Vanilla as a Questions and Answers (Q&A) site wide?

AristaP

Hi,

I would like to use the Open version of Vanilla as a Questions and Answers (Q&A) site.

I'm already aware of the Q&A addon but I have some questions, please.

1. It looks like users may designate a discussion as a Question, but I would like to have all discussions as a Questions by default. Is that possible?
2. Is there any option, button or link to list or sort the Questions by Recent and/or Unanswered?
3. Last, but not least, I really like the way the script Question2Answer displays colors to differentiate the Questions: Red, for no answers. Blue, for answers. And Green, for a Question with answer marked as Best Answer.

And just in case you wonder why, I prefer Vanilla for a number of reasons: I already have a site running it, the product is much more advanced and mature, and the community here is bigger. 🙂

I'm attaching a screenshot. Thanks in advance for your help.

donshakespeare

1. Yes. Go to example.com/vanilla/settings/categories to edit a category and you will see an option to enable only QnA (if the plugin is enabled)

2. Yes. You mean to filter (not sort). Go to example.com/discussions and example.com/unanswered . And and an infinite more with the FilterDiscussion plugin.

3. Yes. If you are asking if you can colour-code your question/answer response labels. Absolutely!

And here is my own two-cent first-hand experience on the matter (I have used both platforms): Although Q2A is primarily a QnA software, Vanilla can be used as such very comfortably.

As for creating themes and writing plugins, you will find Vanilla less likely to send you to the ER.

Cheers.

charrondev

It's definitely very common in my experience to see sites theme accepted answers and the like. For example the Qualtrics community themes accepted answers to stand out a bit more than the rest of the comments.

donshakespeare

// public_html/plugins/QnA/class.qna.plugin.php

public function base_beforeDiscussionMeta_handler($sender, $args) {
//...contents
}

If you open the above file you will find nice things.

You can place the contents of the function in your themehook or plugin.

Then you can play with say, placing a tooltip for every tag; change the wording; alter it so that everyone knows an answer is pending not just the person who asked it

Cheers

AristaP

Awesome!

Thanks a lot! :)

say_hello

really awesome...

i really like vanillaforums alot - keep up the great project - it rocks