Looking to create a new gaming site and forum - what should I be looking for?

UberTiger

UberTiger

UberTiger

Soldato
Joined
1 Nov 2008
Posts
4,561
So I'm going to give our clans gaming site a complete overhaul and I'm trying to prioritise what I need to be looking for in order in order to make decision as to what the best CMS and Forum to use will be.

I'm not 100% sure if I should be focussing on a decent CMS and then integrate the forum into that or focussing on a forum with a built in CMS?

Originally I was thinking Wordpress CMS due to the extensive theme selection and plugin library as I really want great aesthetics on the landing page, probably with some kind of jquery transitional banner, plus it's not going anywhere. Part of the problem with our current site is that it used Nuke Evolution, which is now dead it seems, is difficult to customise and is sooooo dated looking.

The other important side of things is the forum, which is really the lifeblood of the site. I really want it to have a forum that's clean, easy to navigate and use. Which then leans me towards picking a forum first and then working around that.

What are peoples thoughts on

1. Picking a WordPress theme, then trying to integrate a forum? If so, what options are there? Could I easily integrate one of the decent forums available? One downfall I can see with this is possibly having difficulty getting the forum theme to match the WP theme making the site inconsistent.

I was thinking bbpress would get around this but it seems that the basic bbpress is very basic although plugins seem to be able to add functionality that come standard in most other forums. Is it worth messing with this?

2. Picking a decent forum such vBulletin or maybe simple Machines (or anything else you guys suggest) and using their CMS. I'm just worried I won't be able to make the site look as slick this way or that there's the same theme selection or customisation.

3. Any other thoughts and suggestions you may have?

The only other major feature we'd like to retain is some kind of match arranging system. We currently use Virtual Wars, I believe I could still give this it's own page on the site but alternatively does anyone use a more modern match arranging system I could look into? Or alternatively if the notification system in a good forum good be used for this purpose?

Thanks!

You can see the current old site here at emwebsolutions.be/fff/index.php
 
Last edited:
Right, I've kind of answered most of my own questions so far. It looks like for nice integration between the site and forum I really need some forum software then install a portal over it which I can then theme and further customise to my liking.

Still trying to decide between forums though, I installed Simple Machines, then simple portal and imported my old forum over and started messing with themes and while the layouts are pretty good I'm not sure if it has all the forum features I want though.

I'm edging more towards vBulletin now to help future proof it and especially if a lot of modding work is going to go into heavily customise a theme it I'd rather not have to do it again if we port to vBulletin at a later date.

Does anyone know if it's possible to insert nice transitional banners like this into HTML blocks on these portals/cms'?
 
Been put onto the case of xen foro now which seems like a pretty awesome forum. A new player in the game started up by ex vBulletin delopers apparently...any thought's on that?
 
Invision is the daddy of paid forum software at the moment. If you really know what you're doing it gives the best results beyond comparrison. But bear in mind it's going to cost you, and you REALLY need to know what you're doing to get the kind of results I'm talking about.

vBulletin is the modders choice. The modding community is vast! It's also a lot more user-friendly in general and a better 'all-rounder' than IPB.

xenforo is alright... but poor modding comunity, and poor themes selection (as you'd expect from a relatively new forum). It's also overpriced given how new it is. They've priced themselves into the same market as vB and IPB, but they lack the maturity of the aforementioned boards, which includes a lack of developed modding community. IMO they shouldn't be asking for so much money given how new to the scene they are.

PHPBB is the aesthetically nicest forum available IMO, but is the hardest to mod, which makes it a poor choice for beginners. But the price is right.

SMF, contrary to phpbb, has the poorest range of themes (there's lots available, but they're mostly crap and only a relatively small handful are kept updated). Though I find it more user-friendly in general than phpBB. Especially with their 'packages' system for installing mods. The tinyportal add-on can turn SMF ito a very impressive full website. And considering it all costs £0, it's well worth a trial.

MYBB is good, but as a relative newcomer, it's modding community is poor, and the themes are extremely limited (hope you like blue/white...). Support isn't great and the staff can be a bit rude on their forum. They've got potential as a free forum, but they'll always be the underdog to existing forum types. They're basically just "too late to the party".
 
Last edited:
Thanks for that overview Van Hellseek!

I've started to feel that it will be worth using a paid forum may be the best route to ensure decent support, mods and ongoing development over time.
After reading around I seem to get the distinct impression that a lot of vBulletin and IPB forum admins are very unhappy with the way that both companies are moving and as a result the way that both boards are being developed and progressing.

Granted much of my reading over the last day or so has been on the xenforo site so many of them are converts and I'd expect posters on there to be slightly biased, it does seem that there's a lot of defectors to it. Plus whilst I keep hearing 'vbulletin is crap' I'm wondering how many of these people are just ****ed off at the company opposed to the software, as it's obviously pretty good software but it does seem recent releases have been very buggy and the company is taking a long time to fix them.

My thinking at this stage based on its potential, what a chap I know who's an admin of a vBulletin forum with 20k users and what I've read at a few different places, that if I'm going to put the hours into becoming familiar with and learning one paid for piece of forum software I think it may be xen foro.

Like you say, it's very young, the mods are still few, in addition to the themes but it seems to have a lot of potential and a real chance at becoming a big player in 6-12 months time once it matures a bit more. What do you think?
 
Xenforo is definately the 'in' forum at the moment. I'm not hugely impressed because of the limitations regarding mods/skins etc, and it's too limited 'out-of-the box'. Although it is quite slick, and as you say it will no doubt be one of the top forums in the future, but it will take years and years. Definately not 6-12 months. :p

I'm not sure wordpress+forum is such a great idea. It would make much more sense to go for whatever forum you like, and then get a dedicated CMS. Such as vBulletin+vbacmps (as mentioned above), or SMF+tinyportal. Aparantly there's a portal add-on for xenforo too.

