A couple of questions before I buy vbulletin. Hope to get some answers

[be cool]

Hi guys

I am interesting of purchasing vbulletin but before I take the plunge I had a couple of questions.

I use smf as the forum software of choise at my website since over a year ago. But recently I am not happy with it and decided to switch to another forum software. After trying out some free ones, I decided that I would be better off going with a paid one. So my options were narrowed down to you guys and Ipb. First I tried the ipb on line admin demo and looked around at their community forum. Then I did the same with vb on-line admin demo and checked out your community forum and decided that I would go with you guys.

There were 2 reasons why I chose vb if you are interested to know. The first one and the most important, it was the way that you guys handle the support here which I found very professional and satisfactory. You know how to treat your customers, that is fore sure. Plus, your community forum is very much organised and detailed, especially the Documentation area.

The second reason it was the new release that you had announced, with those extra very handy and practical new options. My congratulations to the devs by the way, very well done.

That said, here are my questions:

1. At the moment I plan to buy a leased license and see how things go, so if I decide to upgrade later to a owned license, do I get a discount? If so, is there a time limit that I must upgrade my license in order to qualify for the discount?

2. When I buy the license, I plan first to make a copy of my website at a subdomain, install there vbulleting and do a test convert. Then I plan not to go live immediately with the vbulletin forum, but instead familiarise myself and my staff with it before I do the conversion at the live site. That can take some weeks up to a month, with the Holidays coming up and all that. Is there a time limit that I should go live with vb from the date of purchase or I can take my time learning my way around the admin panel and the system.

3. When I go live, can I keep the test vb at the subdomain or should I install the test vb forum at a test url of my website. www.mysite.com/test? As I need to have a test forum in order to test there first any modifications that I might make in the future, before I apply them to my live site.

4. How is vb security-wise? With my current smf I had problems with spammers so bad that I was forced to put the Admin approval option for the new members. Does this option exists in the vb, cause I missed it at the online admin demo?

That was it guys. I thank you all in advance for your answers and reading this topic as well.

[Floris]

Hello,

Thank you for your interest in the vBulletin Forum Software and for contacting vBulletin Sales.

A leased license is $85, upgrading it to an owned license costs $160 as a fee.
An owned license is $160.

However, if you buy a leased license now for $85, you can upgrade to an owned license for $85 within the first 60 days after your purchase. Giving you a 45% discount on the upgrade-fee.

No, there is no time limit. You can have your forum not in use, or in use, as long as you want. As long as your license is valid and active (leased) or valid (owned). You can run one instance per license that you bought, so you can change the url as many times basically as you want. As long as there's one live site max.

As per our license agreement it's probably best to have your test / dev instance in the testvb/ directory. Alongside your live instance. But if you only have 1 private test instance running (basically your live instance) the url or directory does not matter.

vB takes security very, very seriously. We do not offer downloads with security issues in them, so download the latest version to make sure it has no known security issues. And if a security issue comes to light we provide a free patch for download to our customers without hours. I am not sure exactly what you mean with admin approval, but yes, new member moderation and new thread or even new post moderation is a default feature in vBulletin.

Thank you for your interest in the vBulletin forum software and we're looking forward to having you as a customer. If you have any further questions feel free to ask.

[Reeve of Shinra]

I find that it is cheaper to go with an owned license over a leased license to start with.

And yes, an admin can moderate new members. You can also set it up so that posts from new members need to be approved by the moderators before showing up. After a certain # of approved posts, vb can automatically move then into a usergroup which is free of this restriction (promotion system).

[be cool]

Thank you very much for your quick and prompt answer Floris. I really appreciated it. That proved me again right in my asumption about the support here that is great.

I made up my mind. I will purchase a leased license and I don''t doubt that I will be upgrading to a owned one very soon.

Thank you very much once again and have a very pleasant Sunday.

[Floris]

Good luck setting up your forum, and don't forget to read up on our manual (but I believe you've already found it).

[be cool]

I find that it is cheaper to go with an owned license over a leased license to start with.

And yes, an admin can moderate new members. You can also set it up so that posts from new members need to be approved by the moderators before showing up. After a certain # of approved posts, vb can automatically move then into a usergroup which is free of this restriction (promotion system).

Yes, you are right about being better to go with a owned license than a leased one. But as I said, I want to have a look first at how things will go, but I think that I will be upgrading pretty soon to a owned license. And thank you for your answer Reeve of Shinra

[be cool]

Good luck setting up your forum, and don't forget to read up on our manual (but I believe you've already found it).

Thank you. And yes, I have read the manual a couple of times and found it very useful. Now I am off to buy a leased license

[be cool]

I just bought the leased license and logged in at the members area. However I don''t understand something. There it says that I must enter the url to where I will install the vb forum but I won''t install the vb at the live site for some time. What should I enter at that part for the url? Thank you

Edit. I figured it out.

[Floris]

Hi there

Sorry for the delay in response, I went to have some breakfast.

Welcome to the vbulletin community and thank you for your recent purchase. You can enter basically any url, if all fails just enter http://localhost

You can change this url at a later stage again.

[be cool]

Hi there

Sorry for the delay in response, I went to have some breakfast.

Welcome to the vbulletin community and thank you for your recent purchase. You can enter basically any url, if all fails just enter http://localhost

You can change this url at a later stage again.

Thank you again and I appologize for any inconvenieance. I should have looked more around before posting but I was so eager to download vb and install it at my subdomain.

Enjoy your breakfast

[Removed-836727]

Hi there

Sorry for the delay in response, I went to have some breakfast.

Welcome to the vbulletin community and thank you for your recent purchase. You can enter basically any url, if all fails just enter http://localhost

You can change this url at a later stage again.

breakfast? its 23:00

[Floris]

I've took a 6 hour nap earlier today

[Chazel]

I started with a leased license, but upgraded 45 days into having it. Now if I have hosting I'm guaranteed the best forum software available.

[be cool]

I installed vb at my subdomain. The installation went very smooth thanks to the Documentation area. Thank you for such an amazing product

P.s. I didn''t enter an db prefix at the config file btw. Is that ok or should I have entered one?

[Floris]

A prefix is not required, but I always set one, just in case I used the database for other software already like a wordpress blog and don't want to conflict the table names.

If your vb db was totally new, you should be fine.