A while back… like a year or so ago my friend Shawn Hogan pinged me and showed me the Alpha version of Vbulletin blogs which like a concept version at the time. Now vBulletin Blogs is a supported addon from the makers of vBulletin. I thought I would check it out on my vb account and I even made a blog entry about how to make money online with forums.
As you can see its pretty slick and easily integrated into vbulletin. I am not sure if Shawn is going to integrate this into digitalpoint or not. I know at one time he was thinking pretty heavily about it but we were just talking about people overrunning it with spam. Being its now the largest webmaster forum on the planet I personally would like to see him implement it and let users make there own blogs. You can always specify a min amount of reputation/posts before a user can make there own blog.
O well its cool none the less. Good work vBulletin.
EDIT: Ok I feel like people commenting are missing the point… Its not wordpress vs vbulletin…. Its a addon to offer your users blogs… and if you think that users would not want there own blog on a pr8 or pr7 domain you are really missing the point 
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2415 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 84 comments… read them below or add one }
Bad link maybe?
actually i had it in drafts… duh should be ok now
Just noticed it came up and was looking for a edit comment button… I feel like these are great post, but that they only apply after I get traffic. Working on both at the same time is not a bad idea though.
Oh so this is a blog that is integrated into a forum. Interesting idea. Usually you have a blog and after you get a lot of visitors you start a forum next to it. I guess this is the other way to put things. It will be useful
I like it.
Looks pretty cool – but throwing up a WordPress blog of your own, or even a hosted one on WordPress or somewhere is just so easy.
interesting …
why not just use wordpress blog as main blog page and just link it to vb. anyway to connect the member database for both.
now that would be awesome
vb is good out of my $ range for many small webmasters like me
my exact sentiments … i think the vb blog is quite limited
I think it could be cool though you could definently not make it available to everyone or it’d be spammed like no other see B/S/T forum for why.
Hmm. Interesting! But I think wordpress will be better than vb
about the edit: shoe don’t worry about the people who look at your finger when you are pointing at the moon
Is this the same functionality as Morgan Carey uses on realestatewebmasters ?
if digitalpoint implemented this, I think all of the blackhat SEO “pros” might ruin the good reputation of the forum.
I could see this working well on a lot of forums. I didn’t realise that DigitalPoint has a PR7. That is pretty impressive.
This would be an excellent add on for many sites. DigitalPoint is the perfect example but even some smaller sites would benefit nicely from it.
I think it’s a nice addon and I get why people would want to use it but… yeh the spam may be mental and I think it’s just nicer to have your own blog as aposed to an addon, I mean… I think only the dominants on DP would get their blogs read.
Shoe – Do you know if they have any plans to make the URLs friendly? It seems like the way they’re set up, juice wouldn’t flow through to the blogs at all… obviously, if the blog got an auto boost from the PR7-8 home site, that would great… but I don’t think their setup really allows that right now.
I think it’s an awesome idea for digitalpoint, but I have a feeling it will be abused as a way of getting a high PR link-back.
I think it would be good if people could make their vBulletin Blogs import from an RSS feed so they could continue using their main blog if they have one.
Our blog is powered by vBulletin – Software Projects Blog
I love VB’s user-level control. Lots of features / functionality and less prone to security breaches.
Pretty slick indeed. I installed this on my forum MMOCC Forum. I just have to work on integrating it better into the forum skin….
Good stuff, as I was unaware of this. I have given thought to creating a forum for a niche group of hobbyists I know, and this would be a welcomed feature.
I see your point in having a addon but i can’t see why I would want to pay $85 or $160 to get a license when I can get a similar FREE forum (or maybe even better) forum app in phpbb (http://www.phpbb.com). That is just one of the many really good free forum apps out there.
I guess I trying hard to understand the advantages of getting this or maybe you can explain its advantages further — right now i see none.
I would and feel it would be an great intergration at DP. There are ways to dismantle a blog for spammy blogs. There is and always be people who will do “black hat” SEO work. But I am sure with close monitoring it can be minimize. Or if anything pay a yearly fee of $20 or so like at Namepros.com. Those who choose pay $20 for a membership at DNOA.org for serious domainers. Domainers with ethics, So why not a membership fee for DP blog service? B loggers with ethics sorta thing.
Hard to go past the edit, Pr 7 or 8 domain has lots of benefits.
Spam would be a huge issue. My very small forum is already targetted by a lot of spammers. And it would take a lot of time and moderators to keep these blogs spam free at very large forums.
Nice jump Shoe from yesterday with your feeds
interesting – I might try this out. I have been trying to develop a similar system with nucleus, but I make it user friendly enough to offer to my users. thanks for the info
Yeah ive been pretty impressed with it. Ive had it on my poker forums since they launched it.
Its pretty much a continuation of vbjournal which was a hack which was popular 2 years ago.
could be interesting def if digital point puts it in but at the same time if they put that in they will lose a lot of their PR juice if everyone is making blogs on there because best believe everyone will throw out links like crazy
Have you SM or any other regular readers used or currently run http://www.vbseo.com/ for a forum – I have looked at it for a project idea I have but settled on a blog (WP) for now and may do something later with it.
thanks in advance to any feedback on it.
