vBulletin 4 Review - General Features & Requirements

Tue December 22, 2009 01:03 |
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Web Site: http://www.vbulletin.com
Download here: Download vBulletin 4
Community Forum: Support
Released under: Proprietary License.
Current version: 4.0.2 (February 4, 2010).
Sponsored By: Jelsoft Enterprises Limited.
Price: $195 for Forum, $285 for Publishing Suite.

vBulletin is one of the most famous solution for providing a forum software to communities. The latest major 4.0 version has been released in the end of the year 2009, and was a great opportunity to revamp and organize the vBulletin softwares suite. As you may know, vBulletin company does not only edit a forum software of the same name, but also a CMS and a Blog software. Those two tools could be absolutely used with the vBulletin Forum in order to administrate a whole website with the same software solution.

That's why vBulletin provides now two different packages:

vBulletin Forum vBulletin Publishing Suite

vBulletin 4.0 Forum

Only provides the forum software.

vBulletin 4.0 Publishing Suite

Contains the Forum, the CMS and the Blog softwares.

Using the vBulletin 4.0 Publishing Suite, you will have the full stack to manage your website (using the CMS or/and the Blog software(s)), and if you already use another tool (Drupal, Wordpress, Dotclear,...), then you will only need the vBulletin forum software.

Let's see in details what going on with this major evolution.

Server & Clients Requirements

Server Requirements
Operating Systems
Systems supporting this software.
  • Linux
  • Windows Server 2003
  • Windows XP
  • Solaris
  • FreeBSD
  • OpenBSD
  • NetBSD
  • Windows Server 2008
  • Mac OS
Web Server Details
Web servers host the forum software.
  • Apache 1.3
  • Apache 2.0/2.2
  • Microsoft IIS
  • Lighttpd
Languages Details
Development language.
  • PHP 4
  • PHP 5
Databases Details
Systems that store forum datas.
  • MySQL
Browsers & Clients Requirements
Compatible Browsers Details
List of compatible browsers.
  • Mozilla Firefox 3
  • Mozilla Firefox 2
  • Mozilla Firefox 1
  • Opera
  • Safari
  • Konqueror
  • Internet Explorer 7
  • Internet Explorer 6
  • Chrome
  • Mozilla SeaMonkey
Required Plugins/Technologies Details
What the user needs exactly to use this forum correctly.
  • HTML and Javascript
  • HTML and AJAX
Localization Details
Languages supported by vBulletin 4.
Yes 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.

From this side, vBulletin only had new AJAX calls to improve the usability of the forum, so you will just require a modern browser (or Internet Explorer 6 - sorry, it could not be included within the term "modern").

Forum Threads & Posts

Forum Threads
Forum Style
General appearance of the topics.
Flat/Threaded
Social Networks
Users can share information from their social network account...
No.
Thread Icons
An icon that identifies the type of a topic.
Yes Yes
Forum Organization
Organize your forum with categories, sections,...
  • Forum Categories
  • URL Redirection Forum
  • Sub Sections
  • Trashcan Forum
Sticky Threads
Sticky threads stay at top of a section or a forum.
Yes Yes
Spell Checking
Posts and topics are spelled checked with a dictionary.
Unknown Unknown
Detect Duplicate Threads
Duplicate Threads are detected before creation.
Yes Yes
Shadow Topics
Some topics are only accessible to a limited list of users.
Yes Yes
Posts
Post Editing Form Details
Details about the manner to post messages.
  • WYSIWYG Editor
  • Preview Button
 Emoticons Details Yes Yes
Post Editing Format Details
Markup Language (HTML, Wiki, BBCode,...).
  • Plain
  • BBCode
 Attachments Details
Attach files (screenshot, archive,...) with a post.
Yes Yes
Post Quoting
Quoting a post helps readers understand who answers who.
Yes Yes Syntax Highlighting
Posted Source Code is formatted using colors.
Plugin Plugin
Post Rating
Users can rate the quality of other users posts.
Yes Yes

Key Features & Additional Tools

Key Features
Bundled Softwares
Softwares that are also available with the forum.
  • Website Home Page
  • CMS
  • Blog
  • Bug Tracker
  • Projet Manager
  • Pictures Album Manager
 Users List Details
List of all user accounts, to helps users searching their friends.
Yes Yes
Private Messages Details
Users can communicate using an internal messaging system.
Yes Yes Online Users List
List of actually connected users, in the forum home page, a dedicated topic,...
Yes Yes
Instant Messaging Details
Users can communicate in the forum like in other IM softwares (Yahoo Messenger, Live Messenger, Google Talk, AIM,...)
Yes Yes Quick Reply Box
Write a post directly from the topic page.
Yes Yes
Calendar Details Yes Yes Remote Control Details
Remote control from external softwares or websites.
No.
Poll Creation Details Yes Yes Friendly URLs
URLs are as short and simple as possible (for better copy/paste and share).
Yes Yes
RSS/Atom Syndication Details
New posts and threads available using aggregators (represented by the Syndicate icon)
RSS 2.0

vBulletin features are still really huge and have an incredibly large scope. All of them are not mandatory and could be disabled, but vBulletin has clearly simplify the job of webmasters, that won't have to look for additional plugins and modules to fulfill their needs. Some examples are Thread prefixing, User Infractions, User Profile Fields,...

About additional softwares, please note that the CMS and Blog would only be included in the vBulletin Publishing Suite.

The inline editing, quick reply with AJAX and other new features are really useful and give the feeling of a faster website with more interactivity.

RSS feeds are totally customizable, and adding them into Google Reader will make users be able to buzz on forum topics of your website. XML Sitemap are also supported, so controling the access from search engine robots have never been so easy with vBulletin.

 
 
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