As part of vBulletin 4.1.2, vBulletin is happy to announce it has integrated with Skimlinks.
Skimlinks is a leading affiliate technology provider, more information on Skimlinks is available here, they have been around since 2008, and have a lot of experience working with vBulletin forums.

What does this integration do?
It enables you to easily signup for Skimlinks and integrates it with your vBulletin forum.

Where can this integration be found?
Under the Advertising section of your Admin Control Panel

Does it cost anything to utilize?
Similar to Google Adsense, it is a ad provider and it is a free service.

What is the benefit of enabling Skimlinks?
Skimlinks enables you to earn revenue from seamlessly converting existing links on your site to online retailers or auction sites such as eBay and Amazon and appending them with an affiliate link. At the time of writing, Skimlinks has affiliate relationships with over 12,000 merchants in a number of different regions to enable you to earn money from. Skimlinks also has a feature to convert certain keywords into links, called Skimwords which you may elect to opt into too.

How much can I earn?
Lots. Most forum websites will earn a similar amount by enabling Skimlinks as they do with having basic Adsense advertisements ? depending on the nature of the website. Sites devoted to electronic goods, and other purchasable items work really really well.

Why will enabling Skimlinks on my site brighten my day?
Well, it provides you with an additional revenue stream that doesn?t impact your user experience, OR replace any existing advertising you may have on your site. We have even heard people call it ?free money? :p

Does vBulletin know how much I earn if I integrate from Skimlinks?
We do not.

Does vBulletin gain access to any of my statistics through the integration with Skimlinks, like click-thru’s, purchase data etc.?
We do not.

Does vBulletin earn anything from me integrating with Skimlinks?
Yes, vBulletin does earn something from this. We cannot disclose more info because of contractual obligations. However the main benefit to customers is another option to help earn money from your site without costing you a cent.

Does this mean vBulletin takes some of my commission away?
We do not. Integrating through vBulletin actually provides you with a greater level of commission due to the agreement we have been able to strike with Skimlinks.

So you have been able to do a special deal for me?
Glad you asked Yes. If you stay on the program for 6 months, as thanks for joining up through vBulletin, Skimlinks will add an additional 5% to your earnings to date for this first 6 month period only.

Do I have flexibility in where Skimlinks works, and who it gets displayed to?
You do! You can chose what usergroups it gets displayed to, in what forums it works, only in threads past a certain date range, and a number of other options that are under the section ?Skimlinks Advanced Options?

Does it just work in the forum section
No. Skimlinks will append affiliate ID’s to links throughout any section of your vBulletin website, CMS, Blogs etc.

I already use Skimlinks?
Great! You can associate your existing account if you so wish.

I utilize vBulletin 3.X, not 4.1.2, can you help me?
You can download the latest Skimlinks product HERE, http://skimlinks.com/files/vbulletin/skimlinks.zip

If I sign up, who will pay me, and how?
Skimlinks handles all that fun stuff. Payment terms are under here: www.skimlinks.com/faq

This all sounds gravy, how do I sign up?

What about setting it up?
Here is the setup guide:
http://skimlinks.com/files/vbulletin…SetupGuide.pdf
And here is a guide on how to get the most from the integration:
http://skimlinks.com/best-practices-…etizing-forums

If I have a technical issue with SkimLinks, who should I contact?
Skimlinks should be able to help you out via your member account.

I have integrated it, and don’t see anything on my site?
The Skimlinks integration is seamless – you, or your users won’t see a change

I have more questions?
They might be answered here: www.skimlinks.com/faq
If they aren’t ? feel free to post a question here.

vBulletin Community Forum – Blogs

vBulletin 4.1.2 is now available to be downloaded from the vBulletin Members Area at: http://members.vbulletin.com

vBulletin 4.1.2 includes:

Skimlinks Integration
As part of an effort to expand the monetization options with vBulletin, we have added Skimlinks to the software. Skimlinks is a leading affiliate technology provider, and has had significant experience working with vBulletin customers previously.
If you join through vBulletin and stay on the program for 6 months, as thanks for joining up through vBulletin, Skimlinks will add an additional 5% to your earnings to date.
You can learn more about the Skimlinks integration here.

Mobile Style
Integrated lightweight mobile style.
This mobile style is optimized for all webkit mobile devices in most languages, and will auto-detect if a user visits the site from a mobile device and render the site in the mobile style.

Please note: Currently this style is included in both the vBulletin 4 Publishing Suite and the vBulletin 4 Forum Classic, however the Blog and CMS of the Publishing Suite are not currently covered by the mobile style – the mobile Blog and mobile CMS styles are currently in development, and slated for a future release of vBulletin. Both the CMS and the Blog will still be accessible via mobile devices, but will render in their respective web application styles.
Follow these instructions to install:

VerticalResponse Integration
We have enabled direct integration with the professional e-mail management service, VerticalResponse.
As a vBulletin customer, you will receive a free trial of the service, and it will enable you to send professionally managed e-mails to your userbase with full reporting from your adminCP via VerticalResponse. Please note, VerticalResponse is a paid for service.
Please note: PHP SOAP is required for the integration to function correctly.

Bug Fixes/Improvements
Here is a list of the major bug fixes/improvements included in this release. A full list of issues are available here.

Mobile API

• Custom profile field doesn’t return all information in 3.7 and 3.8 api
• Miss editlink, replylink and forwardlink show vars in postbit related methods

Blogs

• Wrong Permission checks for blog tags
• Wrong Permission checks for blog tags (2)

General Fixes

• Forum Home Optimization
• cms_nodeinfo doesn’t have an Index for associatedthreads field

Others

• New Profile Format Not Workable With Custom Tabs
• XFBML For Facebook Like Button
• Upgrade failing for older versions where custom templates exist
• CMS error: Cannot redeclare class vB_Bootstrap_Forum in /XXXXXX/class_bootstrap.php
• Adding new SubCategories
• http://tracker.vbulletin.com/browse/VBIV-3801
• Paid Subscriptions not working with Authorize.net

Again, thank you to everyone who has filed bugs in our bug tracker, we sincerely appreciate your assistance.
If you come across any bugs in the product, please continue to file them in our new tracker.

