Professormedia
20th November 2006, 02:20 AM
The Extensive Guide to vBulletin: How to create a successful and Productive community using the vBulletin.
By: Professormedia
Introduction: I am only a beginner at vBulletin but I've already fallen in love with the amazing options and tools that are packaged with vBulletin and makes the seemingly expensive price a bargain in the long run. :).
Table of contents:
1. Exploring vBulletin General Options
2. Styles
3. FAQ
4. News and announcements
5. How to secure your forum from dangers inside and out
6. Plugin system
7. How to use logs
8. Maintainance tools
9. How to expand your community with help of vBulletin and modifications
A. Adveritising
B. Staff management
C. Choosing a good main site tool
10. Setting up the permissions for your forum
11. Modifying styles to create your own look
12. Exploring and setting up an infraction system
13. Moderation
14. Additional Trips and Tricks
15. Personal experiences with vBulletin and how it has influenced the way I have handled forums (Opinion section of the guide)
1. Exploring vBulletin General Options
This subsection of the admin control is where you input all the general settings that represents the basic infrastructure of your forum. The general options or vBulletin Options as it is known has several catagories. Here are the catagories and a detailed description of what you can do in each area.
-vBulletin Options
Turn your vBulletin site on and off: This option allows you to easily disable your forum so your members will be unable to view the forum and enables easier to fix up minor issues on the forum, ease to preform maintaince such as restoring database, backing up the forum, etc. Note: You may wish to inform your users beforehand to prevent complications resulting from constant activity. This is best for very active forums.
Site Name/URL/Contact Details: This option is all the information regarding your forum name, the url of the forum. Note: If you change the url of the forum it will now show up on that URL and the old url will lead to an 404 Error Page. I recommend alerting all members of the change beforehand. The contact details let you input who to contact if the forum goes down for server, file, or other reasons that may require immediate attention. So you can put in the web master's email or the tech administrator depending on your organizational set up.
General Settings: These options are related to how search engines will search and index your forum into their databases. For example you can use terms such as School, computers, or Games to describe what type of site you are and that is how it will be catagorized in google or yahoo's search engine. (Note: Make the keywords very specific as it gives your site a better chance of being found. )Also domain cookie info is display there.
Image Settings: This relates to the image verification that is used to eliminate (or nearly) the number of spammer bots that may wrek havok on your forums. Note: It's initailly set to GD verification image system.
Date and Time system: These are the global time and date system for the forums. Note: These can be edited by the users in the User CP.
http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/9307/vbulletinoptionspt1oz0.png (http://imageshack.us)
This is a screenshot of the General options as taken while using the vBulletin demo on vBulletin.com.
http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/958/vbulletinoptionspt2zd2.png (http://imageshack.us)
This is part 2 of the general options.
These are the most important general options as the rest are more advanced and may have dire consequences if tampered without knowledge in that area.
Tip: It is generally best to leave all of the general options alone except chaging the name of the forum that is displayed in the title bar of your browser and the URL that the forum points to.
2. Styles
Styles define the look and feel of the your forum and is made up of several different files and file types. I find that the most common files that the styles are made up of are .css (cascading style sheet), images of various formats (.gif,.jpg,.png) and an xml file that enables vBulletin to install the file for you. The styles part of this guide will be split up into three parts.
A. What are you looking for in a style?
B. Are paid styles worth buying?
C. Common problems found with styles
A. What are you looking for in a style?
The best way to decide on what style fits you is to consider, what do you want to achieve with your forum? Is it a personal forum, a coporate forum, a fan game project forum, a clan forum? If its a personal forum it may be best to go with a clean and simple style that fits your tastes, for example if you like Baseball you may choose a rugged baseball diamond style with baseballs for the forum icons.
But if you wish to achieve a professional image you may want to go out and make one yourself that fits the image that best sells your business to your customer and makes you stand out from the rest of the competition.
Another question on whether to choose specific styles is how hard would it be to edit this if needed? Can your average joe edit the template to fit their needs or will it take a rocket scientist with five years of photoshop and CSS experience to make it work? Most styles are made with the average user in mind and thus has very few fully editable areas that is made simplified by vBulletin's built in css editor that is found in the admin cp > under styles and templates manager. Then you go to style manager and choose which style you would like to edit. After that go to the list under that style and choose Edit Main css. This will let you edit all of the css options for the main portions of the style including header, footer, and the background and even the text color for the pages.
Another point you may want to consider when choosing a template is how compatiable is it with your currnet hacks/mods installed on vBulletin. Some modifications changes the styles and strecth it to the point of being horribly disfigured or at the least makes the forum look unprofessional. Other modifications change the standard font, logo, and layout of the forum but unlike other forum software, I've never run into an issue that causes an php error or leaves your forum unusuable. All that you would have to do to install a style in vBulletin is a simple 2 step process.
i. upload the style folder (ex. PSPFT) into the image folder
ii. place the xml file included in the install folder or upload the xml file from your computer.
B. Are paid styles worth buying?
If the free templates that are available on the internet does not suit your needs or are just not what you are specifically looking for then you may want to considered buying already made templates or better yet having one customly made by a highly trained and skilled designer that has been in the field for years.
Pros:
-Professionally done
-Can be customized due to need of customer
-higher quality than free styles
-installation guides are usually included
-guaranteed to work for your version of vBulletin
Cons:
-Costly
-Time consuming (for the style maker and you)
-Style designs may be limited
In conclusion: You may want to consider either creating your own style (if you feel comfortable enough to do it), hire someone or buy an already made quality template from respect template sellers. The benefits of using a paid style is that its guaranteed to fit your need, its made for the version you are using, better quality graphics and support, more professional looking, and overall a solid coded design for the paid templates. It all depends on your needs and whether the cost of the style is worth the overall benefits given to your users/members.
C. Common Problems with styles
In the short few months that I've worked and used vBulletin I've run into several common problems when using and finding styles. The first common problem that I run into is the Version Incompatiability issue. The style says that it is compatiable with 3.6.x but then you find out that in reality though it said 3.6 it was made for 3.5 or older which leads to inability to use as many of the functions in 3.6 were not found in 3.5 and may cause your forum to become instable or lead to distorted graphics or the graphics not showing up (as in my case). The second common issue I've run into is the missing xml file for the style. This could be the result of a few situations, several that are easy to fix and one that is nearly impossible to fix. The issues with missing xml files are normally corrupted downloads (ex. Antivirus didn't allow the xml to be downloaded), corrupted file, or even file hidden in another folder that is hard to locate. But in the worst case senario, you may find out that the style creator forgot to include an xml file, which means you can do two things: 1. Contact the style maker for the xml file, 2. find another user that has the xml file.
3. FAQs
The FAQ subcatagory in the admin control panel is useful to add FAQs to your forum so your users can have their questions answered by just clicking the FAQ link on the navbar of your forum. What is an FAQ? FAQ is a list of Frequently Asked Questions that users have when visiting forums or even about the website or your projects/products may be listed in the FAQ section. The main reason why the FAQ system of vBulletin is wonderful is that in a matter of minutes you can have a well designed and easy to navigate FAQ that gives your users all that they need to know about your project without having to go beyond the index of your forum.
How to create an amazing FAQ?
There are several ways you can create FAQs but the easiest and most effective method is the FAQ catagory that is shown in the navbar. You can create an FAQ by going into your admin cp and go to FAQS, and from here you get several options that will help define and expand your FAQ. The key options are: Add FAQ Item, Edit FAQ item and Delete. I will be concentrating on the Add FAQ item.
-Add FAQ Item - It lets you add a new FAQ to the main FAQ section which comes default with standard FAQ questions on the vBulletin forum options for users.
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p166/mediamixerj/FAQnewitem.jpg
Here is the page that allows you to add FAQ items.
