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vanilla Forums

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Vanilla
Original author(s)Mark O'Sullivan
Developer(s)Todd Burry, Tim Gunter, Matt Lincoln Russell, Klaus Burton
Initial release1 July 2006 (2006-07-01)
Stable release
2.0.18.8 / April 5, 2013; 11 years ago (2013-04-05)
Repository
Written inPHP
Operating systemCross Platform
PlatformPHP / MySQL
Size7 MB
Available inOfficial support for English, Multilingual
TypeForum software
LicenseOpen Source, GNU GPL[1]
Websitewww.vanillaforums.org

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]

By 2009, Vanilla was getting lots of attention and was invited to TechStars in Boulder.[15] At the start of 2010, a pivtoal year for Vanilla, they received 500,000 in series A funding.[16]By July 2010, a new version of Vanilla was released, named Vanilla 2. It was a complete rewrite of Vanilla 1.[17]

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.[18]

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[19]. The communinty version of the software, has seen developpers replicate much of these functionalities.[20][21]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b http://vanillaforums.org/docs/license
  2. ^ http://vanillaforums.org/addons
  3. ^ http://vanillawiki.homebrewforums.net/index.php/What_are_Features_and_Addons%3F
  4. ^ http://vanillaforums.org/docs/proxyconnect_sso
  5. ^ http://www.itworldcanada.com/news/canadian-software-company-improves-on-the-internet-forum/144307
  6. ^ http://vanillaforums.com/blog/news/how-to-integrate-twitter-and-facebook/
  7. ^ http://gigaom.com/2010/10/25/vanilla-forums-now-embeddable-offers-import-tools/
  8. ^ http://gigaom.com/2010/10/25/vanilla-forums-now-embeddable-offers-import-tools/
  9. ^ http://www.techvibes.com/blog/montreals-vanilla-forums-launches-new-commenting-feature-to-help-cultivate-online-communities-2012-04-13
  10. ^ http://wordpress.org/plugins/vanilla-forums/
  11. ^ http://www.rackspace.com/blog/designing-a-hosting-platform-around-high-availability-low-cost/
  12. ^ http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/19927/difference-between-self-hosted-vanilla-vs-vanilla-hosted
  13. ^ http://vanillaforums.com/blog/news/the-quest-for-better-forum-software/
  14. ^ http://lussumo.com/docs/doku.php
  15. ^ http://techcrunch.com/2009/08/06/techstars-incubator-hatches-10-new-companies/
  16. ^ http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20100119007662&newsLang=en
  17. ^ http://readwrite.com/2010/07/22/vanilla_forums_gets_investment_releases_new_versio#awesm=~oci8n4r7dDeinO
  18. ^ http://boagworld.com/reviews/vanilla/
  19. ^ http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/24089/the-community-and-vanilla-please-read
  20. ^ http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/24064/question-to-vanilla-developers-my-possible-future-reactions-plugin-addon
  21. ^ http://vanillaforums.org/addon/peregrinereactions-plugin

Examples

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