Vanilla 1 Forum

what does everyone think about the Vanilla 1 Forum looks pretty simple and appears to be a blog/forum combo

http://lussumo.com/community/
http://getvanilla.com/

Vanilla is a cool forum indeed. I’ve no experience in how it scales though.

Bugsmi(), if you are talking about integration (like the SMF bridge) then I think Wendy looked into this a while back (I know somebody did ) and I don’t think it was looking very promising. There were definitely some issues with possible integration methods anyway.

But, if you’re offering to look into it ...

Don’t get me wrong I like SMF but this looked rather interesting

I can never really tell the difference between blogging and forums, sure what you read about them makes sense but yet it doesn’t actually. A blog you are doing exactly the same thing as if you were you a forum so not sure what the big deal is about blogging. Comments vs Posts different ? not really. Vanilla 1 seem to combine the best of both.

I’d look into it but I’m a newbie by nature and I’d screw it all up he he
adding it to your modx site wouldn’t be much trouble but the duel login connection is a whole other thing,

Modx/SMF currently has issues no need to bring another forum into the mix

You could turn a forum into a blog easily - organise by date of first post, make the first post most prominent, restrict who can start a new thread.

That said, I don’t know what Vanilla has that is like a blog - other than a Web 2.0 look.

Vanilla’s main features:
1) Default view is "Latest Posts", not "Categories".
2) Very little on-screen dross (which helps it avoid tables)
3) Created by a single person.
4) Has insane ability to "whisper" comments within a thread that only your friends can see.

Vanilla recently released a v1.0 which was dramatically different to previous releases by all accounts.

I just don’t get a good vibe off Vanilla.

Frankly it is probably easier to write a forum than to integrate it.

I would however, be interested to hear what features of Vanilla people do like.

I think what people do like about Vanilla is simplicity.

Vanilla doesn’t have any extraordinary features that I am aware of (though I didn’t test the latest 1.0). But it does go back to the basics, which is what people need. My take on this is, modern web apps are more and more centered on the most needed features and get rid of the overweight. In an over-informed world, simple looking apps are attractive. BaseCamp and all 37signals apps are based on this principle...

About Wendy’s work : it was Phorum’s integration he was working on, to my knowledge...

I kinda agree with Paul, integration might not be as good as writing something up. After all, you can build a blog with Ditto + Replix, the benefit being smooth template integration and easier user management (no more sync to worry with). You could build a forum with MODx API I guess, that will be even easier with the 1.0 branch from my understanding.

Vanilla is also coming out with an intergrated blog that can fit in with the forum, I’d like to see MODX have its own forum capability that way everything should fit and work smoothly simple as opposed to a full scale forum software with all the wackyness that comes with it.

I’d say use Vanilla’s simple style as a model for the modx forum perhaps call it chocolate

Here’s a start.