Jomsocial, Joomapolis and... VBulletin
 

I have VBulletin working with Joomla via JFusion. I have a whole lot of things jerry-rigged together because of JFusion's ability. But in messing around with all of this Joomla stuff, I've come to understand how **close** VBulletin is to becoming a full fledged social networking site. Actually you just need some bells and whistles and a good template designer, I think.

If you could add a "Wall", such as JomSocial has, VBulletin has everything else and VB works so much better. JomSocial is a very young program and IMO, it should still be in Beta. I'm not going to use it, it's attractive but it's just not ready for my site.

VBulletin is such a reliable workhorse of a program and if it had a dash of Glamour, I think it could bump up to the modern era of Social Networking. Frankly, Forums are looking old and stuffy ever since Facebook came along. We still need forums, but the Wall is an awful lot of fun because, when you land on the site, you're instantly drawn into the activity, the pictures, the things that are happening. Whereas, with a forum, you have to start digging. Everything's locked up in little boxes.

JoomlaPraise has scrabbled together an interesting assortment of things to make a Facebook style Community with Community Builder. It's downright inspiring. They have a demo:
http://demo.joomlapraise.com/?http:/...omlapraise.com

I'm not saying any of this to be critical... VBulletin is a great program and we need to tell the developers that. But I need some "spark" on my site, which is why I've done a lot of research lately and rebuilt my site.

I'm hoping VBulletin will take a look at "the Wall" features especially, because I think it would be a very beneficial addition to a good Forum. Especially since VBulletin has blogs, groups, Private message and everything needed for Social Networking, it's as if they're on the brink of it already.