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By frankzzsword on
Vanilla is a forum pretty much like drupal's forum but I think with little more features.
It has everything drupal's forum lacks i mean. If this forum comes default with drupal 5, or even a new module for this. I am sure drupal+vanilla might be ruling the web.
you can preview vanilla here
so what do you think bout this? still satisfied with drupal default forums.
Comments
Code size?
Code size?
384 kb zipped 1.1 mb
384 kb zipped
1.1 mb unzipped
Why not just add said
Why not just add said features to Drupal's existing forum?
i would love to see some
i would love to see some additional things added to Drupals forums. unfortunately i dont know how to code at all. yikes
I think not
I'm quite happy with the core forum module as long as it is combined with a few extra modules. We aim for an install profile for Drupal 5 with a forum focus.
The working group is at http://groups.drupal.org/drubb
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now thats a good news, I am
now thats a good news, I am pretty sure I will switch back to drupal's forum as I really like it.
It's more worth it to integrate than to enhance Drupal
Vanilla has a devoted community that focuses on forums exclusively. Drupal will never have a devoted base to something that's so small in comparison.
I've used Drupal's forums quite a bit, and probably the worst thing about them is that they really don't work in a way that makes them very comfortable to use. Vanilla, by comparison, is a very casual forum, far different from the type that Drupal creates. More importantly, it has a gallery of modules that are specifically designed for forums, as opposed to overall sites. Integration would probably be a bit easier than creating a set of modules, but if somebody tries, here're the things that make Vanilla so fun to use:
Community Discussion
Vanilla starts off by showing a list of all recent discussions, not a category view. Unlike a Views module showing new discussions, this one is formatted nicely, including changing colors based on new posts. (This is theming, I know, but since I am not a theme developer, this is something that looks very nice to begin with.) Category discussion can be achieved through a drop-down on the left at any time. No module exists that can do this yet.
Instant posting from anywhere
There's a button on the very top that automatically starts a discussion. From anywhere on the forum. This is much better than Drupal's default Create Content button, and keeps the forum feeling really compact.
Users can decide what's on the left bar
In the settings tab, users can choose what appears on the left. This is excellent for customization, and many of these features aren't available in Drupal. Examples:
Saved Searches
Recently Browsed Discussions (Browsing History)
Recent Disscussions I'm Active In
Whispered Discussions (More on that next)
Whispering
This is Vanilla's big thing, and it's one of the coolest features I've seen on a forum. Rather than private messages, you can whisper any post to anybody else, basically allowing for in-thread messaging. If you make a new thread and whisper it, it's considered a private thread. This lets you read "private messages" in the same places as forums, and it is a much more versatile feature than PMing. Vanilla also adds custom CSS to whispered messages, meaning it's easy to find where you've been conversing. Whispers also appear on the sidebar for quick navigation.
Post from the bottom
This is a smaller feature, but it's still very nice. On the bottom of a thread, a comment box appears with username and password fields (and a whisper field, of course). That way, I don't need to worry about whether or not I'm logged in when I post.
Simpler posts
Is there any way to remove the Subject field on forum posts? It's really not necessary for forums, and it clutters things up.
Nicer profiles
Vanilla's profiles are as minimalist as Drupal's, and they look much nicer, too. Among other things, it lets users quickly add custom profile fields for quick customization. And it doesn't look NEARLY as bulky.
And that's without the various modules that extend it. If you want to try adding all that as Drupal modules, be my guest. Methinks, however, that making an integration would be much easier, and much more feasible.
Some of that not hard
It looks like a nice forum and integration with that would be no worse than any of the other forum integrations out there if someone wants to do it. That said, a lot of that can be done already with Drupal:
Community Discussion - Yeah, a view takes care of this nicely. Sure, you need to know how to theme, but you need to theme the rest of your site, too, unless you're just sticking with a stock one.
Instant posting from anywhere - Drupal already has this. I actually found it annoying and took it out. I prefer having people go to the forum they want to post in first as I think it's confusing otherwise.
Users can decide what's on the left bar - You could do this with blocks, since users can turn those on and off. You'd have to code the individual features, though.
Whispering - Not sure how you'd do this but, honestly, it sounds awful. I don't want private messages mixed in with the forum. What a mess!
Post from the bottom - You can already set it so the comment form is on the bottom. Would take a bit of coding to make it log you in if you aren't already, but wouldn't be terribly hard.
Simpler posts - Why would you want to remove the subject from forum posts? From comments, I understand, and that's easy, but from the posts? That would make for difficult reading if none of the posts had titles.
Nicer profiles - Are you talking user profiles? That's a whole different thing than forums..
Michelle
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My site: http://shellmultimedia.com
Instant Posting - this is
Instant Posting - this is not so nice on Drupal's page. On Vanilla's, it's a very logical extension. You need to really use Vanilla to see some of this - it's much more user-friendly than Drupal tries to be, and is oversimplified to achieve this. And while I want a lot of my site to be complex enough for users, I want a basic forum. It is, after all, the hub of most web sites today.
Blocks - first of all, coding isn't something I'm good at. I don't know where to start with adding a "recent discussions" block, for instance.
The other problem involves theming. Drupal's block layout system isn't that good: it's lumped in with everything else. Vanilla offers a very nice "account setup" page, one that I think Drupal could learn from.
Whispering - you'd have to see how it works. It's actually VERY efficient, and extremely useful. I'm a member of one vanilla-run forum where moderators discuss individual posts to decide if the thread is getting out-of-hand. And when you think about it, private messages are really just forum posts (well, nodes in Drupal) that only a few people can see. GMail has turned its email into conversations, and sites like Facebook followed suit. Why not make PMs into forum threads? This is just a logical extension.
Forum posts- are replies to the original post. Forum slang uses "threads" and "posts," not "nodes" and "comments." So they remove it from the comments, instead.
User profiles - every site uses user profiles. Since I'm good enough to redirect from one profile to another, I was saying that Vanilla's ultrasimple forum profile is a plus to me. Register at the demo forum above, and check it out, or watch the demo videos at GetVanilla.com. Vanilla really makes the small things count: while Drupal does this for most things, I'd much rather have a central forum than a Drupal-managed one.
I personally think this would
I personally think this would be way awesome to have a Module version of Vanilla, all I would really like is sharing of Drupal user accounts, so if someone registers in the Drupal site, they are also registered in your Vanilla Forums.