Feedback on the product is welcomed here for licensed customers.

Enjoy,
Adrian

vBulletin Community Forum – Blogs

Hi everyone,

As promised in this thread?
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt…=1#post2119221

I wanted to blog about my experience with ForumCon, the first organized meeting for people interested in forum and community management. The event was held in beautiful San Francisco, California, inside one of Google?s numerous facilities. The host (Viglink) did a very swell job in marketing the event and had many attendees, ranging from big companies like Google and eBay to forum owners like myself.

I initially attended the conference both as a vBulletin staff and forum owner. Though, I?d place more emphasis on the latter. I?m a forum junkie, so attending this event was like going to Disneyland! :rolleyes:

Myself, Adrian Harris (Senior Operations Manager of vBulletin and my boss), and fellow coworker Alvin Fong (VP Business Operator of Internet Brands) were one of the first people to arrive. From the start, the conference setting was amazing?.

We were met by Raymond Lyle, President of Viglink and organizer of the event. His hosting skills were top notch. He definitely made us feel welcomed and approached us with both a great level of professionalism and personal appeal. He introduced us to his coworkers and told us to ?help ourselves? with free grub! As others began to arrive, we had a couple hours to network before the presentations began.

Where Purchasing Happens in Social Media
The first presentation was from Dan Gill, Founder and CEO of Huddler Inc. He spoke about the importance of ?engaging communication? and ?intent consumers? on online forums. He taught us about the 1-9-90 rule, Symbiotic Marketing, as well as how to properly analyze audiences for improving community. He also showcased strategies for improving site content to appeal to advertisers, which was great advice for forum owners like myself who were further looking to monetize our communities.<o>

What Customers are Saying About You!
The next presenter was Brian Solis, a revered sociologist and futurist who has had tremendous success with new media platforms. I enjoyed his presentation due to his background in marketing and his humorous slides to get the audience?s attention. He spoke about branding and how customers viewed companies in the social media realm. The main key point to his presentation was about utilizing social media platforms for increasing relationships with customers. I learned that to successfully market a product on Facebook and Twitter, you must directly engage with customers rather than just post updates.

Developing Forums for Community and Profit
The next person to present was Raymond Lyle, the gentleman we met earlier. He has developed large and successful forums and worked on both the media and advertising sides within communities. His presentation was about helping publishers grow and develop their communities and drive user generated content to bring value to both users and advertisers. He showcased one of his newest ventures, a vBulletin powered website called L4P.com. He visualized how he successfully marketed the site using a combination of celebrity power and hand signals.

He taught us how to implement ads without bothering the users and spoke briefly about the future of online forums. He also explained why forums have not become ?mainstream? like Facebook and Twitter. The reasons are that the overall design is still very antiquated, mostly started for passion and not business, forums are not ?sexy?, never covered in media, big businesses are not backing it, known as a place for us forum nerds to gather, and other distractions like Facebook and Twitter.

After his presentation we were given a 20 minute break.

Content Marketing in Forums
The next presenter was Justin Choi, founder of PostRelease ? a content marketing platform that enables advertisers to insert sponsored posts into forums. He shared some tips and insights on how to get brands to engage the community in a meaningful way that generates revenue for forum owners and value for the advertiser. He taught us how to integrate ads without actually making it look like an ad by ?stickying? advertisement post in forums. He told us to become part of the conversation when opinions are being formed and purchase decisions are being made. He also mentioned the power of forums and their influence towards content marketing. People who contribute to forums are overwhelmingly more engaged in ?influential activities? ? both online and offline ? than people who don?t use forums, according to a nationwide survey conducted by PostRelease/Synovate in November 2009.

Growing Your Communities: Tools<o></o>
Up next was Nadia Aly, a community manager for Microsoft who jokingly compared her advertising budget with the company she works for. It was clear to all that she was not the winner. She quickly shared some tips and tricks with us for targeting business demographics and getting the valuable users into joining the community utilizing tools like TweetAdder, Facebook pages, and Facebook advertising. She told us that she spent roughly $ 700 on Facebook ads and received almost 10,000 new likes in less than 2 months on her Facebook page utilizing ?targeted? advertising campaign.

Community Support at Google
After Nadia?s presentation, Brian Rose, Community Manager at Google shared his experience with customer support and how it has evolved from one to one email, to leveraging the full power of a forum platform. Brian?s presentation was very interesting because he provided an explanation of why some users contribute to forums. He told us a story about a user who had a knack for answering and helping people on Google?s customer support forum. When he asked that said user why they contributed so much of their time to helping people with clearly no beneficial return, the user said something along the lines? ?Sometimes I feel bad after working, so to make myself and others feel better, I contribute a little of my time to helping others by posting on the customer support forums. It brightens my day whenever I can provide help.? This gave me great hope for humanity, Brian commented.

Lunch Time at GOOGLE!
After we?ve gone through the first half of the presentation, it was time for lunch. Google is known for providing their employees with free gourmet meals, and they did not disappoint. I had pizza, pasta, sushi, carne asada, cheese, rice, steak, and everything I can get my hands on! I went back to the conference room feeling sleepy and tired, though the high quality of presentations where enough to keep me awake.

