Drupal or vBulletin?
 

I just can't decide between the two :-/

The site will focus around forums, news, reviews etc

My main concern is finding the one that is the most efficient, especially for logged in users (I hear Drupal kind of sucks at this?) and which platform would be the easiest to scale (for future growth).

My options are to use Drupal and it's various modules, or vB and either Gars or vBadvanced Dynamics to power news/reviews etc (Or I could use just stock vB and a thread fields hack).

I know Drupal is meant to be really powerful and you can do some great sites with it, eg popsugar.com, but I am pretty familiar with styling vB as I've been using it for two years. I also think the vB team are excellent coders, and the most secure and efficient option would be vB (at least right now - Drupal is sure to get better with acquia getting all that funding).

Just wondering what your thoughts are? Do any of you use Drupal or, vB in this manner?

It really depends on what you want your site to do. vBulletin is a fantastic forum, no doubt about that, but it's not a CMS and while add-ons like vBA make a brave attempt, they can't compete with a proper content management system like Drupal.

If your site is going to be focused around the forums, then use vB. If the content rather than the forum are going to be the main part of your site, use Drupal :-)

Of course, you could use both with the vBDrupal addon :-D

Alan.

I've used both, both are extremely good software. It comes down to whether you want a forum based site or a news based site. and of course you can port the two together.

Cheers both.

The one thing I'd want to preserve is a single log-in across the site. I'm not really keen on using forks, which I think vbdrupal is? There are others like Drupaltin but I'm not sure how 'good' they are in terms of how efficient they work together.

The good thing about vB is I know we can style it to pretty much how I like - and I really see it as a base for a custom back end system. Drupal is more a 'cms' where it's easier to add new sections etc from an end users perspective (eg easier for an office admin to maintain and update the site content and new content sections).

Other things I want to keep is a standard Pm system throughout the site, all comments added to post counts, one userCp system etc etc - which can only really happen if vB is the base I guess.

The other factor is it'll prob take me a while to get my head around Drupal, so could add a few months to development time. Also, with Drupal I think you need to know more php to get even simple things like the styling done. Finally, I'm still concerned about how efficient it will be, I keep hearing people saying it's not good for logged in users - and my site is going to be very community orientated with almost every page commentable.

I guess if the site takes off I could always employ someone to port the content and comments into drupal?

i think thats up for debate xD

As for advice, i dont really have any, i stopped using pre made things a while ago because most of them are too large and complex for my needs, badly programmed and inconceivably hard to understand.
What i will say tho is that i have never been a great fan of the idea of 'hacking' forum software to be a CMS when there are other dedicated CMS systems that do the job better, on the other hand is the fact that some CMS's dont have forums, or if they do there not up the the standard of vB etc.

tis indeed a tough one, if it were me i would just install both and have a play around for a bit, as forums go vB is probably one of the better forum softwares around (i detest phpBB with a passion) and if you site is going to be forum centred then possibly using vB will be a better idea, although i do like the relative simplicity of the drupal interface tho, but wether or not its good enough or feature rich for a community i just dont know.

They have an Integration for Drupal, that adds vBulletin to it. :]

there we are then, best of both worlds hehe

And here you are:
vbDrupal | The best CMS combined with the most popular forum

vbDrupal is a fork.... and I'm not keen on using forks tbh :-/

I think my best solution is to go for a custom type cms built into vB - there are too many things about vB that I want carried into my site, specifically the user orientated stuff (rep points, reported posts, being able to track every users activity from one cp etc etc).

All I need really is to find a way to cache a page - I'm sure I can come up with the end pages I need with php (they will basically be select queries), but there will be a LOT of queries on them and ideally I need some sort of caching system..

I will post a thread on it and hopefully some of you brainy people will be able to help me with it :D