In the past few weeks, I have been a little side tracked by the happenings in the Search Engine industry and also seo for my own sites. So i have not been posting about vbulletin and also invisionboard . But with every new release – be it from any of the big 3 in the forum softwares ( vBulletin , Invisionboard and phpBB ) , I am noticing the growth or development of the softwares is mostly being directed towards making plugins or addons / modifications as default feature .

Example : In vbulletin version 3.7, some of the major changes or additions are -

• Reciprocal friendship between forum members
• Public messaging along with private messaging
• User Picture galleries
• User created social groups
• Member profile page
• Profile page Design and Customization
• Social bookmarking and tagging

Earlier , quite a few of these features were also introduced in Invisionboard and they also have their official gallery component .

What are the advantages of these modules being added as features : The best possible advantages is that features means , they are coded by the official developers – thus most secure, most easy to template and continuous support. Any modification always have the difficulties of 2 types – one that they are often made for the developers personal forum , and directed towards the site’s goals, which may or may not be the goal of other users of the modification. And the other being , the weaning of support due to lack of time or rather “free volunteer time”.

What are the disadvantages of the mods being added as features : Yes, there are direct disadvantages , such as … a software’s growth is often contributed by the plugins and modification community. Most mods developers spend months of their volunteer time building a modification and even for supporting it and provide it for free , in the hope of getting some donation money or related work in the future. This keeps them interested in contributing codes and time , and even build sites for supporting the modification . This comes to a close / end , with their mods being adapted as default features – which makes them loose their credit / money / fan following.

But all that is for any kind of mods and features … but these current modifications , turned feature sets, IMHO are not necessary in a forum software … a Forum is a Forum , a forum can not be a gallery . Same way , a forum is a forum , and IMO should not be a social network site . A social network site comes with a plethora of features which is often unworthy of being in a forum , which is typically a Message Board . A profile page … earlier the profile of the poster was recognizable through his posts , his posting habits , signature and maybe his avatar . Now, with a full blown profile page in place , i feel , the identity , the secrecy , the charm would be lost . Now , we have public messaging ( read profile commenting ), along with private messaging . All in all , every new element is taking the members and their “friends” away from the message board to the frills and fancies ( like MS Windows software ) . Will this really increase the value of the individual messageboards ? I feel it will only lower the posting and discussion on topics and people will be so besotted by the features .

Why this has been done : I believe this is entirely a marketing decision , only to generate hype , and compete with other scripts , but all in all this only Adds to the workload of a typical forum admin and moderators as they will have to check for more places which might go against forum policies . Every addon module as large as a gallery , friends network and the same , will only increase a web and database server requirement . Furthermore, with every one speaking of the web 2 and social web, most companies are feeling a need for making their offering more web 2.0 oriented and the frills such as “friends” and”networking” and “profiles” are the key features seen elsewhere.

To keep to the main topic as well , vbulletin 3.7 also comes with some good feature sets , undoubtedly . These are :

• Inline Spam Management and Prevention Tools
• Thread Tagging
• Thread Prefixes
• Attachment Viewing Lightbox
• Post Edit History
• Navbar Notices
• New Human Verification Systems

Spam and spam prevention is a constant complaint or nuisance for any and every forum administrator – the more tools the merrier . Thread tagging helps in quicker searching and less repeat posts by noobs , Thread prefix – a mod i always sought after
The attachment lightbox would surely be a welcome addition for preventing the stretching of template / board width etc .
To be quite frank , I have not tested all of this on a liver big board yet , as this is totally a Beta version , but I will do so soon and update this post , so stay UPDATED through the FEED.

Over the past 2 weeks , we have developed vbulletin skins for 2 different websites / clients . One for a flower discussion community forum and now currently a Spanish fantasy gaming website . The 2 new templates that have been developed are quite a bit more colorful than before , especially the Spanish forum .

Developing custom templates is naturally costlier than regular templates, because they are uniquely designed for 1 single customer to maintain their individuality . These templates we do not allow for download directly from our website. Among the last 2 clients i was mentioning, one of them provided their own PSD and our work involved converting the Photoshop design into a fully coded vbulletin template , which could be imported on their existing forum , which also used vB CMPS , along with 13 other vbulletin Addons / Plugins / Modifications. The odd thing , however , is that both times the client / customer requested their “unique vbulletin template” to be a clone of a existing forum site design !!

I have been discussing about the legality of doing this design with a few web designer friends of mine and have also posted on webmaster forums . As of yet , people are of the idea that since the liability of the content – design and text copy , is of the owner of the domain , it should not concern me , as the designer. However , as the designer it should be in my best interests to let the customer / site owner know that he is opting towards probable legal hassle. My friend suggested that i get at least a email confirmation , if not in writing , that it is by his idea the design is being cloned . Furthermore, he also suggested that I should not include a link back to my website / portfolio page – proudly claiming that the vbulletin clone design was done by me / us, thus alienating ourselves from any complaints or such.

Last week we got this new client for designing a custom vbulletin template for his website cum forum on American Idol . American Idol is a well known tv show and has got a huge fan following all over america and other parts of the world , thanks to satelite television . The project required good amount of work including creating custom vbulletin template , logo , banners as well as custom designed buttons, forum markers – the works. Being related to American Idol , we decided to use a blue with blue combination, and the client approved of it . Besides the template the work also involved ensuring the css and the rest also works with his vBadvanced CMPS addon.

This is however not the first time , we have designed Skins for Television forums , our previous works on celebrity forums was with Discusstv.com , where we have designed multiple Invisionboard skins .

