The forums - an introduction to vB

[Martz]

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

• 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

I could waffle on all day about what It can do, I'm sure you will be able to find the features yourself. But lets get to what it can't do, as I am sure some people will feel that Ezboard is better.

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!

* To be introduced in the future. However some of the hacks available at vbulletin.com reduce the integrity of the forums and database, which is not a good thing. The best way for new features to be introduced is to wait for them to be added to the official upgrades.

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

 

[Martz]

Bit of an update

Tips for getting around the forums quickly and using all of vB's functionality.

Jump to last post

shows that there is a new post in this topic, and lets you jump straight too it. Usefull for large threads, saves having to load up the main page, and then go to the last page, scroll down to the last post... etc. This does it for you. Simple but effective

Smilies
Make sure you learn the new smilie names in vB. :lol doesn't work here like Ezboard - the standard ones such as and are obviously :) and :( but they mostly follow this :standard:

Attachments
On certain forums you can upload attachments straight to the forums. This is good for pictures, text files, png files etc. If you want to add multiple attachments, the only method at the moment is to edit your post and choose to keep the existing upload and add another. This is being developed to allow multiple files.

 

[UK_Warrior]

50,000,000
sixth will be pleased :cool:

 

[Cazzy]

hehe

 

[Rob1000100]

Things have come a lonnnnnnnnnnng way!

 

[CaHiLl]