Discussion Forum Implementation

Implementation of a vBulletin discussion forum. Other forum software will not be considered. Buyer, not Coder, will provide licensed copy of vBulletin. Modifications/functionality required: 1) Eliminate sessionhash (session ID) in URLs per description below. 2) Forum URLs for topic pages, thread pages, user profiles, and other content pages to be rewritten to look like conventional .html URLs without query strings; links on forum pages must refer to the .html URL format. Example: http:// [login to view URL] . Details of how to handle normal query string variables should be agreed upon before coding. 3) Page title and meta tags to contain dynamic information (e.g., thread title, forum title). 4) Create/modify a skin/template to create a lightweight (low bandwidth) page following a color scheme to be provided. Coder to install and test on our server. NOTE: information about how others have accomplished the above tasks can be found at [login to view URL] and www.vbulletin.org. The objective of #1, #2, and #3 is to create a forum that can be easily spidered by search engine robots. VBulletin software currently uses either cookies or URL session IDs for its visitors. This choice is set manually (V 2.0) or automatically (V 3.0 Beta). A spider/bot will accept no cookie, but we do not want a Session ID in the URL for these visitors, either. Coder may implement an existing hack or code a new one to accomplish this. (One thought: test for cookies, and require an action if cookies are not enabled; if this action isn't taken, visitor is presumed to be a bot and no session ID will be used. Other solutions may be better.) Bid should comment on the general approach that will be used for #1 and #2, although a detailed design approach is NOT expected in the bid. ## Deliverables 1) Complete and fully-functional working program(s) in executable form as well as complete source code of all work done. Changes to the distribution source code should be clearly marked in the code and documented in a separate txt/doc file. Any third-party hacks installed must be identified and documented. 2) Installation on our server. 3) Complete ownership and distribution copyrights to all work purchased. 4) Minimum 90 day warranty on modifications to code, starting with public launch of the forum. If some element of the specification is not clear, please ask questions prior to bidding! ## Platform Server is Red Hat Linux/Apache. Software version: we prefer to use vBulletin 3.0 if a stable Beta is available when bid is awarded. Otherwise, we will use the current available production version (2.x). Must be 100% finished and received by buyer on: Jun 30, 2003 EDT