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p166/mediamixerj/FAQmanager.jpg
Here is the page that shows all the FAQ items.
The options you can edit for the built in FAQ is the name of the FAQ Item, the variable name, the text that is in that FAQ item and what product it talks about.
You can create an amazing FAQ by: keeping the Catagories (main or outer FAQ items) short and to the point, create several child FAQ items for each catagory and make the FAQ questions easy to read and understand. You can also use acronyms and other memory devices to attract attention to certain questions or catagories in the FAQ. Putting in tricks to gather attention limits the number of constant spam topics that result from not reading the rules or the FAQs.
Another way that you can create FAQs are by creating a topic title FAQ and there are two key reasons that you may choose this more flexible method. You need to have a million or so questions or if you want to draw attention to various questions by using various format tools available in the forums but not in the FAQ subcatagory of the Admin CP. Give your FAQ a variety of colors, different fonts, and maybe even images to add a bit of style to the old plain style of the common FAQ.
How to draw attention to the FAQs?
Are you tired of the constant spam/repeat topics about common questions that is in the FAQ? It may be time to employ methods of attention grabbing techniques that authors have utilized for years.
1. Choose a deceptive or interesting titles that draw attention to the FAQ. - The age old adage of curiosity killed the cat applies to this method. Once you've got them in to the topic they'll realize its the FAQ and may read it.
2. Social Pressure - Members frown upon the constant questions of new users that do not read the FAQs or the rules. This disposition may lead the new users to realize to be accepted and not watched for common questions is to read the stickies about the FAQ and to follow the rules.
3. Reward system: Create a rules system that rewards for reading the FAQ and following the rules and punishments for breaking the rules and posting spam topics.
4. News and Announcements
I find that the number one feature that I enjoy the most about vBulletin is the news and announcement feature. As with the FAQ subcatagory of the admin CP, the News and Announcement subcatagory can create News and announcement topics in a matter of seconds. It let you choose which forum it is placed in and you can also make it a global announcement and have it show up in every forum.
How to add new news topics to the forum?
You can add new news topic by:
1. Go to the admin control panel
2. Go to the announcements subcatagory
3. Click on announcements manager
4. Add new announcement
5. Choose a certain forum to post the announcement in or choose global by clicking new/add at the top of the menu.
6. Choose name of the announcement
7. Type in all the details you would like to add about the announcement.
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p166/mediamixerj/newannouncements.jpg
Here is an image of the new announcement page of the admin cp.
That's all you need to do to make a simplified announcement using built in tools provided by vBulletin.
How to get users to read the important news and updates?
There are several ways to get users to read the important news and updates. These include:
1. Create a forum specifically titled: Announcements/News.
2. Use an CMS and have it display the latest news on your main page.
3. Create an .php file that has an link that says "Latest News" and leads to the latest news section.
4. Make the title of the news exciting - Ex. WE are live and back in business!. We are taking names and dealing out justice.
5. Securing your forum from dangers inside and out.
A common problem that I've found in dealing with installing and setting up vBulletin is that there are several files and tools that are included that poses a very serious to the overall security of your forum. Files that can be exploited, tools that can be abused by malicious staff, and some standard installation settings that may leave you in trouble along the path to achieving success as an active and engaging forum.
1. The install.php and update.php danger - The good news is that the installer of vBulletin warns you to delete these files as they pose a potential safety hazard to your forum if a hacker manages to be able to access your files on the server. These files can be used to delete your forum by using the uninstall tool. I recommend following the installer's advice of deleting these files as they are no longer needed. Note: The risk of keeping them around is greater than the chance you may need them soon.
2. The administrative permissions danger. - The complexed and flexible usergroup system of vBulletin allows for as little or as much changes or modifications as you wish to do but the standard installation may pose a danger to you if:
A. you've got an admin that poses a risk of damaging or betraying you at a later point.
B. Someone guess an admin password and they have full access to the forum could lead to your forum being damaged or worse yet shut down by the hacker.
The best way to protect against an inside job is to restrict the administrative access based on the need of the admin. So if one admin is in charge of tech give him/her access to all admin catagories related to tech that is essential to the forum's survival/maintanience. Note: Only super admins can access the logs and the admin permissions. (Bonus points to vBulletin for putting in these security safeguards).If its an hacker guessing the password I'd recommend having an emergency hidden admin account should you need to ever restore if the hacker deletes all other admin acocunts. (I've had personal experiences in which I've had done this in the past).
3. Config.php Danger - The danger of an hacker accessing and taking full control of your forum involves the use of config.php and is what contains all of the info on who are the super admins of the forums and what they can and cannot access in the forum. If the hacker changes the config.php to an unusable format they pretty much just trashed your forum as the file would be missing and they'd probably insert an unremovable or unchangeable fake file. I'd recommend safeguarding it by not allowing access to changed it after you've set it up to your likings and password it if you have a need to constantly change it. This will prevent hackers from removing super admins and also prevents them from trashing the forum by deleting all records or causing missing file errors. Note: The initial installation of the vBulletin forum software does not set the super admin to undeletable/unalterable (this is considered a safety precaution but can work both ways), my recommendation is only have one super admin and make him/her uneditable so no hacker can take down the root admin.
4. Rogue Global Moderator Danger- The way to prevent this from preventing havok is to demod the moderator as the global mods can ban and if they ban a huge number of members it could scar you in the long run. Checking the moderation logs every so often will help you catch the rouge moderators and help you keep an eye on the suspicious activity as it may mean a hacker or a staff that is not following policies that you've set up for your forums. Note: Trusting your staff is essential to a good and strong community and constant monitoring may have a negative effect on staff moral and may even lead to staff resigning or quiting.
6. Plugin System
The plugin system is were you install all modifications for vBulletin that you have gotten from vBulletin.org's modification forum. The plugin system is an easy to use installation sytem for mods that make phpbb and other forum software look old and complicated with having to use outside php files and install scripts to install it while vBulletin has a built in system and all modifications are designed to work with a certain version and may change from time to time.
How do I access the plug in system?]
You can access the plug in system via the Admin Control Panel:
1. Go to the admin control panel > Plug in system
2. Go to Plug in manager to see all the plug ins
3. To install new plug ins go to add new plug in.
4. Add the php code need to run plug in.
5. Choose the yes option to activate the plug in.
Note: Make sure that the global plug in system is enabled.
Note: Do not let other admins have access to this area of the admin cp as it can have dire effects like (viruses, malicious code, hackers, etc).
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p166/mediamixerj/pluginmanager.jpg
Here is an image of the plugin manager.
Where can I get modifications/plug ins?
You can go to vBulletin.org (this is vBulletin's community styles and modifications website) and go to the modification forum and go to plug ins and look for the ones related to the version you are using. They have nearly hundreds of modifications ranging from extensions of current technology included and new features that are useful to forum owners.
7. How to use logs
This section discusses the importance of saving the logs that are recorded by vBulletin. They serve several purposes including: Evidence to be used in investigations of hacking incidents, check for moderator abilities abuse, and for keeping a check on how much the admin CP is being used and by who. This is the security center of the vBulletin forum software. This would be the same as security cameras in a wal-mart. It protects your forum as the eye in the sky. Its only viewable by super admins which is a good security precaution.
How can I access the logs for the forum?
1. You must be an super admin and it must be configured in config.php that you can access the logs.
2. After you have been granted access to the logs, go to the statistics and logs subcatagory in the admin control panel.
3. Choose which log you would like to view. There are four seperate logs. They are:
i. Moderation log - This log shows all activities that was done using the moderation commands in the forum (ex. delete thread, move thread, split thread, merge thread, etc).
ii. Control panel log - This log shows all activities done using the administrative control panel and logs the username, activity done, what action was done and the admin's IP.
iii. Transaction log - This log shows all financial transactions done on the forum (ex. paid subscriptions).
iv. Scheduled tasks log - This log shows all scheduled tasks done for the forum (ex. backing up the database).
