Vbulletin is the most installed internet forum software on the internet. I also think it is the internet forum software with a large number of features. Take into account that all the features presented below are part of Vbulletin. Vbulletin is still today one of the best internet forum platforms.
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Security
Vbulletin Forum members can sign in using Twitter, Google or using the forum credentials. The admin can use Akismet & stop forum spam to protect the forum from spam. It is also possible to set up different types of Captchas like image verification, Questions
It is possible to ban users by a username but we didn’t find the way to ban a user by IP address or email address. Howevre, there is an infraction system and after receiving several points, a user can get automatically banned.
Users
Vbulletin feature a reputation system, a rank manager system and a title manager system. A certain score unlocks a user rank. For sure, users can be added to usergroups with specific permissions
Themes
Vbulletin is delivered with at least 15 themes with different colors and look. It is possible to customize every theme separately in the style variable editor.
The style editor is every advanced and it is possible to change the colors, the fonts of all the forum items. You don’t need to modify CSS files to modify the forum theme. An editor named style variable editor helps you to do it. The theme is ready out of the box.
Attachements
Vbulletin allows you to set the file size and resolution limits by type. That’s how you can limit uploads to your web server and avoide your web server storage to be full.
Language
Vbulletin comes in English but it is possible to download other languages like French, German, Spanish. It is also possible to modify a translated page right from the admin panel.
BBcode
no BBcode are delivered with a new installation of Vbulletin. We guess that the forum admin must import BBcodes. For sure, it is possible to add customized BBcodes.
Paid Subscription
An administrator can set up a daily or a monthly subscription. After payment the user is added to a new usergroup with new credentials. These credentials can be customized in the usergroup permissions section. The payment gateways are Authorize ,CCBILL, 2checkOut, Paypal, Worldpay by default.
SEO
Vbulletin generates SEO friendly URLs for every thread. We also discovered that a XML sitemap file was generated.
Monitoring
It is possible to get an overview of the forum activity thanks to many different statistics & logs panels. For example, it is possible to monitor moderator activity, user activity.
Vbulletin API
It is possible to monitor the API activities in the admin panel thanks to the section API statistics and API logs. We didn’t find beginner documentation for the API. It looks a bit complicated. However, the API reference is complete.
Conclusion
The conclusion is quite easy. If you have an internet forum with many users, Vbulletin is for you. The amount and types of features are tailored for the high traffic internet forums.
Looking for a Vbulletin web hosting?
We advise opting for a Vbulletin web hosting which includes hosting optimization for the forum and a Vbulletin license. A Vbulletin web hosting also ensures that the web server is accurately