vB Blog vs vBlogetin

Posted 06-09-2007 at 23:13 by Lizard King
Updated 07-09-2007 at 03:42 by Lizard King

From the first day we moved Ayyas to vBulletin we always planned to install user blogs which will have tight integration with vBulletin. Main idea behind of installing a blog is to allow our users have their own personal sites which they can have full control. There were couple hacks that has been released way back like vB Journal but i never like look and coding standarts of that hacks. Thats why i always choosed to wait. When I heard about vBlogetin i directly purchased the script and installed on Ayyas. In the beginning the development speed of vBlogetin was pretty good however everything changed when i hear a gossip that vBulletin is preparing an official blog script. Because Aj is my chat buddy i talked with him about the gossip with the intensions of offering my help to improve the scripts development speed. Unfortunately this didn't happen and Aj nearly pulled himself out of developing the script. Hugh worked on the script however once Hugh leaved internet world because of loss in his family the script totally died. At that stage vBlogetin had really good features like :

Modular Block Syetem : which can be customized by user
SEO'd Url : Unfortunately this has 2 major problems
1. Trailing Slash : when users forget to use a trailing slash they get a 404 file not found error
2. Unique Urls : If someone will like to hurt your rankings they can easily create duplicate fake seo'd urls for your blog entries
Blog this post : There was an icon on each page where you can directly add the post to your blog as an entry.
Tableless Format : Aj prepared a custom style without any tables which i really liked.
See Who is Viewing : Optionally, you can have the users who are viewing an entry or blog listed at the bottom.
Custom Fields : You can add custom fields via the AdminCP, and they may be any of the common form elements (text box, textarea, select, checkbox, radio). They may optionally be required and searchable.

However because of these features vBlogetin's code was not optimized at all. On each vBulletin page vBlogetin added the following php files which highly increases used memory on pages.

Code:

# blogs/plugins/init_startup.php
# blogs/plugins/fetch_userinfo.php
# blogs/plugins/style_fetch.php
# blogs/plugins/cache_templates.php
# blogs/plugins/global_start.php
# blogs/backend/functions_blog.php
# blogs/backend/functions_seo.php
# blogs/backend/class_blog.php
# blogs/backend/class_siradrian.php
# blogs/datastore/blogstatistics.php
# blogs/datastore/categories.php
# blogs/datastore/blogcustomfields.php
# blogs/backend/class_permissionCheck.php
# blogs/backend/class_permissionCheckCore.php

Unfortunately Aj never tried to improve the script thats why i needed to try vB Blog. When it was on Beta stafe Floren offered me Administrator access to his test board so i can check vB Blog. It was not on the same feature level with vBlogetin however the development stage was pretty fast and less then 3 month Jelsoft announced vB Blog's Gold version. After waiting a day and discussing with vBSEO Dev team about SEO'd urls i purchased vB Blog. vB Blog was missing some features it was pretty obvious that vB Blog had some key features that vBlogetin was missing like :

Trackback : Allows you to send pingback , trackback to other blog systems
Optimized Code : The code is perfectly optimized
High vBulletin Integration : Has blog link on profiles , showthread and forumhome also has latest entries on forumhome as an addon
Fast development : The code is improving each other day and probably within a month there will be a new version of vB Blog
Multiple Category : You can choose multiple categories for a blog entry
SEO'd urls : vBSEO prepared a built in module for vB Blog

vB Blog is also very new script. It has been annouced couple month ago but it already reached Gold level. Jelsoft is a clever company and instead of releasing a feature rich script full of bugs , they released a solid product with optmized code. This way users can suggest improvements and they can implement on each new version. Jelsoft Dev's already announced that they will add more features within next versions. I also think that within 6 month vB Blog will have the ability to allow each user to use their own CSS. Another important point after i remove vBlogetin from my server completely my memory usage on each page dropped like 300~450kb which is really a huge difference. Imagine the load level vBlogetin adds to your server.

As for today i advise everyone to go with vB Blog but as i stated vB Blog vs Vblogetin thread @ vblogetin i'll keep my vBlogetin license for at least one or two month. If i see an increase in development speed of vBlogetin i may use it on another board i will create soon.