Attachment & Registration Questions

[forumbuyer]

Hi,

After extensive evaluation of phpBB, Discusware pro, etc - I am close to deciding on vbulletin. Great job on a great product.


I do have two pre-sales questions though:

1)Is it possible for users to insert more than one image into a post? I would like my users to be able to write a message and comment on the pictures they post.

2)I plan to also combine vbulletin with the supported photo gallery software - i.e. utilize the same user registration db for single registration/login. But I'm curious if there have been customers who have integrated payment processing into the mix?

It would be very nice if a subscription website could allow a customer to choose a username and password when they first register (with the billing information), and this same information would be used by vbulletin and the photo gallery software as well.

Thanks!

[filburt1]

1. Only one attachment is allowed per post, so they'd have to post multiple times. What I do on my board is start one thread exclusively for attachments, then users make dummy posts in that thread to store the attachments.
2. Provided you know how to connect and manipulate a MySQL database, then you can use the vB login for whatever you want.

[forumbuyer]

Hmmm...

Is image attachment currently disabled on this board? I clicked the IMG button but can't seem to locate the 'browse' type functionality that would allow me to search through my local HD and attach a file.

[filburt1]

You have to attach it to the post (look down a bit from the reply box). I don't know how it is on this board, but once you attach it, it can show up automatically. If it doesn't, then make the post with the attachment, copy the URL of the attachment, and then edit the original post to [img]url to attachment[/img].

BTW, please see my signature

[forumbuyer]

Thanks! I found it - although the 'Preview' limitation is kind of annoying in that it clears the attached file name whenever I try to preview the message with the attached photo.

BTW, is the information required during user registration customizable by the webmaster? There seems to be too much requested information cluttering up the screen, and I would rather get rid of a lot of those fields altogether (ICQ address, web site address, etc). I would also like to disable PM between users altogether. I am assuming all this is possible?

[forumbuyer]

By the way, I found the following Perl scripts that help webmasters manage their membership/billing with iBill integration.

http://www.tools4webmasters.com

Something like this as an add-on module to vBulletin (i.e. integration with VBulletin's user reg.) would be awesome for subscription sites.

[filburt1]

Originally posted by forumbuyer
BTW, is the information required during user registration customizable by the webmaster? There seems to be too much requested information cluttering up the screen, and I would rather get rid of a lot of those fields altogether (ICQ address, web site address, etc). I would also like to disable PM between users altogether. I am assuming all this is possible?

Sure, all you have to do is edit the registration templates to just not show that information, or delete the fields using the admin CP. Note that only the username, password, and e-mail are required for all boards, everything else can be made optional. Even the e-mail can be faked provided you don't want to have users activate their account through mail, which is a good idea to not change.

[Wayne Luke]

Some of the information given so far is not quite accurate.

For your first original question
-------------------------------------
Each post is allowed to have one attachment however you can embed multiple images using the image tag. The difference is with attachments, the image is stored in your database. With the image tag, it is loaded off another server or location on your server.

You have control over how many images a user can embed in a single post using the [img] tag.

Your second question
---------------------------
There is no supported photo gallery software for vBulletin. You can tie it into other products or add-on gallery support yourself but we don't support it. For subscription purposes, you can tie vBulletin into what ever scripts and resources you have. It will most likely require some custom programming which you will have to do or pay for but it can be done.

I personally don't recommend mixing technologies like PERL and PHP as it can add a large strain on your server loading both technologies into memory.

About the user profile
---------------------------
You have complete control over everything seen. You can remove fields from the templates and add new fields to the profile from within the admin control panel. None of this will require programming and is a standard feature of vBulletin.

[forumbuyer]

Thanks wluke. I was thinking about PhotoPost - which advertises that it can integrate with vBulletin's user database.

It really does look like vBulletin offers everything I could want. The only question mark is still the payment processing integration. Given the cost of running web sites, I'm positive there must be others who have worked through these issues before.

I'll continue to do research and post here.