paysites with forums - phpBB or vBulletin?
 

I see paysites with forums, and I like the concept... but I'd kinda like to require joining the site to post, but you'd be able to see the dialogue from the outside. The one thing all the paysites I've seen have in common is Vbulletin. I'm running phpBB and to my knowledge, I can't do this.

But I'm not sure. Anyone know?

Hmm might be a good idea to set this up indeed, anyway most *big* sites dont have it.

It has it benefits and constraints

You need a big user base or it will just look like a joke.

And that's what makes the world go round. Everything has an upside, and a downside. I guess that's part of life, right?

what would be the cons?

Community isn't a joke, jackass. Forums don't start out huge. Do you think Slashdot just came out of nowhere? Doubtful, and I doubt people thought it was a joke either.

Hardy har har.

Public negative feedback, I'm guessing is what he's talking about.

Members fighting, blaming eachother. Surfers get mad/agree decide to chargeback/cancel. If you know that members chargeback for porn actors using condoms to protect themselves from getting aids.

No because it all stays inside the memberarea. If they are negetive they will tell there friends anyway.

Also spam, if your paysite is big some webmasters join and spam links around from ''better paysites sites''

Tons of reasons to think about.

i use pbhBB because it's free and the features it has are just fine for a members area board

yes, with phbBB you can set the permissions on the forums to be "read by all" but only registered users can make threads & reply to posts

phpBB has many of the same administrative capabilities of Vbulletin (i admin a Vb boards as well, so i'm speaking with experience from the admin panel access)

you can download phbBB skins for free and do custom tweaking to them yourself too (the default subSilver skin is very generic)

We've had a post board on our site for years. I usually don't edit the negative post unless they are about CP or something because I want to know what the members like and what they don't like. The majority of members are respectful and it gives them a sense of community. Plus they feel like they have real interaction with the models and they get to converse directly with Ray Guhn and tell us what they would like to see at the next shoot.

You'll get a few jerks every now and then, but for the most part it's been a good experience for our members.

Members fighing can be good, it will be like GFY, they will lose interest in the content, but still stay a member to be able to post :)

j/k


But seriously, I dont see anything bad with members fighting. Please enlighten me what I am missing.

This has lots of downsides, I mean putting paysite sufers on a board..ehhhh

I use phpbb in the members forum, you can change the permission settings. It's free and it gets the job done.

For paysites I always choose PhpBB... It's free, quick and easy. I just use VB for more complex stand alone boards.

Agree on phpbb. I run several of them. Unless you are talking about 10K plus members, it will work for you just fine. It's very easy to install, setup, customize, and administrate.