While we've been hard at work getting Vanilla 2 ready for it's official release, others in the community have been hard at work fixing lingering bugs and adding feature refinements to Vanilla 1. Vanilla 1.1.10 is now available. The main changes in this release are replacement of deprecated functions, and updates to Scriptaculous and Prototype.
I love Vanilla 1 to bits and was keen to try Vanilla 2 but kept running into issues which I could not resolve. I've finally got it up and running with the help of some helpful folk on this forum so I decided to write an extended how-to for Vanilla 2 in case you encounter similar problems to me.
I'd like to reiterate the developers' comments first by saying Vanilla 2 is still in development so you should bear this in mind if you intend on using it on a live site. It could be prone to unexpected bugs/behaviour. If you're unsure/concerned, use Vanilla 1 instead.
Extended How-to install Garden/Vanilla 2
1. Download the latest stable release of Garden from GitHub. What's Garden? It's the platform on which Vanilla runs - but don't fret, Vanilla forum is bundled in with this download.
2. Extract the .zip or .tar and copy the contents into the desired folder on your server. Remember to upload the .htaccess file in the root directory which may not be visible to you if you have these types of files hidden. Most FTP programs have an option to show invisible files if it isn't already set by default.
3. In /conf/config-defaults.php consider uncommenting line 47: // $Configuration['Garden']['Errors']['MasterView'] = 'deverror.master.php'; // <-- Use this error master view when debugging This will enable verbose error messages and is very useful when installing and setting up. These messages will help other forum users with diagnosing any problems you encounter. Of course, once happy with your setup, it's recommended to comment out this line once again, so users encounter 'pretty errors'.
4. Grant Read/Write permissions (777) to /cache/, /conf/, and /uploads/
5. Create a database (name does not matter).
6. Browse to your install folder in your web browser, and follow the instructions on-screen.
As I said, if you encounter any errors and have completed step 3, you should have a verbose error - post this and any information about your server (PHP version etc.) and the steps you performed leading up to the error into the community forums.
Hope that helps - thanks to @benno and @bean for their help in getting my install working. I used their advice, my experience and the Documentation to provide the above information.
Try it out - let us know what you think. If you are a Vanilla 2 early adopter (ie. you've downloaded a copy of Garden/Vanilla from GitHub and you're running it somewhere), there are instructions on how to update your database for search here:
Vanilla 1.2 is going to be a great, significant release. There will be plenty of new features, many of which will be included as new extensions, allowing them to be easily disabled and enabled easily.
Some new features are:
Automatic image width reduction by window size (an upcoming update to HTML Formatter), a feature similar to the one on IP.Board, so that images never create horizontal scrollbars on the page; images will either be too small in width to be sized, or the width will be reduced to the perfect size.
Minification, compression, and a bunch of other speed optimizations (an upcoming extension called Minify) to make the forums load faster for users, especially first-time users.
Whisper notifications (the Whisperfi extension) so that users don't miss whispers
Some will be enabled by default, others won't be. So we want to know, which extensions (if any) do you think add essential functionality to Vanilla 1? There are so many really awesome extensions out there, but we don't want to include most of them, just the ones that add a very commonly used functionality, ones that will be useful for 90% of Vanilla installations.
I have read and recreated the config files from - http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/9915/vanilla-on-nginx/ but have not been able to get everything working properly. Generally the index.php file loads, but any subsequent page doesn't load. It's clear this has to do with the rewrites.
Would anyone be willing to help me with this issue, maybe via PM or through the threads. I have been trying to walk through this in the #nginx IRC channel, but it's clear I need the help of someone more familiar with Vanilla.
It is quite confusing when even the discussions of both Garden and Vanilla 2 are grouped together. Seeing as how Vanilla 2 is an app inside the Garden Framework, these should be marketed separately as the Garden Framework and the Vanilla 2 app based on the Garden Framework.
