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Vanilla Forums and WordPress

brilangbrilang New
in General Banter

I currently manage a website that is running WordPress. I need to add forums. Is there a "best practices" document somewhere for installing Vanilla alongside WordPress? I've found a WordPress plugin, but haven't stumbled on a "how to" for getting them both working together. Maybe I'm not looking in the right place? Any help would be appreciated.

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Comments

  • vrijvlindervrijvlinder MVP
    edited February 2016

    That depends , it is recommended to set up your forum as a stand alone forum and try to make the theme match your Wordpress site so it looks fluid going from one place to another then add a link to the forum in your WP site.

    If you just want to use the comments plugin only, which to me is not as useful but some people like using it.

    To get them to work together ... if you mean single sign on , there is that available with several plugins.

    You can also embed your forum and there are several ways of doing that too. But embedding is not as recommended due to problems that may arise so it is a bit trickier to get it going.

    ❌ ✊ ♥. ¸. ••. ¸♥¸. ••. ¸♥ ✊ ❌

  • AaronWebsteyAaronWebstey ✭✭✭

    Recommendation: don't bother with Wordpress SSO unless you really need to.

  • AdrianAdrian MVP

    @brilang you can try:

    How to use Vanilla Forums with WordPress

  • brilangbrilang New

    I need to add a forums module - it doesn't need to integrate to WordPress (although that would be nice), it doesn't need to be styled the same (although that would also be nice).

    I guess what I'm really after is info on how to install it when WordPress is installed at the site root. Obviously, Vanilla cannot exist in the same location, so that leaves a subdirectory, or a subdomain.

    @Adrian Thanks. I'll give that a look.

  • whu606whu606 MVP

    @brilang

    You can install Vanilla in a sub-directory; you would just need to alter the .htaccess or nginx conf file to show that.

  • brilangbrilang New

    @whu606 So I will have to alter the root .htaccess file? Or the .htaccess in the forums (Vanilla) directory? Is this documented somewhere?

  • whu606whu606 MVP
    edited February 2016

    @brilang

    Yes, the .htaccess that is in the Vanilla folder.

    In the .htaccess file it explains:

       # Certain hosts may require the following line.
   # If vanilla is in a subfolder then you need to specify it after the /.
   # (ex. You put Vanilla in /forum so change the next line to: RewriteBase /forum)

 # RewriteBase /

    So your .htaccess would include

    RewriteBase /nameofyourvanillasubfolder
  • brilangbrilang New

    Thank you. @whu606

  • LincLinc Admin
    edited February 2016

    It's actually possible to run them both from the root directory, but you need to be a level 2 htaccess wizard to do it. :) Basically you have to pick one or the other to whitelist to selectively send traffic to certain URLs to one and let the other handle everything else. Personally, I send /posts (or whatever root you use for posts) to WordPress and let everything else go to Vanilla. Since the WordPress admin area is all via a different script than index.php, this works out pretty well. (To accomplish this, I physically put my WordPress in a subfolder, but it works as if it were in root).

  • PFAFFPFAFF ✭

    It's a pain in the ass. I'm currently doing it right now and all sorts of headaches come of it. I'd recommend doing as others have suggested and keep WP and Vanilla as separate things and just style the forum to match the rest of your site.

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