I have worked with my fair share of vBulletin forums – and often times management and customization of these forums can turn into a bit of a pain in the ass. Keeping up with vBulletin updates isn’t always the simplest of tasks; and as your forum grows security becomes more and more of an issue. Luckily vBulletin now has vBulletin Cloud which hosts your fully functioning and customizable vBulletin forum site. vBulletin Cloud takes advantage of a Cloud-specific version of vBulletin Connect, vBulletin Connect 5.0.6.
vBulletin Cloud provides customers with a fast and easy way to launch and manage a community website. vBulletin Cloud provides most of the functionality and customizability of the downloaded version of the software while removing the need for sites to worry about hosting hardware purchases and maintenance. vBulletin Cloud sites are hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), providing world-class security and scalability. Furthermore Memcache is provided on all forums to help make your forum interact with your database as quickly as possible.
“Our customers have been asking for a hosted version of vBulletin for quite some time,” said Joe Rosenblum, CTO of Internet Brands, the parent company of vBulletin. “Rather than rush a product to market, we spent several months talking to current forum owners to gauge their unique needs and expectations. We’re very proud of the final result, and we think vBulletin Cloud truly leads forums into the modern era of cloud-based software.”
As I previously mentioned, upgrades can be a bit of a hassle, and luckily with vBulletin cloud upgrades are no longer a concern. Sites will be automatically upgraded to each new version of vBulletin. Going forward, the cloud and download versions of vBulletin mostly will both get new features and fixes at the same time, though there will be occasional exceptions such as when a feature is only applicable to one version.
vBulletin Cloud provides low monthly and annual pricing with no set-up charges. Pricing is based on bandwidth usage and starts as low as $14.99 per month if billed annually ($19.95/mo if billed monthly). 100GB of storage is included at no additional cost with each plan. If you’re the webmaster of a vBulletin forum I would highly recommend checking out the vBulletin Cloud platform. Chances are it may make you’re like that much easier.