Before jumping into the world of Vanilla...

Artashes

Greetings all,

I have been running communities for many years. Virtually all of them are vBulletin-based. However, as much as I like the software, I am a bit disappointed with the speed of how they are adapting to the changes that take place online in terms of usability, social engagement features, etc. So, for the past few days I have been looking at Vanilla and I am impressed with the progress made since the day when I saw Vanilla for the first time. I registered here to keep a closer eye and hopefully get a better feeling for the application.

However, here is my first problem. I am not a coder myself, so how would one go about finding an expert in Vanilla who, if it gets there, would be able to assist in this challenging task of transitioning a large vBulletin community (25k+ members, 500k+ posts) to Vanilla, or coding custom apps for it? Is there a section/resource anywhere on Vanilla website that offers such information/services?

Some other questions:

• does the self-hosted version of Vanilla include all the features and modules offered by Vanilla hosted solution?
  
• are there any marketplace addons that enable members to buy/sell/trade/hire products and services? With that comes a follow-up question an iTrader-like addon, which is basically an eBay-like feedback/review system - is there one?

Thank you all for any tips.

UnderDog

Think of Vanilla as a very young community. The things you're looking for are most likely in the vBulletin community and you need them here also, right?
If you need someone transitioning that vBulletin community to Vanilla, there are a couple of users here that have some contact information in their signature.
@peregrine is one of them and @kasperisager is also one of them. @x00 is also a great (custom) developer and once you browse through some of the questions you'll see some more users that might be able to help

We have a couple of places with resources : VanillaWiki and the Docs / Addons site. In the addons site are all the available plugins.
There is a Marketplace plugin in there, but I don't think it has the functionality you need.
We were actually talking about being able to sell plugins and if there is a market for it. @businessdad is the topic starter of that discussion (also a developer).

Last but not least : The hosted version (and its services) offers more than the open source version. The services, you can see on their site (vanillaforums.com) and the transitioning should run smoothly. There are 2 particular addons that are on the hosted forums and not available in the open source version.
Do you see the possibility to 'Flag' a post? It's the Flagging plugin. After you've received enough flags (for 'awesome', lol, etc) plus some other things, you will get 'Badges'. Those are not in the open source version.
There are some talks around here to make our own version, but those are in the beginning stages.
Who knows, maybe the Vanilla guys will sell them to the community, while making the exact marketplace you asked for :-)

Hope it helps.

businessdad

@UnderDog put it very well. Vanilla Forums community is growing, and more features are added all the time. I'm working on something similar to the badge plugin and I hope to release it soon.
Another thing that distinguishes Vanilla from vBulletin is the lack of a classic forum view, which is standard in most, if not all, other frameworks. Since it was a requirement for one of my clients, I developed such type of theme, starting from the Traditional Chocolate one you can find in the Addons section. It's now quite different from the original one, though, I plan to release it soon.

As you can see, , there's a lot to do, but also plenty of skilled people who can do it. If you need something urgently, I second UnderDog's suggestion to look for the top contributors and see if they are available for hiring.

Bear with us, Vanilla won't disappoint you.

Anonymoose

A lot of things work out of the box. However, you can hire some of the coders on this forum.

aery

@businessdad In 2.1 which is about to be released you can choose how you want your front page i.e. classic table layout and other ways.

businessdad

@aery Thanks for information. There are two issues with 2.1:
- I can't see when 2.1 will be released. My client wants the website live in the next few days, I can't just wait and design the theme "soon".

• I don't know how many addons won't work anymore with it. From what I've seen, it's not entirely backward compatible.

aery

@businessdad also it will be beta version so your client may not approve it. Better wait for 6 months more to sort all glitches with it.

businessdad

@aery I agree. However, projects can't always wait, therefore I'll play with the cards I have now.