I'm stuck in a decision as whether to combine wordpress with the new vBulleting 4.0 forums or go with vBulletin Suite 4.0. Having it all the new vBulletin 4.0 suite would allow for better cross use of user accounts and users comments accross the site etc where as with a mixture of wordpress and vBulletin users may have to register more than once which would be totally unaceptable for an advice site. What's your opinion?
It depends on what you really want to do with your website. If you are going to use all those features in vbulletin suite, then go for it, if not, then go or vbulletin 4. Thats all. And if you are looking for something free, then SMF maybe a good idea to go for.
just make things as easy as possible for your users, if they have to do the same thing in two places they will probably get ticked. Another free option would be a drupal site with advanced forum + advanced blog module
Since WordPress/vBulletin integration that works seamlessly is hard to come by, you're better off going with the suite for the sole reason that it consists of the CMS.
Wait a few months, read the reviews of the suite and go from there. In the long run you will probably be much happier with the suite. Because bridges can break when one side or the other is updated. A few years ago I had joomla bridged with SMF. Everytime I updated one or the other, the bridge would break. To prevent this, go with something that is full integrated, such as the vbulletin suite.
I would go for the CMS 4.0. Just because its under the same hood and we wont have to worry about any compatibility.
Well, totally depends on you and the features you want. Wordpress is great and can add a lot of functionality via the plugins etc.
vb suite if you are not good at programming or if you just want a readymade solution. otherwise i suggest making your own blog/forum or modifying wordpress & phpBB. they're good integration. the new SMF is good too and easily modifiable. making your own blog/forum isn't that hard for the base code (you can find many free tutorials online) and add your own features.
Yeh I code all of my own sites 100% up but for a serious business related forum I want to have all the features of VB and it's alot better than the free phpBB which is slightly outdated now in my opinion. I've decided to go with the suite anyway because I want to link tutorials and articles in with the blog feature, should be quite good when it's finished and vb4 is looking very impressive even in the beta stages, I'd choose it over phpbb anyday even with the $250 license.