How Forums Work with Marketers
The next presenters where Andrew Loos, CCO, and Scott James, Social Media Stategist, at Attack! a company that specializes in event staffing, field support, and guerrilla marketing services. They talked about how forum and community managers can make the right connections to strengthen their communities. They visualized case studies of what has worked and why, and provided ideas about how publishers can work with marketers and advertisers in a transparent way with the focus on connecting people to things they love in a targeted, authentic way.

Monetizing Forums with Mobile Apps
The next presenter was someone I was looking forward to seeing and meeting, Tapatalk founder Winter Wong. I?ve been utilizing his mobile plugin for a while now, though I could never get the plugin to work on my forum. I approached him during break and he politely suggested to update my files. The app is working fine on my forum now. His presentation was mostly about monetizing forums with mobile apps using iad and Admob. He showed us a few statistics which further emphasized the potential of making money via mobile ads.

Customer Engagement at eBay Inc.
The last presenter was John Bodine, head of US Community Development at eBay Inc. He shared an overview of what has worked to create an engaged community at eBay. He gave us 4 levels of engagement? Respond, Monitor, Encourage, and Resources. He told us that community metrics must tie in with business metrics and engagement will ideally drive business metrics. He closed the presentation with 3 words? Learn, Listen, Engage.

Short Break
So after John?s presentation we were given our final afternoon break. It was the same routine, speaking and networking with fellow forum owners and answering questions about vBulletin. It was definitely the most enjoyable part of the event and the #1 reason I attended.

Ask the Expert Panelists
The last list on the agenda was ?Ask the Expert Panelists.? There were three panel categories, Forum Owners, Future of Forums, and Forum and Community Technology panel. Each expert panelist spoke about their given topic and the audience was given the chance to ask them questions. It was actually the most fun, interesting, and engaging part of the presentations because it directly involved the audience and answered questions that we all came there for.

Forum Owners Panel
This panel consisted of Knick Jimenez – Founder of Luxury4play Forum, Andy Gilchrist ? Founder of askandyaboutclothes.com, Jamie Vondruska ? Founder of VWVortex, and David Bott ? Founder and COO of AVSForum.com. These forum owners are currently at the top of their "game." They were asked questions ranging from how they managed their communities to what they do during their spare time. Andy Gilchrist mentioned to the audience the power of user contributions. He owns one of the largest apparel forums and utilizes it for providing support to his customers. David warned us about the effects of assigning moderators with a ?reputation? from other communities. He told us to take note of user reputation when assigning them as moderators because it can hurt your community in the long run. When asked by one of the audience members if they would do it all over again, all basically said "Absolutely."

Future of Forums Panel
This panel consisted of Richard Weston Smith ? VP Business Development and Strategic Alliances for SocialGO, Tezza Yujuico ? COO, Athena East, Alvin Fong ? VP Business Operations, Internet Brands, and Jery Orban ? VP Business Development of Vertical Scope. From what I interpreted from their lectures, forums will stay consistent with the basic concepts, though with a few flares. There was a consensus that it was journeying through a more social networking theme.

Forum and Community Technology Panel
This panel consisted of Matthew Prince, CoFounder & CEO of CloudFlare, Todd Vernon ? CEO & Founder of Lijit Networks, John Bodine ? Head of US Development eBay Inc., and Jack Bafia, COO of Viglink. They spoke about upcoming technological advancement relevant to social media and how these same technological advancements will affect forums. An audience member asked why many people keep jumping onto the Facebook and Twitter bandwagon when developers should be thinking about developing their own unique platforms. No one in the panel had a clear answer. They all seemed to agree with the gentleman who asked the question. <o>

Wrap up and Networking
So after that final session, Raymond wrapped up and closed the successful event. We were escorted back to Palomino Restaurant where we networked again with forum owners. I had a chance to speak to many car enthusiasts during our walk to the restaurant. It was fun hearing how they turned their passion into businesses. Unfortunately, I had to catch a flight back to Los Angeles, so I didn?t get as much time to meet with the other attendees.

My Feedback on the Event
Overall the conference was AWESOME! If I was FORCED to provide constructive criticism, I would suggest more networking and engagement and less presentations. Maybe provide group discussions to get familiar with the attendees rather than just a handful of people. Not to say that the presentations weren?t great, I just think networking with fellow forum owners is the #1 reason most people attended the conference. Anyways, this event left me a great lasting impression about forum owners and has motivated me to not shy away from my nerdy love for the game. I?m looking forward to attending next year?s conference, which I assume will double next year. So if you?re reading this, make sure you purchase them early bird tickets! They will sell out fast!

vBulletin Community Forum – Blogs

As vBulletin 3 approaches EOL (end of life) when it will no longer be actively developed, we have developed a style conversion tool to facilitate converting vBulletin 3 styles to be compatible with vBulletin 4.

We are planning to release this tool as part of vBulletin 4.1.3. Note that this tool is currently being tested, so the functionality when you see it may differ from what is described in this blog post, based on feedback from QA and other testers.

How it works

When you upgrade from vB3 to vB4, your styles are left unmodified in the Admin CP, but are not usable with vB4, since the vB3 and vB4 Stylevar systems and template syntax are not interoperable.

This tool allows you to convert those disabled vB3 styles to vB4 styles.
It works by mapping your customized vB3 Stylevars and CSS colors to the corresponding vB4 Stylevars to produce a style that has many of the same style elements as the vB3 style. The goal is to provide you with a good starting place to manually convert your previous style to vB4, since the automatic conversion process is limited in what it can do.

There are some caveats

There is often not a one-to-one mapping of Stylevars. Some vB3 Stylevars map to multiple vB4 Stylevars, others have nowhere to map to. Due to the nature of this process, it is possible to produce an unusable or hard-to-read style depending on which elements were customized in vB3.

These are limitations that must be accepted since in an automated process such as this there is no reliable method to guarantee that the style will be usable.

Additional limitations are that customized templates and images cannot be converted. I’ll explain this further down.

