As of right now you will earn a 20% revenue share on any client you bring to VanillaForums.com.

Full details of the Vanilla Forums Partner Program here.

While we don’t have complete translations available for Vanilla 2 yet (there are many non-native-English speaking community members working on this), you can most certainly make little text changes on your forum very easily. Generally speaking, you can take just about any word or phrase on the forum, and create a “translation” for it by adding a “locale.php” file to your conf folder, and placing the translations inside. If you want to change the “Howdy, Stranger” text, for example, you would place the following information in your conf/locale.php file:

<?php if (!defined('APPLICATION')) exit();
$Definition['Howdy, Stranger!'] = 'Welcome to our Community!';
$Definition["GuestModule.Message"] = "If you want to take part in the discussions, sign in or apply for membership below!";

Happy translating!

Two years ago we took another look at Vanilla and realized there was still an immense amount of work to be done in the community discussion space. Last year Todd Burry, one of my closest friends, joined me on the project, and since then we’ve attended the TechStars program in Boulder Colorado, raised a seed round for the company, hired staff, and we have been working on Vanilla full-time – all with the goal of getting to this day: the day we present you with Vanilla 2.

Vanilla 2 brings you more of the great user experience you tasted with Vanilla 1, and also allows addon developers to do more than they’ve ever been able to do before. Today, on the day of it’s release, there are already 40 addons available that were created by the Vanilla community developers. The addon turnaround has already been awe-inspiring, but with this official release we know we will be wowed by what this community can accomplish.

Today we invite you to download Vanilla 2 and install it on your server, quickly set up a forum on VanillaForums.com, or get involved in our community forum here at VanillaForums.org.

Vanilla 2 is more than forum software, it is built with the goal of helping communities grow by any means necessary: SEO optimization, participation-driving custom features, or simply a better user experience.

Welcome to Vanilla 2
Vanilla Open Source Community: http://vanillaforums.org
Vanilla Forums Hosting Business: http://vanillaforums.com
Download Vanilla 2: http://vanillaforums.org/download
Vanilla 2 Features: http://vanillaforums.org/features
Vanilla 2 Addons: http://vanillaforums.org/addons
Vanilla 2 Documentation: http://vanillaforums.org/docs

But first…

Before you get started, you’ll need to take note of an important change we’ve made to plugin files. Instead of starting your class files like this: class MyPlugin implements Gdn_IPlugin {, you’ll need to change that around and use something like this instead: class MyPlugin extends Gdn_Plugin {. This lets us add some methods to your plugin’s scope, as well as gain access to the name and location of your plugin. Once you’ve made that change, you’ll be ready to go.

Plugin Path Handling

One of the more annoying aspects of writing a plugin has been managing the various secondary asset files that go along with developing an application for the web. CSS, JavaScript, Views, Images… you need to know where each of these resources is located and then build paths to those files. Sometimes you’ll want a URL directly to your CSS file, other times you want to check if a certain file exists on the server, so a filesystem path is needed. Each of these tasks requires the use of different Vanilla constants and generates a lot of pointless boilerplate code.

When you extend Gdn_Plugin, you gain access to several new methods that help you to deal with your plugin’s files:

• GetResource: GetResource($Filepath, $Include = FALSE, $Absolute = TRUE)This method takes a relative $Filepath (relative to the top of your plugin’s folder) and returns the path to that file relative to Document root. Optionally, you can have the method include() the file as well. Finally, by supplying FALSE as the third parameter, you can return a file path relative to Vanilla’s root instead of the Document root.

  For example: $Sender->AddJsFile($this->GetResource('js/quotes.js', FALSE, FALSE));

• GetWebResource: GetWebResource($Filepath)This method also takes a relative $Filepath but instead of also returning a filesystem path, it creates a web-accessible URL that points to the specified file. This is great for Images, CSS and JS files that need to be included from your plugin.

  For example: <img src="<?php echo $this->GetWebResource('images/gear.png'); ?>"/>

• GetView: GetView($ViewName)This method takes the filename of a view within your plugin’s views/ folder and converts it into a path relative to the Document root. This format is suitable for $Sender->Render(), making overriding controller views extremely easy and pain free.

  For example: $Sender->Render($this->GetView('toggle.php'));

These convenience methods are the first of quite a few that we are planning to add in the future. If you have sane ideas for other methods we could add, don’t hesitate to suggest them on the Community Forums.

UserMeta Storage

Plugins often need to store extra information about users. A good examples of this is the Signatures plugin, which needs to store a signature and some settings for each user. Traditionally a plugin like this would need to create its own table and use queries to access the information within it. Not anymore. Enter the GDN_UserMeta table.

We created this table to allow plugin developers to store discrete chunks of information about users without needing to go through the hoops of creating their own table and structure calls, and especially to avoid having to write SQL. Each plugin gets its own namespace within the table (Plugin..*) and they can store as many key/value pairs as they like, each tied to a UserID. UserID 0 can be used to store settings for the plugin in general. We’ve written some code to make it easy to read and write this information. Extending Gdn_Plugin gives you access to four new methods:

• SetUserMeta: SetUserMeta($UserID, $Key, $Value = NULL)This method attempts to set $Key = $Value for $UserID. $Key can be (or just contain) an SQL wildcard (%), thereby allowing multiple variations of a $Key to be set. $UserID can be an array or UserIDs, thereby allowing multiple users’ $Keys to be set to the same $Value.