The logs that I have used the most are the control panel log and the moderation log as these show what your staff is doing and I had to use it to investigate an inside job that could have trashed the forum.
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p166/mediamixerj/logmanager.jpg
Here is an image of the moderation log page.
8. Maintenance tools
vBulletin provides a large selection of maintenance tools to help you keep your forum up and running in a effiecent manner that represents the quality that other forum software lack and shows the reason why many tech administrators prefer vBulletin's restore tools over the free competitors.
The maintence tools include:
1. Database backup - This is the most important tool in my opinion as this lets you restore your forum if you ever get hacked and may be important if a mod is incorrectly installed and corrupts the currnet database.
2. Repair/Optimise tables - Speeds up the tables used by vBulletin and increases the loading speed for your forum.
3. Update Counters - This updates the info on page hits and the number of visitors, users and threads created on your forum.
4. Diagnostics
5. execute SQL enquiery
6. view php info
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p166/mediamixerj/maintenancelist.jpg
Here is the maintenance options for the forum.
How do I run the backup database utility?
1. Enter the Admin Control Panel.
2. Go to the maintance subcatagory of the Admin Control panel.
3. Choose the backup database option.
4. Now you have to choose what tables to save in the database. Tip: The recommended and default choice is to back up all tables.
It will take a few minutes to backup the database depending on the size of the database. I'd recommend backing up atleast once a week as you never know when disaster may strike.
9. How to expand your community with help of vBulletin and modifications
A. Advertising
You could utilize modifications made for vBulletin that allows you to integrate several popular advertising programs such as google ads or adwords. But that is not the main focus of this section. The main section is how to attract more users to your forum and to bring about more activity. I can say from experience that the number one way to bring more users is to please the current users and they'll tell their friends and families to your forum and word of mouth is a key part of gaining members.
Another good method of advertising I'd recommend is spreading the word about your forum by advertising it in your siggy on other sites (as long as its allowed) and get your members that are die hard supporters to do the same. Note: A few connections can really impact whether your site is an A++ favorite forum of thousands or an small but close community of ten or fifteen members/friends.
Here is an example of one form of advertising that seems to bring at a very small level.
I would also recommend seeking out affiliations with like minded sites and forum owners as that could boost your membership size and visitor amount by atleast 5% to 10%.
B. Staff Management
The forum is only as good as those who monitor and manage the forum. So if you've got a poor or corrupt staff it could drag you forum straight into the ground. I've found that to maintain a happy staff will prevent troubles along the road but it is also essential to set the rules and codes of the staff, make sure not too much access is given without good reasons and that you have hired all the staff yourself. A well regulated, rewarded staff will bring a small forum a long way to the ideal form of an active community of thousands of people.
C. Choosing the main site
The first piece of the website that a user will see is the main site or index of the domain. If the main site is a poorly designed and shoddy CMS then the first impressions of the user may not be as good as can be expected. There are several solid options for CMS's that intergrate directly into vBulletin. The first one that I have tried is vBadvanced. vBadvanced is a solid, free option for an CMS. It has built in calendar, who's online, birthday, search forum, stats, latest poll, news, and recent topics modules. Its easy to add new modules and you can even make your own modules if you have a decent amount of experience in PHP. It uses the forum's styles which is very good and is overall my favorite CMS out of all the CMS's I've used so far. The others are about the same but may have a few bonuses and flaws that vBadvance doesn't have.
10. Setting up the Permissions for your forum
When setting up the permissions for your forum you must consider several factors.
1. Do I want guests to be able to see my forum?
If you want your guests to be able to see the forums then you must set up the forum properly. To set up the forums to be able to viewed by guests:
First: Go to the Admin Control Panel.
Second: Go to the Forums and Moderators subsection of the Control Panel.
Third: Go to forum permissions.
Fourth: Choose the forum that you wish to make viewable for your guests. Note for the fourth step you can just go to the permissions quick editor instead of the manually method of choosing each group you want to edit which is shown under each forum.
Fifth: Set the view forum option to yes.
Sixth: If you want to allow your users to post and rate topics then set all of the options related to posting and viewing threads to yes.
Some reasons you may wish to let guests to see your forums instead of requiring them to register are: Allows Users to see what the forums offer before deciding if they want to stay or not, eliminates the constant sign up of new members that only have one question that was already answered, and allows ease of use for users that are not in a good location to input their information (example: Library or School).
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p166/mediamixerj/permissionspt1.jpg
This is one of the three main things for the permissions relating to forum permissions.
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p166/mediamixerj/permissionsforforums.jpg
Here is the forum permission settings for the usergroups far as posting options.
2. What can the regular member see?
When setting up forums it is always important what forums you want your users to see. You may wish to only allow users to see certain forums based on usergroup. Example: Junior members may see the introduction forum, help forum and off topic forum. Once they get to senior member they can see the report forum, the benefits forum and the graphics forum. It is important to remember that when setting up the forum, any option that you set to yes may end up becoming a security hazard if a troll or a hacker gets control of your forum. Note: I recommend disabling the ability to upload files to the forum as it poses a major security hazard if certain types of files are not disabled.
3. What forums are for staff only?
Most forums have a staff forum to keep up on new rules and policies that staff are required to follow and helps to maintain order and structure within a forum. For this just set it so that only admins and moderators can access the forum. Note: You may wish to password the forum as an extra precaution. To password the forum go to the forum options and scroll down to where it says Password: and then enter a password.
4. Do I want to have paid services for members? If so what will I offer them?
Most forums offer more to those who are willing to contribute to the cost to maintain or expand communities and one way that grateful administrators thank them is by offering them benefits by having the users who want to contribute by having a paid subscription system set up and the plus side of using vBulletin is that they have already built it into the main vBulletin software. ((That's another plus side of buying vBulletin built in subscription system)). All you have to do is:
First: Go to the Admin Control Panel
Second: Go to Paid Subscription
Third: (To set up subscription plans) Go to Add New Subscription
Fourth: Fill in the details it ask for: title, price etc.
Now you have set up your own subscription plan and now you can expand your plans to make your forum better and to help pay for the cost of the forum if advertising is not an option or if advertising doesn't pay enough.
I have not used the paid subscription option myself but I hear that many use it and that it is a very useful option.
:)
Far as what you can offer them there are plenty of benefits that you can offer them: From More modifications to vBulletin that they may actually see and use to new private forums to little ranks and titles that show that they help contribute to your forum to additional support and care in the long run.
11. Modifying styles to create your own look
One step to creating a positive environment for your members and to give yourself a unique look that yells to the world what you are trying to do with your forum. The tools to modify a style to your likings are:
-FTP Access
-Custom designed Images
-Ability to access the Admin CP.
-Time
First, ready the images in Photoshop or another photo editing software of choice. Make sure to save the images as the same names as the original images featured in the style that you are basing your new one on.
Second, Open the FTP software of choice and enter in all the data needed to access the site's directory. Browse to the folder that holds the images for the style and then begin placing the files into the correct location and choose overwrite all.
From here, vBulletin allows you a variety of options that caters to users of all levels. So if you are a beginner, you may be satisfied by just modifying the images and not editing the CSS of the templates of the style. If you are comfortable with editing CSS and/or the templates of the style then vBulletin holds several options for you.
If you are a beginner I recommend just modifying the images and fixing up any of the buttons that do not meet your needs using the methods above.
If you are a more advanced user:
1.Go to Admin Control Panel.
