The sites enabled so far are:

Android Phone Forum
Windows 8 forum
Windows Server 2008 Forum
Mac Mini Forum
Forum SEO Help
Microsoft Visual Studio .Net Programming Forum
Just BS Chat Forum
Computer Help Forums

I will be adding this site and the last 2 forums soon.

What I have found so far. vBulletin is a far inferior product. There is just so much wrong with it compared to IPB I don’t know where to start.

First lets look at the style editor and the vbulletin stylevars. The vbulletin style editor is old, very old in fact. When you edit a template the complete page refreshes and you are brought back to the template editor main page. If you make a mistake and the site doesn’t render correctly you have to find your spot to correct the problem. Not any easy task.

Now lets look at IPB template editor. You want to change the width of the site you open the main css file in the editor. Find the place to change, change it and commit the change. Notice how you get an ajax refresh and you stayed on the exact area of the edit. So when you check the site in a new windows if it doesn’t look right you can easily and quickly undo the edit.

Win for IPB.

Now lets look at SEO. Both vbulletin and IPB have SE friendly url’s. The vbulletin url’s take more to get working correctly and do not 301 same content. IPB url’s 301 exact content so you won’t be penalized for duplicate content. Unless you use vbseo vbulletin can not compare with IPB out of the box as far as SEO goes.

Without vbseo win for IPB.
With vbseo win for vBulletin.

There are other things that make IPB hands down the winner over vbulletin and it would take me a long time to point them out. Let me just say that I gave vbulletin another chance and after 2 years of development for the 4.0 branch it is still going backwards. In the same time IPB has set the bar extremely high by improving at every turn.

Now I have to convert the new site to IPB and this is the last time I will speak on vbulletin unless they absolutely blow my socks off in the future which is highly unlikely.

I am in the process of buying a database from a site that closed a couple months ago. It is a vbulletin 3.8.6 database. I am leaning towards using vbulletin 4.1.1 for this site. I haven’t touched vbulletin in almost 6 months. The reason I am considering vbulletin on this site is to see how far the software has come. Judging by the comments and threads about 4.1.1 on the vbulletin forums it seems as if it is going in the right direction. Yes there are some negative replies, but, if you really look at those comments you’ll see it’s from the same group of disgruntled people. The users that left for another forum product that for whatever reason still hang out at vbulletin to make everyone uncomfortable.

I am willing to give anyone a second chance and this is vbulletins second chance. I have 3 unused licenses that I never sold with the rest I had so nothing is lost if it turns out that vbulletin isn’t really getting any better. If vbulletin 4 doesn’t work out I can convert to IPB down the road.

Even though I will be using it on a new site it doesn’t mean I will ever spend any more money on more licenses. That will never happen. If I buy any forum licenses for future projects you can be sure the money will be spent for IPB and not vbulletin.

Internet Brands. This is your second and final chance. You’ll never see any more of my money, but, you could get good PR from me, Lord knows you need it, if you keep me interested and keep vbulletin up the standards it used to follow.

To stop the post spam I use reCaptcha.  It seems to be the most effective against spambots, but, for the low life spammers that still do things manually even reCaptcha doesn’t help. The main purpose of these spammers is to get backlinks to their sites and services. What I did was create a new usergroup called Registered Members. The new group has the same privileges as the default Registered Users group.

Read on to see how to set up the registered users group and the new registered members group permissions to help combat vBulletin forum spam.

First thing we do is edit the registered users group. Disallow usage of the link bbcode. If a spambot or a low life spammer that is doing things manually registers the first thing they will do is post some spam. When they try add a link to a post they will get the no permission error. This stops them in their tracks. This is not completely fool proof. If they check the option to not automatically parse links the spam links will be posted they just will not be linked. Akismet will even let the post in since no links are actually posted.

Some of these spammers know it isn’t as easy as it used to be to post spam in threads so they have come up with a new type of spam. Private message spam. A spammer signs in and the first thing they do is head to the control panel and proceed to PM every user except for admins and moderators. I’m not sure this is automated since the bot would have to know who is an admin or mod. Either way it is the most annoying type of forum spam and has caused many forum owners and users pain. This is very easy to stop.