Jeff
This is sweet as hell. Blogs are definitely in. Now members of forums can easily create their own blog and interact that way, add a bit more social networking and bam! It’s MySpace with better features.
As to your edit, if these blogs did have pr juice that would simply cause an onslaught of people selling links in B/S/T for their new pr 7.
I think this is a great addition, who wouldn’t want to use it for a new blog.
This is a feature that I have been waiting for to offer members of one of the boards I run. Thanks for pointing this out. Good looking out. Cheers.
That’s a good addition to forums to add content.
Very interesting idea. I think it will work out well for vbulletin
It’s the all-in-one package
Blog on DP will be good, but DP became spammers Point.So after thinking about DP spam together what changes U planned?
I have an ongoing test of vBSEO – you can read about it here: http://www.vbulletin-faq.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9847
Who cares? People will use DP even if every single search engine bans it. Why? Because it has quality information and a solid community.
I dont know that blogging on DP would be the best idea. As a forum DP does quite well, in fact its the only forum I’ve hung in with since it began. As a social environment it’s not too bad… tho a lot of the original DPers have moved on.
It IS overcrowded tho, and actually getting at value info is now almost impossible (ie the same old stuff increasing exponentially burying the gems).
To add blogs to it would only turn it into another myspace for WMs/Marketers/Spammers.
One thing is for sure – it’s tired. I mean it could REALLY use a new look and feel. Maybe blogging would breathe new life into it somehow – it would sure as hell add some new money to an already FAT cow.
PS – Shawn does tend to innovate, so who knows. He might just take blogging down a new path somehow. He’s got the numbers to do it
I shy away from the spam baiting.
This is a great addon. I think implementing this on DP will give the site a fresh feel.
It might attract a lot of spammer but I am sure they can fix that issue on the backend.
Ive been using it for a year or two
it helps a lot with se traffic however it can put a lot of strain on your server (check the forums. most users had a problem with this)
It doesn’t look like this blog is live able. I checked it, and found nothing interesting there.
Except of your post of course.
vBulletin is a cool tool to gain traffic. Alot of top forum websites are running under vBulletin. The only problem so far is the spam filtering.
Yeah I plan to get this for carphotos.org but I’m waiting for the next release of VBSEO because it will support vbulletin blogs. And be UNENCRYPTED! Finally those knuckleheads woke up!
i think it is a good addon to possibly any forum… anything that gives people reason to come back is a good thing
This is a nice piece to read …. I have used Vbulletin before it i must say it really did great us my site.
You’re not targeted as an individual. It works more like a fish-net.
They should moderate it better..
If you look at the Google section, there are way too many pagerank update threads.
They also should stop money deals on the forum, and ban scammers.
This gives the avid forum user something different other than the static forum contact page, so sounds like a good idea for both vbulletin and the users.
i think i would prefer if wickedfire start using vb blogs more than dp
VB is one of the best built php based CMS, and now with blogs it has become almost unbeatable. Lets wait what they come up with next … and yeh shawn you have have blogs on DP but either they will have to be moderated or totally nofollow (for external links).
You are getting it wrong, compare it with a big VB forum, which wants to give blogs to its users.
vb don’t have any anti-spam features?
IF DP made nofallow like SP then every one will visit and read , but dont spam posts.
Yes it will help to add lot of content to site.Hope many quality blogs will b developed.
Interesting timing as I was checking out VBulletin last night actually early this morning to add to my site. ShoeMoney if you want an extra cash prize to throw into your Chow Contest contact me
I would love to see a blog integrated in DigitalPoint
i think i like digital point the way it is … why change it if its making money
I’ve implemented it on my forum..
I’ve held back on implementing vB blogs on my forums. I’m waiting to see if they improve features. Additionally, im concerned it would take away from forum posting.
Great – now not only will my our forums be hacked, but our blogs too
IPB added blogs long ago… Is strange that vbulletin did that just now…
By the way, why everybody mention dp and not a more professional webmaster forum? A good example: webmaster world… In my opinion is much better than dp.
Joey,
Thats an excellent point, especially if dp does the revenue share on the blogs.
People would be posting on he blogs more I bet, and then you have thet whole spam issue as well.
Hello,
Great forum!
I found a lot of interesting information here.
Does this forum helpful for you also?
I came to DP from webmaster world and stay forever … till DP online
Hello !
Sorry to bother you. I found this forum when looking through google for forums to use. I need
to install a forum on my website but I cannot find where it is sold.
Where did you get this one
Thanks for any assistance
personally i dont like vbulletin blog as a user, it just doesnt looks nice. as a forum owner, i hope my member will use it if i implement. the best thing is… if vbulletin blog can syndicate from my personal wordpress blog, it will be great.
Yes i agree with you Neon
i’m eric. joining a couple boards and looking
forward to participating. hehe unless i get
too distracted!
eric
Hi all
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What do you think about this? When it happens?
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I just want to say thanks for this interesting thread about vBulletin Blogs! Regards, Alexa Beratung
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