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New Opensource forum - would you want to switch?*

mclovinmclovin New
edited February 2013 in Vanilla 2.0 - 2.8

By Jeff Atwood, the founder of stackoverflow. Pretty impressive for a beta version. What do you guys think?

http://disclosure.org
http://try.disclosure.org

I have been with Vanilla for over 4 years now. And I would switch to Disclosure, but only if it was in php. Sigh!

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Comments

  • aeryaery Gtricks Forum in 2.2 :) ✭✭✭
    edited February 2013

    links do not work. The correct one is http://www.discourse.org/

    Now, I will not switch and also do not recommend the same for the following reasons -

    1. Discourse is brand new. Discourse is early beta software, and likely to remain so for many months.

    2. There is tremendous technical and sociological friction to change in any established community. Consider carefully whether your community is willing to adopt such a big change.

    (from their FAQ)

    1. Its from the co-founder of stackoverflow but it does not replicate same functionality and same success.

    2. Most of the discouse features are already present in vanilla like notifications and moderation

    3. Its too modern to be understood and accepted by normal people. Like Google+ and Facebook. Not the features, but simplicity is the key.

    Finally, Its just like vanilla except pretty UI, which I am sure we can replicate and other features which can be easily brought via plugins. Also, no ubiquitous php and MySQL.

    Its onlu good for one thing, leaning the trend of communitites.

    There was an error rendering this rich post.

  • 422422 Developer MVP

    I spent quite some time on there yesterday, and must admit its different... but a nightmare to follow.
    Great for hardened forum posters, but the dip in dip out member , hmmm reserve judgement

    There was an error rendering this rich post.

  • @mclovin said:
    I have been with Vanilla for over 4 years now. And I would switch to Disclosure, but only if it was in php. Sigh!

    Now that's interesting. Why would you want to switch. Because we're not really a community? True (see the documentation / wiki discussion).
    Because Vanilla 2.1 is on it's way and we've got a shtload of work ahead of us? True. (we need to check all plugins and themes whether they're 2.1 resistant). Because StackOverflow is the best thing since sliced bread and now one of the founders created something new? True. But remember : Vanilla was also interesting when it was working so closely with WordPress (SSO, JsConnect) and WordPress is getting better too...
    Why not make Vanilla a *real
    community (we need peregrine back). Why not make the VanillaWiki Project a real community project. Why not write down what you're missing with Vanilla and help develop it.

    There was an error rendering this rich post.

  • x00x00 MVP
    edited February 2013

    like aery says there really isn't anything there that couldn't be replicated, and vanilla has thing that discourse doesn't yet.

    However it is entirely up to you.

    grep is your friend.

  • KasperKasper Scholar of the Bits Copenhagen Vanilla Staff

    I for one am going to take Discourse for a spin, I actually installed it yesterday. I love community platforms and Discourse looks really promising. Plus, I personally like living on the edge and adopting new technology as soon as it's born. That being said, I won't abandon working with Vanilla just because some new "toy" comes out. I'd just really like to get a peek at the future of community platforms and both Vanilla and Discourse definitely seems to be heading there.

    By the way, speaking of pretty interfaces: Any UI/UX fellas who'd like to join in on a "little" Vanilla project? I know I've asked this question in the past without any response, but who knows - today might be my lucky day! Shoot me a PM if you're up for some serious Vanilla theming.

    Kasper Kronborg Isager (kasperisager) | Freelance Developer @Vanilla | Hit me up: Google Mail or Vanilla Mail | Find me on GitHub

  • x00x00 MVP
    edited February 2013

    It depends how you define community. It does a specific job, really going on a forum take up people's time. People don't hang out at a tech support forum if that is not their thing.

    Some tech support forum work even more like a ticketing system and threads are auto closed. That is deliberate, and what they are aiming for.

    It always amazes me how emotional people get online. I would say turn off the computer go outside, breath in some fresh air.

    grep is your friend.

  • Thanks for this! They have a good business model. I like not being forced into buying hosting to benefit from features. Also no PHP and redis caching! Sweet!

  • x00x00 MVP
    edited November 2013

    @hydn said:
    Thanks for this! They have a good business model. I like not being forced into buying hosting to benefit from features. Also no PHP and redis caching! Sweet!

    No one is forcing you to do anything. Their business plan is they already have funds from venture capital and other ventures. It is hardly a better business plan, vanilla team also did the same.

    The simple fact, as much as is embarrasses some GPL die hards, a great deal of OS project are funded by SaaS, if SasS didn't exist, these simply wouldn't get off the ground.

    The level of entitlement people have today is outstanding, vanilla being open source with liberal development program mean there is nothing you couldn't do yourself, but the fact is you don't want to or fund it, and you begrudge that they offer a SaaS, which a level of support includes, with it own USPs.

    It doesn't suit everybody, but it is not for everybody.

    grep is your friend.

  • hbfhbf wiki guy? MVP

    i'm shopping for any platform with a solid migration path from Vanilla 2.0 at this point. Discourse looks very cool, but I dont see any type of porting and redirect handling for this new platform yet, and probably not for a long time.

  • I've been looking for a while to switch two forums from IP.Board to another engine centered around discussions, not categories like classic forums. So my only viable choices right now seem to be Vanilla and Discourse.

    (There is another one, esoTalk, which is also nice, but its development seems to be very slow and irregular).

    Actually I intended to use Vanilla from the very beginning for one of the two forums, but back in 2010 when I started it, v2 was only in alpha, and v1 had some peculiarities which made me abandon it. But I kept an eye on Vanilla and tested v2 releases several times.

    Right now I have Vanilla 2.0.18.10, Vanilla 2.1b2 and Discourse installed on my testing servers. I must say Discourse works pretty well even though it's still in beta. It is also progressing quite fast and there is an active community where the developers participate in discussions and listen to the feedback from the users.

    For ordinary users like me, who just want to run a forum, the biggest problem with Discourse it's the fact that it is based on Ruby and PostgreSQL. This requires a special server setup and right now can be a real pain in the rear to install and maintain, compared with Vanilla or other PHP/MySQL applications which work very well on any shared hosting solution. I had to get a VPS hosting account and learn the basics of Linux server administration, GitHub and Rails to make it work.

    What I like best about Discourse compared with Vanilla: out of the box it has some really well done basic features, like one of the best text editors I've seen, with drag and drop file uploads or uploads from clipboard. Or the possibility to respond to topics via email. Vanilla is much more mature and has a lot more plugins (Discourse has only a couple right now) but to be honest I don't like depending on plugins of various quality for things other forums have in the core by now.

    So I am still keeping an eye on both of them. Hopefully I'll make a decision before IPB releases version 4.0. :)

  • phreakphreak Vanilla*APP (White Label) & Vanilla*Skins Shop MVP
    edited December 2013

    Also nodeBB i catching up with features day by day. Not many plugins yet but the motivation and speed of development is amazing. Their OS path is openly developed on GitHub while they also provide a hosted solution.

    https://nodebb.org/

    They have some interesting functions like search based on time, a small reputation system, in this discussion and so on on board.

    • VanillaAPP | iOS & Android App for Vanilla - White label app for Vanilla Forums OS
    • VanillaSkins | Plugins, Themes, Graphics and Custom Development for Vanilla
  • R_JR_J Ex-Fanboy Munich Admin

    I like NodeBB from the technical point of view. It's appealing to me that you have to learn only one language to get a forum going. You will never be able to create a modern forum without js, because you will need it for the user interface. Being able to use only that language is great for a lazy guy like me.

    There is another forum software that I like because of it technical background: phosphorum (https://github.com/phalcon/forum)
    It is build on a php framework that has been realized as a php extension. That's a performance advance other php frameworks will never be able to compete with.

    If I ever will be able to extend any of them so intuitively, I might be gone. But Vanilla and me by now is a perfect match!

  • edited December 2013

    @mclovin Vanilla is one of the best forum software ever made and no one has a power to compete it. We are Vanilla family and will be.

    Is i am right everyone (*)

  • My opinion as user who dont know coding etc is that Discourse is messy and super confusing and nodebb looks cool but installing is like trying to go Mars by walking :D

  • Just checked out NodeBB and it has turned out to be quite cool. I am sure that the discussion oriented forum is a copy of Vanilla, but I like the interface a lot. Not that I am considering switch!

  • rbrahmsonrbrahmson "You may say I'm a dreamer / But I'm not the only one" NY ✭✭✭

    @‌Tudor said:... What I like best about Discourse compared with Vanilla ... Or the possibility to respond to topics via email... >

    As someone who is testing Vanilla for a new forum I can only concur with @Tudor's points: having support for posting/responding via email as a built-in function is a great feature, especially for busy on the move audiences that don't have lots of time or opportunity to respond. I'm not convinced Vanilla can't have it out of the box with/without plugins.

  • LincLinc Detroit Admin

    @Tudor @rbrahmson FWIW, we now have a best-of-breed text editor with drag and drop file uploads that will be released with or alongside 2.1.

    The mail-to-reply functionality is great for some folks and we support it on higher vanillaforums.com hosted plans. Anyone is free to build an open source version if they want, but I'll add: it's not terribly valuable to the non-technical because it has a ton of setup if you're self-hosting. In the pantheon of features to focus on, reply-by-email does not go very high up my list. I could use it on my sites but I choose not to for a variety of reasons and I do not agree it is core forum functionality. A forum is not (necessarily) a listserv. Cramming big features like that into core is antithetical to the architecture of Vanilla.

  • rbrahmsonrbrahmson "You may say I'm a dreamer / But I'm not the only one" NY ✭✭✭
    edited April 2014

    I'd think that if two users describe it as a need, if it is available on a competing product, and if it is available in the hosted plans (albeit at a premium), then these are all evidence that it is not such an obscure or unnecessary feature (I'm not claiming that you said so).

    How it is implemented (in your words "it's not terribly valuable to the non-technical because it has a ton of setup if you're self-hosting.") - easy or hard to install or administer, is a separate question. No point in arguing this - it is what it is.

    At the end of the day, in the balance of things, the lack of that function for self-hosting does not go on the plus column for Vanilla. That's my opinion and I respect your opposing view.

  • LincLinc Detroit Admin
    edited April 2014

    @rbrahmson said:
    I'd think that if two users describe it as a need, if it is available on a competing product, and...

    If we used those first 2 points as criteria, we'd be vBulletin. ;)

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