I don't think there is anything anyone can do in particular. It's all up to the individual. If they have used something like phpbb forever, then most likely their opinion will be biased towards Vanilla, and they wont want to use it.
I did not like Vanilla at first. I thought it was awkward, and just plain funky. Being a phpbb user for most of my internet life, this was my biased opinion. I forced myself to actually check it out, and use it for a few days. After using it for a few days I found that it is actually phpbb (and the others) that are awkward and funky. This is how a forum should be.
There are a few threads about making it more appealing towards those "other forum" users, but I don't see how. The only thing I can think of is making a style that more resembles the other forums. But that would be going against the Vanilla Movement™.
People just have to actually try it out, not just look at it for a few seconds and then go "ah, it sucks" then go back to the other foums. Use it. Then you'll learn it, live it, and love it. I think thats the biggest problem. People just look at it, and go ack, because its different. If they actually used it, I'm sure more than half of them would like it.
I guess it doesnt help that o8 was discussion based (though i do recall there being a time where it had a selection of categories? i cant remember if that was the first page); but i've always found this the most natural way of viewing. I guess cause i literally hang round here checking out all the threads that pop up rather than going to a forum for a particular purpose (i.e. i go to bit-tech.net to check out the electronics category and therefore just sit in that one) that it makes more sense. That said, if i was using bit-tech for that purpose and it ran vanilla i'd just hop into categories and block the rest. Job done. What's more, i never check out any other discussions on b-t because all i see is electronics stuff (cause i'm looking for help) but chances are there are some very interesting threads in other categories. I think a view like vanilla helps much more broader reading because people can scan all the discussions and think 'ooh. whats this' wheras if you're *forced* to view by category you might just get into one and not bother sniffing around. </rant> But seriously, it might be a big change for some users, but if they cant be bothered checking it out, theyre not worth it. If they do, i'm pretty convinced in 80% of cases they'd appreciate it a great deal more and get a lot more out of their forum experience. If you are just dropping by for a quick visit to look at something, do it in categories. Otherwise, hi, pull up a chair.
From my perspective, Vanilla is clean, in regards to how discussions and categories are displayed. It's all easy to read and find discussions you're looking for. I'm very familliar with all other forums and have to admit that all forums like phpbb and others do information over-kill when it comes to displaying threads or categories. It's an akward mess trying to hunt for stuff via those forums and not fun. Setting up those beasts is another story. Setting up and running Vanilla the first time around was a bit clunky but it has since gotten better and by far the easiest damn forum to set up, straight forward and to the point, it's damn good.
I've only really stumbled across Vanilla in the last month or so and I'm very impressed with the layout and the move away from "feature bloat". Whilst we're on the subject of other forums, the Wordpress guys are also writing their own forum software which I'm pretty sure will be along similar lines to Vanilla, at least in spirit.
I've never really cared for WP's forum. I don't think it flows nicely. But it is nice to see that more people/companies are starting to go with clean simple forums/software.
I agree bbpress is not up to scratch yet but if it's anything like Wordpress (which I'm using as the new backend of my website), I'm sure they'll make a good job of it.
And Krak, you're right, WP's forum layout is a bit weird with the usernames displayed in the right column. I tend to find my eyes are darting back and forth so much I go dizzy! It doesn't read very well.
bbpress is alright, but it's not nearly as intuitive as Vanilla is.
About getting people to use vanilla, I think it's a matter of getting people just to slow down a bit. I have been discussin switching to vanilla to a few of my staff. I told them to visit these boards, and at first they all hated it. I told them just to slow down, and look around, everything is in an easy to find place. After an hour or two of exploring Vanilla, they all loved it. Like all revolution, Vanilla's biggest problem is simply that it's different. It's also the strongest feature.
I do have to make a suggestion for some form of quoting and some minor BBcode buttons or simple WYSIWYG editor. Markdown and HTML is just not easy to use, and users have come to expect that formatting text is fast and simple.
After seeing Mark's comment, I need to get me some of that "next version Vanilla" and write some extensions. I'm now realising, coming from PunBB or Invision or SMF, that as much as I like the look of Vanilla, and can get used to the idea of having "whispers" instead of PMs, I *know* people will complain if they don't have their old sigs and can't quote people. I'm willing to write extensions for them, to make the migration easier for people, but I can't seem to find this "next version" anywhere - although I did find threads talking about Subversion or CVS access, but no links. And the developer pages are pretty darn useless. I thought this was open source? So where's the latest source?
The latest source is available for download at http://getvanilla.com The 'next revision' isnt out yet which is why its entitled 'next', but will be out sometime in the very near future, we hope. It's not going SVN/CVS untill version 1 when mark is ready to truly release his little baby to the brutal fighting of public developers :)
There is no real "roadmap" at the moment, and from what mark says, there probably won't be one since Vanilla is at the moment, only a side project. Vanilla from what I know has been in development for either nearly or over a year and is entirely the work of Mark. At least as far as the core program goes.
The next rev will be available in the latter half of november. I have recently been hired by a very exciting client who is going to pay me to get it out quickly. The great news here is that among all of the fixes and new improvements, it will also include distributed user authentication - allowing you to have a single login for vanilla and any other application you want to attach it to.
Ohh, sounds cool. You should come up with a creative name for the distributed user authentication, like "Unity" or something like that. I dunno, IPB did it, so I think Vanilla can too.
Great mark. Although I've mixed feelings about the late November release date. On the one hand, "yay! a date! and it's pretty soon!" while on the other, "aww, it's coming soon ... should I bother writing my extensions and modifying so much of Vanilla 0.9.2 if 1.0 will either do what I need - integrate logins with another service - or force me to re-write whatever extensions or modifications I make to 0.9.2 to fit 1.0 (or whatever the next version will be).
