Best Of
Re: How good is the Vanilla forum search?
@dandv search on hosted vanilla is changing dramatically within the next few months. I'd wager you'll be happier with it when that happens.

Re: Embedding an IFrame into my site
You could try setting post format to HTML (it's in the dashboard under Posting settings), but I think iframes might get sanitized, since freely embedding them seems like a security risk.
Do you need the embeds in the actual comments or is just having them on the page enough? If you only need it available somewhere on the page you can use the Pockets addon to embed pretty much anything.

Re: Vanilla 4.0 RC1
with composer update in the root folder, it's ok.
you have to do a /utility/update
You have to delete class.qna.plugin.php in the plugins/QnA folder because there is a QnaPlugin.php file otherwise you will have a notice error

Re: How to set the default user timezone in a timestamp
Correct me if I'm wrong but timestamp do not bother with timezone, everyone have the same timestamp for all timezones.
The timestamp is the amount of seconds since the 1st january 1970 at 00:00:00 UTC 0.
In Vanilla this timestamp is display to the user according to his own timezone (set in the "HourOffest" column of your GDN_User table).

Re: 2020 OSS Roadmap plans
New Roadmap Objectives
Warning: These notes are not a guarantee of any particular version number or release date. It just represents some of our development goals.
Complete the 4.0 release
The 4.0 release is currently in progress. Main improvements will include:
- New Base Theme & New theming system.
- Hero Image plugin no longer a plugin. Instead it is built-in to core.
- 100s of bug-fixes
- Performance improvements.
- New PHP version requirements.
Documentation Overhaul
As we move our developer documentation over to it's new home in our Success Knowledge Base, we are updating outdated articles, adding new ones, and moving some new technical documentation from our internal documentation to become public.
Items that are set to receive new documentation:
I'll link the documentation here as it becomes available.
- New Controllers & Routing.
- Using Twig for Views.
- Using React for Views.
- Using the new Theming system.
- Using the new FormatService.
- Advanced custom embeds for Rich Editor.
- Improved local installation instructions.
- i18n & Localization.
- New Model Class & Pipelines.
- Dependency Injection.
- New Javascript & Style loading for addons.
As we write these we will primarily looking to provide "quickstart" guides with code examples. For for more technical understanding it's best to look at the key source code files, which will be linked at the bottom of documentation, where possible.
So how many of these Roadmap objectives were actually achieved in 2020?
Maybe time to invest in some GPS instead.

Re: Ok, one more question for today! Is there any way to subscribe to admins posts?
It's not the best example for a beginner plugin. But it's doable, but certainly only if you want to learn. I can give advices, but I will not write code for you.
If you want to develop plugins, you need a test environment. That doesn't need to be a mirror of your live forum. Just some dummy users will be enught. The default Vanilla installation already provides 4 test users and that will be enough.
If you are a linux user, then I guess you know how to install your test environment. If you are a windows I strongly recomment not using some WAMP stack. Your server is running on linux and so should your test server do. Either install Oracles VirtualBox and install some Linux inside. Linux Mint is really beginner friendly.
I have become a fan of the "Windows Subsystem for Linux" (WSL). That allows installing a debian directly on your windows machine. But there is no graphical UI, only a command line. So it requires more Linux knowledge than the VirtualBox + Linux Mint setup.
If you already have a WAMP stack set up, you can certainly go with it. But a plugin that works flawlessly on Windows, might not work on Linux or the other way around.
If you have prepared the test forum, read the basics:
https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/152-what-is-an-addon
https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/151-the-addon-json-file
https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/164-addon-quickstart-guide
The most important task after this is to define the features the plugin should have:
1. It should send mails
2. after a discussion has been created
3. by a person with special permissions
4. but only to those who wants to be notified
Correct? If not, add the missing tasks (one by one if possible)
In one of the links above, there was one very, very important sentence "Download other addons from the Addon Directory and borrow their code.". You yhould take a look how all of the things have been done by others. That's the part where most beginners are lost. Therefore I gathered some examples for you. There are much more, so if you need more, try to find them wih a mighty tool like grep (or Notepad++) or ask and I will give hints on how to find more examples.
Matching the numbers from above, here are the examples:
2. https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/245-event-and-handlers
3. https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/255-permission-checking
4. https://github.com/R-J/kick/blob/master/KickPlugin.php, https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla/blob/release/3.3/applications/vanilla/models/class.discussionmodel.php#L2370
Okay. That has been the preparation. But how to start now?
Create a valid plugin with the following method:
public function base_render_before($sender) { decho('useless'); }
If you have done everything correct and enable that plugin, as an admin you should see that debug message on every page call. A normal user should not. During the creation of a plugin, you might need to delete the /cache/addon.php file, because it might have cached incomplete addon meta data.
After that you need to implement the features in the following order: 3., 4., 2., 1.
Read about how to implement permissions, take a look at plugins which create their own permissions (the kick plugin does) and see if you can implement this. If you are at this point, ask again.
Just to tell you my expectations as your teacher: if you are not able to make it this far, I'd say you have chosen the wrong class. But that should just serve as an estimation about the level of difficulty up to this point. Learning includes asking questions, so nevertheless please ask at any time.

