Good Bye

Holy

I’ve used vanilla forum for about 2 months on my site and have decided that I really do not like vanilla forum. There are many different reasons why I don’t like vanilla. One reasons being that Admin tasks that would normally require a single click, require more then one. Such as deleting posts, it should be obviously how to delete a post. Instead vanilla requires you to hide the post then go into the setting to delete them. That’s just annoying. The design of vanilla is unique, but it’s extremely confusing my guests. Adjustment is mediocre for each new guest, but I believe it often times scares new users away. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to shoot down vanilla but it still needs a lot of advancement. So this is my last post, and thanks for a different internet community experience. After next week I’m going back to phpbb. ~Holy~

Minisweeper

Interesting. Its a shame to lose users and particularly so soon before the release of v1 but atleast you have your reasons. I cant say i entirely agree with them - but i do acknowledge it is a learning curve when moving from a lot of the other forums out there. Thanks for the respectful comments at very least.

Bergamot

Vanilla is not a PHPBB replacement. It's a PHPBB alternative.

If you need a forum that behaves exactly like "X", you're probably better off using X itself rather than ripping out half of Vanilla and essentially writing your own forum.

ercatli

I'm a new user (never tried to run another forum) but I really like Vanilla, and I love this forum. But I must confess that I chose it for my site mostly because I thought it looked really cool. Somehow other forums I've visited look too regimented, with everything appearing in hard rectangles, and strong lines and colours separating everything. Vanilla looks understated and friendly. But to improve my understanding, can any of you techo dudes tell me why you think Vanilla is technically better please? (So I can tell others.) I gather it takes up less space, but the Lussumo documentation says that it's a new type of forum, and I reckon there must be some good things that I just don't appreciate because I have so little experience. Thanks

Krak

Here comes a can of worms....

Jazzman

Well.. normally I don't like forums :P But the way Vanilla is programmed is just so beautiful, that I decided to create some forums just so I could use it :P I agree with the hide-thingy. A simple delete button would suffice. I know Vanilla is different from your standard forums, and people will have to get used to it. But once you know how it works, it works like a charm... I think it's much easier to understand than phpBB with it's overkill-options. "Less is more" also applies to forum software you know

Bergamot

Comments are hidden, rather than deleted, because it's nice to be able to resurrect them when needed.

I do agree that it would be nice if the System Cleanup extension added a "delete" button to hidden posts, but it's hardly a deal breaker. 95% of your users (the non-mods) won't even know the hidden comment is there.

Bergamot

But to improve my understanding, can any of you techo dudes tell me why you think Vanilla is technically better please?

1. phpBB's default theme outputs a mess of nested tables (I count three-deep on that page), while Vanilla's default theme outputs clean, semantic HTML.

2. In addition to the bandwidth taken up by all that crufty markup, phpBB uses lots of GIFs, each potentially having to be downloaded at every page load.

3. Vanilla's focus on discussions allows people to view all recent threads on one page, saving the trouble of clicking back and forth through categories. Also, the non-heirarchial category structure is easier to understand.

Kosmo

Forums in general are a waste of good name, communities could easily be built more information vice, forums generate too much inane banter and what I call "less of a subject" what that means is that it makes people lazy, less articulate and down right annoying. If there were somesort of article/commenting system in place, it would reduce the amount of "just wanted to say poop" threads and would generate actual information considering the topic. Slashdot is a good example of something vaguely similar, but as many of you know "class /. has_many :retards" so it wouldn't work what ever kind of system it was running on. While I like the way Vanilla and many other forums are very similar to chats, it just proves that the empty space between an article/commenting system and internet chat is just a waste of good ideas. As a community tool, just a forum doesn't cut it, people are close to anonymous and topics are mainly inane banter. I have cut alot of my forum habit because of that, Lussumo is one of the last places I visit anymore and that is thanks to the community here.

billyboy

I'm no techno dude, I know nothing about ajax or PHP. But I do know (x)html and CSS. One look at the source code Vanilla puts out compared to other forum scripts was enough to convince me to use it. There's just no comparison between bloated old fashioned nested table layouts - I came across one that relied on frames - and modern semantically correct code. I've been shoppping around for a forum script for the last little while and have tested out a few - none I was really happy with until now. I've only had Vanilla installed for a day, but so far I'm loving it. I like the fact the basic script is bare bones and I can pick and choose exactly what add ons I want to install. I like that the code is clean and simple. I like that there's one cantral CSS file for the main script as opossed some that contain three or four as well as inline styles or additional code in the head. Customizing should be a breeze. Kosmo if you think forums are nothing but inane banter you're hanging out in the wrong places. There's many forums I'm a member of that contain intellegent, relevant discussions pertaining to their topics.

adrian.

why would you ever choose phpbb?

punbb, vanilla and vbulletin negate it's existence

ADM

If you don't like vanilla then please whatever you do don't go to phpbb. As Navitron said there are other forums out there that are so much better.