In spite of these limitations, there are many cases where this automatic converter will produce a reasonable “base” style upon which you can rebuild your vB3 style in vB4. In some cases the converter may produce a usable style without needing to manually tweak it.

This tool will tend to be more successful on vB3 styles that are customized in Stylevars and Main CSS colors, and will be (much) less successful on custom styles that rely on template edits and custom images.

So don’t expect this tool to create a production-ready vB4 style, instead, take the generated style and use it as a starting point to be able to more quickly recreate your vB3 style in vB4.

Where is it?

When viewing the list of styles in the Admin CP Style Manager, there will be a new menu option called Generate vB4 Style in the style drop-down menu for each style that was customized in vB3. In this case, “customized” means that the style has customized values for Stylevars and/or CSS Colors.

This means that the new option should be available for all your customized vB3 styles, however, it is also possible to upload a customized vB3 style to a vB4 installation and then run this converter on it.

What does it do, specifically?

This tool first makes a copy of the vB3 style, appending “(Copy)” to the name of the style. It then attempts to convert it to a vBulletin 4 compatible style based on the vBulletin 3 style customizations in it. It will transfer most spacing and color customizations (background, text, link, and border colors), but as I already mentioned, will not attempt to transfer any template edits or custom images. So not all vBulletin 3 customizations will be transferred.

Style elements that the tool will attempt to transfer to the new vB4 style include:

• Width, sizes, padding, and spacing set in vB3 Stylevars.
• Colors set in vB3 Main CSS ? These include background, text, link, and border colors. CSS in the “Extra CSS Attributes” and “Additional CSS Definitions” boxes are not transferred, nor are background images.
• Style replacement variables.
• The title image set in vB3 Stylevars.

Style elements that will not be transferred to the new vB4 style include:

• Customized templates ? These cannot be transferred due to the new template syntax and completely new style in vBulletin 4.
• Custom images, including image paths set in vB3 Stylevars and background images referenced from CSS ? These cannot be transferred because vBulletin 4 introduces many new images that didn’t exist in vBulletin 3 and many images are used differently, for example vBulletin 4 uses many text-based buttons where vBulletin 3 used image-based buttons. Note that the title image is transferred when possible.
• HTML doctype set in vB3 Stylevars ? This is not transferred because all templates will continue to use the default vB4 markup and should thus use the default vB4 doctype.

See for yourself!

Jasper was kind enough to make a video demonstrating how this tool works.

Specific mappings for reference

The following tables show the specific mappings for how the vB3 Main CSS colors and vB3 Stylevars are mapped to vB4 Stylevars. When the mapping is not 1:1, a note in the right column explains the mapping that takes place.

Main CSS Colors

vB3 Main CSS Item	vB4 Stylevar(s)	Notes
body_bgcolor	doc_background	Value applied only to the "color" element of the vB4 stylevar.
body_fgcolor	footer_copyright_color footer_time_color
body_link_n_fgcolor	link_color pagetitle_link_color
body_link_m_fgcolor	linkhover_color pagetitle_linkhover_color
page_bgcolor	body_background	Value applied only to the "color" element of the vB4 stylevar.
page_fgcolor	body_color pagetitle_color pagetitle_description_color vbblog_pagetitle_color vbcms_header_color
tborder_border_color	blockhead_border blocksubhead_border forumhead_border secondarycontent_header_border threadlisthead_border toolsmenu_border usercp_forum_icon_legend_top_border usercp_forum_icon_legend_border vbblog_bloglist_border vbblog_featured_border vbblog_navigation_border vbblog_pagetitle_border vbblog_sidebar_avatar_border vbblog_sidebar_tabs_border calendar_events_border calendar_th_blocksubhead_border calendar_mini_othermonth_a_border calendar_today_border_color calendar_week_eventlist_birthdays_border calendarwidget_weekdays_border postbitlite_header_border formrow_border forumbits_border foruminfo_border foruminfo_header_border forummenu_border wgo_border wgoheader_border popupmenu_border postbit_border postbit_boxed_border postbit_userinfo_border postbithead_border postbitlegacy_avatar_border signature_border profile_content_friends_list_border profile_content_infractions_li_hover_border profile_content_subsection_border secondarycontent_border sidebar_border sidebar_content_border threadbit_border usercp_nav_blockbody_border bbcode_quote_border vbcms_editor_border vbcms_header_borderBottom vbcms_header_borderTop vbcms_navwidget_menuitem_border vbcms_navwidget_menuitem_hover_border vbcms_wysiwyg_table_borderColor lightweightbox_border	Value applied only to the "color" element of the vB4 stylevars.
tcat_bgcolor	blockhead_background forumhead_background secondarycontent_header_background threadlisthead_background toolsmenu_background navbar_tab_background control_content_hover_background usercp_forum_icon_legend_background	Value applied only to the "color" element of the vB4 stylevars.
tcat_fgcolor	blockhead_color forumhead_color secondarycontent_header_color threadlisthead_color toolsmenu_color control_content_hover_color
tcat_link_n_fgcolor	blockhead_link_color toolsmenu_link_color navbar_tab_color
tcat_link_m_fgcolor	blockhead_linkhover_color toolsmenu_linkhover_color navbar_tab_linkhover_color navbar_linkhover_color
thead_bgcolor	blocksubhead_background header_background navbar_background navbar_tab_border postbithead_background control_content_background	Value applied only to the "color" element of the vB4 stylevars.
thead_fgcolor	blocksubhead_color header_color header_link_color header_linkhover_color toplinks_link_color toplinks_linkhover_color navbar_color navbar_linkhover_color postbithead_color control_content_color
thead_link_n_fgcolor	blocksubhead_link_color navlinks_color navbar_link_color
thead_link_m_fgcolor	blocksubhead_linkhover_color
tfoot_bgcolor	footer_background footer_border	Value applied only to the "color" element of the vB4 stylevars.
tfoot_fgcolor	footer_color
tfoot_link_n_fgcolor	footer_link_color
tfoot_link_m_fgcolor	footer_linkhover_color
alt1_bgcolor	navbar_tab_bevel blockbody_background blockrow_background formrow_background forumrow_firstentry_background forumrow_background threadbit_background postbit_background sidebar_content_background usercp_nav_blockbody_background lightweightbox_background	Value applied only to the "color" element of the vB4 stylevars.
alt1_fgcolor	blockrow_color sidebar_content_color
alt1_link_n_fgcolor	block_link_color blockrow_link_color forum_sidebar_link_color
alt1_link_m_fgcolor	block_linkhover_color blockrow_linkhover_color forum_sidebar_linkhover_color
alt2_bgcolor	navbar_tab_selected_background secondarycontent_background threadbit_alt_background threadbit_deleted_background threadbit_hilite_background postbit_control_background postbit_deleted_background postbit_userinfo_background postbit_foot_background sidebar_background	Value applied only to the "color" element of the vB4 stylevars.
alt2_fgcolor	secondarycontent_color postbit_control_color sidebar_header_color
inlinemod_bgcolor	imodhilite_backgroundColor	Value applied only to the "color" element of the vB4 stylevar.