2. Go to Styles and templates subsection
3. Go to styles manager
4. Choose the style you want to edit.
5. Go to the scroll down box and choose edit main CSS. - This will give you all the CSS options for the style and will let you edit every color that is not linked to an image. Note: Wrongly editing the CSS can have very severe consequences on your forum (from minor annoyances in appearance to complete and utter crashing of the forum and errors). Also this will let you change the location of the images for the style (example: you change the location on the website for the images).
If tweaking the graphics and the CSS is not your idea of creating a unique forum then you may want to get friends or coworkers who have what you are looking for or has an idea on how to bring your dream/goal to life.
12. Exploring and setting up an infraction system
A feature that eases the enforcement of rules is an built in Infraction system. In a matter of clicks you can have a dynamic and fully functional warning system set up and regulating your forums at the hands of your staff. How does the vBulletin Infraction system compare to that of its close rival Invision boards? The vBulletin board has several different methods that you can set up compared to the warnings system of Invision. You can choose between a points system and an infraction (warning) system. Although Invision boards do have an good graphical interface for the warning system, the way to check warnings for Invision is a bit of a pain and seems a bit unwieldy. The vBulletin system lets you know you got warned by PM or Email and also lets you limit the priviledges of members if they go to far. Note: Through no fault of vBulletin, the infraction system may be abused if moderators do not follow the rules or improperly enforces them.
The first question that may enter a user's mind when talking about an infraction system is what is an infraction system and how do I set this up?
Infraction system - An infraction system is a system that allows the staff (Moderators, Global Mods, and Admins) hand out warnings (also known as infractions or citations) to unruly members and also is the standard method of keeping order in most forums.
How do I set up the infraction system?
You can set up the infraction system by:
1. Going to the Admin Control Panel
2. Going to the User Infractions subsection
3. Go to add new User Infraction level - This is where you set up the warnings.
4. Enter the required information- title, points/infraction value, etc .
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p166/mediamixerj/infractionspart1.jpg
Here is one of the screenshots of the infraction system.
Also from this subsection of the admin panel, you can set up automatic bans for the fourm and the groups that warned members will be put into after x number of points or x number of warnings.
13. Moderation
An country without its military will surely fall to its opponents. This decay/collapse without enforcement and regulation concept is timeless and truly does apply to running a forum. The moderators are the military/police force of the forum and executes the rules and policies that are decided upon by the staff/admins of the forum. Without a dedicated and loyal group of moderators you can see an well organized and friendly community turned into an anarchist's haven the very next day. As moderators are the backbone of the forum infrastructure they should be treated as so. They deserve the trust and respect of members as they do their best to uphold the ideals of the owner and in concern to the safety of the members.
What concerns are raised by users and forum owners when dealing with moderations. The most common concerns that I have seen are these:
1. How do I know if the moderators are doing their job correctly?
I recommend talking to them if you have concerns regarding their behavior and to praise them and thank them if they are doing well. An mention of how good they are doing helps to show them that they are appreciated for working hard and that they are being recognized and not being ignored as no trouble has occurred.
2. What should I do if I catch an moderator abusing his/her 's powers?
One way to handle this is to warn them and then later on if they continue on the same pattern is to demod them and to tell them that they lost their moderation abilities for abusing powers and then present them with the evidence. Another way to handle this is to give it up to the members to decide base on merit who stays on the moderation team and who goes.
3. What is one way of choosing new moderators?
One way of choosing new moderators is to look at the current community and choose based on behavior and level of activity and helpfulness candidates that will best benefit the forum.
4. How should I let thank them for all their hard work?
You can thank them in several ways. You can thank them by giving them custom titles, praising their hard work, giving them gifts at the end of the year, giving them their own forum/hosting/perks.
5. What are some ways to keep them happy with the forums?
Enforce rules the way that they are supposed to be enforced. Don't bend the rules just because you are an admin as that would give the view that as I can do what ever I want I will and is demoralizing to the rest of the staff who suffer for those actions. Another way is to make sure that they all have enough help to keep order and to add more if needed and to give breaks if necessary and all in all be understanding if things come up (wedding, death in family, vacation, school, alien attack, etc).
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p166/mediamixerj/showmoderators.jpg
Here is a picture of the moderation page of the admin cp.
14. Additional Tips and Tricks
Tips
- Always consider both sides of the issue before adding or subtracting mods or even forums from the site. It will let you see whether the cost of adding/subtracting it is worth the benefit in the long run and may save some customer or member troubles.
- Make sure that you fully trust your staff and always keep an eye out for suspicious behavior. One loose cannon among a bunch of loyal and awesome staff has been the demise of many forums that I have seen and known of.
- If you are in the United States, make sure to enable the COPPA registration feature as it is required by law and could result in danger to your hosting of the forum if it is not done.
- Have clearly posted privacy policies to ensure that the members know how you are using their information and that is not being sold of to spammers etc.
- All well organized forums have rules posted in the announcement section and also have links throughout the forum point new members to it.
- Limit ftp access to the owner of the forum and only highly trusted admins and I recommend password protecting various directories to protect the site /sites from destruction if a betrayal occurs.
- Make sure that your subject of your forum is fitting to the audience you have/want and that it is within the TOS (terms of service) of your hosting.
- Make sure that there is a clear line of authority among the staff and a chain of command that will be able to ensure the survival of the forum if you have to leave, etc.
- Check out vBulletin.com and it sister sites for great modifications and styles etc to enhance your site to its fullest potentials.
-Follow the procedures of any and all advertising programs that you sign up for. This will save you from losing your account with the advertiser or being charged with fraud in the severest of cases.
-Listening to your members may help point out new tastes and ideas that the community want to be and an unbiased look into the forum always helps :).
-If are planning on having a closed period of time where only certain individuals are allowed in, one method to deal with this is to require registrations to be approved by admins (Note this could be used by hackers to lock you out of your own forum).
- Never ever give your account information to anyone saying/pretending to be from vBulletin staff (example: Password). It may be a scammer out to steal vBulletin accounts from unsuspecting individuals. This is a common method of social engineers who damage and steal forums.
- Rome was not built in a day and neither is a good forum. Take your time and all will be well in the long run.
Overall I must say having used Phpbb, SMF, IPB, and vBulletin that vBulletin is the best of the forum software overall and is well worth the price to own it.
15. Personal experiences with vBulletin
I apologize to the readers who are probably flabbergasted after reading most of this article but to top off this massive paperweight of a guide is a little bit of my experience with vBulletin and why I find it to be the perfect forum solution.
Well about six or seven weeks back I first got the ability to use vBulletin for an gaming project that I am working on and upon the first minute I began to set up vBulletin I was looking at it in awe. The simple 13 step installer that makes Phpbb installation without Fantastico an eternity. When I first set it up I had set it to all admins had the same access and each of the admins had full access to the ftp without any password restrictions on the directories. At the time I was using Joomla and vBulletin. At first we opened the forum up to the public and it was a joyful time and all was set to our tastes beside a lackluster free skin that I have recently begin to fix up. We were hacked. Soon afterward I got help from an member on our team and we got back after modifying a few files to let us sign up as an admin and then restored it back to the original form. All was well and I learn the biggest lesson of all which is to be sure to correctly configure your forum to be secure and to limit unnecessary access to other admins. I since switch from using joomla as the CMS to using vBadvanced as it is intergrated with vBulletin and is not hard to use and easy to configure to our likings. Thanks for taking the time to read my guide and I hope you enjoy vBulletin as much as I have :).
Pros
--------------
-Easy to Install
-many many modifications
-Mods easy to install
-Solid Admin CP
-Built in Subscription system
-Built in warning system
-Styles
- General default interface is clean and crisp
-Great Support team
Cons
----------
-Takes time to adjust after using only free forum software
-Costs money (but that is a small negative in this case. :cool:)
vBulletin : 10 out of 10.
One of the best and better than the rest.
