Chapter 3

Summary

In this chapter we've tried to give you a whistle-stop tour of vBulletin from both the end user's perspective and the administrator's point of view. By now it's probably clear to you just how big, powerful, and customizable vBulletin is. The more you dig, the more options and settings you end up finding! Once you get comfortable with using vBulletin, this is great, but in the beginning it can make it seem like a huge learning curve. What we've tried to do with this chapter is give you a fast track up that learning curve to a base camp at a point where you have a working forum and are in a position to begin making a few basic changes to it.

At this stage we recommend that you take a break from reading and spend some time with your vBulletin installation again (a few hours if possible)—work through the options outlined here and get a feel for what's on offer and how it's presented by the interface. If you feel confident enough, then make some small changes to your installation, and see what implications they have—if you don't like them, undo the changes. By having some hands-on time with your forum, you'll gain the confidence you need to perform the bigger, more complex tasks we'll be looking at in later chapters.

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4

Customizing Your vBulletin Board

Most of the best discussion boards on the Web have been customized in one way or another. Some have only basic customizations to give the place a specific look and feel, while others have been heavily modified and customized to look, feel, and work exactly how the owners want them to.

At this stage you probably want something in the middle—you want a certain level of customization but don't want to take on too much too soon, right? That's fine—the great thing about customizing vBulletin is that you can start small and keep on adding to it until you get what you want.

In this chapter we will look at:

•Modifying CSS stylesheets

•Editing the default text on the board

•Modifying templates

•Changing the board's PHP code

•Hacks

Warning—make sure you have a backup!!!

Remember that anything you do can have consequences that you might not expect! If you make a change to something, then there are things that can (and sometimes will) go wrong. Usually just undoing the changes will fix the problem, but this isn't always the case.

The data is the most important thing on your website, so make sure you take care of it! Most web hosts allow you to do this easily though the control panel.

Also, don't just have a backup—have up-to-date backups. If your site is important, try to make a backup at least once a week. If your site is very important, then do it daily, and make sure you keep at least the last three backups in case the most recent carries the problem you are trying to fix. This way, if something does go wrong, you just reload the backup, and you are away again in minutes rather than days.