Need suggestions to develop new social forums!
AbhinavG
New
I had an idea from long time , about building a social knowledge sharing platform and was searching and reviewing a number of already built and community driven solutions. The most appealing was Vanilla Forums , as it is open Source and Free as well as , is backed by a large no. of supportive developers. I would be currently working on Free/OpenSource version.
My concerns are:
- Is Vanilla secure? I mean as it is fairly new as compared to other forum solutions , and that too have reported being hacked by numerous persons.
- How many users does it can accomodate? Will it break if there are a lot of users accessing the website simultaneously? Is there a upper limit?
- Which version should i start working on , as i saw a 2.0.x and 2.1b2 and a few more others. Also i need to have a badges and gamification plugin , so i think it is only possible in 2.1+ versions(YAGA plugin). But they are in beta right now! Am really confused on this one
- What languages(web) do we need to know , to develop it further? We already have some members knowing HTML5+CSS3+JS+PHP5.x+MySQL. Do we need anything else to create our own UI for website and some plugins like Points system or Rank system?
- Some plugins that we need are already present , like the Q/A plugin in the community section addons. Will it be supported in next versions of Vanilla that are currently in beta or alpha?
- What should be requirements for my hosting server?
Thanks a lot 
Best Answers
-
whu606
MVP
Welcome to the community.
For questions 1 and 2, you really need to answer question 6, and that will be determined by your anticipated use. No one else can really answer that for you.
Hacking has nothing to do with the software, and everything to do with your server security.
Vanilla will scale up to very large user numbers if it is running on the right server(s).
If you are expecting very high usage volumes, then you may want to look at the hosted Vanilla solutions at VanillaForums.com
For production sites, start with the latest production ready release, which is 2.0.18.10
If you want to take part in beta testing, and are prepared to report issues on Github, then you might go to 2.1b2, but that is not released or recommended for production sites.
Vanilla is written in PHP.
11 -
whu606
MVP
Sorry, no idea about dates.
The issue is primarily about stability.
The current Vanilla release is 'guaranteed' to be stable.2.1b2 is in use by a number of Beta testers (and other users) and seems to be working fine, but there is no guarantee.
If you want guarantees, go with the stable release.
If you are prepared for a bit of effort, and to contribute to Beta testing, you could go with 2.1b2.
7
Answers
@AbhinavG
Welcome to the community.
For questions 1 and 2, you really need to answer question 6, and that will be determined by your anticipated use. No one else can really answer that for you.
Hacking has nothing to do with the software, and everything to do with your server security.
Vanilla will scale up to very large user numbers if it is running on the right server(s).
If you are expecting very high usage volumes, then you may want to look at the hosted Vanilla solutions at VanillaForums.com
For production sites, start with the latest production ready release, which is 2.0.18.10
If you want to take part in beta testing, and are prepared to report issues on Github, then you might go to 2.1b2, but that is not released or recommended for production sites.
Vanilla is written in PHP.
@whu606 , but there are some plugins that are only supported by 2.1b2 like YAGA(that i definitely need). So should i wait for it to get released? Any idea about the dates..
@AbhinavG
Sorry, no idea about dates.
The issue is primarily about stability.
The current Vanilla release is 'guaranteed' to be stable.2.1b2 is in use by a number of Beta testers (and other users) and seems to be working fine, but there is no guarantee.
If you want guarantees, go with the stable release.
If you are prepared for a bit of effort, and to contribute to Beta testing, you could go with 2.1b2.
I just want to chime in that there are no guarantees made by Vanilla Inc. as to the suitability of this software for any purposes. Please read and understand the license terms to understand what you can do and what to expect from Vanilla Inc.
I am not trying to strike fear into your heart about using Vanilla. I find Vanilla to be rock solid that provides an awesome framework that is a pleasure to develop atop. @whu606 is spot on. 2.0.18.10 is considered stable and considered suitable for production use.
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Cheers @hgtonight
I was being a bit loose with 'guarantee'!
@hgtonight , actually i knew that was an informal representation of 'guarantee'