If you can afford it then get vBulletin.. if not get punbb, that's a really great simplistic forum.

bugsmi0

[someone said] Comments are hidden, rather than deleted, because it's nice to be able to resurrect them when needed [end quote]
--> note the use of [quote] in place of a real button, doh! that's because there is no quote button, do you know where the quote button is ? I don't oh that is against our forum religion sorry

this is a common mindset among Vanilla worshipers, nice to resurrect ? says who ? I don't want them resurrected but dead dead dead lol

I was merely illustrating a point ;-)

some of the common tools found on standard forum reallly should be part of Vanilla, I can see the need to throw out smilies they do take away from the discussion, as I mentioned in another post, Vanilla is centered around discussion and you can still have this while still adding some familiar tools buttons to make the experience good for users, if making the experience better for users is not the focus then you should give up creating forum software altogether.

Some Vanillaism belief states you should do away with all that crap but how can tools designed to make your dicussion better and more productive be labeled as crap that's just rubbish if you ask me, there are many great tools in forum software that make using it and managing it very doable its not all bad,

like it or not Vanilla is a forum ok I prefer to call it a discussion board, it should have the standard bells and whistles that every forum uses, is this selling out no of course not, some hard core Vanilla followers got it in their mind that they are special they aren't, you can just as easily re-design your standard forum to appear like Vanilla fresh but it would take some major work and if you really want to make it special you would have to redsign it all in CSS.

Vanilla is designed using CSS that alone is worth its weight, its not bulky not codey and its centered around discussion not community stats, mods and other creepycrawlers gadgets.

I think what would turn a user off of Vanilla is simply the lack of familiar (standard) buttons
it would be better if the user had more power to clean up their own posts and wasted spaces of crap, once a month clean your crappy posts day extension,

people here bring up good points, discussion is good no matter what the banter what do you think a virtual community is real ? its not sorry to have to be the one to tell you its not and never will be a real community so bust that myth right out the door, now lets make our virual banter as pleasnt as possible

let us all do the Vanilla shuffle and pray for more extensions ;-) Ah@Vanilla

LoOkOuT

stream of consciousness?

ithcy

its not sorry to have to be the one to tell you its not and never will be a real community

speak for yourself, ok?

Toivo

or he understands english just below beginners level (you know, english is just a language that minority of people on the earth speak) "this is a common mindset among Vanilla worshipers, nice to resurrect ? says who ? I don't want them resurrected but dead dead dead lol" hide is good if someone posts something that is not appropriate to your forum but wants to "recall" the text. so you could just copypaste and email him. or you will allow many people to mod and there's some flame war with lots of posts hidden. the owner, you, could read it and make some sense of it. but it has some downsides. if you are logged in as admin you will always see these and thats annoying. some other extension could just make these grey

ithcy

also: if you don't like the way hide works, write your own delete extension and shut up about it already. don't tell us we are 'worshippers' who 'think we are special' as though we are all of the same mindset. it's just software; there's no 'worshipping' going on here.

bugsmi0

i was only pointing out the obvious ;-) denial is the first step towards recovery

someone has to point these things out otherwise nothing can grow, its good we know how others feel about Vanilla so we can look towards making it better, I like it for the most part even with the lack of famliar tools, but many will not and its a shame all on the count of not having the basics a forum should have but that's that', can I get an Ah@Vanilla lol

Dinoboff

@ Toivo: Admins doesn't have to see hidden post, they can turn it on and off in "account > Forum preferences"

ercatli

"its not and never will be a real community" Sure, we don't (most of us anyway) actually meet each other face to face, so it's not a community in that sense. But this Lussumo community is unique in my small experience. You guys (non gender specific term!) out there are funny, helpful, committed, generous and only very occasionally rude. I keep coming back even when I don't have any Vanilla questions, because it's fun. If you don't see the value and uniqueness of this, I could "recommend" a few forums where people treat others like crap and there's more a sense of emnity than community. Keeping rockin' Lussumo! On another topic, has anyone ever put together a table showing the basic characteristics of different forum software so people can compare - might help people like Holy, who started this thread, make up his/her mind without a lot of pain of changing and then changing again?

bugsmi0

nobody ever said anything about the Lussumo Community, I agree Lussumo rocks and is a very open minded community, one of the best i might add, buys everyone a round of beer ;-)

the pattern that keeps repeating here (i've noticed) is Vanilla doesn't do that, Vanilla isn't that kind of software, it throws people off, why can't Vanilla be more familiar like, is it so hard to add a friken delete button or any other basic standard item, it is a forum software without the frills ok got that, its wonderful but when you are missing basic things like that most people would expect it gets people confused, I tossed and turned myself deciding weather to use Vanilla or not, its missing so many basic things I want to scream sometime but the big picture is that its a growing application that really has a lot going for itself so I be in it for the long haul.

I also believe that respect is due to anyone who is willing to give up their current forum software to use Vanilla, takes a lot of courage and balls and we should highly respect people who make that sacrifice for the greater good.