I may add a few more parts depending on if I find anything else that I really really really need to cover but I think this is good enough for a beginner's guide >.>.
By: Professormedia
Introduction: I am only a beginner at vBulletin but I've already fallen in love with the amazing options and tools that are packaged with vBulletin and makes the seemingly expensive price a bargain in the long run. :).
Table of contents:
1. Exploring vBulletin General Options
2. Styles
3. FAQ
4. News and announcements
5. How to secure your forum from dangers inside and out
6. Plugin system
7. How to use logs
8. Maintainance tools
9. How to expand your community with help of vBulletin and modifications
A. Adveritising
B. Staff management
C. Choosing a good main site tool
10. Setting up the permissions for your forum
11. Modifying styles to create your own look
12. Exploring and setting up an infraction system
13. Moderation
14. Additional Trips and Tricks
15. Personal experiences with vBulletin and how it has influenced the way I have handled forums (Opinion section of the guide)
1. Exploring vBulletin General Options
This subsection of the admin control is where you input all the general settings that represents the basic infrastructure of your forum. The general options or vBulletin Options as it is known has several catagories. Here are the catagories and a detailed description of what you can do in each area.
-vBulletin Options
Turn your vBulletin site on and off: This option allows you to easily disable your forum so your members will be unable to view the forum and enables easier to fix up minor issues on the forum, ease to preform maintaince such as restoring database, backing up the forum, etc. Note: You may wish to inform your users beforehand to prevent complications resulting from constant activity. This is best for very active forums.
Site Name/URL/Contact Details: This option is all the information regarding your forum name, the url of the forum. Note: If you change the url of the forum it will now show up on that URL and the old url will lead to an 404 Error Page. I recommend alerting all members of the change beforehand. The contact details let you input who to contact if the forum goes down for server, file, or other reasons that may require immediate attention. So you can put in the web master's email or the tech administrator depending on your organizational set up.
General Settings: These options are related to how search engines will search and index your forum into their databases. For example you can use terms such as School, computers, or Games to describe what type of site you are and that is how it will be catagorized in google or yahoo's search engine. (Note: Make the keywords very specific as it gives your site a better chance of being found. )Also domain cookie info is display there.
Image Settings: This relates to the image verification that is used to eliminate (or nearly) the number of spammer bots that may wrek havok on your forums. Note: It's initailly set to GD verification image system.
Date and Time system: These are the global time and date system for the forums. Note: These can be edited by the users in the User CP.
http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/9307/vbulletinoptionspt1oz0.png (http://imageshack.us)
This is a screenshot of the General options as taken while using the vBulletin demo on vBulletin.com.
http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/958/vbulletinoptionspt2zd2.png (http://imageshack.us)
This is part 2 of the general options.
These are the most important general options as the rest are more advanced and may have dire consequences if tampered without knowledge in that area.
Tip: It is generally best to leave all of the general options alone except chaging the name of the forum that is displayed in the title bar of your browser and the URL that the forum points to.
2. Styles
Styles define the look and feel of the your forum and is made up of several different files and file types. I find that the most common files that the styles are made up of are .css (cascading style sheet), images of various formats (.gif,.jpg,.png) and an xml file that enables vBulletin to install the file for you. The styles part of this guide will be split up into three parts.
A. What are you looking for in a style?
B. Are paid styles worth buying?
C. Common problems found with styles
A. What are you looking for in a style?
The best way to decide on what style fits you is to consider, what do you want to achieve with your forum? Is it a personal forum, a coporate forum, a fan game project forum, a clan forum? If its a personal forum it may be best to go with a clean and simple style that fits your tastes, for example if you like Baseball you may choose a rugged baseball diamond style with baseballs for the forum icons.
But if you wish to achieve a professional image you may want to go out and make one yourself that fits the image that best sells your business to your customer and makes you stand out from the rest of the competition.
Another question on whether to choose specific styles is how hard would it be to edit this if needed? Can your average joe edit the template to fit their needs or will it take a rocket scientist with five years of photoshop and CSS experience to make it work? Most styles are made with the average user in mind and thus has very few fully editable areas that is made simplified by vBulletin's built in css editor that is found in the admin cp > under styles and templates manager. Then you go to style manager and choose which style you would like to edit. After that go to the list under that style and choose Edit Main css. This will let you edit all of the css options for the main portions of the style including header, footer, and the background and even the text color for the pages.
Another point you may want to consider when choosing a template is how compatiable is it with your currnet hacks/mods installed on vBulletin. Some modifications changes the styles and strecth it to the point of being horribly disfigured or at the least makes the forum look unprofessional. Other modifications change the standard font, logo, and layout of the forum but unlike other forum software, I've never run into an issue that causes an php error or leaves your forum unusuable. All that you would have to do to install a style in vBulletin is a simple 2 step process.
i. upload the style folder (ex. PSPFT) into the image folder
ii. place the xml file included in the install folder or upload the xml file from your computer.
B. Are paid styles worth buying?
If the free templates that are available on the internet does not suit your needs or are just not what you are specifically looking for then you may want to considered buying already made templates or better yet having one customly made by a highly trained and skilled designer that has been in the field for years.
Pros:
-Professionally done
-Can be customized due to need of customer
-higher quality than free styles
-installation guides are usually included
-guaranteed to work for your version of vBulletin
Cons:
-Costly
-Time consuming (for the style maker and you)
-Style designs may be limited
In conclusion: You may want to consider either creating your own style (if you feel comfortable enough to do it), hire someone or buy an already made quality template from respect template sellers. The benefits of using a paid style is that its guaranteed to fit your need, its made for the version you are using, better quality graphics and support, more professional looking, and overall a solid coded design for the paid templates. It all depends on your needs and whether the cost of the style is worth the overall benefits given to your users/members.
C. Common Problems with styles
In the short few months that I've worked and used vBulletin I've run into several common problems when using and finding styles. The first common problem that I run into is the Version Incompatiability issue. The style says that it is compatiable with 3.6.x but then you find out that in reality though it said 3.6 it was made for 3.5 or older which leads to inability to use as many of the functions in 3.6 were not found in 3.5 and may cause your forum to become instable or lead to distorted graphics or the graphics not showing up (as in my case). The second common issue I've run into is the missing xml file for the style. This could be the result of a few situations, several that are easy to fix and one that is nearly impossible to fix. The issues with missing xml files are normally corrupted downloads (ex. Antivirus didn't allow the xml to be downloaded), corrupted file, or even file hidden in another folder that is hard to locate. But in the worst case senario, you may find out that the style creator forgot to include an xml file, which means you can do two things: 1. Contact the style maker for the xml file, 2. find another user that has the xml file.
3. FAQs
The FAQ subcatagory in the admin control panel is useful to add FAQs to your forum so your users can have their questions answered by just clicking the FAQ link on the navbar of your forum. What is an FAQ? FAQ is a list of Frequently Asked Questions that users have when visiting forums or even about the website or your projects/products may be listed in the FAQ section. The main reason why the FAQ system of vBulletin is wonderful is that in a matter of minutes you can have a well designed and easy to navigate FAQ that gives your users all that they need to know about your project without having to go beyond the index of your forum.
How to create an amazing FAQ?
There are several ways you can create FAQs but the easiest and most effective method is the FAQ catagory that is shown in the navbar. You can create an FAQ by going into your admin cp and go to FAQS, and from here you get several options that will help define and expand your FAQ. The key options are: Add FAQ Item, Edit FAQ item and Delete. I will be concentrating on the Add FAQ item.
-Add FAQ Item - It lets you add a new FAQ to the main FAQ section which comes default with standard FAQ questions on the vBulletin forum options for users.
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p166/mediamixerj/FAQnewitem.jpg
Here is the page that allows you to add FAQ items.
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p166/mediamixerj/FAQmanager.jpg
Here is the page that shows all the FAQ items.
