vBulletin [How To] Remove 'Powered by vBulletin' from the browser's title bar

One of the first things that a new vBulletin community administrator notices is that while viewing their forums the description "Powered by vBulletin" appears in their web browsers title.



The 'Powered by vBulletin' text does not harm anything but many owners want to remove the text for various reasons. The text is contained in a vBulletin phrase and is pretty easy to edit.

This tutorial will show you how to remove the 'Powered by vBulletin' text and will serve as an example for you when you need to edit other phrases.

Log into your AdminCP (ACP for short) and look for the options grouping titled Languages & Phrase on the left-hand side; it should be in about the middle of the various menu options.



If you click on Phrase Manager you would be able to find your phrase but it is usually much faster to just search for the item you are looking for instead. Click on Search in Phrases from the menu and you'll see a search box.



In the search box enter the word 'powered' in the Search for Text field. Scroll down a little bit and you'll see the Search In... field options. By default the Phrase Text Only option is checked but because you do not know yet the name of the phrase that you need to modify choose the Phrase Text and Phrase Variable Name option instead. This will also be handy because you can then see any other phrases that may have the word 'powered' in them.

When you are ready click the Find button and you will see search results similar to the below.



As you can see from the descriptions the first result is for third-party hack and the second result is for the vBulletin copyright notice that normally appears in the footer so we don't want either one of them. The third one, x_powered_by_vbulletin, is what we are after.

When you are ready click the Edit button to the right of the x_powered_by_vbulletin phrase entry and you will see an edit screen similar to below.



This edit screen allows you to either modify the default text or to add a language translation. This is how you would be able to have multiple languages on your forum.

In the example screen shot only the English language is installed so we have two options available. Either the Text value could be changed or we could add an English (US) Translation. Modifying either one would work but if you were to use the translation option and then add any additional languages in the future you would then have to go back and add additional translations for each of the languages that you have choosen. For that reason it is much simpler for the Text value to be changed for our example.

Modify the Text value to remove the "- Powered by vBulletin" text. Do NOT remove the "{1}" text! When you see text in curly brackets like that it means it is a variable that is dynamically updated and you were to remove it then you would end up breaking the display on some of your screens. Either remove the "- Powered by vBulletin" text or change it to something else but make sure the "{1}" variable remains.

When you are ready click the Save button to save your changes and continue.

That's it, you're all done! Your changes will take place immediately.

When you now visit your forums the "Powered by vBulletin" text will now be gone from your browser's title bar.



Using the method described in this tutorial you now have the skills to find a phrase that you want to modify and then to either change or add a translation to that phrase.

Here we are in 2011... and these instructions are still applicable to the current version of vBulletin!