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Imhotep397

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 22, 2002
350
37
Ok, I'm interested in building my own art themed online community. I'm a designer with limited coding experience/knowledge, but have a pretty good idea of how I would want my backend to logically work. To a large extent I would rather build the thing myself so I can change anything and/or everything if necessary. I also understand the importance of having pretty much everything pre-constructed within already existing backend to get up quickly. Do you think it makes more sense (can it even be done?) to build a forum community with image galleries using WO and MySQL or Filemaker or can this kind of thing really only be done with software like VBulletin?
 

sord

macrumors 6502
Jun 16, 2004
352
0
...(can it even be done?) to build a forum community with image galleries using WO and MySQL...

hehe...you make me laugh :D

YES Of course it could! For an experienced developer it wouldn't be very difficult too, however without programming experience it would certainly take awhile.

EDIT: Fixed type ;) Thanks angelwatt
 

angelwatt

Moderator emeritus
Aug 16, 2005
7,852
9
USA
...For an experienced developer it wouldn't be very difficult too, however without programming experience it wouldn't certainly take awhile.

So you're saying it would be easier to do by an inexperienced person? ;) Gotta love typos.
 

SrWebDeveloper

macrumors 68000
Dec 7, 2007
1,871
3
Alexandria, VA, USA
I'll address the vBulletin aspect.

It is excellent for integrating other things into it, i.e. blogs or third party freeware or shareware scripts to extend the basic functionality of the forum software.

Just remember - learn/use the template/hooks system which is built into vBulletin and intended for this purpose. Don't hack a single line of distribution code, do the entire thing through their control panel via custom templates and the hooks they provide! This is so you can upgrade vBulletin and not have to re-hack their code. Your code will be compartmentalized and added into the database so it's easy to use vBulletin functions/variables and also distribute your additions to the public independently, if desired.

For details on their template/hook system see the VB web site and explore the many topics there and download a few third party plugins.

If you are inexperienced at coding, you will find even the simplicity of the template/hook system likely confusing at first, because the vB authors use PHP scripting to write the system. So learn basic PHP.

But even novices can integrate vB into an open source content management system such as Drupal which you can use to design your overall site. Install vB as a plugin in Drupal (or Drupal as a plugin in vB, which is now available) depending on if you want vB to serve as the main template system and layout, or to be used within your own custom layout or site. You don't need to be a guru to work with plugins. Just need to read endless docs and maybe join the vB forum for help.

Have fun!

-jim
 
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