vBadvanced: Getting the Basics Up and Rolling

by Scott Clark

October 27, 2009

Introduction

In our last article, we showed you how to install vBadvanced and get it running on your site. In this tutorial, we'll show you how to get the basic functionality of vBadvanced working on your site, specifically, how to present your site's visitors with the latest news from your site, the latest threads, an event calendar, stats and more!

Columns, News and Calendar Settings

Initially, you'll want to add the basic details for your site portal's main page, such as the names for the columns of your site, (i.e. left column, center column, right column), the width of each column, as well as the horizontal and vertical space between those columns. You can do that by going to the vBulletin forum administration console, usually located at http://www.yoursite.com/forum/admincp. Once you are in the Admin console, you will click on the vBa CMPS link on the left, and you can either view all the options on the right, or view/edit specific options by selecting them in an ordered list.

This is also the section where you can select those forums from which polls will be shown on the front page. Perhaps you want to show polls from the major forums on your site, but not the polls from your feedback forum? You can select all of your forums, or only those specifically related to the site's subject matter.

You can also control the display of the mini calendar shown on the home page. The CMPS enables you to show site member's birthdays, how often to update the calendar's cache, etc. The calendar is useful for displaying events related to your site's content, conferences, webcasts and more.

The next section allows you to select which forums will show up in the news section on the home page. Not only can you control which forums are considered "news" forums, but you can select the number of news items to show on the home page, but you can enable pagination (allowing members to view the next page of news items), how many characters to display in a news title, and more. The news section will be displayed above the site's latest forum threads right about the Recent Threads section on the site's home page.

Recent Threads: The Heart of Your Portal

Obviously you want your site's visitors to be able to see the most recent threads that have been posted in the discussion forum, as they are the main attraction of the site. vBadvanced has a section in the vBa CMPS admin section that specifically controls every aspect of the Recent Threads section.

Like the News section, the Recent Threads section of the admin console enables you to specify which forum's threads will show up in the Recent Threads area on the portal home page. It also allows you to specify how many threads to show, how many days to consider "recent", the number of characters to show in the thread title (along with the maximum number of characters per word, which helps to alleviate long words from stretching out the page), and the direction in which threads are displayed (i.e. the oldest to newest, or newest to oldest).

The Recent Threads section also allows you to really drill down into exactly what is shown in that section. You can control whether or not to show:

• Thread Starter
• Date and Time
• Number of Views
• Number of Replies
• Last Post Info
• Forum
• Preview of threads (on mouseover)
• Thread Icons
• Subscribed Icon

Site Navigation

The vBa CMPS also enables you to edit or add to the site navigation menu that is shown on the upper left area of the portal home page. Traditionally it includes a link to the Portal home page, the User Control Panel, and the Site's FAQ, but you can add additional links to other areas of your site, such as articles, blogs, etc., and you can add them under main menu items, or create separate main menu items under which to show them.

There are also sections that allow you to control the Statistics block, which shows items such as the number of threads, number of posts, number of members, newest members, top posters, etc., as well as the ability to show members who are celebrating their birthday (members have the option to be included in this display or not when they set up their member profile options).

The Welcome Block

Most vBadvanced portals include a Welcome Block at the very top of the portal home page. It usually includes information relating to the member who is visiting the site, if they are signed in. The vBa CMPS console enables you to control items that are shown inside the Welcome Block including:

• The Last Visit Date format
• The Last Visit Time format
• Whether or not to use a "no avatar" image (if the member isn't using an avatar)
• Private Message information
• New Posts
• Member Reputation
• Member Rank

Conclusion

As you can see, vBadvanced has many options that enable you to custimize the user experience for your website. This article discussed the basic options used to set up your portal's home page. Next time we'll discuss the various modules that are included with vBadvanced, how to add modules and pages, and how to assign permissions to various user groups. See you then!