moving from phpnuke too.....

[dionsiseire]

hey ive got a pretty decent community going on based on an site for people in ireland to talk about gigs and music happening in ireland.

its doing well and the stats are starting to mount up but i want to move off phpnuke, the site doesnt really generate any revenue so im not looking to get something custom scripted,
but i am willing to pay for a CMS and Forum to move forward with this project


the important thing for me is to manage to keep the Forums Posts and User accounts.

can anyone suggest a script that would help me going forward and escaping phpnuke

cheers

[dionsiseire]

no idea's guys?

[Bjorn2404]

What version of Nuke are you using? I used a script to convert my Nukephpbb forums to regular phpbb. Then converted that over to vbulletin - which was definitely worth it. It took some work though.

Search in the official nuke forums for converting forum to phpBB. It might be different now compared to when I was using it.

[dionsiseire]

im using nuke 7.9, which is the latest version, coz im a member of the nuke club, more money than sense i guess, but sure nuke is great for starting a community and then once you have a captive audience you can move it to something good


so you reckon that Vbulletin is my best option

what about for site content,

it would mainly consist of news, reviews and the like

[Bjorn2404]

I love Vbulletin, but I'm sure you could convert to other boards as well.

As far as content - you'll have to make a CMS decision for yourself. There are several CMS's that integrate with Vbulletin; try searching in the vbulletin forums, or even in these forums.

I personally found picking a CMS to be a very difficult decision - there's plenty of good info here though. Make sure it is SEO friendly, it saves a lot of work.

[Outlander]

dionsiseire invision offer a conversion service. On the subject of site content (always a tricky one) Invision are releasing IP.D very shortly, which is a CMS which sounds like what you wont.

Haven't been around vB circles long enough to know what's available via third party (doesn't appear that Jelsoft themselves have additional modules).

So l would look at invision first, and if that doesn't match your requirements then vBulletin. Both products are very sturdy and your members will love them. Plenty of skins and hacks available.

Here l am indicating invision first as it currently has more options available as add ons (gallery, blog, wiki, etc) from the actual software company than vBulletin does. You also get a Portal with the purchase of the forum software, but it's not a full bells and whistles CMS type one.

Hope you find what you need.

[dionsiseire]

do any of these paid forums allow removal of copyright notice

considering your paying them a fair amount surely removal of this shouldnt cost you the price of another forum ( 120 for vbulletin )

what do you guys reckon?

[Bjorn2404]

For an owned copy of vbulletin (lifetime license but you have to pay $30/yr if you want to have access to upgrades) it's $160 and it's an extra $120 for the "Branding free option." It never seemed worth it to me....

I'm not sure about the pricing of the other boards.

[dionsiseire]

well i never understood how paying for something meant you had to keep the branding

i understand it on open source free stuff, obviously they need to keep interest in their project and whilst its free they make nothing out of it, but Vbulletin, it seems like they could just allow you remove it, or at least charge something miniscule for it, $120 is a lot to ask to remove their name from your paid for product

[ORiN]

It is pretty much like buying a Toyota car and therefore, you will be promoting the brand for them. I doubt Toyota will allow people to remove their logo from their cars even for a fee. I think that's roughly how it works. Beside, you are getting a wonderful piece of software.

[dionsiseire]

well do people not customize their cars, i dont think ive ever heard of a case due to removal of a badge,

some people remove a badge to hide the car type etc etc.

it just seems like overkill for a software that already costs enough. i understand that its a great piece of software but $120 is a lot of money to remove a badge

considering probably not 1 of the members of most type of sites will consider buying a software for their own sites i cant see any member of my forums starting a site and buying vbulletin, purely because none of my sites are tech related.

yes people know the software is vbulletin but what does it mean to them

zilch

[ORiN]

Customizing a car is expensive. That's why vBulletin is charging quite a bit to remove it's copyright message & branding. They are assuming that if your website is big enough for you to not want the branding, you should be able to pay the price for it. Though I haven't seen a big website remove their branding so far yet.

[dionsiseire]

customising a car is expensive

removing a branding can be done with a screwdriver and a bit of thought.

when you think about it

if you've paid for the product, its now yours, if you dont wants some part of it, you shouldnt have to keep it. you have PAID for it. its not your responsibility to give the software free advertising and backlinks. this is meant to be the concept of paying for something, its yours.

would you give away valuable ad space to vbulletin because you use their forums.
do you track how many clicks they get. how much of vbulletin.com's PR7 is due to backlinks recieved by the installation of their script

they get $160 of you for their software, a backlink and permanent promotion.

do you not feel that its leeching of an extreme form.

now im not trying to start anything *****y, im just trying to point out how their license is structured and how you are giving them MUCH more than $160 for your participation in their script. and if you want to remove the branding its ANOTHER $120

somehow this feels like a terminal form of inflation