vBulletin Content Management System (vBCMS)

**Brandon Sheley** · 02-25-2009, 06:06 PM

Distilling it into it's most basic functionality, the vB CMS allows content authors to create pages of content; categorize those pages into lists; and place widgets of functionality onto those pages to make them more interesting. Although the first release will cover these principals, the CMS is being designed to be far more powerful, which will become more apparent in future development blogs.

Content Types

One of the main goals with the CMS was to allow the creation of 'non static' pages. This could be achieved in a number of ways. From the outset, the simplest way would be to add the ability to create articles that can be listed and managed, in the style of some of the existing content in vBulletin. However, we would eventually need to add other types of content.

As an example, it's easy to compare social group discussions with threads and wonder why they aren't pretty much the same thing. Unfortunately the code in vB3 for these (and other types of content) doesn't lend itself well to reuse. Because of this, the code for things such as inline moderation, read marking and subscriptions of these two similar features is currently duplicated and modified to suit each as if they were almost entirely separate. As vB3 has grown in functionality, the benefit of consolidating these separated features has grown too.

The CMS is designed to be content agnostic, allowing all manner of content types in a way that allows us to create and implement features that can apply to all content equally; without the need to duplicate the effort for each supported type of content. For example, if I wanted to create a user rating feature; it should be available for all content regardless of whether it is an article, gallery image or video.

Conversely, it should also be much easier to create a new type of content and allow it to be used for pages, while automatically benefiting from all of the existing content orientated features without having to write lots of specific code just for the new type.

Not only will the CMS allow the vBulletin developers to quickly create new content types for your pages, it should also be very exciting for mod developers to come up with their own content types and widgets.

Widgets

Along with the main content, the vB CMS also allows you to place widgets on the pages. Widgets are used to express non page content and allow you to liven up pages with related content, provide further navigation options to the user, to highlight other site content, or do pretty much whatever widget developers can think of. Widgets are a very simple concept and are fairly standard to content management systems, but they should not be underestimated in terms of the features that they can provide.

What's Working Now

In the future I'll be talking about some of the more technical aspects of the CMS and the framework that it's based on, for now I'll walk through some of the functionality that's currently up and running, and discuss features that should be included in the initial release. However, there are a couple of caveats -

Firstly it's important to bear in mind that most of the work done so far has been on the framework, and abstract features that will enable cool things to happen in the future. I contemplated discussing some of these concepts and the design goals behind them in this blog but decided against it. Not only can abstract concepts be overly technical, but describing them requires me to allude to examples and potentials that may never actually be developed. I'd rather discuss concrete features in future blogs, but will be happy to go into more detail in the blog comments.

Secondly, as most of you know, vBulletin 4.0 will be shipping with a new style. As that isn't finished yet, the CMS isn't using it - but as it will be using it eventually I haven't wasted much effort in making it look pretty.

Read more in this blog post, including pictures
vBulletin Content Management System (vBCMS) - vBulletin Community Forum

**ArnyVee** · 02-25-2009, 06:27 PM

Definitely interesting stuff. Although, if they are going to charge what some folks are discussing.... then, I'm not sure that it's going to be worth it.

It absolutely must be superior in every way to get $120-140 for that add-on.

**Brandon Sheley** · 02-25-2009, 06:53 PM

120 for that? wow
I missed that part, that's insane

**ohiosweetheart** · 02-25-2009, 07:19 PM

They're going to charge for a cms??? This is something that should be default, imo.

**glennybee** · 02-26-2009, 03:15 AM

That price tag was another members guess, it's not fact.

I think it's a disgrace if they do charge for this addon. In its current condition, there's no way I'll even be contemplating buying it. There are quite a few CMS options for vB that are far cheaper and even free so why should we consider the vB option?

**ohiosweetheart** · 02-26-2009, 04:17 AM

It will indeed be a paid add-on. That question was answered on the blog last night.

Of course in it's present state, no one would pay for it. But it's still in developement. I doubt it would be released for at least another year, or more, and after having read the entire blog about it and seeing what is planned for the future, yeah I can see paying for it.

**Rocket 442** · 02-26-2009, 06:07 AM

No way I'd pay for a vB CMS when there are tons of free and better alternatives out there.

