I'm about to start a new site and am unsure whether to go with: vBulletin 4.0 Suite Or vBulletin 4.0 Forums & custom coded blog/article I've coded my own blogs before and it's kind of better because youhave complete control of the seo etc, however the vBulletin suite isn't too much more and all featrues are linked together. What do you think of the new vBulletin 4.0 packages?
Do you use vbulletin before? I have run forums for almost 2 years, frankly I cannot find the alternative of vb.
To be honest.. I'm a bit underwhelmed with the new v. bulletin 4.0. For me the forum part of vbulletin is unmatched but the cms stuff is lackluster... I suggest you use wordpress for your site,blog,etc and v bulleting for your forums... Wordpress also just added Buddypress... It might be worth it to look at that! Its open source and free.. and the price doesn't get much better than that!
vBulletin is a great platform to develop on, and if you can customize your site to develop with vBulletin and implement things from the board into your site (top members, avatars, profile information) you'll be pretty well off
vBulletin is by far the best, the best thing about it for me is its a base. where i make completely unique.
We don't know much about the blog features yet, I am guessing that the SEO aspect of it is not as advanced as wordpress, and there are currently no plugins for it. If your blog is going to be something you are going to be putting a lot of time and effort into, I still think wordpress together with a VB Forum is best. If you prefer to use the same template and opt for an easier option, the VB Suite is better.
Go for vBulletin and wordpress, if you may. Wordpress can add a lot of plugins, themes and has an awesome support base.
I would go with the suit, there is a poll about this exact question.. just search "vbulletin" if you use the suit, the cms and forum will always be integrated.. if you use wordpress and vb, you'll have to rely on mods to be updated for integration.