I am starting a website for university students. Initially I was looking for social networking script but didn't find any which have all features and is stable for 10-20K members. So now I am looking for some kind of forum or discussion board. My requirement is as follows: 1. Brief profile for members like you see on MySpace or Orkut. 2. Discussion Board something like DP forum. 3. Rating and Voting system (something like in DP) 4. Member can view each others friend list. 5. Member can upload and images 6. Flexible layout so I can put the video from youtube and slides from slideshare. I need reviews from people who have tested it and can tell me honest pros and cons.
vB offers much of that, and now offers a blog. You'll need to install ZOINTS for the social profile aspect of it though, which is something I do not actually recommend. However, they (vB) are supposedly working on an official product for social profiles so that's a bonus! vB does offer an official blogging product, which I think is excellent for any student, and there is vBulletin.org which has many free add-ons which are well with the free pricetag However, when using any 3rd party product (regardless of forum platform) always look into the members using it as well as the support offered by those that wrote it so you are not stuck with a broken site. IPB does offer a complete package that you may enjoy, but it does cost more, and from my experience it is a bit more complicated on the admin side.
How good it is to integrate HandShakes with vBulletin. Because at HandShakes site its mentioned as forum integration. Can visitors use same account for both. Or can vBulletin give me all those features with adons?
I didn't see a thread on vb.com or vborg about that site specifically. There are a handful of threads on vborg that discuss dzoic though. Do a search on a post by post basis and see what's talked about. You may wish to start threads at one or more of those locations (assuming you have permissions). If you are simply looking for a CMS or portal, then there are several discussions on those types of things.