Open the usergroup page and edit the registered users usergroup again. In the private message settings use these settings.

1. Maximum Stored Messages:  0
2. Maximum Recipients to Send PMs at a time: 1

Those settings disallow sending private messages for Registered Users.

Now we don’t want to disallow PM’s for everyone except mods and admins so we create a new uer group called Registered Members. Create that group and give the group the default permissions that an unedited Registered User would have. Turn on bbcode and setup private messages. For private messages I use this.

1. Maximum Stored Messages:  10
2. Maximum Recipients to Send PMs at a time: 2
3. Message Throttle Quantity: 2

This will allow the new group to have a max of 10 PM’s stored in their PM folders. Will allow them to send 2 PM’s at a time and will not let them send another 2 until the time limit set in options is expired. You can set it up any way you want. After all if the users meets the requirements to be promoted to this group they aren’t there to spam.

Save your changes. You’ll need a way to move users to ths new group without doing it manually. This is where the vBulletin promotion manager comes in to play.

In the usergroup menu in the left frame click the promotions link. Select add new promotion. Set up the promotion like this.

1. Reputation Level: 0
2. Days Registered: 30 or more if you choose
3. Posts: 3 or any number you choose
4. Promotion Type: Primary User Group
5. Promotion Strategy: Posts
6. Reputation Comparison Type: Greater or Equal to
7. Move User to Usergroup: Select the Registered Members group

After a user has 3 posts they will be promoted to the new Registered Members group with full posting and PM permissions. This will stop 90% of all post and PM spam.

Why is this effective? A drive by spammer is only interested in one thing. To post links to to their wares. They use a bot to register or do it maunually. Once they register their only goal is to post spam. This will not allow them to do this. They will try and fail. When they fail they move on to another forum. Sure you’ll have a user that will never be seen again, but, your community will be spam free. It’s munch easier to prune users then to contantly clean out spam posts.

If you have any question or think this post was helpful post a comment. No need to regisiter to comment. I use a very effective anti-spam measure on this site.

When Windows Server 2008 is adopted by more people I will combine Admin Reports Forum into the new forum to make a one stop shop for all your Windows Server needs.

Be one of the first to register at the new Windows Server 2008 Forum.

While there are several reasons behind the sudden fall of a forum, I am going to discuss some of these issues in this two part article and tell you if your forum is destined to be a failure.

Starting the forum for wrong reasons…

That’s right; I have always come across forums which were started for reasons which are likely to cause the forum to fail inevitably. So before you invest your money and resource in starting a forum delve a little deeper for the reasons you want to start it and if it is one of the reasons I have listed below, then take a deep breath and do some soul searching before jumping the gun:

To get back at another forum: This seems to be one of the primary reasons why one sees new forums sprouting up almost every day. Most often than not rogue members of a particularly large or moderately successful forum might become unhappy/distressed with the forum administrator or their policy and decide to break away and start their own forum. Most often than not, forums like these don’t survive long and fail miserably.

Why?

They fail because of a simple reason, propagating negativeness and hate almost never leads to long term growth. Most often than not, these forums become the ranting point for members of the larger forum and people join not to discuss issues which they felt were being ignored by the other forum but to bitch about it. This state usually doesn’t last long and most members though still unhappy get bored with the alternative and go back to posting at the older forum.

If you are one of those who want to start a forum because you are unhappy with the current forum you’re participating in, then my suggestion would be not to try and become an alternative to the other forum by copying every thing from it, instead try and bring some uniqueness to your forum. Make sure you don’t try to steal members from other forums; instead try to grow on your own by writing articles and addressing issue you felt were being ignored by the older forums administration.

To make easy money: Many fail to realize how resource and time consuming running a forum can be. Many think on the basis of user generated content they will rank well in search engines and make some easy money. Well I got news for you; it is only some time before you realize what you got yourself into.

