Off the Top of My Head

Interview : Ins and Outs of vBulletin

My next interview in the series is with Greg, who is more commonly known as noppid throughout many forums like DP, Vbulletin and Band of Gonzos. He was born and educated in New Jersey and although his computer career started in NYC, Greg currently lives in central Florida. I had a chance to talk to him for quite a while on how he got into computers and then was able to have an interview about his experiences with vBulletin. I thought it would be a perfect compliment to Joes Hayes take on phpBB.

Gregs studies for a profession were to become an analog electronics technician. However, at graduation time, the release of the first IBM PC made it apparent that digital electronics was going to be the future. He was able to gain employment as a locksmith and use his analog electronics training to repair, install, and maintain alarm systems and electronic door interlocking systems for warehouses, banks and jails.

These skills eventually exposed him to computer rooms for mainframe and supermini computer systems. In the large computer environment it was common to segregate different departments necessary to operate the computers. They used programmable locks. These locks were changed frequently as employees came and went. Greg was the guy doing the changing and getting acquainted with the bosses.

One day while changing the lock, they discussed hiring someone with no computer experience, so that they could train them. So he asked for the job and got an interview and was subsequently hired. He trained as a computer operator and once he could do that, Greg learned the programming language cpl, like Pascal, to make the job easier. He then learned to use C and make my job easier once again. He was then a computer operator. I knew Prime Super Minis and IBM PC’s!

Greg worked with the mainframes for some time in some major brokerage firms in NYC but then relocated to Florida. While in Florida it became obvious, quickly, that he could not make the money which he did in NYC. So he then worked for a family store for a while and just laid back.

Right around 1991 he went to work building and repairing PCs and networks for a retail store. When there was no more room for salary increases there, it was time to go it alone and started his own computer repair and sales company. Things were good. I did this untill around 2000 and then at that time he was building a family. Greg wanted to be home with his kids so he started looking at the internet in order to work at home. He would soon became familiar with vBulletin software and forums.

The first step was to learn how to get a site hosted, where to get vBulletin and code HTML, so the Computer Help Forum was born. This was the first endeavor in making a statement on the internet. Only thing is, since it advertised free help, how was that going to make me money? Luckily, this “free” computer help forum attracted some folks he could talk to and get some clues from as to how to make money off  “free” on the internet. Out of necessity, he dove into php programming and added vBulletin hacks to the vBulletin forum and improved it so it was attractive to potential new members. This was an easy transition from C programming. He hacked in ads for revenue and features to attract new members although it still didn’t make much money. However, he was getting a reputation for knowing vBulletin and making money helping others.

So working at home was paying, but not getting Greg rich. The supplemental income from his website ads was not even enough to pay out. He even had a cool motorcycle forum at that point and some folks were going there. But, the real question was how to get more traffic for the ads to pay off? Again, the computer help forum paid off. He met some webmasters there that needed help with vBulletin and they could help him with web mastering. Next he learned about back links and anchor text and content. They explained h1 tags, titles and meta tags. He knew little of the importance of these things at the time.

Gregs income exploded in no time promoting his websites with his new knowledge. It was at that point he was hooked. Websites worked 24 hours a day making him money, not to mention he also had a fair income providing professional programming services in the vBulletin community and on the internet in general. He latched onto vBulletin forum software and although he had tried others, the flow of the vBulletin control panel, the coding style of the php code and the template methods they used, made it easier for him to learn vBulletin. The security reminded him of ACL’s (access control lists) on the super mini computers he had worked with in the past and there was a feeling of comfort.

Today Greg has two well known vBulletin communities. Both provide a good source of recreation, income, and professional opportunity and there are many other websites as well that are not forum based. They are a good source of income from advertising and he has been fortunate to enjoy making a fair living working for others in the vBulletin and internet community. They publish free php additions for vBulletin websites and a php based Amazon affiliate book store for any website and sell a photo gallery add on for vBulletin named vBPicGallery.

