We have had a few inquiries as to changing the format for the Forum to Vbulliten http://www.vbulletin.com/?AID=804495&PID=1247873. Vbulliten is a very powerful and fully scriptable bulliten board software package. It is much more comprehensive than PHPbb2 (what we are running now) it is also a hosted service and is managed by the vbulliten staff. It is however a paid subscription. The initial cost will be somewhere in the $150 range. So if anyone is interested in switching to vbulliten, let me know and we will make the change and get something to run the forum that is a little more robust. i will however ask for some donations to defray the initial cost. So check it out, let me know and then I will poll some key member snad make the change before this forum grows even more. (less rework)

Spence

I'm interested. I can help with both $$$ and time. To start things off I'm putting $10 in your paypall account. If for some reason this effort doesn't float you can use it for gas $ when you come down to Loards this summer for when we go riding <BG> We only need 170 more people to donate $1 and we are there... :D

Here are some of the advantages of Vbulletin that I have discovered:

- can sort topics by # of views or # of replies
- by topic title
- by who started it
- by thread rating - yes, at least the moderators would have the ability to rank threads
- by the last time anything was posted to the topic
- posts within a given time frame (e.g. last day, last 2 days, last 10 days, last 2 weeks, last month, last 45 days, last 2 months, last 75 days,... last year...since beginning..)

- you can switch display modes - e.g. threaded vs non threaded display modes.

If you have registered, you will be able to edit and delete your posts. Note that the administrator can disable this ability as he desires. Your ability to edit your posts may also be time-limited, depending on how the administrator has set up the forum.

When viewing a thread, you will be able to view the thread from a choice of four modes.

1. Linear Mode (Oldest First) - In this mode, posts are displayed chronologically from oldest to newest. Posts are shown in a flat mode so that many posts can be viewed simultaneously.
2. Linear Mode (Newest First) - This is the same as the above mode, except that posts are ordered in an opposite way (newest first).
3. Threaded Mode - In this mode, a tree is shown along with every post. This tree allows you to see the relationship each post has to others, in terms of who responded to whom. Only one post is shown at a time.
4. Hybrid Mode - This mode is a mixture of the linear and threaded modes. The post tree is displayed like in the threaded mode, but multiple posts are displayed simultaneously like in the linear modes.

If you post a new thread, or reply to an existing thread, you can choose to be notified by email when someone else replies to that thread. You can also choose to receive email notifications of new posts in a thread without posting in that thread, by clicking the 'Subscribe to this thread' link displayed in the thread page.

If you choose to stop receiving email notifications from a thread, you can turn off the option by either editing your post, or by unsubscribing from the thread.

Only registered users may receive email notification, and they can set whether they want to receive email notification by default by editing their options.

Email notification is also referred to as 'Thread Subscription'.

The general vBulletin FAQ is here: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/faq.php?faq=vb_faq#faq_vb_board_usage

List of Vbulletin features:
http://www.vbulletin.com/features.php :D

Sounds Great Chris, anyone else what to chip in?

Spence

If you can spare a few dollars and want to help this new forum get off to a great start, please help us purchase the vBulletin software.

Spence can accept paypal donations here:

obageegee@hotmail.com


Thanks

Sorry, I messed that up.

I don't know how to put direct paypal link in for spence..

You will need to signup for a paypal account if you don't have one to log in.
www.paypal.com and use spence's email to pay him.

obageegee@hotmail.com.


If you don't already have paypal, I highly recommend it, it is great for paying for ebay auctions, helping others in the group, etc...

Chris