large website and forum question

PeakOutput

hi

myself and a friend are looking to create a fairly large and unique in some respects website

first question is

we are thinking about using wordpress and paying for a custom theme to be created for us that includes any widgets/addons that are currently not already available

do any of you know of an irish company or any company i guess that des this sort of thing?how expensive would it be compared to starting from scratch with no system like wordpress as a starting point?

second question

there will be a forum on the website can people here please explain in plain english the differences between phpbb and smf(the open source options) and then the difference bewtween them and vbulletin?

thirdly

is there a way to automatically integrate these forums with the website so that there is membership across the board and they dont have to log in to the website to see certain things and then again into the forum to see that?

hope this is a suitable place for this

thanks

Evil Phil

Moved from development.

Seth Brundle

PeakOutput wrote: »

do any of you know of an irish company or any company i guess that des this sort of thing?how expensive would it be compared to starting from scratch with no system like wordpress as a starting point?

any web company or individual should be able to do this. Cost will depend on who you get (how long is a piece of string but some of the others should be able to give a good ballpark.
However, using out-of-the-box solutions would be cheaper than starting from scratch.

PeakOutput wrote: »

there will be a forum on the website can people here please explain in plain english the differences between phpbb and smf(the open source options) and then the difference bewtween them and vbulletin?

Whats the difference between a Ford and Volkswagen?
They are both forums with similar and different features. VB would be regarded (AFAIK) as being better.

PeakOutput wrote: »

is there a way to automatically integrate these forums with the website so that there is membership across the board and they dont have to log in to the website to see certain things and then again into the forum to see that?

Is the website (not the forum) going to require a login or what?
Anyhow, the answer would be yes but I suspect that this may change the requirement from Q1.

PeakOutput

kbannon wrote: »

Is the website (not the forum) going to require a login or what?
Anyhow, the answer would be yes but I suspect that this may change the requirement from Q1.

we havnt decided yet if some of the website features will require you to be logged in

chances are that it wont but we plan on having a store on it as well so we havnt started looking into how that would work yet

Seth Brundle

so your original Q1 should have been more like "Is it possible to integrate phpBB or VB with a shopping cart application?"
Anyhow, refine your requirements and then ask people here for rough estimates I guess.

PeakOutput

kbannon wrote: »

so your original Q1 should have been more like "Is it possible to integrate phpBB or VB with a shopping cart application?"

i guess so ye, thanks.

trying to do as much of it as possible ourselves with out of the box solutions so just trying to finding out whats possible and whats not and then pay for the rest

aidan_walsh

Thread cleaned of recommendations and discussion of hosting providers, appropriate bans handed out. Read the forum charter and stickies before posting, thank you.

cormee

A lot of hosting packages will have control panels that allow you to add a Wordpress installation at the click of a button, the most recent version of Wordpress allows for the installation of plugins with no technical knowledge, you simply search for it and add it from your Wordpress control panel.

phpBB and smf are fine starting out but are limited in terms of functionality, support and spam protection - if you want to get serious with your forum you'd need to upgrade to the likes of Vbulletin (and VBSEO if you have the budget). If you decide to start out with phpBB your database can be imported into vBulletin at a later date if you want to.

VBulletin also has a 3rd party plugin that allows you share logins across Wordpress and itself. You'd probably be sharing from vBulletin to Wordpress though so you'd need your bulletin board set up first. http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=205388 this plugin can be added from the vBulletin control panel.

ScumLord

Would wordpress be all that good at being a large website/forum? I would have thought if your going big you would want to go robust with something like Drupal. Although wordpress is a doddle to use next to drupal so more than likely much cheaper to run on wordpress.

PeakOutput

ScumLord wrote: »

Would wordpress be all that good at being a large website/forum? I would have thought if your going big you would want to go robust with something like Drupal. Although wordpress is a doddle to use next to drupal so more than likely much cheaper to run on wordpress.

i was asking on another forum i am on and they reckon there is no reason word press shouldnt be used for it. i use wordpress already and its very simple to use and my only reservations were if it had any limitations placed on it and apparently it dosnt and can do anything php or whatever web language can do on its own

drupal was mentioned aswell though as an alternative so maybe i should look into that in the mean time

hmmm vbulletin sounds like what we need pity as it is not open source but if its that good its worth it i guess

thanks

any more advice greatly appreciated

ScumLord

PeakOutput wrote: »

i was asking on another forum i am on and they reckon there is no reason word press shouldnt be used for it. i use wordpress already and its very simple to use and my only reservations were if it had any limitations placed on it and apparently it dosnt and can do anything php or whatever web language can do on its own

drupal was mentioned aswell though as an alternative so maybe i should look into that in the mean time

I've only started using wordpress over the last two weeks, it really is very straight forward to use, probably the easiest out of all the CMS. Drupal is allot harder to use but way more flexible and powerful and comes with forum type software built in, it does community websites really well. I've kind of settled on joomla though, it's a nice compromise between the two.

