Demo problems

[redraider]

Hi,

I have almost decided to buy vBulletin for the forums I am planning to start. However there are a few problems which I ran into during the demo that are making me uncomfortable.

Here is a list:
- Forum display level at the home page. Although I did go to the admin panel to set the display level as "5", it didnt hange the display level on any of the pages.
- No browse option when trying to insert a pitcture while posting a message on the forum. Does it have to be a http:// URL? I would like my users to be able to insert a piture in the post from their local computer.
- Doesnt ask/inform the user when he tries to go to a forum which requires registration/paid subsription
- Is there a provision to inlclude adsense/adbrite on side of the forum ?
- How do I show a "News" item on the first page instead of list of forums? News need not be an RSS feed, it can be something like "congrats to user 'X' for successfully completing puzzle Y".

Any guidance, help and suggestions will be greatly appreciated. I need to be able to make a deision by tomorrow [Monday] evening.

Thanks
redraider

[feldon23]

- Forum display level at the home page. Although I did go to the admin panel to set the display level as "5", it didnt hange the display level on any of the pages.

vBulletin has built-in support for displaying the contents of 2 levels of subforums. If you want to have more than 2 levels, it is reasonbly easy to add additional forumbit templates. I've never heard of anyone doing 5 levels but it's certainly possible. No programming required. Just creating a custom template for level 3, 4, and 5.

- No browse option when trying to insert a pitcture while posting a message on the forum. Does it have to be a http:// URL? I would like my users to be able to insert a piture in the post from their local computer.

To Attach an image, scroll down to the "Manage Attachments" button. It receives their files, automatically generates thumbnails if you wish, and resizes the images. There are many settings and options for attachments.

- Is there a provision to inlclude adsense/adbrite on side of the forum ?

This is trivial to do. You can display the adsense between the first and second post of each topic/thread. You can put it in the header and/or footer. Lots of places. 99% of the HTML and JavaScript used by vBulletin can be manipulated without editing any files.

- How do I show a "News" item on the first page instead of list of forums? News need not be an RSS feed, it can be something like "congrats to user 'X' for successfully completing puzzle Y".

You may wish to look at the vBAdvanced free add-on page for vBulletin.

Note that for an official sales response for vBulletin Sales, send an e-mail to [email protected].

I'm just a long-time vB user and fan.

[redraider]

[quote=feldon23;1223765]vBulletin has built-in support for displaying the contents of 2 levels of subforums. If you want to have more than 2 levels, it is reasonbly easy to add additional forumbit templates. I've never heard of anyone doing 5 levels but it's certainly possible. No programming required. Just creating a custom template for level 3, 4, and 5.

Thanks very much for the answers, that does give me more confidence.

However, I am still uncomfortable with this. In the admin panel there is a facility which allows to set the "Depth of Forums-Forums Display". what Do these not work? Or work in a different way?

Admin Panel -> VBulletin Options -> Forum Listings Display Options ->
"Depth of Forums - Forum Home"
"Depth of Forums - Forum Home"
"Depth of Sub-Forums"

I set both of these to 5. The forum page / home page should be changed to show all the 5 levels.

Please let me know where I am going wrong.

Thanks
redraider

[Steve Machol]

As feldon23 said, the maximum it will display is to level 2. You can go higher but this requires modifications. Also as he said, people rarely ever need to go higher.

[redraider]

Thanks,

So what are the below options for?

Admin Panel -> VBulletin Options -> Forum Listings Display Options ->
"Depth of Forums - Forum Home"
"Depth of Forums - Forum Home"
"Depth of Sub-Forums"

Also, who will be able to help me in making those custom template to show 3-4 levels?

[Steve Machol]

They are for setitng those depths. And as we've said setting this higher than '2' requires other modifications. Sorry I didn't make that clear.

[redraider]

Sorry, If I am troubling. I need to understand this before hand.

"Depth of Forums - Forum Home" option is described as " Depth to show forums on forum home forum listings. If you set this value to '2', forum listings will show the current forum level and any child forums one level below (etc.)"

"Depth of Forums - Forum Display" -> "
This setting does the same job as the setting above, but this time for forumdisplay.php pages, rather than forum home.
"

Depth of Sub-Forums ->
"If you have forums below the depth specified in the 'Depth of Forums' settings above, you can display them as sub-forum links in each forum's display area.
"

Am I misinterpreting these descriptions?

[LJR]

"Depth of Forums - Forum Home" option is described as " Depth to show forums on forum home forum listings. If you set this value to '2', forum listings will show the current forum level and any child forums one level below (etc.)"

This is the main forum page which lists all your Categories and Forums within them (the page most people land on when they come to your forum). You can set the depth of forums to display here (i.e. choose just the top level forums, or also show the subforums)

"Depth of Forums - Forum Display" -> "
This setting does the same job as the setting above, but this time for forumdisplay.php pages, rather than forum home.
"

When you click on a forum you are now in the Forum Display page. Again you can specify the depth of any subforums to display here (so if you are 5 deep you may only want to display the next subforum level, not all 5).

Depth of Sub-Forums ->
"If you have forums below the depth specified in the 'Depth of Forums' settings above, you can display them as sub-forum links in each forum's display area.
"

If you have a depth of 5 (and I have to say this would be somewhat confusing I think) then you can have your main forum or top-level subforum displayed with hyperlinks to the others. You should be able to test this with the demo but only to a depth of two deep.

The two deep restriction is not actually a restriction it's just how far you can go with the default templates. If you need more then you would need to edit the FORUMHOME and/or FORUMDISPLAY templates. I would consider carefully before implementing anything too deep though as this would to me be quite confusing (I'm not even a fan of subforums that much, although I appreciate their usefulness).

Just so I can be sure we're not talking at cross purposes here. You can have any number of subforums (all at level 2) to the main forum. This is different from what you are talking about though where you would have a Main Forum which would have a subforum, which itself would have a subforum, which too would have a subforum, etc. Do you really want to do this?

vBulletin is a superb and very well supported product. If you wanted to customise a template you would find help. It's not too difficult to do what you are asking.

All the best in your choice.

[redraider]

I think I get it now. I am going for VBulletin!

Thanks all for help.

One more question though:

Which web hosting vendor I should go for. What is the minimum bandwidth/space/database space I would need? What kind of backend the vendor should provide php/mysql/apache/ more?

MY forum is not going to have more than 100-200 users per month. I dont want to go for too costly a vendor. Free vendors are not that good I have heard (but if you know of a good one, please let me know).

Any suggestions would be welcome!

Thanks
redraider

[feldon23]

Many people tinker with the values 0, 1, and 2. I think most people feel that having more than 2 is cluttered, but again it's just cloning a few templates to do what you want.

I would check the Web Hosting Recommendations forum and/or visit WebHostingTalk.com to research a web host. I would not get GoDaddy, Yahoo, iPower, or 1&1 for various reasons. The yardstick for how much hosting you need is disk space (vB fresh install takes 8MB, after 6 years I am using 350MB of space) and how many simultaneous users are browsing your forum. 20 simultaneous browsers is about the tops you want for your typical $12-25 a month web hosting.