Member Avatar for vngeanceFPS

Hello everyone. A group of us who are into Battlefield 3 gaming have started a new clan/community to support the game and we are looking for someone to help with designing a basic but professional looking website for the group. We would like to run a vbulletin forum on that site as well. If any of you talented individuals think you'd be interested in this project please feel free to reach out to me. Would like to get this started within the next week or so the latest.

Thanks very much. Very nice community here at daniweb by the way.

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Brief, practical plan for : with a non-coder team and a tight start window, pick a low-friction route so the site is usable quickly and maintainable long-term. Two common approaches are a hosted modern forum (fast setup, low ops) or a WordPress site with a forum plugin (familiar admin UI, large marketplace for themes/plugins). These let a hired designer focus on look, categories, and moderation rules instead of rebuilding forum features from scratch. Discourse · bbPress. (discourse.org)

If you want alternatives to evaluate, consider a lightweight PHP forum or a commercial, polished package — each has tradeoffs in cost, customization and hosting requirements. Good choices to compare: Flarum (modern, extensible), phpBB (mature, widely supported), and XenForo (commercial). Pick the platform that matches expected traffic, customization needs, and how comfortable you want to be with maintenance. (flarum.org)

Spam and moderation: require verified email, throttle new accounts, and run automated checks at registration. Use a CAPTCHA or modern alternative (Google reCAPTCHA or Cloudflare Turnstile), add content filters (Akismet or platform-specific extensions), and query public banlists like StopForumSpam / Project Honey Pot to reject known abusers. Plan for at least one trusted moderator and simple escalation rules to keep cleanup time low. reCAPTCHA · Cloudflare Turnstile · Akismet · [Project Honey Pot / StopForumSpam]. (developers.google.com)

Quick hiring checklist to paste into your freelancer post: target platform (or “recommend”), responsive homepage + forum skin, forum category map, registration flow, spam controls, admin panel walk-through, backups and update plan, deliverables, and milestone-based payment with a demo. Call out “gaming/clan features” (private sections, officers roles, event/recruitment form) so proposals are comparable. As and noted, weigh initial cost vs ongoing maintenance when you decide.

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Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

We would like to run a vbulletin forum on that site as well.

I would suggest not -- vBulletin forums are heavily spammed and you will spend 3/4 your time removing spam. But if you really want to go that route I have a vBulletin license I'm not using any more and will sell you for half price. Send me PM if you are interested. vBulletin isn't all that difficult to set up, most of it is pre-planning what you want the forums to contain. The really difficult part is customization so that it doesn't look like a vBulletin site. That was one reason Dani decided to use her own forum software and get rid of vBulletin (there were other reasons too).

Edited by Ancient Dragon
Member Avatar for vngeanceFPS

We're open to suggestions on alternative solutions.

Member Avatar for bradly.spicer

To be fair Vbulletin isn't bad if you use the right plugins to prevent spam etc. But then it becomes a nucience.

These spam bots search for Vbulletin code. So you're better off writing your own forum or using something open source.

Member Avatar for vngeanceFPS

Thanks and understood... but we aren't coders. We're just a group of guys who enjoy running around with cartoon soldiers shooting digital bullets at each other lol. So, we're hoping to find someone interested in working on this with/for us. We have also posted this on several freelance type sites as a web design type of project. So, hopefully we get some interest soon.

Thanks for all info though. Much appreciated

Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

you realize vBulletin is not free??

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