And if you're really prepared to put in the time and dedication getting to know a board inside out and creating a great site then it doesn't really matter which you pick, since they all have potential to make very good forums. And besides, the success or failure of your site will be largely down to how you run your community, rather than which software you're using.
 
Last edited:
Van Hellseek said:
Xenforo is definately the 'in' forum at the moment. I'm not hugely impressed because of the limitations regarding mods/skins etc, and it's too limited 'out-of-the box'. Although it is quite slick, and as you say it will no doubt be one of the top forums in the future, but it will take years and years. Definately not 6-12 months. :p
Click to expand...

Yeah, fair play. Although I have seen some pretty nice examples of what can be done with it so far. These are some of my faves:

1. http://8wayrun.com/
2. http://www.welive2game.com/
3. http://forums.topgearbox.com/index.php
4. http://www.petforum.co.uk/

I just hope I can get mine up to scratch!

Van Hellseek said:
I'm not sure wordpress+forum is such a great idea (is there even a xenforo bridge? I doubt it tbh). It would make much more sense to go for whatever forum you like, and then get a dedicated CMS. Such as vBulletin + vbacmps, or SMF+tinyportal, or w/e. Aparantly there's a portal add-on for xenforo too.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was thinking WP before I realised there were so many great portals for many of the forums out there. I'm going to use the xen porta add on.

Van Hellseek said:
And if you're really prepared to put in the time and dedication getting to know a board inside out and creating a great site then it doesn't really matter which you pick, since they all have potential to make very good forums. And besides, the success or failure of your site will be largely down to how you run your community, rather than which software you're using.
Click to expand...

Indeed! We have a fair few core members and it's really just for our benefit, but hopefully the refresh will also draw new blood as well as encouraging very active Teamspeak members to actually bother to visit the site and start posting :)

I decided to go xenforo in the end and give it a whirl, going to start building tonight :D
 
Ah yes, 8wayrun... It anoyed the hell out of me when Jaxel moved to xenforo and thus abandoned his media library mod for vBulletin, which I use on my forum. :mad: I think the mod is being contined by others now though at least.

His new xenforo board looks great to be fair. And it was him that wrote the potal addon for it too.

Anyway, post your link when you've got something up. Will be interesting to have a look. :p
 
Ha, perfect example of a defector for you right there :p

He seems to have done some pretty cool stuff, I really like the new jquery slider he made a couple of nights back and is now featured on his home page. It should be integrated into the next version of xen porta which is perfect for me as that's one the key features I wanted to integrate into my site rebuild!

I kind of feel like I'm cheating though using all these plug and plug code blocks, but when they fit together well it can make such a good looking site!
 
There's a lot I love about xenforo, but some things are a little unforgivable... Like, no default option for having postcount in posts... really?
(almost as bad as phpBB3 having the postbit on the right, with no option to change it... lol?).

And xenforo user profiles are frustratingly limited compared to vBulletin/Invision. I know it's intentionally simplistic, but users on my forums use their profiles as a way of interacting outside the limitation of forum 'threads'. So these extensive profiles potentially add a whole new level of member interaction to a board, which is sorely missing in xenforo.

Love their 'notifications/likes' though.

Tbh, I'm considering using xenforo for a board I've got planned, but at the moment I'm not entirely convinced. It's going to be a bitter and bloody battle between them all before I come to a decision. :D
 
Last edited:
There must be a plugin for the post count as this chaps board has it :)

What additional profile info do you need in the user profile? I quite like their 'conversations' PM system. I used it briefly today for a chat with someone and it worked really nicely.

I love their notifications and likes too!

I worked on my board quite a lot last night. Bit of a baptism of fire being new to administering a forum getting used to all the settings and I'm still getting familiar with how it all works.

Was a pain importing my old forum too as I had to use an unfinished SMF converter, but nothing that screwing around with the tables in phpMyAdmin and a bit of help from a slightly geekier friend couldn't fix in the end thank goodness :)

I think it'll take me a few more days to get to grips with it all and start customising it enough to open it up to the rest of the clan at least, and then a bit longer to polish it off.

Got lots of nice graphical ideas in my head, but it's taking me aaaages to do the photoshop work using tutorials online!

Now that I've spent more time researching the themes, plugins etc. and stumbled across a few threads where mods were started in development then stopped I see how young it really is compared to the plethora of stuff available for the other boards. I have faith in it though.

Community support has been very good so far too, so a thumbs up there :)
 
Interesting link, pretty cool what some sites have done with webspell.

So, I've managed to get my new xenforo site to a level I feel is respectable looking enough to go live and I'll keep working on it form here.

Had a few issues migrating the my old forum over due to the lack of converters out there for it yet.

I have to say, the community support has been amazing, they have a few members on there who respond with lightning speed to questions.

There were also some key mods that I utilised, without which it would look like just a plain old forum. There are some really good ones out, but I can't wait until more get developed.

Anyway, enough of me jabbering, take a peek www.fffsquad.com

:)

(PS I know it doesn't load properly in IE8)
 
Looking good :cool:

Only issue I spotted (at a quick glance) is that users have the ability to change back to the default xenforo theme (intentional?), but once they've changed there is no link to change back again. :o

Also... What's with the cabbage? :confused:

2d9e984.jpg
 
When I switched to the default theme there was definately no option to turn back.

And now it's automatically your chosen theme with no option to change (which I assume is what you want).

I'll post screenshots if you need them.
 
Ahh right, hmmm....not really what I wanted. I've just gone and disabled user selection of alternative themes so hopefully no one else should run into that problem.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom