V2 problem and a question: Invitation email URLs and 'cleaner' site URLs

adamk

Hi all, first post here so please feel free to flame the hell out of me if I'm asking something that has been answered many times before, I've searched but to no avail

Background info: I'm using Dreamhost and have followed the advice on switching off fastCGI given by defused in this thread. My install works just fine unless I turn on "Use Garden's .htaccess file to rewrite urls" as it produces 404s all over the place.

The problem: The urls generated for the invite emails are not complete and I've no idea if it's because of the above setup. An example of what is sent is - /entry/?Target=07RWPOWL
Any idea what I should do to make this complete? Also I'm not sure what the link should achieve because visiting http://forum.createbrighton.com/index.php/entry/?Target=07RWPOWL (which I imagine should be the complete URL) just takes me to the signed out entry point to the site rather than the invite code taking the user elsewhere.

My question: How can I further pretty up URLs like this one http://forum.createbrighton.com/index.php/discussion/1/test ? I'd really like to have that read http://forum.createbrighton.com/[thread category]/[thread id number]/[thread title]

Many thanks! Can't wait to actually get people onto my v2 install!

defused

I ended up just rm'ing v2 unfortunately, couldn't get stuff properly working.

Which kind of 404s?
If its the blue-background 404 something is wrong, if its the Apache 404 then you don't have a htaccess file or it's misconfigured.

Same invite issue as you too.

adamk

I'm getting the apache 404s and trying to work out whether this is worth my time. I'd use v1 but the themes are just nowhere near as nice as v2...

Be a shame not to be able to use Vanilla but perhaps I was being rather more technically ambitious than I realised.

Mark

@adamk - Check your conf/config.php file for the Garden.Domain setting. Make sure that it is the FQDN like http://yourdomain.com.

V2 is definitely still not ready for release. It works very well in our development and production environments, but it will require a lot more testing before we can confidently say that it functions well on all other environments. Sadly, every machine and setup is different

adamk

Thanks for that Mark, I'll check the config file in a bit when Dreamhost gets back as they are having mysql probs today apparently.

I understand that V2 isn't perfect yet but it's just so damned pretty that I wanted to use it. That said I'm more suited to pushing pixels round in photoshop than getting into the confusing stuff that lurks behind the UI!

Mark

Haha - well, I appreciate you giving it a shot. If nothing else, please keep an eye on our theming support ... If you're more of a UI guy, I would love you to take a shot at doing a theme

defused

Odd question, but is there a way to get the vanillaforums.org site off github, like a Garden-based premade CMS?

adamk

How many templates are there in a theme Mark? I could maybe design a theme but there's no way I can build it...

Mark

@defused - the vforg site isn't available (completely). You can get Vanilla, and you can get the addons application (http://github.com/lussumo/VanillaAddons), but nothing else.

@adamk - For the most part you don't have to edit php files when theming - just css files. I've found that if I have to make xhtml changes, it is typically done in the master view file, which wraps the main content of every page in the application. So, to answer your question, it would most likely be one template file. Check out our quick-start on theming for more info:

http://vanillaforums.org/page/ThemeQuickStart

adamk

@Mark - I'd happily throw a theme or two together especially if it involves just one template design. Is there an example, even a screenshot, that incorporates the various elements that need styling anywhere?

Mark

@adamk - I'm not sure I understand what you mean. The elements that typically need styling in a simple style change are the header, sidebars, and footer. You might want to change some background colors or fonts in the actual discussions - but it's not totally necessary.

Of course, you can always go as crazy as you like and change the css (and even html) on everything in the application if that's what you want to do. It just makes it harder to maintain themes that change a lot of html as improvements are made to the code, or plugins start to integrate with parts of html that have been removed by custom themes, etc.