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Vanilla: a nice, strange forum

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urlwolf:
It kind of looks like a blog, but very flexible at the same time: vanilla.

Since many plugin developers for SMF hung out here... what do you think of vanilla? I have zero experience with forum scripts...

tinjaw:
This is the first I have heard of Vanilla, but that isn't going to stop me from critiquing it. ;)

First of all, Vanilla may have been around for a long time, I don't know, but even that doesn't mean it has been properly vetted. The community needs to put it through its paces.

There are many many forum applications already. What does Vanilla bring to the table that others haven't already? I can't tell from their home page, which, IMNSHO, means that even they don't know. Anybody with at least a minuscule amount of marketing knowhow knows that you need to tell visitors immediately what your differentiator is. They talk about being simple to use, but a) that is relative to each individual's technical savvy and b) not a big deal as even mom & pop hosting services now have push-button installs of forum software on demand.

They claim add-ins/plugins/mods are easy to do. Yeah, until you need to worry about deconflicting two different community-built ones. The first mod is always easy.

Vanilla may turn out to be wonderful. I don't know yet. And that is why you posted - looking for others that have used it and can comment on it. However, I just thought it would be a good time to point out some generic things that may be useful when looking at any software of this nature.

And one last comment. From their home page, Vanilla is all about add-ons. We've spent many, many months developing a new system whereby developers can create add-ons for Vanilla that allow you to do just about anything with your forum. Want to turn your Vanilla into a bug tracking system? Want to tag discussions instead of categorizing them? Maybe you just want a fancy highlighting effect when new messages are posted. Your imagination is the limit.
--- End quote ---

Unless you are building a framework, anything that tries to be everything to everybody tends to not doing anything well.

mouser:
This was posted about in february here: https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=7478.0

It looks interesting -- it's like a fresh look at forum software, and the developers have really gone for a streamlined web2.0 slick-looking interface.  The vanilla web page itself is filled with demo videos, etc.  It certainly looks to me like they put a lot of effort into polishing their website.

Having said that, I'm not sure I actually like the design decisions they've made in terms of the actual forum software and they way it presents stuff to the user.  I'm not sure about it's suitability in terms of navigating around a large forum.  It seems quite bare bones. For a small forum though it might be acceptable.

Here's their sample forum: http://lussumo.com/community/discussions/

I really do get a kind of feeling that this site is almost like an aesthetic demonstration of how to make a minimalist forum system.  I'm unconvinced that they are all that concerned with providing strong functionality and may be more interested in it looking good.

mouser:
A comment on Tinjaw's comments.

They say:
Vanilla is all about add-ons. We've spent many, many months developing a new system whereby developers can create add-ons for Vanilla that allow you to do just about anything with your forum. Want to turn your Vanilla into a bug tracking system? Want to tag discussions instead of categorizing them? Maybe you just want a fancy highlighting effect when new messages are posted. Your imagination is the limit.
--- End quote ---

I haven't looked at how they do addons, BUT I can say this: One of the big weaknesses of SMF (the forum software we use here) is that extensions to the system are basically done by modifying forum code.  There isn't an official API so much as you basically just write search+replace code to modify the actual forum code.  This makes it quite painfull to maintain modifications as new updates of the forum software are released, and makes conflicts between mods common.  This is a very big flag in the system. In all fairness though, it's pretty hard to design a forum system that can be easily extended in a flexible and way using an API.

HOWEVER, if vanilla (or any other forum software) manages to figure our how to support addons in a very clean and robust way, that would be a *HUGE* plus and a major step in the right direction.  Though I must repeat I haven't looked at their extension system so i can't comment on it yet.

Deozaan:
I've used Vanilla on a private forum since it was mentioned on this site (linked by mouser).

It's very minimalistic and provides the basic functionality I need for just a few people. It has some ajax stuff which is kind of nice. I definitely wouldn't say it has the greatest features or is the best forum software, but it sure beats rolling your own, so to speak.

That and I haven't upgraded the version since I installed it (if there is a new version) about a year ago so I'm not sure what the latest developments on Vanilla are.

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