Learning how to become a VB Tech Admin

[Fergal]

Do VB provide any advice or guidance to their customers, on how to acquire the technical skills required to admin a VB forum?

[borbole]

Do VB provide any advice or guidance to their customers, on how to acquire the technical skills required to admin a VB forum?

vB has the online manual which covers a lot of things on how to administer a forum. You can also search this forum and the vb.org as well. They are both a gold mine of information. You can also search the net for tutorials on the programing languages that you need to acquire the tech skills, like css, html, php etc. Then set up a test forum and try out what you learn there. Things might seem a little complicated at first, but they will make sense soon. The only thing you need to have is some free time and a lot of patience.

[Lynne]

Unfortunately, it really isn't something you can just read about to become an expert. And, I would suspect that every forum has it's own special skills required. The best thing to do to become familiar with the software is to test up a test site and play. I also found helping others to be a great way to learn about new things.

[Fergal]

Thanks borbole and Lynne, that is very helpful. What would you say would be the most useful tech skill for a VB Admin to learn first, e.g. HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, etc?

[borbole]

You can start with html/css which can help you in the styling area and then you can start learning the more advanced stuff like php/sql.

[Eve_Ra]

As we say in France, "this is practice makes perfect"! ("c'est en forgeant qu'on devient forgeron")

[Lynne]

Thanks borbole and Lynne, that is very helpful. What would you say would be the most useful tech skill for a VB Admin to learn first, e.g. HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, etc?

As an admin, html is very, very useful. If you are going to modify your site, then you will want to know some php/mysql. That being said, I didn't know a single thing about php or mysql before starting my site, but I do have a fairly logical mind (I was a mechanical engineer).

[Zachery]

HTML and CSS are borderline required to do any level of basic customization.
Being able to at the very least have some googlefu when it comes to php and mysql errors, and learn what they mean over time.

I mean, I would consider myself an expert of vBulletin for for nothing else than shear time I've spent learning the ins and out of the software. But by no stretch am I a php or mysql expert.

I would also highly advise becoming familiar with S/FTP, and SSH. Many of server transfers would have taken days or weeks without them.

[Fergal]

Thanks everyone for the helpful replies.

[AusPhotography]

Admin for the forum is quite easy, admin for the site (i.e. the server etc.) can take a bit more effort depending of your hosting.

A decent text editor is handy for looking at code and XML files
http://notepad-plus-plus.org/ is what I use

[Fergal]

Thanks Rick, I also use Notepad++ it's a great tool.