VBulletin 3 or something in .NET?

[Rob Weaver]

For the last couple of years we have been using vBulletin 2 on our website and it has been excellent. This month, we are doing a total rebuild of the website - a total new look and feel. Our programmers are using an updated CMS program based on .NET and are recommending that we move to a .NET forum solution (This is mainly because they do not understand PHP.).

Because I've had a couple of years experience with vB I would prefer to stay in the family.

How difficult would it be and what would be the cost of having it installed for us?

[Zachery]

I'm sorry Rob, I don't totally follow what your asking here.
how diffucult would what be? and having what installed?

[Rob Weaver]

Hi Zachery. I'm not a programmer, just a user, so I may not be able to answer the technical things. However, here goes ...

At the moment, we use vB2 which has been integrated into our page design - not just "skinned" but integrated. The forum is just one element of the page. We use a CMS system to update the other areas of the page, including the LATEST NEWS section, the left and right columns and the navbar. See www.panthers.com.au

We will be updating to a later version of the CMS and this time we will not tightly integrate the forum into the rest of the page - it will be treated simply as a component that can be added or moved as required.

Ideally, I would like to see a simplified sub-set of forum features on the front page (maybe just the names of the five latest threads that had been added to, the name of the user who added it and the time). Clicking on the thread name would take you to that thread.

Apart from the forum, our programmers work in .NET and use an SQL server.

Does any of that make sense to you? I'm not sure I have explained it well but a look at the existing site might help.

The problem is that our programmers do not understand PHP and if we were to install vb3 they would need to have it done by someone who does.

Cheers, Rob.

[Zachery]

Alright, thats abit easier to anwser

Its possible to get the last few latest threads via XML/RSS and JavaScript. That doesn't require any php knowleged whatso ever .

If you have good well versed programers, they should be at least able to follow the flow of the code.

As you know vBulletin requires php and mysql. php and mysql can run along side of sql server and asp(.net) and even on a windows machine.

We do provide installation for vBulletin, but not for php and mysql.

[Rob Weaver]

Thanks for that. I will get them to come in and have a look around.