Re: Mass Media Mind Manipulation
If you exclude features with "you can face specific bug", you might not even want to present a static site because visitors might find a specific bug in the web server, which is a totally realistic threat.

Re: Mass Media Mind Manipulation
In a forum where you want to be creative and have fun, font styling is a big win 😎 If the format is html and you allow just a defined list of classes and only for span tags, that's not a security problem at all. Combined with a WYSIWYG editor where those formattings are in a dropdown list, it's even usable combined with Markdown ;-)

Re: Brainstorming on the sense of a OS powered community forum
Okay, coming back to a few of the (on topic) points:
@vanilla13 I do not see a chance for a Vanilla redesign and that's way beyond my intention. My motivation is more to present a "vanilla" open source Vanilla version. WYSIWYG for the forum. Everything that the user sees can be recreated by plugins available to the forum users.
- I would love to have a GitHub based addon catalogue with sort features like "recently updated" so that it would be no problem to have e.g. 5 YAGA plugins: one original and 4 forks. With a strict acceptance requirement like the plugins info key "requiredVersion" there might be even better sort option. Combined with some curated user actions like "report as working with version x.y", there could be an even better filter.
- The problem is not that not working addons could not be over taken by other users. In theory, if the plugin author accepts a new maintainer, the owner of the plugin could be changed. And one very, very easy thing is to "Ask a Question" from a plugins page"I fixed plugin BLABLA to work with Vanilla 3.3" or whatever. Upload the fixed version to that discussion and allow the plugin author to use this version. That way people can find the updated version and the author gets informed about your support. One community problem is that things like that almost never happen.
- SVG support, export, import - things like that are features. Yeah, new features are always nice. But I think it makes sense t concentrate on things we can achieve. That might grow in the future, some may dream of an enhanced fork, but I have the impression that our current resources are not enough for plans like that
- Not updated locales: yes, it shouldn't be that way. But Vanilla Inc. does not do it. It's a fact. So the most constructive way to work with that is to think about solutions. I do not have a focus on translations. Can they be downloaded from somewhere? If yes, it would be great if somebody downloading the language package would upload it so that it can be found. By now the best way again would be a "Ask a question" on a language pack site. As I have said: I do not look at translations. But are there any users sharing their work with others? If not, then this is a community problem, again.
The solution to all our problems will not be "Vanilla Inc" changes somehow. We have to deal with it. If anybody has doubts about it, read up the definition of "Open Source" and "Free Software" and try to find something like "obligation for support" in such definitons. If you find it, we should raise our claims (but please in a new discussion). But I promise you that will not even any obligation to that at all. Open source and free software is a gift.
Some of the things mentioned above could already be better if we as a community would improve. But I know that "work" environment is a very important factor when we speak about performance. I find it hard to "perform" with all the obstacles mentioned above. That's why I personally came to the conclusion that an open source support forum driven by people who want to give support and showing what can be reached and telling how it can be build could become a more healthy and inviting community.

Re: Mass Media Mind Manipulation
I agree that Markdown is faster to write. What I miss in Markdown are text sizing and coloring options. Yes, you can use HTML, but what looks more natural?
[bold][color=blue]BoldAndColored[/color][/bold] **<span style="blue">BoldAndColored</span>**
But I still would favour Markdown
