Comments on: Vanilla Forums

By: Eric Scalf

Eric Scalf — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 11:22:33 +0000

Darren, I’ve not run Vanilla, but I have installed and administrated many PHPbb and co-administered a few vBulletin. Personally, I feel PHPbb is the better system, though it does have more security issues. For the most part, though, keeping on top of security fixes is relatively easy, and fixes are usually issued within a day or so of a new bug being reported (depending on how bad the bug).

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 14:29:17 +0000

While I’m not a PHP guy, I have to admit vBulletin is largely the best in its class, and the code is a lot tighter than I’ve seen elsewhere. phpBB is a bloated and risky app by most popular accounts. That Vanilla app is interesting. Simple is good.

I ended up writing my own forum app years ago (http://www.popforums.com), and started giving it away a few years ago. I haven’t revised it in two years, but I’m getting there. The ASP.NET folks aren’t quite as nutty as the PHP people, so the demand isn’t as high. :)

By: Christopher Sharpe

Christopher Sharpe — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 16:14:32 +0000

I’m a Mac user but for some reason, I just don’t like Vanilla forums. Yeah, they look really pretty, but I guess I’m so used to the traditional layout of message boards that I just don’t “connect” with Vanilla for some reason. Most of the time when I hit a Vanilla forum, I think “Ooh, cool, pretty” scan the headlines then end up surfing somewhere else. Not sure why that is, but that’s my ongoing reaction to it.

By: Rian

Rian — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 14:28:15 +0000

In general, Mac users tend to *love* vanilla. I personally can’t stand it. ;) Many of my non-Mac friends don’t like it either…

By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 21:31:03 +0000

I installed vanilla recently. i had used phpbb and smforums on some other sites. Vanilla was easy to setup. I haven’t customized it yet (or announced to my readres that it’s online yet, but you can look here:

http://candyaddict.com/forums

brian

By: hatem

hatem — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 11:41:05 +0000

I use it in http://www.phpmagazine.net/talk/, and its really great but i suggest you to wait till the 0.9.3 will be released and become more stable. There is lot of compatibilities problems and stability of the soft, othewise you may consider installing the latest stable.

By: Emacle

Emacle — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 11:08:04 +0000

Darren. I tried it on UrbanSkaters and nearly all my visitors found it confusing (they aren’t forum users, or they were used to PHPBB etc). In my opinion it loses to much by trying to be to simple. Stick with the other forums, Vanilla should only be used by small closed groups, in my humble opinion.

By: buxx

buxx — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 09:31:53 +0000

I have set the brandnew version of my Dutch forum for weblog related items up with this Vanilla forum software and i like it.
It is much more intuïve in use then the ‘old’ fora like phpbb etc.

Vanilla is an forum in the web 2.0 style.
http://www.weblogforum.nl

By: buxx

buxx — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 09:31:38 +0000

I have set the brandnew version of my Dutch forum for weblog related items up with this Vanilla forum software and i like it.
It is much more intuïve in use then the ‘old’ fora like phpbb etc.

Vanilla is an forum in the web 2.0 style.

By: Andy Merrett

Andy Merrett — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 09:18:36 +0000

Hey you’re a Mac user Darren – you’re different :)

I think if people want to participate in your forum they’ll learn the system it uses. I’ve not seen Vanilla but there must be something about it you like. I think you have to be comfortable with it as an administrator, particularly if there will be a large volume of users and posts. I don’t like the way phpBB (at least the version I use) handles user admin – too time-consuming to search for a user, do some admin, search for another, etc. – no global options for when a bunch of idiots sign up 20 spam accounts that need taking down.

A lot of the forums do seem to use bloated, 1990s-style coding – you know, loads of tables, fonts, rubbish like that. Not only does it look bad but it’s bad for SEO and your bandwidth. I’d go for whatever gives you the cleanest, most easily maintainable code base. IMO phpBB is not it. Maybe Vanilla is?

By: Gerard McGarry

Gerard McGarry — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 08:07:34 +0000

Darren: I remember the guys at Performancing saying that they run their blog off a system called Drupal, which is actually open source forum software. I’ve no direct experience with it, but it might also be worth a look.

By: Alexander

Alexander — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 07:41:20 +0000

One big boo is that vanilla isn’t optimized for search engines yet and i haven’t found a plugin some months ago…

By: Carl

Carl — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 07:35:08 +0000

Sorry about the typo, that was surposed to say free feature rich not feature free…

By: Carl

Carl — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 07:34:34 +0000

It depends on whether you want something that is feature rich or just simple… None of those are a bad thing unless it becomes full of useless features or none at all which I feel neither Vanilla or PHPBB/VB has done.

What i’ve seen of it, I like Vb… I’ve used it a bit behind the scenes and I loved it! Just the cost that kept me away

As for vanilla, I love the looks and for a community like this you just want a place to chat and share knowledge without all the added features, it should work!

PHPBB was good as well, it was definatly one of the most feature FREE forum softwares I used…

By: mark

mark — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 07:18:41 +0000

Definitely go with VB as it’s the BEST one out there! If you rather want a free one, phpBB is quite good and they’re tons of themes for it.

By: George

George — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 06:26:07 +0000

I say go for vB and pay for a template.

By: orangeguru

orangeguru — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 06:09:10 +0000

Vanilla is fast and lightweight, but it lacks many features you want when you run larger communities / boards. The plugin architecture promises a great future – but it simply isn’t there yet. Sure – it’s not even version 1.0 … but it will be great.

For a production enviroment: vB or phpBB.

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 03:46:53 +0000

Darren, try http://www.mybboard.com/ aswell. See it in action at http://www.trueblogging.com (not mine).

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 03:23:35 +0000

I think when it comes down to which forum to choose, functionality and ‘being different’ are not the only factors that should be considered.
It has been said before that phpBB is unsafe and messy. This may be true to some extent, however one also needs to keep in mind that it’s one of the most popular forum platform and thus receives a lot of attention.
This is a good thing on the one hand because it’s got a large active developper community and a very active help forum. On the other hand of course lots of people deliberately try to break it, which is why it’s been called ‘unsafe’.

With the Vanilla forum, ask yourself: is it really that much safer or is it just that it hasn’t gotten that much attention yet and less people have tried to find a security hole? What’s the support forum like, are you likely to have your questions answered or is there simply not enough activity. And finally how many people work on this open source project and is it likely that there will still be ongoing development and feature improvements in a few years?
Switching forum platforms because the open source developper community is not longer supporting it is labour intensive….

Steve

By: Sim'

Sim' — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 02:40:10 +0000

Darren – I understand your desire to consider cool, new stuff … but really, what are you trying to achieve here ? Do you really want to experiment ? Or do you want to run forums and just get on with the discusison with a minimum of administrative overhead holding you back !?!?!