What add-ons do you use and why?

klip

I would like to start discussion about add-ons you use and why, because there is lot of add-ons to go through all of them and there is no way how to order it by popularity (actually there is nothing like popularity) This discussion might be helpful for new-comers to quickly meet some useful add-ons. so what add-ons do you use and why?

conradslater

I'd just like quickly explain that my forum has about 100 active members(those that post more than 10 posts per day) and a few hundred more the drop by now and then. They are all mainly under 18 and therefore post tons of images, videos and get up to all kind of mischief, so my choices are to keep them happy but also keep the forum secure and safe (or lulz as they call it). There is also an average of 4 new members per day and their needs are little different.

• Account Pictures - so I can have big icons for everyone
  
• Announcement - useful for a quick heads up
  
• Attachments - for those who are too lazy to post html for their images
  
• Category Icons - adds a bit of character
  
• Category Jumper - Only just added it but might keep it
  
• Comment Protection - useful for quickly switching of crazy html
  
• Comment Permalinks - there is a lot of cross referencing and repeat requests
  
• Dclock24 - looks nice
  
• Discussion pages - useful find catching long threads before they get completely out of hand
  
• Duplicate Email Check - a lot of people seem to reapply for membership
  
• Extended Text Formatter - for autolink
  
• Html Formatter - mandatory
  
• IP History - I only just got this but i don't know how I managed without it - this is the BEST security addon ever.
  
• Inline Images - see attachments
  
• JQmedia - the community is for youtube users so this one is likewise mandatory for us
  
• JQuery - only use it for jqmedia
  
• Legends - I change the style quite often so this helps the hard of thinking
  
• Low-Cal Vanilla - speed things up a bit
  
• MarkAllRead - very useful for me as mod
  
• MassMailer - for spamming everyone
  
• ModTools - merge tool used most
  
• New Discussions - surprisingly useful
  
• Notify - I'm sure some of my members use it
  
• Offline - but than mary
  
• Participated Threads - I discovered this one in this actual forum so thought it would be useful
  
• Preview Post - should be base
  
• Private Messages - trying it out, opinions are mixed but I quite like it
  
• Quotations - used too much by my members
  
• RSS2 Feed - used so I can display what going on in the forum on the front page of my site
  
• Role History - adds a bit more stuff to profile pages and useful for spotting troublemakers
  
• Signatures - I wish there was a size limit for images
  
• Text Mode Switch - useful for dial up users
  
• Unanswered Discussions - should use it more
  
• Vanillazilla - so I'm on some chart somewhere
  
• Whisper Notification - people forget to switch it on
  
• Who's Online - good for keeping an eye on traffic
  

also sometimes use

• User Tasks - for building against troublemakers
  
• Sidepanel Image Link
  
• Sidepanel Rotator - both of these are great for add a bit of colour and busyness
  
• Quick Whisper - private messages addon made this defunked
  
• Poll - had to switch off because new members were getting flooded with notifications for polls they couldn't even vote in!
  
• Members Page - i used tolove this but now I've over 1000 members the thing took forever to load
  
• CommentAuthorInfo - I like it but it makes a bit of a mess
  
• Applicant Email Verification - currently using the 'holding area' model for account activation
  

robbo

Good idea for a discussion. I also wish the add-on repository had ratings and popularity to help guide us towards the best and most stable add-ons. So far these are the ones I've decided to use:

• User Convenience:
• CategoryJumper - Convenience for users
• AccountPictures - because everybody loves pictures
• VanillaIcons - Because everybody loves smilies
• BBInsertBar + BBCodeParser - Seems like a good combo for BB Code usage (I'm migrating from phpBB)
• Quotations - Wanted to preserve the "Quote" functionality of the old phpBB world.
• CommentLinks - Nice permalink courtesyt
• AddCommentBox - Convenience for users
• Panel Lists - Nice additions for users
• Formatting:
• David - Keeps the front discussion page clean as the old boards have tons of stickies in different categories
• Nuggets - Great utility add-on. Using to whore up Vanilla to look like the rest of my site.
• SubCategories - Nice, easy way to have nested categories. Hacked it a bit to list sub-categories under the top category.
• Administrator Tools:
• InviteFriends + PredefinedAttributes - Long wanted the the ability to refer friends and track who referred hwo. Using PredefinedAttributes to ask new registrants to fill in the friend referral. I know there is a plug-in called InvitationOnly that does this more seamlessly, but I didn't want to limit new registrants to ONLY those referred.
• DuplicateEmailCheck - just good quality control on registrations
• UserTasks - Helpful for administering users
• AddMember - Nice admin convenience,sadly needed for some people who can't figure out how to register
• SimpleCache - For performance
• Turning Vanilla into the commenting system for my custom CMS:
• FeedPublisher - RSS feeds - essential to my scheme to make Vanilla double up as the in-story commenting system for my site's custom CMS
• Janine - Brilliant work by squirrel, altough I've hacked it up quite a bit to allow direct posting from my custom CMS to the Vanilla boards.