The options you can edit for the built in FAQ is the name of the FAQ Item, the variable name, the text that is in that FAQ item and what product it talks about.
You can create an amazing FAQ by: keeping the Catagories (main or outer FAQ items) short and to the point, create several child FAQ items for each catagory and make the FAQ questions easy to read and understand. You can also use acronyms and other memory devices to attract attention to certain questions or catagories in the FAQ. Putting in tricks to gather attention limits the number of constant spam topics that result from not reading the rules or the FAQs.
Another way that you can create FAQs are by creating a topic title FAQ and there are two key reasons that you may choose this more flexible method. You need to have a million or so questions or if you want to draw attention to various questions by using various format tools available in the forums but not in the FAQ subcatagory of the Admin CP. Give your FAQ a variety of colors, different fonts, and maybe even images to add a bit of style to the old plain style of the common FAQ.
How to draw attention to the FAQs?
Are you tired of the constant spam/repeat topics about common questions that is in the FAQ? It may be time to employ methods of attention grabbing techniques that authors have utilized for years.
1. Choose a deceptive or interesting titles that draw attention to the FAQ. - The age old adage of curiosity killed the cat applies to this method. Once you've got them in to the topic they'll realize its the FAQ and may read it.
2. Social Pressure - Members frown upon the constant questions of new users that do not read the FAQs or the rules. This disposition may lead the new users to realize to be accepted and not watched for common questions is to read the stickies about the FAQ and to follow the rules.
3. Reward system: Create a rules system that rewards for reading the FAQ and following the rules and punishments for breaking the rules and posting spam topics.
4. News and Announcements
I find that the number one feature that I enjoy the most about vBulletin is the news and announcement feature. As with the FAQ subcatagory of the admin CP, the News and Announcement subcatagory can create News and announcement topics in a matter of seconds. It let you choose which forum it is placed in and you can also make it a global announcement and have it show up in every forum.
How to add new news topics to the forum?
You can add new news topic by:
1. Go to the admin control panel
2. Go to the announcements subcatagory
3. Click on announcements manager
4. Add new announcement
5. Choose a certain forum to post the announcement in or choose global by clicking new/add at the top of the menu.
6. Choose name of the announcement
7. Type in all the details you would like to add about the announcement.
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p166/mediamixerj/newannouncements.jpg
Here is an image of the new announcement page of the admin cp.
That's all you need to do to make a simplified announcement using built in tools provided by vBulletin.
How to get users to read the important news and updates?
There are several ways to get users to read the important news and updates. These include:
1. Create a forum specifically titled: Announcements/News.
2. Use an CMS and have it display the latest news on your main page.
3. Create an .php file that has an link that says "Latest News" and leads to the latest news section.
4. Make the title of the news exciting - Ex. WE are live and back in business!. We are taking names and dealing out justice.
5. Securing your forum from dangers inside and out.
A common problem that I've found in dealing with installing and setting up vBulletin is that there are several files and tools that are included that poses a very serious to the overall security of your forum. Files that can be exploited, tools that can be abused by malicious staff, and some standard installation settings that may leave you in trouble along the path to achieving success as an active and engaging forum.
1. The install.php and update.php danger - The good news is that the installer of vBulletin warns you to delete these files as they pose a potential safety hazard to your forum if a hacker manages to be able to access your files on the server. These files can be used to delete your forum by using the uninstall tool. I recommend following the installer's advice of deleting these files as they are no longer needed. Note: The risk of keeping them around is greater than the chance you may need them soon.
2. The administrative permissions danger. - The complexed and flexible usergroup system of vBulletin allows for as little or as much changes or modifications as you wish to do but the standard installation may pose a danger to you if:
A. you've got an admin that poses a risk of damaging or betraying you at a later point.
B. Someone guess an admin password and they have full access to the forum could lead to your forum being damaged or worse yet shut down by the hacker.
The best way to protect against an inside job is to restrict the administrative access based on the need of the admin. So if one admin is in charge of tech give him/her access to all admin catagories related to tech that is essential to the forum's survival/maintanience. Note: Only super admins can access the logs and the admin permissions. (Bonus points to vBulletin for putting in these security safeguards).If its an hacker guessing the password I'd recommend having an emergency hidden admin account should you need to ever restore if the hacker deletes all other admin acocunts. (I've had personal experiences in which I've had done this in the past).
3. Config.php Danger - The danger of an hacker accessing and taking full control of your forum involves the use of config.php and is what contains all of the info on who are the super admins of the forums and what they can and cannot access in the forum. If the hacker changes the config.php to an unusable format they pretty much just trashed your forum as the file would be missing and they'd probably insert an unremovable or unchangeable fake file. I'd recommend safeguarding it by not allowing access to changed it after you've set it up to your likings and password it if you have a need to constantly change it. This will prevent hackers from removing super admins and also prevents them from trashing the forum by deleting all records or causing missing file errors. Note: The initial installation of the vBulletin forum software does not set the super admin to undeletable/unalterable (this is considered a safety precaution but can work both ways), my recommendation is only have one super admin and make him/her uneditable so no hacker can take down the root admin.
4. Rogue Global Moderator Danger- The way to prevent this from preventing havok is to demod the moderator as the global mods can ban and if they ban a huge number of members it could scar you in the long run. Checking the moderation logs every so often will help you catch the rouge moderators and help you keep an eye on the suspicious activity as it may mean a hacker or a staff that is not following policies that you've set up for your forums. Note: Trusting your staff is essential to a good and strong community and constant monitoring may have a negative effect on staff moral and may even lead to staff resigning or quiting.
6. Plugin System
The plugin system is were you install all modifications for vBulletin that you have gotten from vBulletin.org's modification forum. The plugin system is an easy to use installation sytem for mods that make phpbb and other forum software look old and complicated with having to use outside php files and install scripts to install it while vBulletin has a built in system and all modifications are designed to work with a certain version and may change from time to time.
How do I access the plug in system?]
You can access the plug in system via the Admin Control Panel:
1. Go to the admin control panel > Plug in system
2. Go to Plug in manager to see all the plug ins
3. To install new plug ins go to add new plug in.
4. Add the php code need to run plug in.
5. Choose the yes option to activate the plug in.
Note: Make sure that the global plug in system is enabled.
Note: Do not let other admins have access to this area of the admin cp as it can have dire effects like (viruses, malicious code, hackers, etc).
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p166/mediamixerj/pluginmanager.jpg
Here is an image of the plugin manager.
Where can I get modifications/plug ins?
You can go to vBulletin.org (this is vBulletin's community styles and modifications website) and go to the modification forum and go to plug ins and look for the ones related to the version you are using. They have nearly hundreds of modifications ranging from extensions of current technology included and new features that are useful to forum owners.
7. How to use logs
This section discusses the importance of saving the logs that are recorded by vBulletin. They serve several purposes including: Evidence to be used in investigations of hacking incidents, check for moderator abilities abuse, and for keeping a check on how much the admin CP is being used and by who. This is the security center of the vBulletin forum software. This would be the same as security cameras in a wal-mart. It protects your forum as the eye in the sky. Its only viewable by super admins which is a good security precaution.
How can I access the logs for the forum?
1. You must be an super admin and it must be configured in config.php that you can access the logs.
2. After you have been granted access to the logs, go to the statistics and logs subcatagory in the admin control panel.
3. Choose which log you would like to view. There are four seperate logs. They are:
i. Moderation log - This log shows all activities that was done using the moderation commands in the forum (ex. delete thread, move thread, split thread, merge thread, etc).
ii. Control panel log - This log shows all activities done using the administrative control panel and logs the username, activity done, what action was done and the admin's IP.
iii. Transaction log - This log shows all financial transactions done on the forum (ex. paid subscriptions).
iv. Scheduled tasks log - This log shows all scheduled tasks done for the forum (ex. backing up the database).
