other large sites out there using the software as well. One thing you won't see is sites using vBulletin shutting down their forums because of escalating costs like CNN recently had to do and Ziff-Davis had to do awhile back (though Ziff-Davis' might be back not sure haven't been there in a long time).

              <Speaking as myself and not a representative of Jelsoft>
              I could also argue that running a large vBulletin forum is fairly costly as well. You had mentioned SitePoint and our ad platform. The forums there are very costly to run not in the software and the hosting but the time we put into developing the community and nurturing it along the way. We chose to put the resources into that instead of software because it will be more beneficial to the organization in the long run.

              With the programming talent we have at SitePoint we could have developed our own solution but the cost savings of investing in vBulletin was humongous.
              </end self-exression>
              Last edited by Wayne Luke; Thu 4 Apr '02, 12:03am.
              Translations provided by Google.

              Wayne Luke
              The Rabid Badger - a vBulletin Cloud demonstration site.
              vBulletin 5 API

              Comment

              • irishdave
                New Member
                • Dec 2001
                • 8

                #8
                Thanks

                Many thanks for the pointers, Wayne. This will be extremely useful.

                Again my thanks to everyone for their help on this thread.

                Take care,

                Dave
                Last edited by irishdave; Thu 4 Apr '02, 12:54am.

                Comment

                • Franky
                  Member
                  • Jun 2001
                  • 59

                  #9
                  I work at ntl and we will probably base a site on vBulletin in the near future, having seen how successful it is at www.nthellworld.com/forum

                  Anyone want to comment on the type of hardware/best software that a forum such as the flashkit one would need to run?

                  Comment

                  • Wayne Luke
                    vBulletin Technical Support Lead
                    • Aug 2000
                    • 73981

                    #10
                    I don't know the specs of many forums except for SitePoint. Currently the SitePoint Forums (link in my signature) is running on a 650 Mhz Athlon Server with 18.1 gigabytes of disk space and 512 megabytes of RAM. It has been highly optimized to handle our loads and vBulletin.

                    We are in the process of setting up a new server for the forums that will have Dual 1.4 Ghz Processors, 2 Gigabytes of RAM and 100 GB of RAID storage. This will give us room to expand for the next 18-24 months at which time we will look to upgrade again.
                    Translations provided by Google.

                    Wayne Luke
                    The Rabid Badger - a vBulletin Cloud demonstration site.
                    vBulletin 5 API

                    Comment

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