A Review of vBulletin
The Choice for Professional Fan sites
If you have been a regular at the DS Ultimate forums recently, which you can easily reach from the side bar, you will have learnt that I have bought a vBulletin license for a lot of money, and am currently using the latest version for my forum personally. I will now say that it is well worth the money, and just so useful.
Installing is easy (but not so much quick)
vBulletin may be one of the only forum software products that requires you to edit php code directly to configure the installation, but what this does not mean is that it is going to be a difficult piece to set up. Basically, you just edit what and where the manual tells you in one file and upload, simple as that. Then it is just a matter of mainly clicking ok about 14 times after accessing the install.php file. However, I will warn you not to try this with a slow connection, or using Internet Explorer as an FTP product. The reason here is that Internet Explorer will likely cut out after a time, and this will require you uploading a whole load of folders it missed separately. Oh, and the upload time does take about 20 minutes, so be warned.
The features work well
Now, what this forum is known best forum is the huge variety in features that can be altered, and version 3.6.4 is certainly good in this respect, requiring no hacks at all to get many of the most wanted features running (unlike that annoying Invisionfree and phpbb!). You can edit the FAQ and profile fields with a few clicks and some typing, add a reputation system with a few clicks and no hacks at all, add your own BB code and much much more! Seriously, just experiment with the admin control panel for a while after you set it up, as you will soon find tons of hidden features you can use to your best advantage lurking away in all the menus!
It looks good...
Just to note this, I fully disagree with those people who say Invision Power Board has the best default layout, as the vBulletin one absolutely smashes it in professionalism. So yeah, it looks good already at first, and is even better in how you can edit the CSS and images to get a very nice looking, well customised forum. The only thing I miss from Invision Power Board though is an individual image changing menu, to change the image used for each part of the board. But everything else is good!
However, is it right for your forum?
I cannot deny the next part. While it is good for many, many professional fan sites and the like, I will admit that it is probably not right for two kinds of communities:
Those that are very techno unsmart, and cannot set up and alter the forum settings so easily.
And those 'Set up a forum for a clan for Mario Kart DS in one week' message boards which generally never get that big, and are left to die quickly. However, big clans would be recommended to use vBulletin.
So if you are someone who does not know any HTML, CSS or PHP, is too non techno savy to let near any raw code and has a habit of breaking forums, you may want a remote hosted or at least idiot proof solution. Also, if you are setting a forum up because 'Its in the popular thing to do around the playground', vBulletin, or any commercial software is most likely overkill, and costing too much for about 2 weeks of activity.
However, if you are a professional fan site trying to get together a real community, or a big bussiness needing a support forum, then you can do no better than using vBulletin. Remember, this is a sure case of 'You get what you pay for!'
95%