VBulletin or Wordpress

[taichijedi]

I am trying to start an internet business that could have serious potential if properly executed. I need to setup a website with forums, and I have very little knowledge of PHP or other programming, but I am willing to learn. I have done some due diligence on the pros and cons of vbulletin versus wordpress/simplepress, but this has actually lead me to become more confused. I want to have a site that looks professional and will be scalable, with tech support if I need it, and it seems that vbulletin seems like the best choice, but it is very expensive for a license. I can justify the expense as it is a business expense, but wordpress/simplepress is free, though I have deep reservations about it being able to to handle the scalability I may require in the medium range timeframe.

Can anyone offer me some advice? Does anyone have any experience with these and can shed some light on this for me? How hard is it to make changes and learn PHP? (I love the professionalism in the arrangement and design of this forum, and most of the better forums I have seen use vbulletin as well.) Does aptohosting support vbulletin, and has anyone used Tom's services and can offer some advice/comments/reviews?

Thank you in advance!

 

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[Icy]

Vbulletin, and Wordpress entirely different roles. It's really not a choice between these two things... What are you trying to make?

How hard is it to make changes and learn PHP?

For simple changes you may be able to just fudge your way through changing it, but really it's not recommended. Lots could go wrong..

Does aptohosting support vbulletin, and has anyone used Tom's services and can offer some advice/comments/reviews?

I don't know about the his particular servers, but lets just say it'd be very weird if it didn't..

 

[taichijedi]

Thank you very much for your response, icy.

My intention is to have a blog type landing page that can be updated with recent innovations or trends in the industry, and then have the forums behind it that would be easily accessible via a tab at the top. This comprehensive design for the site was why I was favoring vbulletin, and I know that wordpress is merely a blogging platform while simplepress is the forum platform, which I found out during my initial research, and I would have to get them synced via matching templates, etc.

Obviously I want membership to be able to register, find out trends and news items (landing page/blog page) and have threaded discussions in a community forum environment, much like we have here. I am also looking to be able to carry the same theme throughout these areas, which I believe may be more easily implemented by using css inside of vbulletin, so that the site can be "seamless." I hope to have such features as connecting via facebook for our users. I also want to have CMS incorporated as well, to have ranking systems as well as WCM keep it simple to use for the end user.

Does this help clarify things? If there is anything else you need to know, please tell me and I will provide as much as I can. As I previously stated, I am very new to this type of business, so I may not be "asking myself the right questions" when I am trying to provide you with feedback.

Thank you very much for your time, patience, and assistance!! :cheers:

 

[Icy]

I may not be understanding it correctly, but why not just use both WP, and Vbulletin? Have your root directory be the WP blog, and then have a directory like 'forum' be the Vbulletin forum?

 

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[taichijedi]

Basically, the themes wouldn't match across the platforms from what I've been told, and the more components that got involved the more obvious the disparities would become. Plus, If I got vbulletin (I'm looking at the suite,) I could do everything that Wordpress would allow and then some while maintaining the visual characteristics due to the uniformity that would be allowable through all of the different facets of the site. I wouldn't have to worry about the seamlessness as much.

Also, with Vbulletin I can also install things like templates, plugins, and themes directly from the control panel, which will make my life much easier. (I learned this after doing more research and revisiting alot of what I had looked at after your first response.)

I think I am going to go with the vbulletin. It really seems like it has everything I need, being challenged on the coding side of things. i like the "plug and play functionality," and I get unlimited license so I can expand it to other sites if need be which could prove helpful later on.

Thank you so much for helping me work through this, Icy. I would give you more rep, but I have to wait a bit. Speed +++

 

[Aristy]

@taichijedi:

Before deciding on VBulletin, ask yourself what is it that you are really trying to achieve. If your final objective is to get your hands on code, tweak things around, and maybe learn a bit of programming while at it, then it may make sense to go that route.

However, I suspect that the above has nothing to do with your business intent. If your business goal is to have a site with a solid backend, and no headaches for you, then it may make sense to go with one of the many hosting providers that can handle things for you and completely abstract you from the minutia of managing a site.

I have NO business relationship with Squarespace.com, but after hearing Leo Laporte talk about them, I decided to give them a try. I tell you, it's a very professional provider, and some of their clients are very large, heavily visited websites. Their plans are very reasonable, and if you look at their client portfolio, it will give you some ideas of what is possible with their system.

Again, I have NO business relationship with them, I'm just a satisfied customer. Of course your mileage may vary, so please do full diligence before committing to anything.

Best of lucks!

A

 

[Bowden]

I suggest you also check out Ning since they have pretty much everything you're looking for. They have various plans which are affordable and if you can get someone to do some custom CSS, you can have the site look amazing. I'm on a hobby site that uses Ning and their website is very professional. I've used the Ning interface and it's very user friendly in the control panel.

 

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