Stylevars

Manual overrides for vB4 Stylevars

A manual override value is applied to some vB4 stylevars to prevent conflicts with other
color values transferred from vB3, and to otherwise accommodate the vB3 style.

vB4 Stylevar(s)	Notes
navlinks_background navlinks_border_top blockfoot_background	The value of "transparent" is applied to the "color" element only of these vB4 stylevars.

vBulletin Community Forum – Blogs

I am happy to announce the forthcoming vBulletin Mobile Suite, encompassing our Android and iPhone applications built specifically for your vBulletin website.
It will be available soon.
You can get full details on how vb mobile suite works, as well as pricing and functionality details, here.

What does this mean for community site owners?
Here are four major implications of going mobile?

Branding Power
Mobile devices have opened up an additional form of promotion for communities – Application Branding. In just the past year alone, a staggering 7 billion application downloads in the App Store had been reported by Apple. In fact, they reached the 10 billion application download mark in less than 3 years, providing a glimpse of the exploding usage of mobile devices.

So considering the sheer number of application download requests by users of mobile devices, publishers begin to see the significance of branding power. Whenever a user utilizes a publisher?s mobile application, they?ll encounter the branded application icon – resulting in engraving the products identity into the users mind. The more time users spend using an app, the more they become acquainted with your community.

Increased Productivity
Applications have revolutionized the way people view and utilize their mobile device. Users can now efficiently conduct many aspects of advance computing literally into the palm of their hands.

A community available ?on the go? provides the management and users the benefits of instant communication, productivity, contributions, and a much more socially engaging atmosphere.

Here are a few videos of the visualizing the intuitive experience of utilizing the vBulletin Mobile Application….

Moderating on the go
The mobile applications have inbuilt moderation functionality, enabling you to curate content anywhere.

Mobile photo management

Simple/quick responses
Take a photo, upload it as a response immediately!

Mobile as a Revenue Stream
Reports by AdMob, in 2010, show a large increase in the number of ads requested by mobile users. By 2015, it is expected to increase 26 fold, making mobile devices the fastest growing advertising platform in modern media.

With these type of statistics, it is imperative for publishers to get into the mobile publishing game and implement mobile monetization methods to increase revenue.

Mobile growth
The Mobile market, and usage of mobile devices is growing exponentially, as publishers we need to ensure we are placed to capture it.

vBulletin Community Forum – Blogs

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of fixed-width layout. What most of you don’t know is why?

It simply comes down to readability. How easy is the content on the eyes?

Newspapers and magazines display text in fixed-width columns because it makes reading so much easier on the eyes. The smaller the reading area the easier it is to consume.

Readability is important because it indirectly has an affect on revenue and conversion rate.

If the content is easy to read you have:

1. A reader who is satisfied.
2. A reader that will visit many pages (Pageviews).
3. A reader that will stay online longer (Avg. Time on Site).
4. A reader that will take action. ie. register, upgrade membership, create a post, etc

Past discussions on layout type (fixed vs liquid) always focused on appearance. You never hear anyone talking about how it can affect revenue.

Until now – My goal with this article is to have a conversation about your choice of layout type.

What’s your favorite layout type? Why? Did you consider readability, revenue, audience, etc before making your choice?

I’m going to try to explain my choice below…

Imagine 2 rooms

In Room 1, $ 20,000 is scattered throughout the floor. You have 1 minute to grab as much as you can. One minute later you walk out with $ 10,000.

Now imagine a room twice as big – Room 2 – $ 20,000 is scattered throughout the room. You have 1 minute to grab as much as you can. How much will you walk out with?

Tick, Tock…

Tick, Tock…

Less than $ 5,000 – half the amount you walked away with in Room 1.
There’s double the space to cover which takes more time and energy to move from one area to the next.

In many ways, a liquid layout is similar to the above. The bigger the layout the more work one has to accomplish a task.

I’m sure you agree that the space between objects is potentially larger in a liquid layout. The farther apart objects are to the primary area the less attention it will get.

There lies the problem. To make money, you need eyes on ads (directly or peripherally).

vBulletin Community Forum – Blogs

The world is going mobile – go mobile with it!
Today we are proud to announce the long awaited vBulletin Mobile Suite which breaks new ground by empowering users to interact with your community via custom-branded iPhone and Android apps is here!

