guild hosting and vBulletin license

[goha]

Hello, I am going to create guildhostiung service.
Every game guild will have their own forum.
I am thinking about to use VB, if it is affodable.

question 1

Project will have its own domain: projectdomain.com
and guilds will have 3rd level domains liek guild1.projectdomain.com, guild2.projectdomain.com etc.

How many licenses do i need in this case?

question 2

what if users will ask me to add their own domain in addition to our standard domain? lets say, they buy myguild.com domain. In this case, in addition to forum.guild1.projectdomain.com their forum will eb also accessible as forum.myguild.com

how many licenses do i need in this case?

[Reeve of Shinra]

The rule of thumb is that each install requires a license.

If you wanted something like you see here on vb.com where its
Catagory A (Warcraft)
- Forum A (Guild A)
- Forum B (Guild B)
- Forum C (Guild C)

That should be fine with one install. I think your okay too if you use mod_rewrite too redirect guilda.projectdomain.com to projectdomain.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1 too so long as you are NOT attempting to hide content or forums or anything like that.

[goha]

What if I am going to have many separate installation on the same domain?

www.domain.com/guild1/
www.domain.com/guild2/
www.domain.com/guild3/

or

www.guild1.domain.com
www.guild2.domain.com
www.guild3.domain.com

Whats then?

The idea is to allow guild masters to be forum dmin and to create their own subforums structure..

[Steve Machol]

You will need a separate license for each one.

[Reeve of Shinra]

You will need a license for each one then.

[goha]

thats mean, that VB canot be used in many cases. Sorry to hear it.

[Fusion]

Mean? I'd call it good business sense.

[fufu]

thats mean, that VB canot be used in many cases. Sorry to hear it.

seriously?

free = free

pay = good quality

you will find the board your looking for. good luck.

[Hitomi]

maybe this topic will help

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=103150

Specific cases:

1. Your forum is accessable from multiple domains but the content is the same for each link. This is OK and does not require multiple licenses. My site is an example of a multi-domain setup that is allowed:
   
   

   http://www.mscclan.com/forum/

   
   

   http://www.macsubculture.com/forum/

   
   

   http://www.mac-gamer.com/forum/

   
   
   Notice how each domain points to exactly the same content.
2. Your forum is accessable from multiple domains but each domain shows a different forum style. This is OK and does not require multiple licenses.
3. Your forum is accessable from multiple domains and your forums are configured to show/hide certain forums based on the domain. This is not OK and requires an active vBulletin license for each domain. In this situation the forums appear to have separate content thereby making them separate forums in the eyes of the license agreement. Your forum content needs to be the same for each domain in order to qualify as a single forum.

The underlying question here is, do the different links appear as separate forums? If so then multiple licenses are required.

Separating content and forum styles by using subforums and forumdisplay links within a single domain is allowed because that functionality is built-in to vBulletin.

[goha]

OK, so, lets work a bit more on my situation.

What if I like to use VB for my project? Is there any special offer for it? Or I just buy single license for every installation and that's it?

I believe, we can work out something special for my case, and similar cases. Can we? May be you have it already?

The situation is, that within the single project, under the same second level domain (different 3rd level subdomains) , I'd like to have many user groups (guilds) and every group will use its own visually isolated VB board, and every user might have administrative rights and their own forum-suborums structure.

Is there some special sale offers for that?

[Steve Machol]

We have quantity discounts available with the purchase of a three or more licenses of the same type under the same account. You can see the discounts available on the order page and clicking on the 'Bulk Prices' link:

http://www.vbulletin.com/order/

[goha]

thats does not work for my case. The services that I am establishing will be free and mass. I can pay for single unlimited license, but looke like you dont have it. And it would be creasy to pay for every single license...

Do you have the license for unlimited installations on one site? Looks liek I need something like that.

[Steve Machol]

No, we do not have an 'unlimited' license.

[goha]

Steve,

may be you can drop this idea to sales guys? May be we can work out somthing here?

In my case it will be single installtion of VB, single code folder but different databases for different users. All installations will be made within the same server cluster.
So, we can easily extract key limiataion - installation on 1 machine under one particaulr owner. No right for resale, no resale. All instances of the VB will use the same IP address

[Steve Machol]

We have discussed this before and the decision has been made that we will not be offering any 'unimited' licenses in the near to intermediate time period.