Articles / Blog App: Make It Happen!

Shadowdare

Too many times have we seen posts about embedding, integrating, and unifying Vanilla with bloated blogging software. Current blogging addons modify discussions into blog posts. However, blog posts and discussions are completely different things. I would like the community to offer a truly integrated solution for the use case of forum + blog.

I propose a blogging application built on and with the ideals of the Garden framework. With the feedback of @peregrine and @hgtonight, I have compiled a list of necessary features:

• Article workflow consisting of draft, pending review, and published article states and based on permissions.
• Comments with threading for replies to the top-level comment.
• Guest commenting which is switchable globally with moderation and spam checks.
• File upload for article thumbnail and images.
• Top-level categories and tagging.
• Simple and clean presentation of articles.
• Stability and performance is of importance, and Vanilla 2.1+ is the target for compatibility.

The word "article" stands for content produced by both bloggers and journalists, and is interchangeable with "blog post."

My belief is many Vanilla Forums users will find this application extremely useful and brilliant. This application will expand creativity by providing a whole new content type for Garden + Vanilla.

I respectfully ask for community sponsorship for this proposed blogging application that will be freely distributed on the Vanilla Forums addons site. I will gladly start development on this upon a pledge of $500 or more.

This proposal is not affiliated with the official Vanilla staff.

What do you pledge?

hgtonight

Count me in for $20.

phreak

Great, shadow lots of people will need that.

In for $30, if someone else goes $30 i go $40.

R_J

Completely useless for me, but I'd love to see another full featured application based on the Garden framework which in itself could be used by people who are not even interested in forum software!

I think that could boost the number of Garden users and therefor Garden developers. (Additionally, I can't get enough examples to look at)

I pledge 35$ to get @phreak s additional 10$

lifeisfoo

I could help you with the code (backend), if you accept this as a pledge.

phreak

@hgtonight: 20$
@phreak: 40$
@R_J: 35$
= $95

@lifeisfoo: Code

hgtonight

Put me down at $25 so it stands at an even $100.

We are a fifth of the way there, step up guys and gals!

Linc

Funny timing, this just came up in a recent conversation I was having. Trying to replace WordPress is a bold move. I think a tremendous amount of planning and design is going to be required to pull this off. The data architecture alone will be critical. I also don't see "revision management" in that list which is a whole other can of worms.

My suggestion is to perhaps collaborate on this rather than shuffle small amounts of money around. Developer buy in will be worth far more than all the pledges you could hope to collect.

phreak

@Lincoln: I don't think @Shadowdare is trying to replace WordPress, that is something you came up with.

vrijvlinder

I will pledge $100 I like the idea of a light weight article writing experience.

I don't think the goal here is to replace WP is it? I mean that is not necessary since Vanilla has most of the same capabilities for expansion and variety of contents and layouts.

There is no need for another blogging stand alone , I think adding an articles section to the forum would greatly enhance the forum experience. I never liked the word blog to describe content. It means web log , An article is not a log it is a piece of work, can be artistic literary technical , newsworthy etc. Like in a magazine or a newspaper .

People try hard to incorporate Vanilla to their WP or other because they use the forum platform to create the communities and the WP just holds the articles and content.

By joining the Articles with Forum in one , It not only simplifies content management but also keeps it in the same house and less need to cross connect two separate platforms as has been done so far.

WP is huge they have been at it for a long time. But it is only a place to put up content not much more.

Integrating an articles area for the forum is a brilliant idea.

Linc

You guys are being really literal about the "replace WordPress" part. I mean making something that is attractive enough to convince you it's even "just good enough" to not bother with WordPress or its ilk.

vrijvlinder

Maybe it is not about convincing to leave WP , that will not happen. Many people use it as a template for their website and rarely do the blogging thing. Some just make it a store or shopping cart.

I think what Shadowdare is trying to do is to extract the articles writing aspect of a worpress page not a wordpress blog post page.

A blog post can contain one single word or an image or a dot. An article is a more substantial piece of writing. With more content per article.

If people find it convenient they will decide to leave WP or whatever. But I don't think that is necessary. I think articles is a great idea to expand Vanilla a bit more.

Linc

This is hair-splitting.

vrijvlinder

hmmm yea ok if you say so .... but just for reference :

phreak

@Lincoln: It's not about splitting hairs. I think you shouldn't kill the enthusiasm in the OS community about a probable new application by prejudging it before 10 comments have even been written in the discussion. Community-sponsorship is something that is still a young and experimental field in various OS software forums, so give it space rather then consider it "do it another way".

I think it's a good idea, so do others and @Shadowdare and @vrijvlinder also lined out why.

Linc

@phreak The implication from my comment was that I'd been thinking along similar lines, not that it shouldn't be done. I'm suggesting a strategy that is more likely to succeed when undertaking a large development project: recruiting help.

I've had about enough of you trolling me.

vrijvlinder

@Lincoln

I don't think you were killing the enthusiasm at all, you are pointing out the potential difficulties of such an undertaking . View is valid and realistic.

More heads are always better than one and it is encouraging that you post input here considering your level of expertise . And it is appreciated

Kasper

I'd be more than happy to donate some person-hours towards UI design and front-end development.

Shadowdare

This application will bring more to the table than what current blogging addons provide, and it will be clean and simple. Other developers and I have been planning this application for some time and have reviewed different ways to go about creating articles with the Garden framework.

It would be difficult for an addon to replace a dedicated publishing platform such as WordPress in the beginning, and complex features that aren't necessary to create and have articles alongside your Vanilla forums from the start can be added later on. This will give users some time to see what features they require in an application like this.

We are at $200 and a fourth of the way there! Thanks so much for the support and keep it up, everybody!

hgtonight

@Shadowdare said:
We are at $200 and 40% the way there!

FTFY

Shadowdare

@hgtonight said:
FTFY

Thanks! It was late and I noticed the typo a couple hours later.