[toc] We use a lot of different terms throughout the software. Here are the definitions for some of the.
vBulletin-related Terms
- Administrator Control Panel
- Also called the AdminCP. Area of a vBulletin installation where the administrator sets up and manages the site. This is a tool where you can control how your site works. Only administrators have access to the AdminCP.
- Administrator
- Administrators are a user role which can manage users, content and the overall systems of a vBulletin site.
- Announcement
- Specialized module that allows administrators and/or moderators to relay information to the end users. Announcements appear on the appropriate page under the breadcrumbs.
- Attachment
- External file that is uploaded to become part of a topic or post. These files can be images or other documents.
- Avatar
- A small image that users can include in their profile and that is displayed on their posts or comments.
- BB Code (vB Code)
- Tags used in place of HTML tags when formatting text in posts.
- Blog
- A web page on your site that is updated by one or more users.
- Bulletin Board
- A software package designed to allow users to carry on conversations via the Internet. Unlike chat software, the threads and messages are stored on the server and can be accessed by users until the board administrator deletes them, allowing the conversations to continue over long periods of time.
- Category
- A special channel used to group forums that are similar in content or theme.
- Channel
- Channels are content containers. They can hold any content including other channels. Channels are provied to build forums, articles, blogs, social groups, private messages, visitor messages, user albums, and flagged (reported) content. Channels can have special users assigned to them.
- The Channel Owner is the user that has ownership of a particular channel. Owners control what happens in the channel.
- Channel Moderators are users appointed by the channel owner to moderate a particular channel.
- Channel users are individuals who have permission to access a specific channel.
- Command Line Upgrade
- A method of running the upgrade scripts via the command line interface of your webserver. Often referred to as a CLI Upgrade.
- Customer Number
- A unique number allocated to everyone who purchases a vBulletin license. The customer number, along with a password, is required to access the vBulletin Members' Area in order to submit support requests or download the software.
- Discussion
- A synonym for Topic.
- Facebook Connect
- The ability to register and log in to a vBulletin site using Facebook’s API.
- Forum
- A type of channel primarily used to group topics that are similar in content or theme.
- Guest
- A visitor to a site who is not logged in as a member. This could be because they have not yet registered on the site, or because they are a registered member who has logged out.
- Infraction
- Warning sent by the administrator or moderators for violating rules established for the site.
- Inline Moderation
- Functionality that allows administrators and moderators to moderate the threads and posts in forums using without having to log in to AdminCP or ModCP.
- Member
- A registered user on a vBulletin website.
- Members’ Area
- A private part of the vBulletin.com site for registered licensed customers. The area is security protected and requires members to enter their customer number and password to get access. From the Members’ Area you can download vBulletin releases and updates as well as gain access to documentation and resources not publicly available.
- Message
- Messages can be posts sent from one user to another. They can be private or visitor messages. Visitor messages are public and will be shown on the user’s profile.
- Moderator
- A user appointed by the site administrator who is put in charge of maintaining one or more channels. Moderators are usually appointed by Administrators to maintain the Forum channels specifically. Moderator duties include tasks like deleting offensive or inappropriate posts, pruning old threads, and banning users from their particular forum(s).
- Moderator Control CP (ModCP)
- An area of your vBulletin installation where moderators can do administrative tasks for which they have the relevant permissions.
- Module
- Modules are the building blocks of pages. You can use Modules in the Page Editor provided by Site Builder. Modules allow you to apply predefined pieces of code to your pages.
- Notice
- Similar to Announcements, Notices allow Administrators to create information blocks that appear under the header. They can be triggered to show when specific conditions are met and users can dismiss them.
- Notification
- Notifications are alerts telling users that content they are interested in has been added to the site. Users can opt-in to receive email notifications as well as notifications on site. They can receive notifications for new private messages, replies to subscribe topics and more.
- Page
- Pages are what build your site. They are controlled through Site Builder. Administrators with the appropriate permission can edit existing pages or create new custom pages.
- Paid Subscription
- The vBulletin Paid Subscriptions system allows you to charge your visitors for access to specific site areas and services that you offer.
- Patch
- One or more files that fix bugs and issues for your site. Patches are released to close security vulnerabilities and to resolve other critical issues.
- Permission
- Permissions are various access rights granted to users or usergroups. vBulletin organizes permissions for various functions with a usergroup or role system. Default usergroups include Administrators, Super Moderators, Moderators, Registered Users and Guests. You can use the Usergroup Manager to edit the various permissions for each group, and to add new usergroups to create a permissions system unique to your site.
- Phrase
- A bit of language used to build the output of the site along with templates. All the text except that contained within posts are phrases.
- Poll
- A type of topic which allows users to ask a question and provide pre-determined options for voting. Other users can vote on the question as well as post with replies and/or comments.
- Post
- An individual message entered by a user, making up a part of a topic or article. Posts can create topics or act as replies and comments.
- Post Icon
- A small image file that appears next to a post title and in the post icon column of the main forum page. An administrator can allow or disallow the use of post icons for posts or private messages.
- Private Message
- A message sent to one user from another. They are similar to email but remain in your system. They are stored in the user’s message center. Only participants in the private message topic can see them.
- Product
- A downloadable package used to extend or modify functionality in vBulletin. Products consist of code snippets (plugins), templates, options, phrases, admin help, control panel navigation entries, and bitfields definitions. vBulletin products are arranged in a such a way that they can be semi-automatically installed and uninstalled through the Product Manager.
- User Profile
- Public user information that is shared with other users.
- Promotion
- Promotions allow users who already belong to a given usergroup and who also meet additional specific criteria to be automatically made secondary members of another usergroup, generally one with greater permissions. You manage usergroup promotions in the Usergroup Manager inside the AdminCP.