The logs that I have used the most are the control panel log and the moderation log as these show what your staff is doing and I had to use it to investigate an inside job that could have trashed the forum.
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p166/mediamixerj/logmanager.jpg
Here is an image of the moderation log page.
8. Maintenance tools
vBulletin provides a large selection of maintenance tools to help you keep your forum up and running in a effiecent manner that represents the quality that other forum software lack and shows the reason why many tech administrators prefer vBulletin's restore tools over the free competitors.
The maintence tools include:
1. Database backup - This is the most important tool in my opinion as this lets you restore your forum if you ever get hacked and may be important if a mod is incorrectly installed and corrupts the currnet database.
2. Repair/Optimise tables - Speeds up the tables used by vBulletin and increases the loading speed for your forum.
3. Update Counters - This updates the info on page hits and the number of visitors, users and threads created on your forum.
4. Diagnostics
5. execute SQL enquiery
6. view php info
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p166/mediamixerj/maintenancelist.jpg
Here is the maintenance options for the forum.
How do I run the backup database utility?
1. Enter the Admin Control Panel.
2. Go to the maintance subcatagory of the Admin Control panel.
3. Choose the backup database option.
4. Now you have to choose what tables to save in the database. Tip: The recommended and default choice is to back up all tables.
It will take a few minutes to backup the database depending on the size of the database. I'd recommend backing up atleast once a week as you never know when disaster may strike.
9. How to expand your community with help of vBulletin and modifications
A. Advertising
You could utilize modifications made for vBulletin that allows you to integrate several popular advertising programs such as google ads or adwords. But that is not the main focus of this section. The main section is how to attract more users to your forum and to bring about more activity. I can say from experience that the number one way to bring more users is to please the current users and they'll tell their friends and families to your forum and word of mouth is a key part of gaining members.
Another good method of advertising I'd recommend is spreading the word about your forum by advertising it in your siggy on other sites (as long as its allowed) and get your members that are die hard supporters to do the same. Note: A few connections can really impact whether your site is an A++ favorite forum of thousands or an small but close community of ten or fifteen members/friends.
Here is an example of one form of advertising that seems to bring at a very small level.
I would also recommend seeking out affiliations with like minded sites and forum owners as that could boost your membership size and visitor amount by atleast 5% to 10%.
B. Staff Management
The forum is only as good as those who monitor and manage the forum. So if you've got a poor or corrupt staff it could drag you forum straight into the ground. I've found that to maintain a happy staff will prevent troubles along the road but it is also essential to set the rules and codes of the staff, make sure not too much access is given without good reasons and that you have hired all the staff yourself. A well regulated, rewarded staff will bring a small forum a long way to the ideal form of an active community of thousands of people.
C. Choosing the main site
The first piece of the website that a user will see is the main site or index of the domain. If the main site is a poorly designed and shoddy CMS then the first impressions of the user may not be as good as can be expected. There are several solid options for CMS's that intergrate directly into vBulletin. The first one that I have tried is vBadvanced. vBadvanced is a solid, free option for an CMS. It has built in calendar, who's online, birthday, search forum, stats, latest poll, news, and recent topics modules. Its easy to add new modules and you can even make your own modules if you have a decent amount of experience in PHP. It uses the forum's styles which is very good and is overall my favorite CMS out of all the CMS's I've used so far. The others are about the same but may have a few bonuses and flaws that vBadvance doesn't have.
10. Setting up the Permissions for your forum
When setting up the permissions for your forum you must consider several factors.
1. Do I want guests to be able to see my forum?
If you want your guests to be able to see the forums then you must set up the forum properly. To set up the forums to be able to viewed by guests:
First: Go to the Admin Control Panel.
Second: Go to the Forums and Moderators subsection of the Control Panel.
Third: Go to forum permissions.
Fourth: Choose the forum that you wish to make viewable for your guests. Note for the fourth step you can just go to the permissions quick editor instead of the manually method of choosing each group you want to edit which is shown under each forum.
Fifth: Set the view forum option to yes.
Sixth: If you want to allow your users to post and rate topics then set all of the options related to posting and viewing threads to yes.
Some reasons you may wish to let guests to see your forums instead of requiring them to register are: Allows Users to see what the forums offer before deciding if they want to stay or not, eliminates the constant sign up of new members that only have one question that was already answered, and allows ease of use for users that are not in a good location to input their information (example: Library or School).
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p166/mediamixerj/permissionspt1.jpg
This is one of the three main things for the permissions relating to forum permissions.
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p166/mediamixerj/permissionsforforums.jpg
Here is the forum permission settings for the usergroups far as posting options.
2. What can the regular member see?
When setting up forums it is always important what forums you want your users to see. You may wish to only allow users to see certain forums based on usergroup. Example: Junior members may see the introduction forum, help forum and off topic forum. Once they get to senior member they can see the report forum, the benefits forum and the graphics forum. It is important to remember that when setting up the forum, any option that you set to yes may end up becoming a security hazard if a troll or a hacker gets control of your forum. Note: I recommend disabling the ability to upload files to the forum as it poses a major security hazard if certain types of files are not disabled.
3. What forums are for staff only?
Most forums have a staff forum to keep up on new rules and policies that staff are required to follow and helps to maintain order and structure within a forum. For this just set it so that only admins and moderators can access the forum. Note: You may wish to password the forum as an extra precaution. To password the forum go to the forum options and scroll down to where it says Password: and then enter a password.
4. Do I want to have paid services for members? If so what will I offer them?
Most forums offer more to those who are willing to contribute to the cost to maintain or expand communities and one way that grateful administrators thank them is by offering them benefits by having the users who want to contribute by having a paid subscription system set up and the plus side of using vBulletin is that they have already built it into the main vBulletin software. ((That's another plus side of buying vBulletin built in subscription system)). All you have to do is:
First: Go to the Admin Control Panel
Second: Go to Paid Subscription
Third: (To set up subscription plans) Go to Add New Subscription
Fourth: Fill in the details it ask for: title, price etc.
Now you have set up your own subscription plan and now you can expand your plans to make your forum better and to help pay for the cost of the forum if advertising is not an option or if advertising doesn't pay enough.
I have not used the paid subscription option myself but I hear that many use it and that it is a very useful option.
:)
Far as what you can offer them there are plenty of benefits that you can offer them: From More modifications to vBulletin that they may actually see and use to new private forums to little ranks and titles that show that they help contribute to your forum to additional support and care in the long run.
11. Modifying styles to create your own look
One step to creating a positive environment for your members and to give yourself a unique look that yells to the world what you are trying to do with your forum. The tools to modify a style to your likings are:
-FTP Access
-Custom designed Images
-Ability to access the Admin CP.
-Time
First, ready the images in Photoshop or another photo editing software of choice. Make sure to save the images as the same names as the original images featured in the style that you are basing your new one on.
Second, Open the FTP software of choice and enter in all the data needed to access the site's directory. Browse to the folder that holds the images for the style and then begin placing the files into the correct location and choose overwrite all.
From here, vBulletin allows you a variety of options that caters to users of all levels. So if you are a beginner, you may be satisfied by just modifying the images and not editing the CSS of the templates of the style. If you are comfortable with editing CSS and/or the templates of the style then vBulletin holds several options for you.
If you are a beginner I recommend just modifying the images and fixing up any of the buttons that do not meet your needs using the methods above.
If you are a more advanced user:
1.Go to Admin Control Panel.
2. Go to Styles and templates subsection
3. Go to styles manager
4. Choose the style you want to edit.
5. Go to the scroll down box and choose edit main CSS. - This will give you all the CSS options for the style and will let you edit every color that is not linked to an image. Note: Wrongly editing the CSS can have very severe consequences on your forum (from minor annoyances in appearance to complete and utter crashing of the forum and errors). Also this will let you change the location of the images for the style (example: you change the location on the website for the images).
