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Some questions I have on using Vanilla.

EvanEvan New
edited August 2006 in Vanilla 1.0 Help
Is there any way to put in a WYSIWYG above where the comments are? If I am installing this, I need to make it easy for persons to bold, italicise, etc. Is there an add-on?

Is there any way to have the icon, which shows with every post you make, larger than the 32*32 pixels it is now? I'd like to make it around 100 or so.

How is Vanilla in terms of bandwidth? No other way to really explain this, heh.

When I was on the TechTV forums, you could rate posts, is there a way to enable this, or is there an add-on or do I have to request it? Here is an example of what I mean. You think this is a good idea or what?
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Finally, for now, is there a way to add more information at the top of posts, like here for example?
Image Hosted by ImageShack.us
I guess what I want is for the area where posters' information is, can it be rounded and have more information, say, like a field under the poster's name where they can have some text of their choice? Currently, I see you can in fact do that here, but it shows up in your profile, I want it for each post.

I think that is all for now :)

Edit:: Oh, and a list of users online at the bottom, that's something I think I need as well.

Comments

  • MinisweeperMinisweeper New
    Will you please take a hike to the addons directory, have a good look through, then come back and ask any questions you still have? I'd suggest you look up things such as the BBInsertBar, Account Pictures, Vote, and Who's Online. Vanilla is fine for bandwidth (until you add all this junk, then it goes down hill. It's probably still better than most things though). Your final request (users information) isnt currently possible to my knowledge but it's possible. Secondly, is there any particular reason you're not using one of the million other forum systems out there which has all this junk (no offence to the extension authors in question, your work is excellent) as standard?
  • Thomas HeathThomas Heath
    @mini: I think a lot of people prefer to choose just which features they want - even if that means installing tonnes of add-ons. Personally I'm more annoyed by having a feature I didn't ask for, than I am by missing a feature I'd like to have. Does what I try to say make sense?
  • MinisweeperMinisweeper New
    It does make sense, yeah. And obviously as many people as possible want to use vanilla cause it's the most awesome thing in the whole world. But i just kinda think it defeats the point when people don't think the vanilla way :D
  • EvanEvan New
    I have been in the addons directory, haven't found what I wanted, hence the reason I'm here asking. Sorry if I did not knowto type in "BBInsertBar" by sheer luck.

    I'm looking at the different options available for discussion forums, and believe it or not, the default configuration of things don't appeal to everyone, so it is generally accepted that changes can be made, and considering there is an add-on directory, I'd say Vanilla would be included in the projects that support this.
  • MinisweeperMinisweeper New
    Well i would have thought you could have used 'rate' to find the vote extension (which for some reason will give you the bbinsert bar too), 'online' to find who's online, and 'icon' to find the account pictures extension. The bbinsertbar was a little trickier admittedly. Not sure why there arent a few more tags on there.
  • MarkMark Vanilla Staff
    I personally just browse through every single page of the add-ons repos to find things. I'm starting to lose faith in tags as a useful way of searching through things.
  • MinisweeperMinisweeper New
    There's 11 pages there!!!
  • davehdaveh
    Mark, I agree with your comment on tags. If the search feature searches the content of discussions/comments anyway then there's no point in additional tags that aren't already covered in the text. Of course, the commenter could create it quite easilly just by adding it to the end (or top) of their posts... [Tags: Sex, Drugs, Rock, Roll] ;-)
  • DinoboffDinoboff
    edited August 2006
    There is no WYSIWYG in vanilla. But I don't think it would be hard to integrate. You can also use BBInsertBar 0.1.5 or Quicktags 0.5
  • EvanEvan New
    The reason I ask is because obviously not everyone is going to know how to do the basic HTML to insert images, hyperlink, etc. I'd like to allow for anyone to be able to do what they want in terms of posting information. I don't think the add-ons I saw do exactly what I was describing, it seems to me that the way the add-ons page is, it doesn't give me, personally, a good idea of some of the functions that a certain add-on has.

    I also prefer asking questions because there may be more than one add-on that does the same thing and asking gives a more personal experience as some people may have better luck with one add-on over the other, etc.

    Is there any specific information in terms of Vanilla and bandwidth use? I really have no idea how much bandwidth may be used with say, 10 people or 100 people on a forum, etc.
  • MinisweeperMinisweeper New
    Well, the forum i host for blizeh is experiencing around 200k hits a month (i think) and using around 3gig of bandwidth. That's probably the best basis to work from since if you have 10 very active users it'l use the same as 100 less active users. I'm working roughly here, but I assume 100 users viewing 10 discussions a day would be c30k hits a month, which should work out around half a gig of bandwidth. Very rough.. How's that?
  • EvanEvan New
    Oh, wow, thanks. The hosting I plan on taking offers 50GB bandwidth, that should be sufficient to run Vanilla and a WP blog together then, thanks.

    It would be nice if I could actually try out some extensions, do you know of any forums where
    http://lussumo.com/addons/?PostBackAction=AddOn&AddOnID=131
    and
    http://lussumo.com/addons/?PostBackAction=AddOn&AddOnID=32
    are in use?

    How come there isn't a vanilla user gallery, a list of v-powered discussion groups? Or am I missing that?
  • MinisweeperMinisweeper New
    50gig should do most things besides run decent porn sites :) There's a 'shameless plug' thread which has a lot of forums and stuff in. Mark has it on his list to setup a playgroun but it's not there yet...
  • EvanEvan New
    Cool, I really am digging Vanilla. Now, I'm going to look in the FAQ etc, but I still like to ask, how would you differentiate whispers from a PM on other forum platforms? If anything, can I disable whispering on my Vanilla forum?
  • MinisweeperMinisweeper New
    Just go into application settings and untick enable whispers. The difference is you can whisper to someone in the middle of a discussion which is useful for on-topic stuff. Or you can whisper a whole discussion for more of a private message type idea.
This discussion has been closed.