**Brandon Sheley** · 02-26-2009, 09:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rocket 442

No way I'd pay for a vB CMS when there are tons of free and better alternatives out there.

exactly

**ohiosweetheart** · 02-26-2009, 10:52 AM

The same could be said for the vb blog but many bought it and are still buying it.
I think I'll have to wait and see what it is in the first release, and how much it is, before I'll say I won't purchase it.

I'm currently using vbA cmps which is great and user-friendly, but doesn't validate, which is highly irritating. I know that vB stuff validates, at least the official releases do.

We'll see...

**ArnyVee** · 02-26-2009, 05:31 PM

I've been leaning heavily of going with WP for my homepages on my sites lately.

I'm going to try it out in the coming weeks after I finish a couple of feature upgrades and additions to Walt Disney Boards and then I'll get workin' on the new homepage.

**ohiosweetheart** · 02-26-2009, 08:36 PM

eh I used to use WP for my homepages and just didn't find it as user friendly as vba cmps, plus you don't get the add-ons that vba offers. If there were plugins to pull the info from the forum to the homepage (users online, login, latest announcement, etc) that vba has, I might use it. But as far as I know, there aren't.

**Rocket 442** · 02-27-2009, 07:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ohiosweetheart

eh I used to use WP for my homepages and just didn't find it as user friendly as vba cmps, plus you don't get the add-ons that vba offers. If there were plugins to pull the info from the forum to the homepage (users online, login, latest announcement, etc) that vba has, I might use it. But as far as I know, there aren't.

You can pull most that info through RSS, simplepie.org is good for stuff. While it wont tell you users online it does have many, many more plugins overall that vBa. I think vba is nice for some things, but unless someone styles it really, really well it just looks like a bunch of boxes on a portal to me and that wasn't what I was going for. There are some nice ones, but just not my style.

I have my wordpress linked to my forums, if a user is logged in in the forum, they can post comments on the wordpress articles and it shows up as their forum username as well as a link to their profile.

I know Arny wanted this, but the developer said he doesn't want to give it away right now. (Sorry Arny, i'm keeping an eye out for other alternatives for you).

**ohiosweetheart** · 02-27-2009, 02:57 PM

I don't want anyone to post on my homepage. I use it as a showcase/information 'front door' to my forum.
But I do want it to also pull limited info from the forum.

I may have to look into seeing how hard it might be to use my signature style on WP.

**ArnyVee** · 03-08-2009, 11:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rocket 442

I have my wordpress linked to my forums, if a user is logged in in the forum, they can post comments on the wordpress articles and it shows up as their forum username as well as a link to their profile.

I know Arny wanted this, but the developer said he doesn't want to give it away right now. (Sorry Arny, i'm keeping an eye out for other alternatives for you).

Thanks for keeping an eye out for me brotha! :applause:

I've got the final touches on my vBPicGallery (should be "out" this week on my site) and then I'm working on adding ReviewPost and then the next project after that is my WP home page. So, we still have some time...please let me know if and when you hear or see anything that can help me with that. Tell your friend that I'm willing to pay!

**Shelley** · 03-15-2009, 04:24 PM

This was never going to be a free addon. Anyone expecting different is living in a state of ignorant bliss. With the pound falling faster than a hookers pair of knickers 120usd is something I would ever consider investing in and like peggy stated a front page (if i were to have one) would be a source of information, a front door minus all the member crap comments being pulled from the forum.

I'm happy enough using their bloated forum software, I don't think i will need or ever need any of their addons for my forum. As stated in this thread, 120usd is simply a members comment/guess?

If and a big if. If I were to ever include a frontpage/cms/portal whatever you would like to call it I would go with one of the free alternatives (wordpress comes to mind) or pay for the likes of subdreamer rather than bloat my site even more with their addons. :boxing_smiley:

**Phantasma** · 03-27-2009, 12:25 AM

I think we pay enough for vB already, the cms is just a way of screwing even more money out of us, of course vB should leave the cms as it is, an evolution of vB, but being money grabbers they're going to screw us all, typical business folk really.

**juster** · 03-27-2009, 12:57 AM

I've been following this also now for a while and although I beleive it will be a fine product, I am getting a little bit sick about all the prices. I do love vBulletin, but the prices went up in a way that is not market conform and the add-ons are way too high priced.
I am comparing them with Microsoft, keep them coming those upgrades, those fools keep buying renewewals anyway. Sure it is a great marketing strategy, but does not feel right by me.

I will stay with vBulletin because it is a great product, but that does not mean I am happy with everything.