Vanilla Forums: Difference between revisions

Vanilla
Original author(s)	Mark O'Sullivan
Developer(s)	Todd Burry, Tim Gunter, Matt Lincoln Russell, Klaus Burton
Initial release	1 July 2006
Stable release	2.0.18.8 / April 5, 2013; 11 years ago
Repository	github.com/vanilla/vanilla ;
Written in	PHP
Operating system	Cross Platform
Platform	PHP / MySQL
Size	7 MB
Available in	Official support for English, Multilingual
Type	Forum software
License	Open Source, GNU GPL
Website	www.vanillaforums.org

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Revision as of 04:30, 22 July 2013

Vanilla is a light weight Internet forum package written in the PHP scripting language. It is released under the GNU GPL.^[1] Vanilla Forums are open-source, standards-compliant, customizable discussion forums.

Features

Vanilla is a free, open-source, pluggable, themable, multi-lingual community-building product to host a forum on your own server infrastructure.The following items describe the open source version:

Users can easily set up and maintain a full-featured discussion forum with unlimited categories
A variety of community made themes and add-ons are available.^[2]^[3]
Single-Sign On^[4]^[5]
Social Media Login^[6]
Embeddable forums^[7]
Import from other forums^[8]
Commenting System for your site^[9]
Integates with other open-source projects, like WordPress.^[10]

There is also a commercial service by the creators of the Vanilla Forums product that offers hosting plans using a modified Vanilla Forums product.^[11] It offers many of the features of the open source version, but it includes many premium add-ons created and supported by the core team that extends functionality.^[12]

History

Mark O'Sullivan coded and designed an early version of Vanilla because he had a community developing around the subjects of graphic design & programming, and found the tools available to be limited.^[13] Between 2002 and 2005, this alpha version of the forum went through many revisions. During this time, the meat of the theming and plugin engines were built. Eventually, Vanilla 1 saw the light of day.^[14]

In July 2010, a new version of Vanilla was released, that was a complete rewrite of Vanilla 1.^[15]

Vanilla 1

The Core of Vanilla is very light-weight, but there are many plugins available. There are Extensions for Chat, Private Messages, "Who's Online", Attachments and many more.

The latest version is 1.3.0 which was released on February 17, 2012.

Vanilla 1 is no longer being developed.

Vanilla 2

Vanilla 2 is a complete rewrite of Vanilla grounded on the framework Garden (like "what's growing in your Garden"). It's object oriented, modular, extentional and modern.^[16]

It's claimed to be easy to switch to Vanilla 2 because there are import scripts for most of the popular forum systems

New core features since Vanilla 2

<embed> Vanilla (embed your Forum anywhere via JavaScript)
Vanilla API
Social Connect
Vanilla Mobile
Vanilla Connect (Single Sign In)
Themes
Banner
File Upload
Import Tool (e. g. phpBB, vBulletin)

Garden is the framework on which Vanilla 2 is built. Its focus is building community scripts. A forum is only one of many possible ways to use Garden.

Hosted Forums

The hosted version of Vanilla runs on the newest version of Vanilla and has all features. It also provides features that are held back from the community edition (usually people who are self-hosting their forum). The features held back are Reactions & Badges, Polls, Pre-Moderation, User Ranks, Profile Extender and others. This leads to ongoing discussions in Vanillas own community forums. There has been numerous discussions in the past about the business model and why certain features have been held back^[17]. The communinty version of the software, has seen developpers replicate much of these functionalities.^[18]^[19]

References

Examples

External links

Template:Link FA Template:Link FA

[lic-1] ttp://vanillaforums.org/docs/license

[2] ttp://vanillaforums.org/addons

[3] ttp://vanillawiki.homebrewforums.net/index.php/What_are_Features_and_Addons%3F

[4] ttp://vanillaforums.org/docs/proxyconnect_sso

[5] ttp://www.itworldcanada.com/news/canadian-software-company-improves-on-the-internet-forum/144307

[6] ttp://vanillaforums.com/blog/news/how-to-integrate-twitter-and-facebook/

[7] ttp://gigaom.com/2010/10/25/vanilla-forums-now-embeddable-offers-import-tools/

[8] ttp://gigaom.com/2010/10/25/vanilla-forums-now-embeddable-offers-import-tools/

[9] ttp://www.techvibes.com/blog/montreals-vanilla-forums-launches-new-commenting-feature-to-help-cultivate-online-communities-2012-04-13

[10] ttp://wordpress.org/plugins/vanilla-forums/

[11] ttp://www.rackspace.com/blog/designing-a-hosting-platform-around-high-availability-low-cost/

[12] ttp://vanillaforums.org/discussion/19927/difference-between-self-hosted-vanilla-vs-vanilla-hosted

[13] ttp://vanillaforums.com/blog/news/the-quest-for-better-forum-software/

[14] ttp://vanillaforums.com/blog/news/the-quest-for-better-forum-software/

[15] ttp://readwrite.com/2010/07/22/vanilla_forums_gets_investment_releases_new_versio#awesm=~oci8n4r7dDeinO

[16] ttp://vanillaforums.com/blog/news/the-quest-for-better-forum-software/

[17] ttp://vanillaforums.org/discussion/24089/the-community-and-vanilla-please-read

[18] ttp://vanillaforums.org/discussion/24064/question-to-vanilla-developers-my-possible-future-reactions-plugin-addon

[19] ttp://vanillaforums.org/addon/peregrinereactions-plugin

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@@ Line 51: / Line 51: @@
 Mark O'Sullivan coded and designed an early version of Vanilla because he had a community developing around the subjects of graphic design & programming, and found the tools available to be limited.<ref>http://vanillaforums.com/blog/news/the-quest-for-better-forum-software/</ref> Between 2002 and 2005, this alpha version of the forum went through many revisions. During this time, the meat of the theming and plugin engines were built. Eventually, Vanilla 1 saw the light of day.<ref>http://vanillaforums.com/blog/news/the-quest-for-better-forum-software/</ref>
-In July 2010, a new version of Vanilla was released, that was a complete rewrite of Vanilla 1.<ref>http://vanillaforums.com/blog/developers/vanilla-2-released/</ref><ref>http://boagworld.com/reviews/vanilla/</ref>
+In July 2010, a new version of Vanilla was released, that was a complete rewrite of Vanilla 1.<ref>http://readwrite.com/2010/07/22/vanilla_forums_gets_investment_releases_new_versio#awesm=~oci8n4r7dDeinO</ref>
 ===Vanilla 1===