Integrating a discussion into a website?

GMAntonz

I've been following Vanilla for a while now, and I'm really excited about Vanilla 2! I'm working on a pretty big project which I want to integrate with Vanilla 2 and was wondering how hard it would be to display a certain discussion on a website.

So for example, I have an article posted on my website. Instead of using an external comment system, I want to use Vanilla 2 for comments. So if I create a dedicated discussion for this particular article, is there a way to show it in the article and allow people to add their comments without leaving that article page?

Any comments and suggestions are appreciated.

glow

Up, interesting for me too.

Mark

Hmmm. @Todd and I were talking about something like this recently. It would be really cool to be able to just put some javascript into a page and have a discussion appear there. We have no official plans to make this happen. It could definitely be done as a plugin if someone was interested in giving it a shot.

dietbrisk

I was able to integrate a discussion list into my website. I added minor changes to the search model and controller functions so a search result can be output as JSON if &json=true is appended to the URL. You can do something similar to this, although it may be harder since the discussion module is a bit more complicated, simply because of the externally included helper function.

Horton

Joomla! Bring us a Joomla/Vanilla bridge or some sort

Linc

I definitely have a Wordpress bridge in my plans. I currently have vBulletin hacked to use discussions as post comments for Wordpress (see Icrontic.com's articles for example) and plan to do something even better with Vanilla. This might be of interest to you: http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/10051

GMAntonz

Working more on my project, I am getting to a point where I have to decide if I am going to adopt Vanilla as the forum/community system of choice.

Basically, the community will be an integral part of the website, and will be built into the site. I really like what I am seeing with Vanilla2 so far, and I would prefer it over other forum systems out there.

Part of this integration is the ability for users to comment on posted articles. At this point I have to either a) develop a custom comment system or b) see if there is a way to use Vanilla. The comments should be displayed below the article on the article page. My thoughts were to automatically create a corresponding thread in Vanilla and integrate it into the article.

So again I am looking for further thoughts/advice. If anyone has ideas on how this can be done, or would be interested in developing a plug-in, I would be glad to pay for your efforts.

garymardell

What system for articles are you currently using?

GMAntonz

It's a custom development. One idea that I had is perhaps integrating a thread into the article page through RSS, does a discussion have its own RSS feed? I know there is RSS for all discussions (http://www.domain.com/vanilla/rss/discussions) but if each discussion had its own RSS feed, could that possibly be integrated into a site?

garymardell

You would then still have to redirect the user back to forum to write the comment. I'd think that a more API based approach maybe more suited. But that would require a method for posting/getting discussions (articles) and comments. Possible and depends on the level of integration you want.

Or there is the option if the development hasn't gone too far of having it built on the garden framework itself.

GMAntonz

@garymardell thanks for your thoughts. The other option I thought of doing is building our own commenting system for articles, and doing the single sign-on integration between vanilla the the site.

The last resort option would be to not integrate any comments into the article pages, but simply provide a link where visitors can go to comment on the article (this would direct them to the vanilla discussion)

Unfortunately the development is far along where integration with Garden would set this project back quite a bit.

bobtheman

embed code for discussions is a great idea ...

isnt a long term goal for vanilla to have its own opensource solution for content management/blogging .. and @marks wiki idea "not sure if anything ever came from this" I think our resources would be better spent developing a simple starter solution for content and page management, instead of continuing to broaden the development of the single sign on solution

asweatman

Any thoughts on Twitter or Facebook integration?

Stash

@GMAntonz, this is such a common request that it really needs to be picked up by a skilled plugin author ASAP. Unfortunately I am not said author, otherwse I would love to create this.

The number of times I have heard clients request this very feature makes me think that Vanilla could massively increase its install base if only there was a simple (probably API-based) way to create and display a Vanilla discussion, with a means of posting as well, on any page you like.

GMAntonz

@[-Stash-], I am with you on that one. I wish I was skilled enough or had the time to develop it on my own. I think it would be a fantastic feature.

One thing that really makes Vanilla2 stand out for me is the fact that while it acts like a forum and facilitates discussions, it looks like a social network. This is what people are into. They don't just want to visit your "standard" forum anymore. They want to be part of something, part of a larger gathering. That's why Vanilla2 fits in so well with our project and concept. While it's not a full-fledged social network, it certainly has enough ingredients to act like one. I call that "social-lite". It's exactly what I need, I just wish there was a good way of integrating it with existing website content, that would be icing on the cake.