Will Vanilla suit me?
Srggamer
HardCore Gamer ✭✭✭
Hello, guys. I love vanilla forums and most of you know so. But I have come to a stop in planing my future website. I am wanting to attract a huge community of game players, where people shall talk, socialize and post cool features about the game. Vanilla is like no other forum engine I have ever seen, with its easy to use theme modifications and everything else, from plugins to tools. My simple yet interesting question is would me using vanilla (shall never stop I hope) be better then moving to a payed / or free forum? Examples such as IP Board / Xenforo / PhpBB / MyBB / and others.
I am planing to have a community with at least 1000 members talking daily. What would be your thoughts be? What would you do and what would you do?
Vanilla forum is the only one I went further into modification, no other forum I have done that to.
Comments
I think you need to ask other Vanilla gaming forum users, ask @Shadowdare the best way to find out is by asking other gamer forum owners who have switched from the other forum software to this one.
I guarantee though that this software is by far the most user-friendly I have tried. But ultimately it is you who needs to decide what is best for your community.
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Yes I agree, I love this software, Yes I have talked with @shadowdare his website is cool. I might as well do some more research but the best Lesson is a persons opinion.
@Srggamer: I'm sure you've come across penny-arcade, just in case not i'll post it here, as it might be inspiring for your project: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/
No, sadly I have never seen this website, and now I am overwhelmed I think If I put my self on a task and follow it vanilla forums may be even better then others. Thanks once again.
Unfortunately Penny Arcade, by using Vanilla and the cockeyed mobile setup, fail to realise that iPad owners do not want a mobile version of their site( by default ). So much so, clicking 'full site' in the footer of their mobile theme, has no effect and always shows mobile version.
Another unfortunate ASSet of vanilla not to cope with different browsers, and forcing people to view in modes they dont really want.
Either that or poorly handled by the guys over at Penny Arcade.. Either way bloody annoying.
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@422: I agree. That fact drives a lot of users away form a plattform.
@422 thank you for this.
@422, we do have the full site version for all the tablets we know of. I am looking at penny arcade on my ipad right now. What tablet are you on?
Like any platform, vanilla will have it's pros and cons for your web deployment. I run 2 popular automotive forums on vBulletin and am fine with them and how they are. Will I change them? No. Why? The $ is already invested and it works fine.
My latest project, BBS Forum is more of a small market / niche type of thing and was a great way to experiment with a new to me platform and see how I like it. So I'll give you an honest take on it.
Vanilla lacks one thing and one thing only. A more active "modding" community. That is the biggest downer for someone coming from vB or the "land of the mods" where there are a million different things you can do to customize your site. For an old C++ hack like me, I get by. But the lack of mods does take away from my ability to make my site as robust as maybe I would like.
And if a less active mod community is my big gripe, I've found a platform to work on and learn more about. I think vanilla gives you endless options for the direction you can go. Self-standing or embedded you can really get a killer customized solution up in no time.
If you already know you have 1k active users coming though, I would imagine you have a detailed business plan already as that's a large overnight community to prepare for
Tested penny arcade on iPad , iPad2 and iPad 3 ( we are Apple fanatics ) and each time, it defaults to mobile which I suppose is fine , but the link in the footer ( view full site ) or whatever , has no affect whatsoever. My initial guess was a cookie issue.
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I used a user agent to switch between mobile and full and it works using iPad user agent. My iPhone however gets the full theme not the mobile hmmm....on the penny arcade site.
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I used MyBB before Vanilla and it worked fine, but down the road I was looking into other forum systems. On one of @Lincoln's sites, he was converting his forum from vBulletin to Vanilla, so I started looking into Vanilla. My first impression was that Vanilla is light, fast, and has great community features such as the profile activity feed.
One thing that I like is how new discussions look to users on the front page, instead of having a list of categories to click on by default. This helps users notice more discussions and get more involved. A different way of developing plugins and themes for Vanilla is also what caught my attention. I also liked how the themes are table-less.
For a gaming community, Vanilla can work fantastically. Like some of the others have said, there are ups and downs to all forum systems and it's up to you to decide which one to use. If you have any specific questions on how Vanilla would suit a gaming community, feel free to post them.
Add Pages to Vanilla with the Basic Pages app
not for long lol but I am happy to say that my themes seem to convert up nicely with relatively few adjustments....so far and for someone as inept as I am in comparison to all of you, it says a lot about the user friendliness of this remarkable software. If I can get it to work then anyone can. That is great for everyone
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