First time vB user here. Could anyone recommend a few of the more useful mods that I should look into installing? Are there any that you would say are essential? Thanks alot in advance
Hi MortimerJazz I'm a new user also, and one of the mods I first had installed was vBSEO. This changes the URL's to search-engine friendly url's, so will help your site get indexed correctly. It really depends on what type of userbase you have, but I'm also looking getting a Quiz mod, so we can run musical quizzes, and a YouTube mod, that will play music-related videos directly in your site. My site's for people with electronic keyboards, who share & discuss their music uploads. www.thelonearrangers dot com I wanted each member to have their own unique front end, or homepage, so had vBAdvanced installed, which is excellent. I have to restrict guest access from the song sharing forums, so I'm also having installed a couple of mods that can 'let them in', but remind them to register after viewing a set amount of threads. These are: Welcome headers Limited Guest Viewing Sorry, I'm not allowed to post the links, but searching the above title in vBulleting dot org will fetch the necessary info for you. Hope the above helps a little. Good luck with the new forum, hard work isn't it! Paul
Auto embedding media is a must have - http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=150863 that mod will auto embed a video from youtube, google and myspace just by posting the url in a thread. Then, install these XML releases and your site will support over a dozen video sites - http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=157109 to get rid of spammers quick, use the one touch spam ban and clean up - http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=156444 If you are running VB 3.7 or higher, use this to create a picture gallery from members profile gallery - http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=172215 Members that have visited in the last 24 hours - http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=121883 These are just a fraction of the mods I have installed on my site. But they will get you going. There are a few more I can recommend, such as the awards system and the arcade, but those take a lot of time and configurations. Limited guest viewing is ok, but bad for small forums. I use that mod to create a welcome header, but have the limited viewing turned off.
Thanks alot for the replies so far Any chance you could tell me a bit more about this awards system. It sounds like it might be a good way to encourage users to post ...