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Vanilla Forums as a news site?

staion86staion86 New
in General Banter

First of, hello Vanilla users and happy new year! I really like this software, how it works and looks. My question is, like the title says: would it be possible to manage a news website with Vanilla all by its self? I've worked with Drupal, Wordpress and many others, but I feel like none worked as I wanted to. I mean, I want a news website, but also to have something social networking in it. I want to create something new, although these days is very hard to bring something new.

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Comments

  • x00x00 MVP

    I don't see why not.

    There is also the Articles app

    https://open.vanillaforums.com/addon/articles-application

    It hasn't been actively developed, recently. So I don't know if is 2.3 compatible.

    grep is your friend.

  • whu606whu606 MVP

    @staion86

    Welcome to the community.

    tbh, your question is a bit too vague to be able to answer with any certainty.

    It is very easy to customise Vanilla to match the theme of your site.

    You might look at the articles application to see if that might add the sort of functionality you are looking for:

    https://open.vanillaforums.com/addon/articles-application

    I would suggest installing a local copy of Vanilla; it's a matter of a few moments, and then you can experiment freely.

  • staion86staion86 New

    thank you guys for the replies! I don't really want to modify anything to be able to use Vanilla as a news website. I mean, I could post discussions as a news article, right? The part I'm interested in is if Vanilla has great SEO to make the discussions(articles) reachable to the users.

  • whu606whu606 MVP
    edited January 2017

    @staion86

    Not for nothing, but if that was your question why didn't you ask it at the start?

    Vanilla is, afaIk, highly SEO friendly, but that won't make any difference if your content isn't.

    Our site is on the first page of Google for 'west ham forum' and I haven't done anything beyond adding a site description in the Dashboard.

    It ranks that highly because of the users and content, not any tricks I've found to boost SE ranking.

  • staion86staion86 New

    ok, got it. But now I'm facing another problem which might be appropriate on the support section...I can't seem to install vanilla on my shared host.

  • whu606whu606 MVP
    edited January 2017

    @staion86

    'Can't seem to install' isn't really anything anyone can help with as it is impossibly vague.

    If you want help with installing Vanilla

    1. start a new discussion

    2. say what host and what setup you are trying to install on (server OS, php and mysql versions etc.)

    3. in your post be as clear as you can be about how far you got and what the issue was that stopped you

    4. DON'T post that you get the 'something has gone wrong message' (if it happens). Search the forum and make the required change in config.php to get the detailed error, and then post that.

  • staion86staion86 New

    understood, thank you!

  • misantropistmisantropist New

    Vanilla looks like a social network.
    But I did not like SEO.

    I have my WordPress news site. With only 20 articles and 100 visitors per day.

    With my vanilla forum 1200 content only 30 visitors per day.

    But
    I love vanilla forum more.
    My favorite script.
    I will try to find and solve the problem.

  • vrijvlindervrijvlinder MVP

    Vanilla Is a community Network that you create and operate. This software is not responsible for failed communities due to low traffic or lack of content relevant.

    This is Not Facebook. It is Facebook on steroids and testosterone..... If you can't make a powerful community, it is not the fault of this software. it is your fault for not knowing how to grow your community.

    I get tired of reading this sort of thing because you can't blame software for your own incompetence or ignorance.

    You can't blame software for your lack of relevant content, you can't blame it for your lack of mustering users.

    Facebook started out as a way for geeks to share info. Turned out that they found out what info people like to share and BOOM !

    You can turn your forum into facebook too but YOU must work hard at it. It takes 5 years for a website to be considered not dead and profitable. Same as a newly formed Band. It is not easy but software that is free makes it possible.

    Stop griping and do something with what you were given for free.. Your intelligence ...

    ❌ ✊ ♥. ¸. ••. ¸♥¸. ••. ¸♥ ✊ ❌

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