Forums are difficult to monetize and getting them to rank well in SERPs is tougher than getting a blog or normal site to rank. Even though in most successful forums an administrator usually doesn’t have to create majority of the content, in the initial phase (read 1-2 years) constant hand holding and content creation by the administrator himself is required on an almost daily basis along with promoting the forum through various channels.

Forums are also poor revenue generator unless you get a large number of people from search engines every day, since most of the regular visitors and member rarely if ever click on ads. Add to this, forums often need more resources to run than a simple blog or a website which adds to the overall expenditure.

Latest fad: Many these days start a forum because it is a latest fad and they feel being an administrator of a forum would be boastful for them. With out having knowledge of the niche they start a forum and after a couple of months of doing it for fun, they suddenly realize that it isn’t as fun as they first thought it would be. You will come across these people scouring through webmaster forums asking for ideas or niche they could target, well let’s face it, if you can’t even come up with the niche you need to target how do you expect to do well in it? It would be better if you stick to your job and try to become a contributing member in a forum you are interested in and maybe some day you will climb up to the ranks of moderator or even an administrator.

So what are some of the right reasons to start a forum?

• Start a forum because you are genuinely interested in the niche you plan to launch your forum.
• Start a forum because you have knowledge about a particular niche and are genuinely interested in learning more about it and at the same time helping those who know even less.
• Start a forum because you feel what you are looking for cannot be found any where else and it would be helpful to people like you.
• Start a forum not as a shortcut to the riches, but for a journey full of joy and experiences which will leave you enlightened and proud with the knowledge that you have accomplished far more than you could ever hope for.

About the author

This article was written by Yogesh Sarkar, who is the author of Content Pays.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Yogesh_Sarkar

Choose your team carefully. If your forum is s startup don’t advertise for staff. Instead watch how members interact with each other. For one new communities don’t need moderators until the member base increases. By the time the membership gets to 100 you’ll have a good sampling of posts and get a good feel for who would make a good team member. Ask that person or persons as the case may be if they would be interested. Once you have a few leaders in place then put in some sort of nomination and voting process to add more team members. It is imperative that team members have input on this process. They are the ones that have to “work” with the other members of the team.

Once you have your team in place then as an admin step back from moderation duties and concentrate on maintaining the site and being a part of the community. Make sure you have guidelines in place for them to follow and make sure they have a say in creating them. Once that is done let your team run things. After all you put them in place so you should trust them to run the place for you. Never give the team the impression that you are watching every move they make. If one of the team members does something you don’t think is right then discuss it with them privately. Never call a person out in public. As the site grows or as team members retire let you team select the replacements. After they decide who to promote do the promotion and welcome the new leader. Never run a community as a dictator.

Now you have an active community and have your team in place. For whatever reason team members become inactive for long periods of time. Everyone at one time or another has to change priorities and doesn’t have the time to devote to a community. Most of the time these people end up coming back and getting involved again once time permits. I myself have had staff members leave for a year or more and come back to the community and become an active leader.
So what do you do with these inactives?
Nothing. Leave them be. They aren’t hurting anything. Instead nominate another member or ask your team for nominations and promote who they choose. Whatever you do do not remove them without first contacting them. Send them an email, not a PM, if they are inactive they won’t see the PM, and ask them if they would like to retire from their position. Some will tell you they will be back as soon as time permits and ask that you leave them. Let them be. Some will retire, but, ask for the option to have the position back if they become active again. Tell them that is what you’ll do. Move them into a retired group with read permissions on the staff forums. From my experience a retired leader will come back and read the staff forum to catch up on new rules before they ask for reinstatement. Once they ask welcome them back with open arms. In any case never remove a staff member without first conversing with them.
There is really no reason to remove staff for inactivity.

Staff disagreements happen. The best thing to do is to let them air their differences in the staff forum. If staff members start to argue in public move the post to the staff forum. Let the ones that have the disagreement try and work things out. Whatever you do don’t take sides. Let them work this out themselves. The problem will die out pretty fast and things will be back to normal.

The above is tried and true. It has worked on every community that I own or have owned. It took a while for me to be able to just sit back and let my teams run the place. I can enjoy the communities more by participating in my communities instead of managing them. I’m sure you will too.