As we prepared for the interview phase Greg told me, “That’s my story, thank you for letting me tell it. I appreciate everyone along that way that has been there to give me an opportunity, a push, or the right advice at the right time.”

First of all, why vBulletin?
vBulletin forum software offers the most features out of the box, for both members and administrators, in my opinion. Other forum software I have tried requires too many additions to equal the features of vBulletin. If you want additions for vBulletin, they are very easy to implement with the plug in system of the vBulletin 3.5.x series.

The development team at vBulletin is very active and provides updates for both function and security in a very timely manner. They also provide very good support, when needed, in their support forum.

What are the advantages over something like phpBB or Invision?
I do not work with these products at all, so I’m not qualified to say. My experience with these products in the past was to merely try them perhaps five years ago while evaluating them as well as vBulletin. At the time, I was naturally drawn to vBulletin, as I have mentioned, because of the coding style and ease of use of the control panel and templates.

The only exposure I get of these products currently, is converting them to vBulletin forum software for customers. I do this often and that in itself is a statement that vBulletin is better from an administrator’s point of view. But members rarely seem to notice the difference. Although those members that do notice are always quick to point out how much they like the new vBulletin forum.

There is often a lot of buzz about forum security issues, is vB often included with those issues?
Yes, security is usually the forefront for comparison as most all forum software is evolving to be “like” vBulletin. As the competitors of vBulletin add similar features to their products, the only thing left to compare will be security, performance, and ease of administration.

Other forum software products have had security problems that affected the websites using it very badly. I’m not aware of any such incidents with vBulletin forum software.

Like I said, the development team is really on top of it and they make any repairs necessary and get them out very quickly.

What are your favorite modifications for vBulletin?

vBadvanced CMPS (Requires Registration)

vBSEO Google Sitemaps

Members who visited the forum in the last 24 hours

If you could suggest just one modification to be added to the full version and supported, which would it be?
A home page portal or CMS.

What are the negative points?
For a hobbyist, some may think the software is expensive.

Not being able to use the payment gateway for guests.

Just in general, what’s the most important ingredient in growing a forum in the beginning?
Seeding the forum with topics people can reply to. Promote the forum so people can find it.

Is the strategy any different when it comes to maintaining that membership?
Not really. People have more in life then the topic that attracted them to your forum. They will divert and talk about life in general as they get acquainted. You must keep seeding the forum with discussion on your topic so they don’t just talk about “cheese” or how evil the world is.

You must keep promoting the forum so fresh ideas and chat are introduced regularly to your forum.

How do you deal with spammers, automated ones in particular?
We remove posts. With some, we try to establish professional relationships. Some we ban some go to tachy. A vBulletin feature that let’s them think they are part of threads, but no one sees their posts but themselves.

I’ve only dealt with one automated poster I’m aware of. A ban kept it at bay. But it visited regularly and still does.

We also have no follow tags in some places and don’t get too concerned in those areas.

Don’t promote your forum by trying to take members from other forums!

What is your preferred style of moderation?
No two incidents are alike. Not all the decisions I make alone are the best. So I try and involve the staff at my forums to stay objective and not over react as the owner. It don’t always work out that way however. There are some things I’ve done that may have been handled better. For instance, arguing instead of removing or closing a thread.

What is the best source of income for a successful forum?
This will certainly vary by topic. But advertising space is probably the most profitable. If your have your own product tie in, that may be very good as well. Affiliates and Google adsense are very subjective. You need the right demographics to have shopping members.

Back to vBulletin, where do you see it going in the future?
The possibilities are endless. Forums are here to stay. Security and performance will be the things that determine if vBulletin has continued success. Their past successes and expansion of the product seem to indicate that it will be a major player for some time to come.

As of now, Jelsoft seems to have a handle on this. I look forward to that continuing as I have my eggs in the vBulletin forum software basket.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 8th, 2006 at 8:15 am and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.