In addition, in the documentation is mentioned the fact that Garden itself is an application (it resides in the app folder). So some distinction needs to be made (as far as file structure) as to what are core files for Garden vs an application based on those core files. If Garden is the application inside the applications folder then what are the files inside the library folder, wouldn't those be Garden's core files?
I think you have a great idea here with the community approach to a php framework (built in discussions/ACL/User interface...) but the real value is for a developer like me to easily create an app that can tap into that power and therefore greatly speed up development time and increase application integration.
I just did a upgrade test from Vanilla 1 to 2 today while preparing our upgraded support center. I noticed just two little issues with the upgrade script: - There is a typo in the upgrade script that is causing Comments to be loaded into the ConversationMessage table. - Username from Vanilla 1 is being loaded into the Name field in Vanilla 2, since username isn't used anymore, shouldn't First Name and Last Name be loaded into Name field?
Otherwise everything worked smoothly and with some cleanup to roles and permissions and the addition of url codes for the categories, everythign was ready to go.
The Zotero bibliographic software forum is powered by Vanilla 1, but I can't find any equivalent to a "Start a New Discussion" button, so I can't figure out how to begin a posting.
And guess what, there is no way to email anyone for Support because the only option on every single Support page is to the Forums and post your question there.
Absolute idiocy on their part, but no matter how much searching I did (including page content on all the levels of the Forum section for the words Start or Post), I couldn't find anything. So here I am... (sigh).
I've been following Vanilla for a while now, and I'm really excited about Vanilla 2! I'm working on a pretty big project which I want to integrate with Vanilla 2 and was wondering how hard it would be to display a certain discussion on a website.
So for example, I have an article posted on my website. Instead of using an external comment system, I want to use Vanilla 2 for comments. So if I create a dedicated discussion for this particular article, is there a way to show it in the article and allow people to add their comments without leaving that article page?
I have some background with frameworks (mostly CI), and I'm trying to get up and running with garden. For some reason, it is not progressing as smoothly as I've hoped.. So -- does anyone know a good tutorial? I have read all the docs here in the site, but I still need something more.. In depth.
First of all sorry if this is posted in the wrong place.
I have a vanilla forum (http://www.hencam.co.uk/hencam_forum/) which has just started acting strangely - first of all, the contents of posts stopped displaying which I eventually tracked down to the transmogrifier extension. When this was disabled, it was ok again (although I hadn't changed anything to cause this).
Whilst trying to trace the problem, I upgraded to the latest version of Vanilla, and everything is working, except that users can't see discussions that they started!
They can see discussions, as long as they weren't the original discussion starter!
If you log into my forum using guest / guest then try and view a discussion started by the user:
Just wondering if in Vanilla 2 you still need to be signed in to comment. Or will there be any guest post facility built in? I hope so as the guest post plugins for Vanilla 1 took quite long to come and were less than ideal in my opinion....but I always used it on my forum as it was extremely important to have.
This has been done for Vanilla 1 already and I have used it snice it was released. On my forum the plugin with captcha worked perfectly. Thee was no added spam or anything and I could increase the amount of comments manifold.
So I would really like to see a guest post plugin for Vanilla 2 also as soon as it comes out officially. I LOVE the new design and hope I can start using it right away when it is released. Any plans for this?
Hi I was creating a forum for my site that will be open soon. I have had vanilla 1 installed and I deiced I would upgrade to the beautiful vanilla 2. Well installation went great - I made completely new databases - and it installed fine. I had installed in on my existing domain at
The only error I seem to be getting is when you click an discussion (try to access its url), I get the "Bonk" error page. You can see an example on my site I provided or with the link below
I think the error lies with the fact that it keeps adding the "/index.php" into the url structure, But I don't know what to do to fix this. Please help with any information that you can.
I have been thinking about this function as one of the natural fundamental functions of a forum app and I saw one of the discussions back on 2005 that someone wanted this (incl. Mark himself.. :P)
Anyone know how to create internal pages with vanilla 2? I dont believe a plugin is NEEDED for this although it would be convient considering http://vanillaforums.org/addon/519/one-cms doesnt work