If tweaking the graphics and the CSS is not your idea of creating a unique forum then you may want to get friends or coworkers who have what you are looking for or has an idea on how to bring your dream/goal to life.
12. Exploring and setting up an infraction system
A feature that eases the enforcement of rules is an built in Infraction system. In a matter of clicks you can have a dynamic and fully functional warning system set up and regulating your forums at the hands of your staff. How does the vBulletin Infraction system compare to that of its close rival Invision boards? The vBulletin board has several different methods that you can set up compared to the warnings system of Invision. You can choose between a points system and an infraction (warning) system. Although Invision boards do have an good graphical interface for the warning system, the way to check warnings for Invision is a bit of a pain and seems a bit unwieldy. The vBulletin system lets you know you got warned by PM or Email and also lets you limit the priviledges of members if they go to far. Note: Through no fault of vBulletin, the infraction system may be abused if moderators do not follow the rules or improperly enforces them.
The first question that may enter a user's mind when talking about an infraction system is what is an infraction system and how do I set this up?
Infraction system - An infraction system is a system that allows the staff (Moderators, Global Mods, and Admins) hand out warnings (also known as infractions or citations) to unruly members and also is the standard method of keeping order in most forums.
How do I set up the infraction system?
You can set up the infraction system by:
1. Going to the Admin Control Panel
2. Going to the User Infractions subsection
3. Go to add new User Infraction level - This is where you set up the warnings.
4. Enter the required information- title, points/infraction value, etc .
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p166/mediamixerj/infractionspart1.jpg
Here is one of the screenshots of the infraction system.
Also from this subsection of the admin panel, you can set up automatic bans for the fourm and the groups that warned members will be put into after x number of points or x number of warnings.
13. Moderation
An country without its military will surely fall to its opponents. This decay/collapse without enforcement and regulation concept is timeless and truly does apply to running a forum. The moderators are the military/police force of the forum and executes the rules and policies that are decided upon by the staff/admins of the forum. Without a dedicated and loyal group of moderators you can see an well organized and friendly community turned into an anarchist's haven the very next day. As moderators are the backbone of the forum infrastructure they should be treated as so. They deserve the trust and respect of members as they do their best to uphold the ideals of the owner and in concern to the safety of the members.
What concerns are raised by users and forum owners when dealing with moderations. The most common concerns that I have seen are these:
1. How do I know if the moderators are doing their job correctly?
I recommend talking to them if you have concerns regarding their behavior and to praise them and thank them if they are doing well. An mention of how good they are doing helps to show them that they are appreciated for working hard and that they are being recognized and not being ignored as no trouble has occurred.
2. What should I do if I catch an moderator abusing his/her 's powers?
One way to handle this is to warn them and then later on if they continue on the same pattern is to demod them and to tell them that they lost their moderation abilities for abusing powers and then present them with the evidence. Another way to handle this is to give it up to the members to decide base on merit who stays on the moderation team and who goes.
3. What is one way of choosing new moderators?
One way of choosing new moderators is to look at the current community and choose based on behavior and level of activity and helpfulness candidates that will best benefit the forum.
4. How should I let thank them for all their hard work?
You can thank them in several ways. You can thank them by giving them custom titles, praising their hard work, giving them gifts at the end of the year, giving them their own forum/hosting/perks.
5. What are some ways to keep them happy with the forums?
Enforce rules the way that they are supposed to be enforced. Don't bend the rules just because you are an admin as that would give the view that as I can do what ever I want I will and is demoralizing to the rest of the staff who suffer for those actions. Another way is to make sure that they all have enough help to keep order and to add more if needed and to give breaks if necessary and all in all be understanding if things come up (wedding, death in family, vacation, school, alien attack, etc).
http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p166/mediamixerj/showmoderators.jpg
Here is a picture of the moderation page of the admin cp.
14. Additional Tips and Tricks
Tips
- Always consider both sides of the issue before adding or subtracting mods or even forums from the site. It will let you see whether the cost of adding/subtracting it is worth the benefit in the long run and may save some customer or member troubles.
- Make sure that you fully trust your staff and always keep an eye out for suspicious behavior. One loose cannon among a bunch of loyal and awesome staff has been the demise of many forums that I have seen and known of.
- If you are in the United States, make sure to enable the COPPA registration feature as it is required by law and could result in danger to your hosting of the forum if it is not done.
- Have clearly posted privacy policies to ensure that the members know how you are using their information and that is not being sold of to spammers etc.
- All well organized forums have rules posted in the announcement section and also have links throughout the forum point new members to it.
- Limit ftp access to the owner of the forum and only highly trusted admins and I recommend password protecting various directories to protect the site /sites from destruction if a betrayal occurs.
- Make sure that your subject of your forum is fitting to the audience you have/want and that it is within the TOS (terms of service) of your hosting.
- Make sure that there is a clear line of authority among the staff and a chain of command that will be able to ensure the survival of the forum if you have to leave, etc.
- Check out vBulletin.com and it sister sites for great modifications and styles etc to enhance your site to its fullest potentials.
-Follow the procedures of any and all advertising programs that you sign up for. This will save you from losing your account with the advertiser or being charged with fraud in the severest of cases.
-Listening to your members may help point out new tastes and ideas that the community want to be and an unbiased look into the forum always helps :).
-If are planning on having a closed period of time where only certain individuals are allowed in, one method to deal with this is to require registrations to be approved by admins (Note this could be used by hackers to lock you out of your own forum).
- Never ever give your account information to anyone saying/pretending to be from vBulletin staff (example: Password). It may be a scammer out to steal vBulletin accounts from unsuspecting individuals. This is a common method of social engineers who damage and steal forums.
- Rome was not built in a day and neither is a good forum. Take your time and all will be well in the long run.
Overall I must say having used Phpbb, SMF, IPB, and vBulletin that vBulletin is the best of the forum software overall and is well worth the price to own it.
15. Personal experiences with vBulletin
I apologize to the readers who are probably flabbergasted after reading most of this article but to top off this massive paperweight of a guide is a little bit of my experience with vBulletin and why I find it to be the perfect forum solution.
Well about six or seven weeks back I first got the ability to use vBulletin for an gaming project that I am working on and upon the first minute I began to set up vBulletin I was looking at it in awe. The simple 13 step installer that makes Phpbb installation without Fantastico an eternity. When I first set it up I had set it to all admins had the same access and each of the admins had full access to the ftp without any password restrictions on the directories. At the time I was using Joomla and vBulletin. At first we opened the forum up to the public and it was a joyful time and all was set to our tastes beside a lackluster free skin that I have recently begin to fix up. We were hacked. Soon afterward I got help from an member on our team and we got back after modifying a few files to let us sign up as an admin and then restored it back to the original form. All was well and I learn the biggest lesson of all which is to be sure to correctly configure your forum to be secure and to limit unnecessary access to other admins. I since switch from using joomla as the CMS to using vBadvanced as it is intergrated with vBulletin and is not hard to use and easy to configure to our likings. Thanks for taking the time to read my guide and I hope you enjoy vBulletin as much as I have :).
Pros
--------------
-Easy to Install
-many many modifications
-Mods easy to install
-Solid Admin CP
-Built in Subscription system
-Built in warning system
-Styles
- General default interface is clean and crisp
-Great Support team
Cons
----------
-Takes time to adjust after using only free forum software
-Costs money (but that is a small negative in this case. :cool:)
vBulletin : 10 out of 10.
One of the best and better than the rest.
I may add a few more parts depending on if I find anything else that I really really really need to cover but I think this is good enough for a beginner's guide >.>.