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Binary Bonsai turns away from Vanilla

BenBen
edited February 2006 in Vanilla 1.0 Help
Mr Heilemann says:
We've now been using these Vanilla forums for a good while now, and the traffic has skyrocketed way beyond anything I could've hoped or imagined for.

I've noticed however, that I am continually lost in the massive activity on here. It's hard to really keep track of what's new and what belongs where. It is of course not helped by the fact that the current beta I've installed is quite buggy; but I'll take full responsibility for that,

Anyway, I looked a bit at the other solutions out there, specifically what solutions that are being used on the forums I otherwise frequent. And as near as I can tell, vBulletin is the best solution out there at the moment. It's highly customizable, well supported and it works very very well. There's only one problem, it costs money.

http://binarybonsai.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=628
It's a shame as this was an enormous forum, and a huge advert for Vanilla and Lussumo.
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Comments

  • marcapricemarcaprice
    edited February 2006
    It is a pity, that was where I first came accross Vanilla. And for such a big forum to move away can't be good advert either...
  • gigingergiginger New
    It seems a bit quick to change their mind to be honest.

    I'm not sure if VBulletin is the way forward either. Never had a good experience with that software.

    I think they'd be better to wait for the fill release. They are using Beta and version1 release is basically ready.
  • marcapricemarcaprice
    Right, it wasn't that long ago when they were using the Flickr forum. Well, I'm please I got pointed here anyway. Looking forward to v1 :)
  • NickENickE New
    edited February 2006
    It is too bad, but I can nevertheless see his point about keeping up with posts on an extremely busy forum. As nice as Vanilla is, it's just not something I could see behind a site like codeguru, gaia online, or some other huge community.
  • MarkMark Vanilla Staff
    edited February 2006
    On a big forum like that, it just makes sense to have something with a more category-driven flow. I'm just surprised he didn't choose to go with something like punbb, which is a great little forum.
  • CryptCrypt
    punbb is allright its lacking some key features. phpbb is probably his best bet.
  • jesusphreakjesusphreak
    I don't understand why Vanilla cannot work. Is it due to performance reasons? The issue about keeping up with posts is a bit silly, imo. If its too much to take in at once, just look at a different category individually. And if its just too many threads period - you'll have that problem with any forum system - vBulletin and such will only make it worse because you are forced to check each seperate category instead of getting a single overview at once. I don't know, I just don't really see the problem.You look at his forum and everything from the last 24 hours (and more) is still on the frontpage.
  • NickENickE New
    I think the point is that Vanilla is much less categorically driven, and as such is probably much better suited to small and medium traffic sites (many times it's hard enough to keep track of posts in each category on some sites, let alone globally). While it is perfectly possible to turn it into a forum based largely on categories, it often makes more sense to simply use a forum designed for such a purpose. It'd be like modding punBB to look like Vanilla.
  • CryptCrypt
    hey! well i plan on using vanilla for a highly populated site or i might modify phpbb a ton
  • lechlech ✭
    I think it has more to do with Categories having Subs. So you can make a Category named "Primary Colors" then dump a seperate category devoted soley to "red" "blue" and then "green". and really split things off as you need to. WIth other forums, so far that's pretty easy to do and comes as a core feature along with the stupid little folder icons next to the category title near the topic title. That and users want their signatures, stupid rediculously-large avatars, and segregated private messaging with the ability to upload. Along with the post-whore stats, warnings and karma crap and other useless features (to me at least). Given, Vanilla at the moment is none of these (yet!) but it needs some time to evolve. We'll likely come up with some inventive extensions and plugins to get people high for a while. But Vanilla has only been in dev for like what? nearing 2 years, right? (excluding o8 mind you). I don't think they made a bad choice, really, if they want to give people something familiar, more power to them. At least they tried it, found things they liked, and uncovered a few bugs we may have missed. Lets just not all turn into Vanilla zealots and start shoving it down their throat, they'll come around when they feel like it :)
  • CryptCrypt
    @lech: i would totally quote everything you said except there is no quote function >_< , but other than that I totally agree with you. Yes Vanilla is lacking some important features (quoting!) but signatures, and crazy avatars are just stupid. I like how Vanilla is so conceptual in forum software. ¡VIVA LA VANILLA! ...I hope that was done right
  • gigingergiginger New
    I suppose it boils down to some people liking the plain forum style of Vanilla and others wanting every feature imagined.
  • chrischris
    once vanilla gets to v1, i am porting a 12k member vb install over...
  • chrischris
    (to be fair, there are only ever around 250 users online at any given time)
  • MarkMark Vanilla Staff
    What lech said :)
  • dknightondknighton
    lech...totally agree with you. When I found Vanilla, it was a breath of fresh air as far as forums go. Systems like PHPBB and VBulletin are perfect cases of information overload. I run my system at 1024x768, and on most bloated boards, I have to scroll half way down the page to see any actual FORUMS. The top half is consumed with crap stats that mean nothing to anyone except an administrator or a moderator. The sigs that are allowed on most of those boards are ridiculous too, especially in threads that get a lot of traffic with multiple posts from the same users. Seeing their dancing unicorns and laser beams once is annoying enough...seeing it on every single follow-up post makes the thread virtually unusable. I know that sub-forums can have their place in a high-traffic environment, but all that other stuff is just crap for the most part. Vanilla is the perfect case for having a designer involved in the process. Systems like PHPBB are great examples of what happens when hard-core coders do design. Ick!
  • BergamotBergamot
    I think it's silly to expect Vanilla to be the best forum for all sites, especially at it's current state of maturity.
  • BergamotBergamot
    dknighton: you can say what you want about laser beams, but leave the unicorns out of this.
  • aloiciousaloicious
    Could one not just turn on Categories on the front page if so desired?
  • BergamotBergamot
    Yeah, but if you're going to do all the work to make Vanilla into a phpbb clone, you might as well just use phpbb and save yourself the effort.
This discussion has been closed.