For those of you that are new to vBulletin forums, I hope this primer is of some help.
vBulletin (vB) is probably one of the best forum packages available for the money. Powered by a mySQL database, it has the capactity to store 50,000,000+ posts without much performance loss. vB also offers customisation of every single part of its appearance, the potential to interact between other parts of the UTA site and to be scaled to cope with millions of users.
So why not Ubb, WWWThreads or some other forum software?
Ubb uses text files to store its information in the same way as Ezboard. Also Ubb (Ultimate Bullitin Board) and Ezboard need to create a brand new HTML page everytime a post is made. This is why the LOL thread, for example is so slow. vB isn't affected by this as each post is unique but appears to work in the same manner
Ubb is now onto version 6.x and still lacks many features available in Ezboard and vB as standard. Hacks and addons are available, but they are semi professional and usually cause problems.
vB / Ezboard comparrison
New features for the user
What vB can't do:
This post and list of pros and cons isn't supposed to try and convert you from Ezboard, I know some people love it - horses for courses However vB does offer the owners and admins a greater amount of flexability over what is essentially the most visited part of the site. vB being less bandwidth hungry due to using "Zend" and "gzip" techniqiues, compress the information before it is sent to the viewer - which is good for UTA (less expensive to run) and also for the end user (pages load quicker)
I hope I haven't missed anything out, I am sure I could rant on all day, as I personally think vB is the best thing since Holidays to the Moon.
Enjoy
vBulletin (vB) is probably one of the best forum packages available for the money. Powered by a mySQL database, it has the capactity to store 50,000,000+ posts without much performance loss. vB also offers customisation of every single part of its appearance, the potential to interact between other parts of the UTA site and to be scaled to cope with millions of users.
So why not Ubb, WWWThreads or some other forum software?
Ubb uses text files to store its information in the same way as Ezboard. Also Ubb (Ultimate Bullitin Board) and Ezboard need to create a brand new HTML page everytime a post is made. This is why the LOL thread, for example is so slow. vB isn't affected by this as each post is unique but appears to work in the same manner
Ubb is now onto version 6.x and still lacks many features available in Ezboard and vB as standard. Hacks and addons are available, but they are semi professional and usually cause problems.
vB / Ezboard comparrison
New features for the user
- Clickable smilies
- Calendar allowing you to post private events, and read public events posted by the admins
- Advanced vBCode (such as [ b ] making things bold [ /b ] and user console)
- Avatars database (personal picture)
- Upload attachments straight to the forums
- Advanced internal search engine to enable any post, or mutiple thousands of posts (if required) to be found in seconds.
- Private messaging between registered users (including webmail*)
- User control panel allowing many options to be changed, including: Thread subscriptions and e-mail notification, avatars, personal bio, PM management and lots more
- Style sheets to allow you to choose how the forums look, for example UT Assault Default or UT Assault Flash* (using flash instead of gif's) and UT Assault text Only*
- A lot more secure than Ezboard.
- Loads of other stuff
What vB can't do:
- Create a single login to be used Internet wide on other forums - your registration is restricted to this forum only.
- When posting you are returned the original thread instead of the forum home page.
- You cannot mark a single forum read*
- Anything else anyone can think of!
This post and list of pros and cons isn't supposed to try and convert you from Ezboard, I know some people love it - horses for courses However vB does offer the owners and admins a greater amount of flexability over what is essentially the most visited part of the site. vB being less bandwidth hungry due to using "Zend" and "gzip" techniqiues, compress the information before it is sent to the viewer - which is good for UTA (less expensive to run) and also for the end user (pages load quicker)
I hope I haven't missed anything out, I am sure I could rant on all day, as I personally think vB is the best thing since Holidays to the Moon.
Enjoy