vBulletin 3.8 Review - General Features & Requirements
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| Web Site: | http://www.vbulletin.com |
|---|---|
| Download here: | Download vBulletin 3.8 |
| Community Forum: | Support |
| Released under: | Proprietary License. |
|---|---|
| Current version: | 3.8.1 (January 27, 2009). |
| Sponsored By: | Jelsoft Enterprises Limited. |
| Price: | $ 180. |
December 22, 2009: A new version of vBulletin 3.8 has been reviewed.
Consult the vBulletin 4 Review »
Consult the vBulletin 4 Review »
From vBulletin 3.8 website
vBulletin gives you an instant community that lets your visitors interact, take part in discussions, ask questions, give answers and express opinions.
vBulletin is a professional, affordable community forum solution. Thousands of clients, including many industry leading blue chip companies, have chosen vBulletin - It's the ideal choice for any size of community.
Making your site a hub for information and discussion encourages visitors to return again and again. It's also a highly effective way of improving your service to customers or users of your website. Our dedicated development team constantly strives to keep vBulletin at the forefront of new Internet innovations, while always keeping an eye on security and performance.
Key features include:
- Fast and efficient database back end
- Template driven interface
- Powerful search engine
- Language system
- Custom user fields
- Extensive admin control panel
- Unlimited forums/posts
- Inline moderation
- Flexible plugin system
vBulletin History and Context
vBulletin is edited by the Jelsoft Enterprises Limited company for more than nine years (started in 2000), and, step by step has been completed by many additional features and evolve with the Internet. We could notice, on the Big Boards website, that 8 forum on the 25 most used Internet forum are using vBulletin, which proves that you could rely on this software.
Prices
The company which develops vBulletin sells two kind of software licenses:
- Owned License ($ 180): Allows you to run the software on your site indefinitely. One year of free updates, and $60 to a new year of updates.
- Leased License ($ 100): Allows you to use the software on your site for 1 year and gives you access to products updates for that year. After 1 year, you must renew your license or remove the software from your site.
More information about vBulletin pricing...
Server & Clients Requirements
| Server Requirements | ||
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Operating Systems
Systems supporting this software.
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Web Server 
Web servers host the forum software.
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Languages
Development language.
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Databases
Systems that store forum datas.
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| Browsers & Clients Requirements | ||
|---|---|---|
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Compatible Browsers
List of compatible browsers.
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Required Plugins/Technologies
What the user needs exactly to use this forum correctly.
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Localization
Languages supported by vBulletin 3.8.
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 Yes.
vBulletin provides a localization features that could virtually make it work in any languages... if you translate it. Translations packages are of course also available. |
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The vBulletin software only supports the MySQL database backend, but it supports it well. This means that using the direct PHP/MySQL functions and optimizations is always better than using a third-party wrapper, because it allows using MySQL hints.
However, it could be installed on any operating systems that support PHP on a Web Server.
Forum Threads & Posts
| Forum Threads | |
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Forum Style
General appearance of the topics.
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Flat/Threaded |
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Social Networks
Users can share information from their social network account...
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No. |
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Thread Icons
An icon that identifies the type of a topic.
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Yes |
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Forum Organization
Organize your forum with categories, sections,...
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Sticky Threads
Sticky threads stay at top of a section or a forum.
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Yes |
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Spell Checking
Posts and topics are spelled checked with a dictionary.
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 No |
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Detect Duplicate Threads
Duplicate Threads are detected before creation.
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Yes |
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Shadow Topics
Some topics are only accessible to a limited list of users.
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Yes |
| Posts | |||
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Post Editing Form
Details about the manner to post messages.
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Emoticons
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Yes |
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Post Editing Format
Markup Language (HTML, Wiki, BBCode,...).
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Attachments
Attach files (screenshot, archive,...) with a post.
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Yes |
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Post Quoting
Quoting a post helps readers understand who answers who.
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Yes |
Syntax Highlighting
Posted Source Code is formatted using colors.
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 Plugin |
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Post Rating
Users can rate the quality of other users posts.
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Yes |
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Key Features & Additional Tools
| Key Features | |||
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Bundled Softwares
Softwares that are also available with the forum.
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Users List
List of all user accounts, to helps users searching their friends.
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Yes |
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Private Messages
Users can communicate using an internal messaging system.
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Yes |
Online Users List
List of actually connected users, in the forum home page, a dedicated topic,...
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Yes |
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Instant Messaging
Communicate in the forum like in other IM (Yahoo Messenger, Live Messenger, Google Talk,...)
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Yes |
Quick Reply Box
Write a post directly from the topic page.
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Yes |
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Calendar
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Yes |
Remote Control
Remote control from external softwares or websites.
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No. |
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Poll Creation
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Yes |
Friendly URLs
URLs are as short and simple as possible (for better copy/paste and share).
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No |
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RSS/Atom Syndication
New posts and threads available using aggregators
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vBulletin has an incredible list of features. They are not all useful, simply because any installation of vBulletin never requires the default huge features list it provides. However, everybody will always fulfill their needs, generally without installing any additional plugins.
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General Features &
Requirements |
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