Business vs. Community (open-source) Vanilla

idlechatter

Hi there,

I came here because I was looking for a new forum software and was inspired by what Plex use - Vanilla. However, they are using the business edition and it looks and feels completely and utterly different from this forum here, which seems to be using the open source edition.

Can someone give me a run down about the differences (besides the obvious, like cloud hosted, support etc.), so more from a feature perspective? Would it be possible to get something that feels and acts like the Plex forums using the open source edition?

I would go with the business edition in a hear beat, but there is no way our community (a hobby community) is able to shell out the kind of money they are asking.

Thanks

R_J

This forum is also hosted by Vanilla and is based on the same software. It has another theme and some other plugins.

You would be able to have a forum which looks like the Plex forum with open source Vanilla and the Bootstrap theme.
There are some functionalities provided by a plugin called "Reactions" which is not available for the open source version. But there is a great, free alternative: search for the YAGA application.

With those you would be very close to what I could see the Plex forum offers.

If you are willing to do a little extra work, you should go for a virtual server instead of a shared hosted webspace. Use PHP7 and memcached and your forum should have quite a good performance!

Linc

"looks and feels completely and utterly different" is what Vanilla does best.

idlechatter

Thanks guys, very helpful. I am going to check out installing the open source edition.