I can understand if it's not meant for everybody and their dog to install on a web server, but could you at least give people the code, or even just diffs of the changes, so we know what we should avoid and what we can work with safely, knowing it'll be stable for the next few weeks and perhaps beyond?
I mean, look at Mozilla or Linux or OpenOffice or other open source products. Their mottos are "release early, release often". Which means even when you don't think it's ready, you release it anyway, knowing that *someone* will find value in it, or have suggestions for improvements.
And if you want, you can make the link hard to find, or email it personally only when people ask, with tons of disclaimers on it - even a huge DEVELOPMENT heading stamped over it, with a red backgrouind. I - and others - probably wouldn't care.
I personally just want to be able to work with the stuff so I know I can launch a forum sometime next month or the month after, and not worry about upgrading when I need to think about Christmas shopping. The idea of extensions - particularly if they're now easier to write - makes me feel all fuzzy inside, after seeing that strategy work so effectively with Firefox, or SMF.
As I've written in a few other threads recently, there are a lot of small things that bug me about the layout of Vanilla, nothing major, just things that would work great as extensions (easier for me to upgrade to newer versions that way, and share my work with others) or have already been fixed according to the change log, but have not seen the light of day.
You don't need SVN or CVS to post a small .zip or whisper it to people ;)
Louis, more than likely, a great deal of the code base has been rewritten, modified and the such with an update so far and in between. Most likely, this version will be 0.9.3 and you will be allowed to template the forum in any way you please. At least this is what I've gathered over the stretch of time and tidbits of information.
If I had bajillions of dollars, I'd do it the way you're talking about. But I don't. I don't even have very much spare time, and vanilla is a "spare time" project. Sadly, the $200 in donations that I've received since 10,000 people downloaded it doesn't exactly allow me to quit my day job.
A cvs/svn will be opened up after the next revision comes out. The current development version would be useless to anyone because it doesn't work *at all* right now.
Extensions, however, will work exactly the same as they do now - with a few extra abilities. So, most of the current extensions will still work in the next revision, but the next revision will make a lot of those extensions easier to program if anyone is so inclined to revisit them.
a bajillion you say... I recon we could organise that for you. *hacks the banks systems and transfers all the money out of everyones account into marks then runs off.
That's odd, because I've managed to find free hosting for all the open source stuff I've worked on, and none of those projects have attained the um, sucess and usability that Vanilla enjoys right now. So I find it hard to believe that it would cost too much to set up SVN or CVS.
But I can sympathize with your time restraints. So I'll be patient and live with whatever you choose to do. But other new groundbreaking web software projects have benefited from sharing their source, like www.rubyonrails.com or www.wordpress.org - both use Trac with SVN to manage source, track bugs and keep developer docs (Trac's a wiki too). RubyOnRails, in particular, is an example of an application developed in-house by only a few people, while doing consulting work with its own time constraints, that only took off after they open sourced it, giving the source to everyone, etc. Suddenly, people are submitting patches left right and center, activity is taking off, and the 1.0 release for RoR is much different from when they first released it to the world. (Just take a peek at the change log. It's huge, and many of the changes come from patches.)
So it's not as if you're alone, or that this hasn't been done before. There are people out there who will give away free tools, like SourceForge or http://www.berlios.de/ or if you host with them, will set everything up for you and help you get started, like TextDrive - http://forum.textdrive.com/viewtopic.php?id=1755
And there are a zillion guides out there for getting started with any of this, as I'm sure you've noticed.
Louis i think you slightly mis-read what mark said. When he was talking about needing a bajillion dollars he meant so he could quit his day job and spend all his time writing vanilla perfectly instead of doing the best he can with the time he has (which is allbeit still pretty darn impressive) - setting up a cvs/svn/whatever we want to use to allow updates and track bugs etc wont be a problem atall - there have been working prototypes running with offers of hosting, although mark has his own VS anyway which i'm pretty sure he'd have regardless of whether vanilla was opensource/private/non-existant given his position. And i'm 99% certain there will be one setup within the year.
Mini is correct. I don't need money to open up a CVS/SVN. I need money to quit my day job and work on open-source software full time. I am working on that, too.
So, let me be absolutely clear:
The next revision of Vanilla (0.9.3) will be released before the end of November
I will set up Vanilla (and the filebrowser) on a CVS/SVN after the release of 0.9.3
Thanks Mark and mini, for not flaming me for my assumptions. I knew what Mark meant, really, I just couldn't believe he'd gotten so far without it, actually. :)
And I can't wait to get started with this stuff. Suddenly I've so many ideas for my forums, not just tweaking themes or making it look the way I want it to.
When someone mentioned that Vanilla looked a lot like a blog, it got me thinking about the similarities. Sure, this already has Atom, but what about RSS? Or working in ways for people to get notified of what they want, like new comments to bookmarked discussions or whispers?
And what about integrating posting/reading with something Web 2.0 like Flock? http://www.flock.com/
Ahh, so many ideas, so little time, but a bright SVN-filled future. :)
I'm pretty sure someone made an rss feed extension or something but i could be wrong. And yeah, i'm looking forward to seeing what people come out with with this new version and easier extensions/theming. I can see the extensions repository on the site growing pretty fast and it could get quite exciting.
Replace your feeds/index.php file with this one (obviously renaming it as index.php), and add in the this extension, then you should be RSS2 enabled as well.
Some, my entire life just revolves around computers, so I'm on them usually from the moment I wake up until just before I go to bed. At least, when I can.