Today we recieved a new vbulletin template design and cuztomization work for a entertainment forum . This vbulletin job is 3 folds :

1. design a vbulletin template
2. install vbCMPS
   
3. Install and configure vbSEO as well install vcPics gallery

Both vb CMPS and vbSEO are well known vbulletin products ( not official, of course). CMPS is like many vbulletin CMS softwares – quite widely used and comes with the regular page generation and management features and options for fixed as well as custom blocks , to display several common functions like stats , latest members , latest posts as well as custom advertisement and google adsense blocks .

To be frank , the current work is less about designing a vbulletin template but more about fixing the layout with the vbCMPS and vbSEO installation . I am currently testing the website on a demo folder taking a mysql and web dump from the original site . But I have seen the vbulletin forum design work done by our designer tarak , and i definitely like it – i hope the customer will also . Just to make the customer happy and satisfied , I have asked tarak to provide with 2 different color themes / concepts for the templates one in darker shade and another in lighter color . We are of course making custom graphics , including custom buttons , custom designed header, and the works

OK, we have now completed the matrix skin , for MW client. Here’s a preview of the skin , however this is a screenshot of a beta stage , do view the finished skin / vbulletin template in the Portfolio page . It was a pleasure working for John and his team / site. And i daresay they are also very much pleased by our work . His last reply , I quote,

Arindra, both me and my team have gone through the template and we are happy to say it is perfect !

Here is the screenshot .

OK , last few days has been a little slow again , thanks to political distrubances in our city / state . It is making everyone sick , how the idiots at the helm of our government along with its opposition continue to destroy the work culture / environment and everything that looks promising for us down here. Anyway, i will keep ranting about it , if allowed , so on to the main news.

We have sent John and his team of fraud watchers to approve and comment on our latest design sample for their vbulletin forum . Personally i believe it is yet just 25% made and hope we can do much more work on it , but lets wait for their feedback first .

On the other hand , we have almost completed a Invisionboard skin , for IP.Board 2.2 . I intend to distribute it for free since the topic / theme is pretty current and generic . The buttons are nice , with a full set of graphics, it should look much nicer . However , what i do like about it is the Stats section which we have modified . Sometime tomorow i will put up a screenshot here , but I do wish we had finished making it before the World Cup 2007 started .

Ever since i did some restructuring on the featuredhost website and its new pages, i have noticed a substantial gain in search engine rankings for the term vBulletin templates. Considering this as a heavily searched term, i was actually quite surprised to say the least for such an interesting gain in so little time. When i showed the same to our team, they were very enthusiastic about working on vBulletin and forum templating in general.

However the initial few days did not bring us any client but the forms / request a quote forms on the same pages got heavily attacked by Spam Bots. Even though we have a captcha solution, on some other forms, i decided against putting such a security measure on this in spite of receiving extensive spam , which gave us nothing but false hopes of receiving request for quotes.

But that was those days and today is now. In the past 2 days , we received 2 new queries for doing custom vB templates design. One such work has already been confirmed by the client and agreement already signed. From Monday , we start work for this German client, who was quite nice to chat with. Once again this requires working on another gaming site. We are only starting by doing a vB template but it promises to lead to more interesting vBulletin CMS development as well . Needless to say , i am pretty excited and geared up .

As for the other client, he has requested few testimonials , so am awaiting the confirmation from previous clients to know if they will allow us to use their testimonials . One client has already agreed and I am quite thankful to him . Hopefully by next week , we should have started work on both the new template designs.

Tonight recieved a new order , this time to design a vbulletin template for a gaming site. I think i am going to like designing / templating for this website. As a child , i was always into playing PC Games . Our new customer , owns / operates more than one gaming forum and somewhere along talking about the work, we dwelved into the genres of games each of us likes or rather liked . I have an idea that the client might be younger than me , and it was quite funny when he asked how old i am

Nevertheless , it is a perfectly valid question , as i am still kept hanging by an outsourced programmer who has been delaying for quite a long time on one invisionboard module i had got from him.

During tonights chat , the client mentioned that his idea of a gaming forum skin compares to IGN.com . Now , anyone running a gaming forum , obviously looks up to IGN – be it for the popularity , the look and feel or the functionability. However what they forget often , i believe is that IGN doesnt use any particular forum software but is built upon totally custom coded scripts from what i know . So often it is and will be much more flexible and maleable .

For many months , i have always wanted to do what we are doing now, i.e designing templates and skins. Over all these times earlier, i have come across various alternative sites… some of them having very good customisations and some having a good amount of skins. Since we are still at the beginning, i doubt if our works can yet be called good customizations, and also since our workforce is as of yet limited, we don’t have a good number of templates / skins either.

However , i am also having the dilemma … what to aim for , quantity and quality ? We have just started to sell … so i don’t have a good enough understanding which will help in selling more and thus making better money . As i have seen, as of yet making just CSS or colour changes can be done pretty quickly , but integrating designs differently does take a bit of time . I think , for now i will go and hunt for more inspirations …. not just design wise , but also from the business point of view.

Since we are now working quite round the (office) clock on vBulletin customisations, we are spending much time in gatherin vBulletin documentation from wherever possible. Being one of the most premier and oldest forum software , it is quite evident that it has good documetation available from the official site i.e vbulletin.com . Not only there is exhaustive documentation on the installation , configuration , rights and permissions but also there is nice info about making customisations to the default script .

I have personally been an long time license holder of Invisionboard and hence always had access to the official documentation and GDK there , but i am even more impressed with the one at vbulletin.com . And also apart from the official documentations , the non official Tips and Tricks and info available on the external sites like vb.org , vb-faqs etc are not bad either , to say the least .  And apart from this , i have also had a peek in the book on vBulletin from Packt ( even though it is a little old dated , by version wise) , it is quite a good read.