Can Vbulletin itself be modified to function as a Social Networking site? I would think that since it appears to be able to handle large volumes of users that it would be ideal for this sort of thing. Anyone?
*note: when I mention vbulletin I am not talking about/referring to Zoints.
It can. I’ve seen several that have done it well. Over at vbulletin.org there’s a Groups Commune mod, and several myspace-style profile mods.
Or you can integrate vBulletin with Drupal using vbDrupal. (<–that’s what I’m having developed now)
If you don’t need a CMS, go with vB and the Groups + Profiles mods.
I have seen some good attempts at using VB as something more than a forum but everything seems blocky and awkward and has that boxy, VB feel to everything. I actually think that the VB integration that PHPFox is using for 1.5 is much more the right approach as they use it only for what it really shines at – an amazing, full featured forum that has all the admin functions you could want to make administrating a large board a pleasure instead of a hassle. This is where I could never think of using phpbb as a substitute. I was one of the early people who worked on vbportal with wajones (a great guy) and while it is great for what it is, it never escaped that boxy feel and look, even though I think it’s still by far the best front end for VB. VBAdvanced and the other products (directory) is another great attempt but still acts like a forum trying to do other things. The UI and visual experience suffers too greatly IMHO and is not streamlined.
The guys at zoints deserve a big hand for trying to bridge that gap. I admire their efforts although I do not care for handing over my users to a third party that holds my clients profiles. Plus the interface is confusing and to me I don’t see the need for crossover to other communities like they have which will get more challenging in time. It’s an idea.
What I have seen that was shockingly good for a hack job is Joomla + VB + Community Builder module for Joomla. I saw a great example of this on iluvkorea.com and use it now for legal profiles on TheLaw.com for lawyers and legal professionals. While my site isn’t per se the definition of where social networking might occur (mostly professional which is a little different), the Korean site is just scratching the surface of where this project is going. The designer has done one of the best jobs of combining modules with a little bit of his own wizardry and clean layout to get the job done. Kudos.
I haven’t seen the Drupal method but I just don’t like Drupal and can tell instantly when I see a site. It can be confusing and the output is almost always boxy. But this is personal taste and I’m sure others (like Kat) can give you the benefits of going with this system and where the promise is.
While I DO find Drupal confusing, I’ve been really impressed when I’ve seen it used well…and most of the time, I can’t tell from instantly looking at it. I have to view the site’s source code.
Here are some of my favs:
http://www.projectopus.com/
http://www.popsugar.com (GREAT article on Popsugar in Business 2.0 in Sept)
http://www.terminus1525.ca/studio (VERY well done. The member pages are called their ‘studios’. It’s an artist community)
http://www.lime.com/
http://usmagazine.com/
http://www.participate.net/
http://netsquared.org/
http://www.digett.com/
http://www.teamfnx.com/
http://www.twit.tv/
http://drupalsites.net/weblink/fearless-living
http://dev.smm.org/buzz/
http://sojournhuntsville.org/
http://www.homesecurityguru.com/
http://www.visitpmr.com/
GREAT sites Kat. I wonder how some of them were built and whether they still use drupal. I wonder just how much customization was done on some of them. drupal seems to have come a long way from where it used to be.
What I do like a lot are some of the sites that have the same look and feel and the way the profile pages are laid out. I just wonder how much pain and sweat it takes to get sites to look the same way, e.g. notice the similarity between projectopus and teamsugar. If you could get that with a minimum amount of serious toil and with designers who know how to do work for a drupal site then I might consider it a good alternative. I don’t know what the choices are for integrated forums although you might be able to shed light on this and the other questions.
They are all still on drupal. Here are a couple more that I think are really nice…
http://www.ausmag.de/
http://sand.yourmtb.com/
http://www.yourclimbing.com/
http://thatotherpaper.com/
I think they are using the same ‘profile template module’ that exists over at drupal.org. Not too much toil 
I know that module is what was used for the profiles here: http://www.terminus1525.ca/studio
This is the module:
http://drupal.org/node/35728
The only ones I know of are the ones that come bundled with the platform, and vB integration.
I haven’t read through the entire ‘groups’ enhancement features but it looks interesting: http://drupal.org/node/59082
Assuming you have a good designer, these folks claim they code themes for Drupal: http://www.psd2html.com/order-now.html
“All” you would need on top of that is a good programmer familiar with Drupal to handle the programming.
Here’s another very well done site on drupal:
http://www.mtv.co.uk/
[url=“http://www.activeliving.org/”]
and one more:
http://www.activeliving.org/
Hi Slinky,
Thanks for the hand (and constructive cricism) With Zoints Local (which went gold last night), the profiles, blogs, networking, and everything else is on YOUR forum. A few examples:
Forum: http://www.writersbeat.com
Zoints Local: http://www.writersbeat.com/z/DFischer/
Forum: http://tntu.net
Zoints Local: http://tntu.net/z/Dave/
Forum: http://sportbikesite.com/forums2
Zoints Local: http://sportbikesite.com/forums2/z/Adrian/
You are correct, we do work to interconnect forums as we strongly feel that is the future of online communities. We do that via a global search, link to our directory, and a “My Communities” block. With that said, as we do understand not everyone is comfortable with a solution like that (even if everything is free), we provide an Autonomous License for $120.00 which makes you just that, a standalone system not connected to outside communities or Zoints in any way.
But hey, if I’m on X forum that uses Zoints and I need to find the answer to a law related question, the first place I click since it’s right there is to check for Zoints communities related to law 
Slinky,
Here are a few more Drupal examples:
http://www.jewcy.com/community
http://www.airamerica.com/
http://www.tpmcafe.com/
Slinky: It’s a mistake to think of drupal as a CMS rather than a development platform.
There’s a phpbb integration module here,http://kepp.net/drupal/
There are also ones for vb and FUD Forum.
http://drupal.org/project/fudforum
http://www.vbdrupal.org/
I personally love the forums module that comes with drupal and the flexibility that comes with being able to treat a forum as a just another node. I don’t understand the need to integrate other forums, honestly.
Look at the ausmag forums. I love that. I’m pretty sure you can’t get anything that slick with vbdrupal.
I hadn’t seen terminus. That’s really inspiring.
From what I’ve read at Drupal.org, the forum node is verrrrrrrry server intensive. I don’t know anything more about the drupal forums, but I ‘do’ know vB, and I like it a LOT. Rather than learning another board, I prefer to stick with what I know.
It’s slick, but I don’t really need a ‘slick’ board for my purposes. I need vB.
Tell me about it…I LOVE that site!
Slinky, here’s another site that is a true SNS built on Drupal:
It’s very nicely done.