• Ever wanted to take a photo with your phone, and immediately post it in your favorite forum?
• Been in an airport and got a reported post and wanted to take action on it right then and there?
• Wanted to move your forum into the mobile app space? (10 billion app downloads have occurred in the past 3 years?)
• Looked at expanding your revenue generating options?

The vBulletin Mobile Suite does all this, and more.

The price for both the iPhone and Android app (and other mobile items we are working on) is $ 199 for 12 months of updates and support.
The Suite incorporates a comprehensive web-based customization providing the ability to maintain the unique character, functionality, and comfort of your vBulletin web presence in an iPhone and Android app. vBulletin handles development work and packages apps for you to submit to your iTunes store and Android marketplaces.

Post from your device, read from it, moderate from it, upload photos from it, customize it, charge for it (if you want!) and advertise through it.
Find out more about it: www.vbulletin.com/mobile
Also, check out our Mobile Suite FAQ

vBulletin Community Forum – Blogs

Basic re-post of my vB 4.x upgrade process which I have been using for years. Basically, you upgrade on a copy of your live database so as to leave live database untouched in case you mess up the upgrade.

eva2000′s upgrade process

My vB 3.8.x to vB 4.1.x upgrade process which I personally use myself as well as for private paying clients is as follows and assumes:

1. you have ssh2 telnet access
2. your vB 3.x forums are only using MySQL default MyISAM/Memory tables with NO InnoDB tables
3. you have enough free disk space to hold all the backups approximately 3x to 6x times the size of your forum database/files/attachments in free disk space.
4. public root directory = /home/username/public_html
5. live database name = livedbname
6. new databasename name = newdbname

Step 1. Tune php and mysql settings specifically for backup, restore and upgrade process. Tune mysql to ensure enough memory is allocated to buffers to speed things up, increase timeout values for mysql to ensure no mysql timeouts and for php. Ensure mysql server has InnoDB support disabled otherwise you?ll have to deal with InnoDB tuning parameters before you start as vB4 automatically converts 6 tables to InnoDB if mysql server has InnoDB support enabled. Read the reasons of how and why you?d want InnoDB support disabled in my blog post at http://vbtechsupport.com/675/ and if you do decide to use InnoDB storage engine for some database tables, I?d also look at upgrading your MySQL version to a better performing MySQL version such as MySQL 5.5.12, Percona 5.5.10-20.2 or my recommendation MariaDB 5.2.x series.

Step 2. Backup live forums

cd /home/username/
mysqldump --opt -Q -u mysqlusername -p livedbname > /home/username/vb3backup.sql
cp -a public_html public_html_oldvb38

if you have attachments outside of public_html i.e. /home/username/attachments

cd /home/username
cp -a attachments attachments_oldvb38

Step 3. Create new empty database called newdbname and import backup vb3backup.sql into newdbname

mysql -u mysqlusernae -p newdbname < /home/username/vb3backup.sql

You could compress these vBulletin forum sql, attachment and public_html backups, but for large vBulletin forums it justs adds additional time to the upgrade task and if you have to revert to one backup it adds more time in uncompressing the vBulletin backups. So I usually don?t compress these backups until after the vBulletin 3.x to 4.x upgrade process is completed fully.

Step 4. Get new vB version files uploaded to /home/username/public_html. Two ways of doing this – I prefer 2nd method if I am on the clock and don’t have much time.

Method #1

• Empty out /home/username/public_html and upload new vB version files from zip folder /upload

Method #2

• On local computer, extract vB new version zip file and in /upload rename config.php.new to config.php and populate all the settings pointing to step #3′s newdbname database which now has a copy of your live database imported into newdbname.
• Also add to vB new version config.php following 2 lines to disable plugins and mail for upgrade process
  PHP Code:

  
define("DISABLE_HOOKS", true);

define('DISABLE_MAIL', 1); 




• If you use vB datastore caching in config.php either APC, Xcache, File or Memcached datastore caching, disable it temporarily for the upgrade by commenting it out with double forward slashes.
• Then zip up /upload folder i.e. upload.zip and upload that to /home/username/ via FTP
• Then ssh2 telnet into server as same username as your vB forum site account (this is so extracted files retain the correct file owner/group permissions).
• Once in ssh2 go to /home/username directory and extract upload.zip you’ll have a folder at /home/username/upload now which contains all the new vB version’s php files etc
  Code:

  unzip upload

• Still in ssh2 telnet, copy all files in /home/username/upload and overwrite all files in /home/username/public_html
  Code:

  cd /home/username/upload
  unalias cp
  cp -Rfp * /home/username/public_html

Now you should have overwritten all files in /home/username/public_html with new vB version files

At this stage, if you are using vBSEO addon and have MaxCDN or any other CDN hosted vB php/js/css files served externally, please flush and purge the CDN caches from your MaxCDN or CDN provider control panels to ensure you’re upgrading using the uploaded new files and not cached CDN files.

Step 5. vB 3.6.x to vB 3.8.x upgrades.

• Run upgrade to 3.7.x and then repeat Step 2 and backup 3.7.x forums.
• Run upgrade from 3.7.x to 3.8.x and then repeat Step 2 and backup 3.8.x forums.
• Note: if you are upgrading using vB 4.0.9+ and higher vB php files, you can from the start using PHP CLI command line upgrade method outlined in Step 7. Just make sure to drop the fulltext indices mentioned in Step 6, BEFORE running PHP CLI command line upgrade.

Step 6. vB 3.8.x to vB 4.0.9 upgrades.

