Professional Installation

[yv3013]

Hi, I'm looking at using Vbulletin as my forum software and have a few questions.

speaking of questions, whilst I've been on forums for many years, I've never run my own and have no technical knowledge on
html coding or anything really, I'd imagine most forum dwellers would be in the same boat and find it all too hard to do one for their own, if your used to all the fancy features then you'd expect to have it in your own forum, but it gets too technical.

take me just now trying to sign up here as a member, in the sign up page there was a question I had to answer.
vbulletin requires php and _________ to run?

I honestly don't know!
and because it's a question to register, I couldn't register to ask someone here what the answer was, so I had to google and try and work it out.

ok!

it's MySQL

whew, now i'm in and I can get to my real question.

<REMOVED>

Is getting in at this point with VB5 Beta the right option for the likes of me? with very little knowledge.
or should I be waiting for the real version to come out before I load it up?

I just wanted to make a comment about how VB looks to me, being a long term forum user but never owned one,
I feel VB is focusing a lot on the administration side of forums, putting r&d into the forums functionality so for a while I think Vbulletin people should forget how it works and look at how it appears to the most important add on you can place in your forum, members, I just expected the latest version to be something full on, so if a forum changed over to VB5 all the members in the forum would be going.. Oh Wow Man! That's Friggin' Insane! How Does it do That? Hey guy's, drop everything at facebook and come check this forum out, they call it VB5!

nup, like I said, the individual admin people, the VB registered owners will be saying wow, look how much faster it is ect,
runs much smoother, worth the $249.
but the millions of potential forum members don't get to witness this incredible achievement in forum technology we just see a sharper version of what we already saw.

Thanks..

[Trevor Hannant]

Please note that it is against the rules to solicit paid services on these forums:

https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/misc.php?do=showrules

You can try posting in the 'Requests for Paid Services' forum at vbulletin.org for help with this:

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=30

Regarding whether this is the right time or not, we don't recommend using vB5 Beta on a live site at this time due to the fact that it is still a Beta product however that's up to you. With it also being in Beta, this is a good time to try it and report any issues or suggestions you have for the product.

[yv3013]

right, so when is this to happen?
I'm wanting to be up and running with the next month or so and want a real forum going, I won't know what to do when the real version comes out, like how to install it over the beta.

lol, this is one of the hardest things to buy in the world, a forum that just works, it seems.
I mean you wouldn't go to a resteraunt, pay top dollar for the chefs selection and they come out with half a pork chop and
a knife with no fork, wi wi misuer, come back next week for the bone and we'll have the fork in place too!
or kinda like buying a house, you pay for it but it has no settlement date and you may never move in

[Trevor Hannant]

right, so when is this to happen?
I'm wanting to be up and running with the next month or so and want a real forum going, I won't know what to do when the real version comes out, like how to install it over the beta.

We don't have a release date for the Gold version, it will be released when it's deemed ready. You have two choices at the moment:

1. install the Beta version on your live site (not recommended) or
2. install vB4.2, our latest stable version

For 1, each Beta that's released can be upgraded to from any previous Beta and Live will be the same. It doesn't matter which Beta you are running, you will always be able to upgrade to the latest released version of the software by following the instructions in our manual.

For 2, a vB5 license gives you access to vB4 also. You can then choose at what point you want to upgrade to vB5 and all data will be preserved in the upgrade (please note that if you use the CMS in vB4, it will not be upgraded to vB5 at this time but the data will be retained for when the CMS is added to vB5 and upgraded then).

lol, this is one of the hardest things to buy in the world, a forum that just works, it seems.
I mean you wouldn't go to a resteraunt, pay top dollar for the chefs selection and they come out with half a pork chop and
a knife with no fork, wi wi misuer, come back next week for the bone and we'll have the fork in place too!
or kinda like buying a house, you pay for it but it has no settlement date and you may never move in

4.2, our latest stable version "just works". vB5 has been released for users to download and test run at this time to assist in finding issues running it on servers/hosting packages other than our own as we aim to bring a better quality to the product and also to allow for different ways of running forums to be tested as it's never possible to test every possible setup when it comes to web sites. We also aren't specifying a release date at this time so as not to be targetted into releasing something that's not necessarily ready.

[yv3013]

ok, no worries, you know, I didn't want to get married until I was ready, now i'm ready but too old to care.
lets hope then you's stay focused on VB Gold until it is ready and not start thinking about VB Platinum before I get something up & running.

to be honest I thought by now forums would of been super full on, as simple as drag n drop things into the forum front page
and they just appear, not really sure what I expected but didn't think i'd need to have any real understanding of how things work.
I guess I could look it up but don't know what a CMS is so that should tell you how easy things are gonna be for me.

Another question please..

Why isn't a demo version of VBulletin available in web hosting software?
how can I explain?
well, I have a godaddy web hosting account right, if I bring up my cpanel and look up the available forums to load onto my site,
I get 4 different free type of forums.
They are real easy to load up, I put in a directory name, like forum, and in seconds it's there all loaded up on my web site!
like how easy is that?
why don't I see VB? it would be great if I could load it up, like a lite trial version, and if I like it, like I would, I can then pay the licence
and VB send me the code to put in somewhere and that would open up the package or give me an automatic upload button to load the
full version when I input my receipt.

[Trevor Hannant]

That's not a service we offer, our demos are only available on our own servers via this site at this time.

[Autopilot]

That's not a service we offer, our demos are only available on our own servers via this site at this time.

Why isn't this service offered?

[yv3013]

the're probably just not ready

I think VB may be missing out on a huge important sector there, say for example the free forum called smf.
I see there's a huge community of smf heads just like the VB heads, this sector of people are basically
the core of a forum's success as those people are all tweakers, mod makers and pretty theme designers.

if VB was available in the same easy way, then the future forum owners would all most likely lean towards the VB option.
out of all these new people, some will become tweakers aswell, meaning a much bigger community of tweakers.
at the moment there's too much variety and us who just want a great forum are losing out.
if everyone just focused on VB, then all those great forum tweakers would be building things for VB, not smf, phpbb, chocolate or vanilla.