Vanilla usage clarification, please?

webmeister

I am researching Forum software for installing on a Property Owners Association website and have some questions about usage. (I have installed a 'vanilla' Vanilla; no addons added yet.) As I understand it, 'Discussions' are 'open' for everyone to comment and 'Conversations' are open only to certain members? Or have I misunderstood? What is a 'wall'? I don't see it in my installation, so is it an 'addon'? The documentation online seems to be lacking in sufficient detail for these questions.

Thanks for helping out a newbie.

x00

Conversations = personal messages. They are private between the recipients.

Wall=personal activity+notification+ brief public comments.

The wall is under the users profile->activity. Really having two terms just add to the confusion. I guess they use wall to make it sound like facebook. I have only heard this terminology recently. It might be specific to vanillaforums.org theme.

You can call anything what you like. I renamed Conversation to Personal Messages, it is less confusing to users.

x00

Conversations = personal messages. They are private between the recipients.

Wall=personal activity+notification+ brief public comments.

The wall is under the users profile->activity. Really having two terms just add to the confusion. I guess they use wall to make it sound like facebook. I have only heard this terminology recently. It might be specific to vanillaforums.org theme.

You can call anything what you like. I renamed Conversation to Personal Messages, it is less confusing to users.

webmeister

Thanks x00, that helps! I think I'd better create a bunch of users and discussions and/or conversations so I can see how they work. I need to understand this before I make it available to our community. After all, when they need answers, they'll ask me, and I'll need to be able to help them out.

UnderDog

I thought we also had demo database that you can import. I just forgot where it is, I just know that I imported a demo database with users and posts a while ago.

luc

There is one for theming, maybe your referring to this? It's linked in the definitive guide to themes.

UnderDog

Yupz, that's what I mean. Just any demo database with some post and users will do in most cases. The fact that the demo database will show all points of a theme is a nice plus.

x00

Watch the demo database, it is fine for testing, but it will wipe everything else, becuase it has fake users, it might not work as expected. There isn't an awful of data in there anyway. You could fill it up with Lorem Ipsum.

x00

Personally I recommend hiding the global activity, what possible reason would there be to to have that spiel? At best it is pointless information, at worst it is a privacy/security concern.

It is too much of the facebook culture where everything you do is reported. On a per user basis I have left it, but you might want to restrict that too.