Pre-sales question

[AndySV1K]

Hi Forum,

Ive just registered and have a pre sales question, ive looked around the forum a while but couldnt see anything on this. Appologies if this has been covered already.

I am looking at purchasing a licence, once downloaded, is it possible to build and setup the whole forum on my pc first? i have little knowledge of setting up a forum so would like to get it right before it goes live. Alternatively can it be uploaded but kept hidden? I think i have found myself a decent hosting company who seem to offer what i want.

i ended up here from being a member on another forum, i was so impressed by it all i had to look into doing my own, after finding this site and looking at the forum, im not even going to bother looking around for comparisons, it has to be vBulletin for me.

Thanks

Andy.

[ManagerJosh]

Hey Andy:

Welcome to vBulletin! Yes it is possible to setup everything on your PC, but you'll need PHP 4.3.10 and MySQL 3.2.33 installed as well.

You can also setup a test installation as well.

The license agreement states:
If you have a valid license, you may set up an additional test forum in order to test code, template and database modifications. To make this clear to us and our license verification procedures, place it in a directory called 'testvb' and be sure to password protect it. It must not be accessible by the general public.

Hope that helps!

[AndySV1K]

Thanks for that. Im on the verge of buying now!


If i upload to allow me to setup, can i password protect the forum with the software itself or would i need to use a third party protection for it?

Also, one more question (sorry)

Can i create a standard HTML website as a home page with just a link to the forums? The forum im a member of i think uses VBadvanced, but i want to keep it a bit more simple initially, i just want a home page that i can keep updating, then a link to the forum.

Thanks

Andy.

[Icheb]

The easiest way to password protect your forum would be to use .htaccess protection.
And to your second question: That's no problem at all.

[AndySV1K]

Thanks Icheb


Andy.