• Similar to large imports mentioned here http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/med_large_import, drop the post table’s fulltext index on title BEFORE running vB 3.8.x to vB 4.1.x stage as vB 4.x no longer uses it. Run query on newdbname database (copy of your live forums). In ssh2 telnet type following to enter mysql command line:
  Code:

  mysql -u mysqlusername -p newdbname

• Then run query to drop fulltext indices in post, thread, groupmessage and socialgroup tables. If you get error saying the key doesn’t exist you can ignore it and move on.
  Code:

  ALTER TABLE `post` DROP INDEX `title`;
  ALTER TABLE `thread` DROP INDEX `title`;
  ALTER TABLE `groupmessage` DROP INDEX `gm_ft`;
  ALTER TABLE `socialgroup` DROP INDEX `name`

• Now begin upgrade process from vB 3.8.x to 4.0.9
• Note: if you are upgrading using vB 4.0.9+ and higher vB php files, you can from the start using PHP CLI command line upgrade method outlined in Step 7. Just make sure to drop the fulltext indices mentioned in Step 6, BEFORE running PHP CLI command line upgrade.

Step 7. vB 4.0.9 to vB 4.1.x latest – utilise the new command line upgrade process oulined at http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/upgrade_cli

• ssh2 telnet into server as same username as vB site account and run from /home/username/public_html/install directory this command
  Code:

  php -f upgrade.php

Step 8. vB 4.x upgrade tasks and backup

• Once upgrade complete, I like to make another 2 backups by repeat Step 2 and backup 4.1.x forums BEFORE vB 4 upgrade tasks are done and another backup AFTER vB4 upgrade tasks are done.
• vB4 upgrade tasks are those notice prompts when you first log into vB4.x admincp, you’ll be prompted to do the following: rebuild search index, adding keywords to threads and rebuilding thread information.

Rebuilding Search Index

Rebuilding search index can be a time consuming task, so vBulletin included a way of doing this rebuild via SSH2 telnet via PHP command line. In the downloaded vB zip file folder called do_not_upload there?s a file called searchindex.php. You upload searchindex.php to the root directory of your vBulletin forum installation. In this example it would be uploaded to /home/username/public_html/searchindex.php. You then log in via SSH2 telnet as the same user as the forum domain/site user and run the following two commands:

cd /home/username/public_html
php searchindex.php

You?ll be prompted to enter the path to your vBulletin installation in this case = /home/username/public_html.

Rebuilding Threads

Rebuilding threads can also be time consuming for large vB forums. vBulletin developer, Michael Anders unofficially posted a PHP command line script for such task as well called threadcli.php (download link for registered vB members only as it isn?t included in official vB4 zip downloads). Works pretty much the same way as searchindex.php but asks for starting thread id and number of threads to update per pass.

Run it from includes folder:

cd /home/username/public_html/includes
php threadcli.php

If threadcli.php doesn?t work for you and you get access denied message, edit threadcli.php and add right after

or you can try Paul K?s cli.php script instead which has more options.

cd /home/username/public_html
php cli.php

php cli.php
> Checking vB installation
> Installation seems to be fine, continuing
#################################################
> Please select an option
1) Quit
2) Update User Titles and Ranks
3) Rebuild Thread Information
4) Rebuild Forum Information
5) Add Add Missing Thread Keywords
6) Update User Names
7) Update Post Counts  Fix Broken User Profiles
9) Rebuild Post Cache
10) Empty Signature Cache
11) Delete Duplicate Threads

Step 9. Revert your php and mysql settings back to everyday 24/7 values and remove from you config.php the lines

Then re-enable vB datastore caching in config.php if you had disabled it for the upgrade.

Step 10. Update YUI version ? by either updating to vB 4.1.3 PL2 or higher or you can edit includes/class_core.php and update the version of YUI used from v2.7.0 to v2.9.0. Then after vB 4.x is upgraded, in AdminCP -> Options -> Server Settings and Optimization Options -> Use Remote YUI = select Google

from

define('YUI_VERSION', '2.7.0'); // define the YUI version we bundle

to

define('YUI_VERSION', '2.9.0'); // define the YUI version we bundle

So basically, you do the upgrade on a copy of your live database in database named newdbname ? leaving live database untouched in case you have to revert to a backup if upgrade messes up. You?ll end up with a few backups at different stages so it?s easier to revert to a particular stage rather than completely start over from scratch if upgrade messes up somewhere between.

You?ll have vB 3.6.x backup, vB 3.7.x backup, vB 3.8.x backup and vB 4.1.x BEFORE upgrade tasks done and AFTER upgrade tasks done. If your database is very large then disk space could be an issue, so you could be selective as to how many backups you do, I?d at least have 3 backups, original live database backup, vB 3.8.x backup and vB 4.1.x backup.

Largest vB forum I have tried this process on was aproximately 38GB size. If you have problems or vBulletin errors during upgrade, best to check out vBulletin 4 Installations and Upgrades support forums.

Once you have upgraded to vBulletin 4.x, you can check out Shawn/Digitalpoint.com?s vBulletin 4 Optimization Guide.

I’ve also posted this as an CMS Article in How to Install/Upgrade section and you can discuss the article here.

vBulletin Community Forum – Blogs

Good news everyone! There is a new editor in vBulletin 4.1.4!

Something may have felt different in the past weeks – and that great new feeling is the brand new, lightweight, modern editor interface! In fact, you may have already heard or noticed that vBulletin 4.1.4 has a rather shiny and exciting new feature ? the versatile CKEditor. Indeed, the old editor has been sent into retirement and replaced with a flexible, feature-rich and powerful editor. Equipped with proverbial sledgehammers, the vBulletin development team dove deep into the code-base and emerged victorious, ripping out the old editor which prevented future extendability, customizations and the much requested functionality such as auto-save. And so, without further ado, let me give you the top reasons why CKEditor rocks, its brief history and the overview of new functionality introduced in vBulletin 4.1.4.

Why CKEditor Rocks:

Brief History of CKEditor

The following section has been gracefully borrowed from the CKEditor.com?s own website. I would like to note one rather entertaining fun fact, however. The original name of the editor was ?FCK?, but due to a rather unfortunate resemblance to a similar word (use your imagination) ? the editor was renamed to simply CK.