  Before any queries are run, $Key is converted to a Fully Qualified Meta Key (Plugin..) (hereafter ‘FQMK’) to prevent collisions in the meta table when multiple plugins have similar key names. This is important, because when values are retrieved from the table, they are indexed by their FQMK.

  If $Value == NULL, the matching row(s) are deleted instead of updated.

  For example: $this->SetUserMeta($SigUserID, 'Sig', 'This is my signature');This code sets the value of the ‘Plugin.Signatures.Sig’ key for $SigUserID to This is my signature in the the database.

• GetUserMeta: GetUserMeta($UserID, $Key, $Default = NULL)This method takes a $UserID or array of $UserIDs, and a $Key. It converts the $Key to a FQMK and then queries for the associated value(s). $Key can contain SQL wildcards (%), in which case multiple results can be returned.

  If $UserID is an array, the return value will be a multi dimensional array with the first axis containing UserIDs and the second containing FQMKs, associated with their values.

  If $UserID is a scalar, the return value will be a single dimensional array of $FQMK => $Value pairs.

  For example: $UserSig = $this->GetUserMeta(Gdn::Session()->UserID, 'Sig');This code retrieves the Key+Value pair for ‘Plugin.Signatures.Sig’ from the database for the currently logged in user.

• MakeMetaKey: MakeMetaKey($RelativeUserKey)This convenience method takes a simply string and prepends ‘Plugin.’ to the front of it. If the string is already a FQMK, the Plugin.PluginName part is stripped off first.

  For example: $FullyQualifiedKey = $this->MakeMetaKey('Sig'); // 'Plugin.Signatures.Sig'

• TrimMetaKey: MakeMetaKey($FullyQualifiedUserKey)This convenience method trims the Plugin.PluginName part off the front of a FQMK, thereby converting it to a relative key. If the provided argument is not in the format of a FQMK, the string is return unchanged.

  For example: $RelativeKey = $this->TrimMetaKey('Plugin.Signatures.Sig'); // 'Sig'

UserMeta storage should help plugin authors to easily and reliably access custom user information without having to go through the minefield of creating and managing their own database table or writing queries.

And that’s the end of Part 1 of Writing Plugins for Vanilla 2. Hopefully this has helped you to understand a little more about plugin development in Vanilla! In Part 2 I will be talking about some of the other things we’ve been working on for plugin developers, such as Slices, which let plugin authors create small asynchronously refreshable portions of the page quickly and easily.

Obviously this release has many bug fixes & improvements over the last release candidate. This release also has the inclusion of some new plugins we are planning on bundling with the final Vanilla 2 release. They are a little late to the game, but inclusions that we felt were incredibly valuable:

• Flagging: With this plugin, users can flag content for administrative review. Administrators then have a queue of flagged content in their dashboard for review.
• Tagging: Finally, users can tag discussions and filter discussions by popular tags.
• HtmLawed: We’ve removed HtmlPurifier from our core product due to speed concerns and memory issues it was causing. While we understand that there are caching mechanisms we could have adopted to overcome these issues, we felt that for download customers it was important to have functional HTML in comments out-of-the-box with no special configuration or memory concerns. HtmLawed fit the bill nicely. Be sure to enable this plugin if you upgrade your existing installation, or your HTML in comments will not render correctly.
• Minify: This plugin will merge and compress (minify) css and js files so the forum pages load faster.

Finally, we’ve also made a number of SEO improvements, such as canonical urls so search engine crawlers will ignore redundant urls that show the same content (ie. yourdomain.com/discussions vs yourdomain.com/discussions/index, which both show the same thing).

For more information, including where to download, check out the community discussion at: http://vanillaforums.org/vanilla/discussion/11332/vanilla-2-rc3

*NOTE: You can still use php if you like ;)

Quick rundown of the new Vanilla Smarty Templates

We’ve renamed default.master.php to default.master.tpl. You will notice that this .tpl file uses some custom Smarty tags: adding a custom logo, calling discussions and the panel, displaying the searchbox, etc.

We have put together a bunch of help documents and tutorials on using these new features. Also make sure to check all the new Vanilla Template Tags we’ve added to make things easier.

We will be constantly updating the Help & Support area on VanillaForums.com, so make sure to check it frequently.

Over the next few weeks we will be re-designing VanillaForums.org and re-organizing the blog.

Keep checking for updates.

iVanilla

Minalla Yellow

Rounder

Light Grunge

Enjoy!

Vanilla Graffiti

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The Vanilla Crew

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Vanilla Grunge

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We are excited to host the first ever official Vanilla User Group Gathering in Montreal!!!
The first gathering will take place Tuesday June 22nd at 6:30pm in the new Vanilla headquarters at 645 Wellington St. unit 411 ( Google map )

Come out and meet the Vanilla crew, Mark, Todd, Tim and I (Brendan), learn about Vanilla, have a few drinks, and meet some cool people.

We have set up a community at usergroups.vanillaforums.org for anyone interested in participating. It is our goal to use this community as a portal for VUG’s all over the world! If you are interested in organizing a user group in your city let us know and we will list it on the main site and help you get started!

If you are a local Vanilla user please feel free to comment on the discussion over at usergroups.vanillaforums.org if you have something you want to show or discuss at the gathering. Make sure to sign up so we have a rough idea of numbers. There will be snacks and drinks ;)

We look forward to kicking this off and hope to see more Vanilla User Groups pop up around the world!