PeakOutput

ScumLord wrote: »

I've only started using wordpress over the last two weeks, it really is very straight forward to use, probably the easiest out of all the CMS. Drupal is allot harder to use but way more flexible and powerful and comes with forum type software built in, it does community websites really well. I've kind of settled on joomla though, it's a nice compromise between the two.

alright thanks ill definitely look into it im not a complete layman when it comes to programming and web design so drupal shouldnt be too difficult to get my head around if people really think it wil be better i guess i should try both for a while

cormee

ScumLord wrote: »

Would wordpress be all that good at being a large website/forum? I would have thought if your going big you would want to go robust with something like Drupal. Although wordpress is a doddle to use next to drupal so more than likely much cheaper to run on wordpress.

There's no point comparing the two. They are two different types of software with two different functions - one is a blog/simple CMS the other is an enterprise level web solution.... OP is talking about running Wordpress along with forum software such as phpBB or vBulletin, he's not suggesting using Wordpress itself as a forum (unless I've misread).

Wordpress is extremely robust and would be well able to handle whatever amount of traffic you could throw at it, and vBulletin would be much better forum software than the equivalent Drupal addon, and last but not least both Wordpress and vBulletin are a lot more user-friendly and easier to install than Drupal, and with thousands of addons between them there is plenty of opportunity to extend functionality.

I've developed sites using all of the above and for the sort of site OP is describing Drupal definitely isn't the way to go.

Get your site going first, if it becomes successful *then* you start to look for enterprise level solutions. Doing it at this stage is overkill and will only distract you from focusing your attention on growing/marketing your site.

ScumLord

cormee wrote: »

There's no point comparing the two. They are two different types of software with two different functions - one is a blog/simple CMS the other is an enterprise level web solution.... OP is talking about running Wordpress along with forum software such as phpBB or vBulletin, he's not suggesting using Wordpress itself as a forum (unless I've misread).

Wordpress is extremely robust and would be well able to handle whatever amount of traffic you could throw at it, and vBulletin would be much better forum software than the equivalent Drupal addon,

The forum isn't an addon in Drupal though it's a built in core function that can be further expanded to become very unique.
I'd say your right about wordpress I just thought since he was going for a commercial community forum I'd throw Drupal on the table just to confuse things futher.

If he starts with a basic Drupal setup now, he can expend that without having to try and convert everything over to the enterprise setup later.

cormee

ScumLord wrote: »

The forum isn't an addon in Drupal though it's a built in core function that can be further expanded to become very unique.
I'd say your right about wordpress I just thought since he was going for a commercial community forum I'd throw Drupal on the table just to confuse things futher.

If he starts with a basic Drupal setup now, he can expend that without having to try and convert everything over to the enterprise setup later.

OK it's a core function, I just think Drupal is more suited to a portal than to the sort of site OP is suggesting. OP only needs a blog and a forum, both Wordpress and vBulletin are arguably the best in both of these fields, easy to set up, easy to maintain and easy to customise and run. Drupal does, in my experience, require more time to administer is not as user-friendly.

Regarding converting later - that's what elance is there for! If it's going to give you a headache doing it, post it on elance - very good developers there more than happy to do all the hard stuff for $10-15 per hour

Talisman

PeakOutput wrote: »

thirdly

is there a way to automatically integrate these forums with the website so that there is membership across the board and they dont have to log in to the website to see certain things and then again into the forum to see that?

aMember integrates quite a few different systems and payment gateways.

PeakOutput

cormee wrote: »

OP only needs a blog and a forum, both Wordpress and vBulletin are arguably the best in both of these fields, easy to set up, easy to maintain and easy to customise and run.

it might be worth me saying here that the site is going to be significantly more than a blog

more along the lines of something like this www.dropzone.com with a blog and a store eventually added on

cormee

Well then Scumlord was right - Drupal is your best option.

PeakOutput

cormee wrote: »

Well then Scumlord was right - Drupal is your best option.

ok thanks cormee. im gonna do some research on drupal today

elance seems to have alot of programmers who say they have experience with it too for a variety of prices

ScumLord

PeakOutput wrote: »

ok thanks cormee. im gonna do some research on drupal today

elance seems to have alot of programmers who say they have experience with it too for a variety of prices

It's very popular, I think the likes of NASA use it.. For the website not to go into space. It's not that good.

It's popular because it's so flexible, but takes allot more work to get to a decent looking stage. Out of the box it looks nowhere near as good as wordpress. It's also got a more regimented module development. Unlike with other CMS packages where you might have 50 different modules doing the same thing, Drupal gets everybody together to work on one super module. That's the way it looks on the Drupal site anyway.

Overall Drupal is not plug and play, its more a case of know what your doing and you can achieve anything. I acknowledge it's one of the best and most flexible but I just gave up on it in the end it was too much work.

WestWicklow1

OP - vBulletin v4.0 has just been released. The major additions are CMS and blog.

So, within the one environment you have forum, cms and blog. All covered by the one login and all nicely integrated and all for $285.00.