Why not use the CMS as homepage?

[Whizkid789]

Hello vBulletin! I just want to say why do you not use the CMS for the main homepage? Basically many people look at that as "vBulletin don't use their CMS for homepage because it ain't good enough for the customers" I look at it like that too.

[feldon23]

Because it's a sales site. Most sites selling a CMS don't use their own CMS as the entry page.

[Shamil.]

Because it's a sales site. Most sites selling a CMS don't use their own CMS as the entry page.

Invision Power Services.

[sadikb]

The CMS out of the box with standard functionality will not be able to achieve what they have at their landing page. They can do it with some customization but then that will open another can of worms. It's more a question of UI then functionality actually.

[cSkins]

The CMS out of the box with standard functionality will not be able to achieve what they have at their landing page. They can do it with some customization but then that will open another can of worms. It's more a question of UI then functionality actually.

That basically sums it up. The CMS is good for what it does, and for practical purposes it shouldn't be bloated with so many features that it can emulate vBulletin's current homepage without customization. Meanwhile, vBulletin's homepage should not be restricted to usage of their standard CMS if they want to maximize the homepage's features and aesthetic appeal [and thereby vBulletin's promotional effectiveness]. To use a customized vBulletin CMS for the homepage would present issues like the one sadikb stated, and might also cause some confusion among potential customers with regards to what exactly is or is not included in the standard CMS. Furthermore, a customized CMS probably still wouldn't have the freedom in implementing various features and content that the current homepage has.

[Ryan Ashbrook]

On the contrary, with the CMS' new-ish PHP Eval functionality it's highly possible to do without any core code modifications. Would require a hell of a lot of pages, though.

[Alfa1]

Because the CMS is currently an article system. Not a portal system or a CMS.
Its certainly not good at what it does.

[Ryan Ashbrook]

Because the CMS is currently an article system. Not a portal system or a CMS.
Its certainly not good at what it does.

Odd, considering I'm building my Final Fantasy site using it. Which wholly relies on Content Management.

[Alfa1]

Odd, considering I'm building my Final Fantasy site using it. Which wholly relies on Content Management.

That sounds interesting. Could you please explain what content you manage with the CMS and if you mean articles then what workflow for authors do you use?

What do you think about the performance issues, the SEO issues, the comments in forum issue and the bugs? Do they impact your new project?

I just checked out your 3.8 website and it looks very nice. I will be very interested to see what you create with vb4.

[Ryan Ashbrook]

That sounds interesting. Could you please explain what content you manage with the CMS and if you mean articles then what workflow for authors do you use?

What do you think about the performance issues, the SEO issues, the comments in forum issue and the bugs? Do they impact your new project?

I just checked out your 3.8 website and it looks very nice. I will be very interested to see what you create with vb4.

The only articles contained within the site will be the ones on the index. As that will be a news feed. I have staff that will post the Articles. Everything else will be static pages divided up into various sections.

I'll likely be changing most of the Article posting page, as I don't like it currently. I'll probably also address the look and feel of a news article to mimic that of my current site. The reason my current site has no content is because I have no easy way to manage it (it's a very old version of my custom framework).

Performance is going to be worked on. I'll likely implement a few things from Digital Point as well as my own changes which I'll then share with the vBulletin community. The SEO issues are not important to me at this time because for a site like mine, SE Optimization passed what is provided by vBulletin is irrelevant. People go to sites like mine to read about the games and gather information. Therefore, unique content comes above any SE optimization (see other sites in my niche, for the most part all of them are an SE nightmare yet they do amazingly well). I'll probably go with vBSEO sometime in the future but that will be the extent.

The comments in forum is a non-issue for me. It's just not important enough to change, and I do not expect many comments to be made on News Articles anyway. In my niche, no one cares enough to comment on News. They just read it. Any thoughts they have are usually posted in the forums.

The bugs, I'll fix when I come across them.

It'll be a lot of work as I have >15 games worth of content I have to populate myself, as well as ~10 major custom mods that need to be rewritten for the vB4 Framework. I do not expect it to happen until mid next year, if that.

[Alfa1]

Thanks for explaining.

Filling it with content yourself or even with the help of 8 staff members is a lot of work. This is one thing I referred to when I said that as an article system its not good at what it does. Because vbCMS currently doesnt offer a good article writing workflow. At least not as far as I can find it. I want my members to write hundreds of articles. I want my members to mark existing articles that are currently in forum, so that these can be published in the article system.

If my members could post to the CMS, use drafts and assigned moderators could then publish the articles, then that would be the basis of a good workflow. But currently I have to search articles in the adminCP myself, without any notification. My staff have no way to find unpublished content, except for combing trough each section and category. Thats not very feasible for a big board.

Please correct me if I am wrong about all this, but I have found no solutions.

For me it is important that my articles appear in google search and even google news. Mind that google news is a different search engine which has technical demands that vbulletin CMS does not meet in any way.

[Ryan Ashbrook]

The population of content for my site would not be any easier if I used another solution. I still have to write out hundreds of pages worth of content. That alone takes months, regardless of workflow.

[Alfa1]

Cant your members do that for you or at least take over part of it?

[Ryan Ashbrook]

Cant your members do that for you or at least take over part of it?

Of course they could, however it's more likely that I got offered a position on the vBulletin Staff before that ever happens.

[Alfa1]

In that case, it may be worth pondering over the idea of a wiki.