Vbulletin Private Forum & Hierchy

[Alex]

Hey guys,

I recently made a website and forum (using bbpress) for my dental school class. We use it to share study tips, create expected test questions, post transcripts of lectures, and other types of communication. Everyone loves it, and I feel like I've created CRACK for dental students.

I realize that dentists are retarded when it comes to technology 99.9% of the time. What I want to do is create a personal & professional development website and forum tailored to dentists. I think this is a great place to start because dentists see many patients each day, who then go back to their families, their jobs, and their communities, and motivating the dentists can have a ripple effect.

So my next action is to create a forum, and I want to use Vbulletin instead of bbpress, because I need something more sophisticated.

My Question

I want to know if there are multiple levels of 'private or hidden' modes. I want to know if you can make hierarchical access levels.

Example.

General forum - visible to all members
Dental politics forum - visible to all members
Practice management forum - visible to all members
NYU Class of 2013 forum - visible to members who are "NYU 2013" students

• subforum of NYU 2013 Transcripts forum - visible only to NYU 2013 students who purchased the transcipt service.
• subforum NYU 2013 events - visible to all NYU 2013 students

Columbia Class of 2013 forum - visible to members who are "Columbia 2013" students

• subforum of Columbia 2013 Transcripts forum - visible only to Columbia 2013 students who purchased the transcipt service.
• subforum of Columbia 2013 events - visible to all Columbia 2013 students

I'm also curious if you can appoint a moderator for each forum that will be in charge of who will get further 'private' access into their various subforums. That's the only way I see of making this sustainable. I personally will not have time to enter 4500 new student names per year, plus any additional existing dentists, unless of course I hire a team. I'd rather interact with class representatives and give them control.

[ellie]

Yes I am pretty sure you can, but it would be best to ask on the vBulletin Community Forum forums.

[James81]

I used vbulletin for a while and yes, you can do that. You can set the permissions however you want them for each forum.

[iDreamCatcher]

I am SEO guy + administer 3 self-help vBulletin-based forums and the answer is yes - you may do it all.
In one case you might want to tweak settings a bit but VB is the most flexible and sophisticated forum software on the planet.
Their upcoming VB 4 release will blow everyone off.

Gleb