FCKeditor has been around for more than six years. Since 2003 it has built a strong user community becoming the most used editor in the market, accumulating more than 3.5 million downloads. In 2009, we decided to rename the editor, bringing to light the next generation of the software: CKEditor 3.0.

CKEditor inherits the quality and strong features people were used to finding in FCKeditor, in a much more modern product, added by dozens of new benefits, like accessibility and ultimate performance.

Auto-Save in vBulletin 4.1.4

Besides the shiny buttons and smoother overall functionality, the biggest new feature added in the initial release of the updated editor in vBulletin 4.1.4 is the ability to ?Auto-Save? content. What does this mean, exactly? Content auto-save is like an emergency parachute ? it automatically saves your content so that it can be restored in the event that things go very wrong.

Imagine this scenario. You?ve sat down to write a blog entry or a really long reply to a thread. Like a mad composer, you are banging away on the keyboard typing away furiously; your words and ideas are flowing freely into the editor. In an unfortunate twist of cruel fate your foot kicks the power outlet and unplugs your computer. Your computer shuts down as you begin to panic ? the panic slowly transforming into agonizing rage. Well, there is good news! The new CKEditor automatically backs up your work every 30 seconds (this is adjustable). You curse the skies, successfully reboot your computer and navigate back to the page where you were writing the content, click the ?Restore Auto-Save? button and magically ? your masterpiece is now restored. Nothing has been lost!

This magic auto-save functionality applies to the editor in general and is available in all vBulletin sections, including CMS, Forums and Blogs.

Improved, Intuitive User Interface

The new editor makes it easier to format content nicely and create pretty articles and posts. After all, CKEditor is a true ?what you see is what you get? editor. You can adjust image sizes, create thumbnails, add and format table data, align paragraphs of text as you wish and in general have a much better time creating visually and aesthetically pleasing content. Besides a streamlined and generally improved user interface, the new editor comes with a lot of little details that will make the user experience more enjoyable. For example, when creating a quick reply users are now able to click the similes button to enhance their quick-reply post.

vBulletin Community Forum – Blogs

Securing your vBulletin Files.
Access to your vBulletin files should only come through a web browser in most instances. However sometimes someone will start poking around on your server and you don’t want them entering directories that should be secure. You can prevent this using server configuration files such as .htaccess or web.config. These files let you control who has access to your directories.

Securing the admincp, modcp, and install directories.
These three directories often require access by staff for the maintanence and running of your forums. Should someone’s account get compromised, they may provide a way into the system for further malicious mischief. Especially the admincp. The general premise is that anyone with access to the admincp can do very bad things including disabling your forums, hijacking other accounts, installing plugins that log, redirect or do other malicious things to users and so forth. Securing these directories should be on the security conscious admin’s mind from the beginning. To do this you would use .htaccess to ask for a secondary username and password. Ideally each person should have their own.

To do this you will find instructions here:
.htaccess – http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess3.shtml
web.config – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/815151

Restrict Access via IP Address
Alternatively, if you’re the only one who requires access to these directories, you can restrict that access to your IP Address. Doing so requires a static IP Address from your internet service provider.

.htaccess:

order deny,allow
deny from all
# allow the admin
allow from 83.116.19.53
# allow moderator:
allow from 83.116.19.59

#for all the xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx put in an ip-addres, or ip-range

web.config:
[code]

<security>
    <ipSecurity allowUnlisted="false">    <!-- this line blocks everybody, except those listed below -->
        <clear/> <!-- removes all upstream restrictions -->
        <add ipAddress="127.0.0.1" allowed="true"/>    <!-- allow requests from the local machine -->
        <add ipAddress="83.116.19.53" allowed="true"/>   <!-- allow the specific IP of 83.116.19.53  -->
        <add ipAddress="83.116.119.0" subnetMask="255.255.255.0" allowed="true"/>   <!--allow network 83.116.119.0 to 83.116.119.255-->
        <add ipAddress="83.116.0.0" subnetMask="255.255.0.0" allowed="true"/>   <!--allow network 83.116.0.0 to 83.116.255.255-->
        <add ipAddress="83.0.0.0" subnetMask="255.0.0.0" allowed="true"/>   <!--allow entire /8 network of 83.0.0.0 to 83.255.255.255-->
    </ipSecurity>
</security>

Renaming your Admincp and Modcp directories
For a bit of security through obscurity you can also rename these directories inside your config.php file. Then when someone tries to access the original names, they will get an error. Though, I recommend leaving empty directories named with admincp and modcp and a deny from all .htaccess within. To rename these directories look for this section in the config.php file:

    //    ****** PATH TO ADMIN & MODERATOR CONTROL PANELS ******
    //    This setting allows you to change the name of the folders that the admin and
    //    moderator control panels reside in. You may wish to do this for security purposes.
    //    Please note that if you change the name of the directory here, you will still need
    //    to manually change the name of the directory on the server.
$  config['Misc']['admincpdir'] = 'admincp';
$  config['Misc']['modcpdir'] = 'modcp';

If you do this, you need to remember to rename the appropriate folders every time you upgrade vbulletin as well.

Other Directories - includes, packages and vb
No one should need direct access to these directories at any time. However I feel these should be secured nonetheless. They contain the inner workings of your vBulletin system. To secure these you should include a deny from all directive in the .htaccess for each directory. To do this create a .htaccess file with the single following line in it:

deny from all

Upload that file to the three directories.

Warning
There is one fatal caveat to securing directories and files via .htaccess or web.config files. If the attacker has access to the server via FTP or other means, they can possibly delete these files and remove any security they provide.

vBulletin Community Forum - Blogs