vblogetin is it worth?

**sagar** · 12-31-2006, 04:48 AM

Is it worth adding vblogetin on the site? I checked it and it looked too tabular to my tests

**Brandon Sheley** · 12-31-2006, 07:42 AM

I've added it to www.locoforum.com
it's only 50$, I guess if you have 50$ to spend, then it's worth it..

If you have a community that wants to blog, ya its a great script.

I was under different impressions when I first bought it.. I had planed on using it here and replacing the wordpress blog. the way the vblogetin is setup, I thought the blog was setup a different way,, I thought you could have your main page like they have, but actually they are using an unbranded version of vBa for the front page

anyways.. I guess what I'm saying is, yes, I think it's worth the price.. It's a nice script and you wont find anything like it for free.

-Brandon

**Code Monkey** · 12-31-2006, 07:47 AM

You should think long and hard before putting a blog on a forum. I would say that most forums are not in need of a blog and in fact would be hurt by them. A blog is like the opposite of a forum. A blog is personal while a forum is community. Blogs are so easily available now that it's almost pointless to offer them. Unless of course your forum happens to be geared toward such a thing.

**Brandon Sheley** · 12-31-2006, 07:53 AM

good point CM

You don't want to take away from your forum

You want users to still make tons and tons of post in the forums.

not have a 40 page blog, but I guess if your making money and getting indexed, does it really matter ?

**sagar** · 12-31-2006, 08:08 AM

Excellent point! thanks a lot for this, I know now what I need on my forum

Quote:

Originally Posted by Code Monkey

You should think long and hard before putting a blog on a forum. I would say that most forums are not in need of a blog and in fact would be hurt by them. A blog is like the opposite of a forum. A blog is personal while a forum is community. Blogs are so easily available now that it's almost pointless to offer them. Unless of course your forum happens to be geared toward such a thing.

DomainRealty · 12-31-2006, 08:28 PM

Anything that removes the Forum aspect of a Forum, such as a blog, can only hurt the site as a whole. Try to find yoour niche, and stick to it. There simply is no need to add a blog to a forum.

**Brandon Sheley** · 01-01-2007, 02:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DomainRealty

Anything that removes the Forum aspect of a Forum, such as a blog, can only hurt the site as a whole. Try to find yoour niche, and stick to it. There simply is no need to add a blog to a forum.

I've seen some large sites with blogs or journals and they are doing very nice.

DomainRealty · 01-01-2007, 04:11 PM

And I have seen many large forums with blogs/journals which are complete failures :P

**SirAdrian** · 01-01-2007, 05:29 PM

A good example of a community with Blogs is SitePoint - it is a major source of content for the site.

Anyway, I'm not going to argue for or against the usefulness... but if you have any questions regarding the software itself let me know.

**Brandon Sheley** · 01-01-2007, 06:02 PM

yup, sitepoint is a great site,, another one with blogs and a forum is the daniweb

**SirAdrian** · 01-01-2007, 06:20 PM

BTW, back at the thread starter, vBlogetin uses table designs because it is the only sure way of matching the site's layout. It's not difficult to modify templates to your liking - they are there as a guide. Had we went the CSS route (which I prefer...) it would be a disaster on half of the sites.

Once I get some spare time I am going to release some cleaner blog templates, such as the ones we use on the home page. They will probably take a bit of tweaking to match each site, but it is a step in the right direction. They'll never be a part of the core product though.

We are also building an API for sharing the blog data... for example, my blog is using the data from my blog at vBlogetin.com. It's mostly for admins (because it's not easy to set up) but it's another tool which can make the whole vBulletin layout problem much easier to solve. Currently you can get the data by hitting the PHP script with some parameters, but we are going to have it so you can include it on say, the home page of your site, with a few only lines of code. This is data only of course.

**Code Monkey** · 01-01-2007, 08:44 PM

Sitepoint doesn't have blogs for members. It's only for their code journalists. And it's not integrated with the forums in any way.

**SirAdrian** · 01-01-2007, 09:48 PM

Nobody says you have to offer blogs to all your members... I would only personally want staff members to blog, but that is up to the admin. Forum integration is a plus... easier for the admin to manage (which is why it is so requested in the first place).

**BikeForums** · 01-02-2007, 01:06 PM

I am a fan of getting my forum members to blog on other domains, or other sites. Your hard core forum members will always add your forum to there blog roll.

If you know one or two true experts that is an active posted on your forum, introduce him to blogging. Offer to install wordpress, buy the domain name and host his blog in exchange for a link back to the forums.

Blogging is an amazing way to get one way links, but they wont do you any good if you are hosting all the blogs on your forum domain.

Something to think about