Daniel P
1st February 2005, 05:06 AM
The future of bulletin boards
Bulletin boards are becoming more and more useful each day. "Bulletin boards are now a very complex system used on a lot of today's web sites (both enthusiasts as well as small to big company web sites)." If it's either for testing or development purposes, or for running a good business, with an easy to use board, a nice group of staff members and dedicated time, your success is guaranteed.
Author: Daniel P & Floris
Web site: http://www.vbulletin.nl/ (http://www.vbulletin.nl)
Some of you may have probably lived the era of early bulletin board systems. Flat-file boards were a pain to customise and personalise. Countless hours were spent on modifying them as much as one wanted. All of that until database driven bulletin boards were launched, where MySQL is the most commonly used and supported by hosting providers.
Even though template driven, they were still flat-file and too time consuming to modify, but for that time simple bulletin boards were just used as that: posting messages that others could see and reply to. A small revolution for the internet.
Nowdays the market leader (http://www.big-boards.com/statistics/) vBulletin is at version 3 and is doing most of the hard work for us. Its powerful style and language system allows one to modify every aspect of the board, just the way he/she likes (in multiple styles & languages). From changing colors, font face and size, complete CSS control with just a click of the mouse, to easy to modify templates, language phrases and more. All through the browser, no file changes or programming skills required!. Bulletin boards are now a very complex system used on a lot of today's web sites (both enthusiasts as well as small to big company web sites). vBulletin for example comes with a very easy installation system which requires just a few clicks to install such a fresh new complex bulletin board system, or convert using ImpEx (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=102412) from another one to vBulletin; making it possible for everybody to have their own instant on-line community on their web site, making their site active, hot, dynamic and interactive.
Some people may find the array of features (http://www.vbulletin.com/features.php) in boards quite impressive and overwhelming (bloated even), but thankfully with a system like vBulletin each feature comes with settings and options to turn them on or off (or limited even), but as always, the community is adding/suggesting more features and options (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=62743) for people to use, as source code modifications. Some people choose to install them depending on wether they find it useful or not for their community. And it hopefully gives the developers of bulletin board systems the idea of what people want to see improved, enhanced or added on top of the existing system.
We do not know what the future reserves for us, although what we want and can do is imagine what it could bring. A lot more things will become automated, not needing any user intervention in the end. The source code will become more optimized, better balanced against features and performance. Made ready to support multiple databases (handy for bigger+ web sites), provide API for third party software integration. Since coding standards and programming languages constantly improve we might expect our community to become lifelike and have a three dimensional and appealing look. We might also see voice recognition or more interaction with other standards and programming languages. Who knows!
We are only begining to see Object Oriented Programming being put to good use, on the vBulletin 3.x development process (following a comment (http://www.vBulletin-Fans.com/showthread.php?t=8024) made by Kier Darby, the Product Manager for Jelsoft).
What you can do now? Upgrade your web site with a community (get vBulletin (http://www.vBulletin.com/order/) if you don't have it already), get the most out of the software, and simply enjoy it. Just wait, the future will reveal itself eventually. Give it some time.
©Copyright 2005 Daniel P, Floris & http://www.vBulletin.nl/
Users are free to publish this article on their web site, as long as full credits are given and the copyright remains intact. For permission to publish it, send us a Private Message.
You can discuss this article here (http://www.vBulletin-Fans.com/showthread.php?t=9319).
Floris & Staff
Bulletin boards are becoming more and more useful each day. "Bulletin boards are now a very complex system used on a lot of today's web sites (both enthusiasts as well as small to big company web sites)." If it's either for testing or development purposes, or for running a good business, with an easy to use board, a nice group of staff members and dedicated time, your success is guaranteed.
Author: Daniel P & Floris
Web site: http://www.vbulletin.nl/ (http://www.vbulletin.nl)
Some of you may have probably lived the era of early bulletin board systems. Flat-file boards were a pain to customise and personalise. Countless hours were spent on modifying them as much as one wanted. All of that until database driven bulletin boards were launched, where MySQL is the most commonly used and supported by hosting providers.
Even though template driven, they were still flat-file and too time consuming to modify, but for that time simple bulletin boards were just used as that: posting messages that others could see and reply to. A small revolution for the internet.
Nowdays the market leader (http://www.big-boards.com/statistics/) vBulletin is at version 3 and is doing most of the hard work for us. Its powerful style and language system allows one to modify every aspect of the board, just the way he/she likes (in multiple styles & languages). From changing colors, font face and size, complete CSS control with just a click of the mouse, to easy to modify templates, language phrases and more. All through the browser, no file changes or programming skills required!. Bulletin boards are now a very complex system used on a lot of today's web sites (both enthusiasts as well as small to big company web sites). vBulletin for example comes with a very easy installation system which requires just a few clicks to install such a fresh new complex bulletin board system, or convert using ImpEx (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=102412) from another one to vBulletin; making it possible for everybody to have their own instant on-line community on their web site, making their site active, hot, dynamic and interactive.
Some people may find the array of features (http://www.vbulletin.com/features.php) in boards quite impressive and overwhelming (bloated even), but thankfully with a system like vBulletin each feature comes with settings and options to turn them on or off (or limited even), but as always, the community is adding/suggesting more features and options (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=62743) for people to use, as source code modifications. Some people choose to install them depending on wether they find it useful or not for their community. And it hopefully gives the developers of bulletin board systems the idea of what people want to see improved, enhanced or added on top of the existing system.
We do not know what the future reserves for us, although what we want and can do is imagine what it could bring. A lot more things will become automated, not needing any user intervention in the end. The source code will become more optimized, better balanced against features and performance. Made ready to support multiple databases (handy for bigger+ web sites), provide API for third party software integration. Since coding standards and programming languages constantly improve we might expect our community to become lifelike and have a three dimensional and appealing look. We might also see voice recognition or more interaction with other standards and programming languages. Who knows!
We are only begining to see Object Oriented Programming being put to good use, on the vBulletin 3.x development process (following a comment (http://www.vBulletin-Fans.com/showthread.php?t=8024) made by Kier Darby, the Product Manager for Jelsoft).
What you can do now? Upgrade your web site with a community (get vBulletin (http://www.vBulletin.com/order/) if you don't have it already), get the most out of the software, and simply enjoy it. Just wait, the future will reveal itself eventually. Give it some time.
©Copyright 2005 Daniel P, Floris & http://www.vBulletin.nl/
Users are free to publish this article on their web site, as long as full credits are given and the copyright remains intact. For permission to publish it, send us a Private Message.
You can discuss this article here (http://www.vBulletin-Fans.com/showthread.php?t=9319).
Floris & Staff