- Prune
- To prune is to delete a large number of posts and/or threads from your site. This is often done as a task in maintaining a small database.
- Reply
- A post made in response to a topic.
- Reputation
- A measure of how well a user is received on the site. User’s gain Reputation through the post likes on their content. They also give reputation on by liking other user’s content.
- Scheduled Task
- Scheduled tasks allow you to run scripts at specific intervals. vBulletin tasks are similar to Linux Cron jobs or Windows® scheduled tasks.
- Site Builder
- Site Builder is a tool that allows an Administrator to build or edit content pages on their site.
- Smilies
- Synonym for emoticon or emoji. Small icons that can be used in posts that denote a person’s emotional state (for example, happy, mad, or sad).
- Social Group
- Social Groups are semi-private channels where users can form clubs or small discussion groups. Social Groups can be public or private.
- Sticky Thread
- A thread that always shows at the top of the threads listed in a forum.
- Style
- A style controls the look and feel of your site through templates and style variables. You can use styles to change colors and look of individual modules.
- Style Variable
- Also called a stylevar. Style Variables are used to modify the colors, borders, backgrounds, and fonts of vBulletin elements.
- Subscription
- A subscription allows users to follow topics, channels or other users and get updated when new content it added. Users can opt in for subscriptions by clicking the subscribe button where it apears.
- Super Administrator
- An administrator who has additional permissions. For example, a super administrator could be created to manage other administrators.
- Super Moderator
- A moderator who has their moderator permissions available in all channels.
- Tag
- A tag is a metadata keyword or term string attached to a content item. Once the tag is attached, it can be used in a search for similar content.
- Template
- Block of HTML code and vBulletin Code used to build the output sent to the user.
- Topic
- A collection of posts usually with a common subject matter.
- User Control Panel
- The User Control Panel is the area of the site where members can administer there own profile preferences, such as signatures, avatars. This is accessed from the My Settings link on the user menu.
- Usergroup
- A usergroup is a named group of users, all of whom have the same permissions. You can access many screens involving usergroup tasks in the Usergroups menu of the Admin CP.
- User Settings
- See User Control Panel
Internet Terms
-
AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML)
AJAX allows your browser to send data to and receive data from a server without reloading the current page. This technology allows developers to create rich, fast-responding interactive pages.
-
Cookie A cookie is a file created and stored on a computer that contains information about user preferences when viewing certain web pages.
-
CSS (Cascading Style Sheet)
CSS is a mechanism for adding style (for example, fonts, colors, spacing) to web pages. vBulletin makes extensive use of CSS.
-
Domain Name
A domain name is a unique name for a website that identifies it on the Internet.
-
FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
FTP is a means of uploading files to your website.
-
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)
HTML is a markup language for content on the World Wide Web. It defines the structure of a webpage and how it should look to website visitors with a web browser.
-
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol)
HTTP defines how computers communicate with each other over the Internet when webpages are requested by a web browser.
-
IP Address
An IP Address is a string of numbers used to locate a website on the Internet. Conceptually it is much like a telephone number for the site. An example of an IP Address is 98.158.195.239, which is the IP Address for vBUlletin.org.
-
Javascript
Javascript is a web scripting language that interacts with HTML source code, allowing the browser to create dynamic content.
- MySQL
- The default database engine supported by vBulletin. All of your data will be stored in the MySQL database.
-
Search Bot
See Spider
-
Server
A server is a computer that accepts connections from other computers (called clients) for the purpose of exchanging information.
-
Spider
A spider is a program or script that systematically follows URLs on a page gathering information. Spiders are also called Web Crawlers. Normally these spiders show on your site as guests. A vBulletin administrative option allows you to see search engine spiders that are browsing your site pages. Typically search engines use spiders to gather information from websites. Some common search engine spiders are:
- Googlebot
- Baiduspider
- Yahoo! slurp
- bingbot
-
SSH (Server Shell)
SSH is a secure server-side application that allows you to run command-line functions on your website. Ask your hosting company if it is available with your hosting package.
-
Telnet Telnet is a server-side application that allows you to run command-line functions on your website. This protocol should be considered insecure and SSH should be used.
-
URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
A URL is the address of a server and it allows computers to route traffic between each other on the Internet.
-
XML (Extensible Markup Language)
XML is a markup language for documents containing structured information. XML enables the use of user-defined tags.
-
XSS (Cross Site Scripting)
XSS is a security vulnerability in a website that allows malicious data to be added to a webpage. This allows information to be exchanged with one or more computers without validity verification.
Miscellaneous Terms
-
ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Exchange)
ASCII is a character-encoding scheme used to represent text in computers.
-
CGI (Common Gateway Interface)
CGI (Common Gateway Interface) is a way for webpage content to be generated by program scripts.
-
CGI Shebang
Deprecated and rarely used anymore A CGI Shebang is the path to your PHP interpreter installation. If your server is running PHP as CGI you may be required to have this at the top of your website’s PHP pages.
-
COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act)
vBulletin is compliant with the COPPA law and requires children under the age of 13 to get parental consent before they can post information on a website.
-
DST
Daylight Savings Time
-
Firewall
A firewall is an application running on a computer to prevent unwanted connections to be made to that computer. Firewalls protect both incoming and outgoing traffic on a computer.
-
Localhost
Localhost is the default host address of a computer on which a service is running. Localhost uses the reserved loopback IP address 127.0.0.1.
-
PHP (PHP Hypertext Preprocessor)
PHP is a script language and interpreter.
-
phpMyAdmin
Graphical User Interface (GUI) for MySQL.
-
Thumbnail
A Thumbnail is a small preview image of an attachment in a post.
-
WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get)
The vBulletin WYSIWYG editor allows a user that creates a new post to see what the end result will look like as the post is being created.