Vanilla Is a Tasty Discussion Forum CMS

by Lisa Hoover - Jul. 02, 2009Comments (3)

Vanilla

Discussion forums may seem antiquated in a world of 140-character conversations but they're still a vital part of online group communication. If you want to add a place for your Web site visitors to meet and chat, then have a look at the open source discussion forum CMS, Vanilla.

Vanilla has a load of administration features that make managing an online forum a snap, including the ability to change the layout, style, themes, and even change the language of the forum in a few simple steps. It's got built-in spam control and advanced search capabilities that allow you to drill down into forum content via comments, username, or discussion topic.

Several hundred add-ons are available to help customize Vanilla to your liking. Report Comment lets users report comments for moderation, Twitter Feed allows users to display their last five Tweets on their profile page, and TagThis adds tagging capabilities to discussions. Developers are, of course, encouraged to create new add-ons or join the community to help develop the Vanilla project.

Licensed under the GPLv2, Vanilla works on all the major Web browsers and runs on virtually any Web server with more recent versions of PHP and MySQL.



Kartik Subbarao uses OStatic to support Open Source, ask and answer questions and stay informed. What about you?



3 Comments
 

Looks pretty cool but its still a ways away from getting close to phpBB type functionality (quote, reply, threaded, topics, user management, roles, etc.) for pure discussion forums..


0 Votes

Looks nice indeed, but would be a tough road to try to match phpBB


0 Votes

Hmmm..........sound good but still a long way to go to compete with likes of phpBB.


0 Votes
Share Your Comments

If you are a member, to have your comment attributed to you. If you are not yet a member, Join OStatic and help the Open Source community by sharing your thoughts, answering user questions and providing reviews and alternatives for projects.