Getting ready to launch vBulletin site

[cinemaeye]

I have zero experience with vBulletin, but I am preparing to launch a community type site that will be focused on a specific city. I think vBulletin is going to be the way to go. But I wanted to hit you guys up for a little feedback.

1. I am going to have a blog that ties into the site. It will be updated monday through Friday and i want this on the home page. I also want the most recent forum posts to show up - kinda like here on WSP. is the best way to set up the blog in the main directory and set up vBulletin in a sub-folder? Am I going to run into any conflicts?

2. Would I be better off using one of the portal type things for vBulletin? Are these any good for search engines?

3. Right now I have most of my sites set up on Dreamhost but I don't think they are capable of handling the type of site I am about to launch. Any recommendations for a really good vBulletin ready host?

Thanks in advance. i know these questions may seem very basic, but I just want to make sure I'm not going to run into anything crazy.

[Chris]

1. Yes that is a normal setup.

2. Many of the portal mods are bulky, feature bloated, and not optimized for SEs. I am not familiar with all of them though. Chances are your blog software might have a vb integration hack though (rather than the other way around).

3. Sorry no, I haven't used virtual hosts in years so I really don't have any recommendations.

[cinemaeye]

Great. Thanks for the feedback.

[MarkB]

If you're running a blog & vbulletin combo, dreamhost should be able to do it. Otherwise, check out Site5 (www.site5.com).

[cinemaeye]

I think I will try to make it happen on dreamhost for now, then move it to a dedicated server when it hopefully starts to make money. So far I have had a completely great experience with dreamhost.

I've decided I'm going to use Wordpress for the home/news page and then use a hack as sort of a bridge between it and vBulletin.

Here's what I'm going to try to do...

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=94443&page=4

Anyway, I will keep you up to date on how everything goes. I was thinking about starting a thread to share my progress and maybe get feedback along the way.

[Cutter]

I believe the latest version of vBulletin will post RSS feeds to a thread, so you should be able to run your commenting system that way, rather than having people post seperately to wordpress.

Good luck, let us know how it goes!

[John]

If you're running a blog & vbulletin combo, dreamhost should be able to do it. Otherwise, check out Site5 (www.site5.com).

I second site5, they have been nothing short of amazing for me.

[*infin8]

yes I also recommend Site5..

Hostgator.com and datacities.com has also been good to me

maybe have a look at vbportal or vbAdvanced.. although,

Wordpress with vb is a prety hot combo.. you will get better SERPs with the blog route aswell

Find yourself a good vb skinner, they should beable to skin Wordpress then aswell as the frontend is html.. nothing worse than a default vb skin.

hope this helps. :D

[OnlineDAD]

If you're running a blog & vbulletin combo, dreamhost should be able to do it. Otherwise, check out Site5 (www.site5.com).

I have had terrible experience with this company. I was with them for 3 months and my server was down for the better part of that time.

Sorry to get off topic.

[ozgression]

Yeah, don't use Site5. They are the worst host I have ever used.

Reading MarkB's blog the other day, I don't think he recommends Site5 anymore, anyway. :)

[Masetek]

Hostgator and Phatservers I recommend