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Secretly building a forum...just in case.

by sethdrebitko
7 replies
Being new to the forum I know I can't contribute to much but in running a small little hobby site I have picked up one trick. I use vanilla forum for my forum solution (because its awesome) and utilize the linking system with for comments. What this gives you the power to do is 100% eliminate spam, and secretly start building threads on an un-promoted forum. Each post will become a thread and every comment will feed into it.

Once you have built a large enough threshold of users its time to open the forum up. Your forum will already look likes its healthy strait from the start from all the posts and commenting. This can even work in a link wheel style set up.

Anyway hope this helps. If anyone has any input I'm totally open to it!
#building #case #forumjust #secretly
  • Profile picture of the author betsyanne
    This is worth looking into, seth. I want to have a forum on at least one of my sites later on. I have tried them, but got way too much spam. This sounds like it could work well.
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    • Profile picture of the author sethdrebitko
      Vanilla is great I don't get spam, and the benefit is that it also allows you to de-spam your blog. You can also use the Jsconnect to allow users to easily register with google and other social networks.

      For an example of the set up check out kobold enterprise dot com and see how the comments work.
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      • Profile picture of the author fluffythewondercat
        It's an interesting concept. I went to look at your blog/community.

        The issue I see is that the forum doesn't look like a forum; it looks (unsurprisingly) like a list of blog comments. There's almost no forum-style functionality such as you get with vBulletin.

        Is it possible to add things like post counts and user information?

        fLufF
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        • Profile picture of the author sethdrebitko
          Originally Posted by fluffythewondercat View Post

          It's an interesting concept. I went to look at your blog/community.

          The issue I see is that the forum doesn't look like a forum; it looks (unsurprisingly) like a list of blog comments. There's almost no forum-style functionality such as you get with vBulletin.

          Is it possible to add things like post counts and user information?

          fLufF
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          Their is a Homepage section of your dashboard where you can select the way the Homepage displays. You can choose a more traditional category listing.

          While the untraditional way of displaying categories is strange at first it is a really efficient way of organizing. Overall you'll find the philosophy with Vanilla is to blend successful social network concepts within a forum framework.

          It is incredibly simple to instal if you want to play with it a bit. If you try it out and need some ideas on plugins and such let me know.

          I chekced out v bulletin and vanilla before getting phpBB3 and didnt like them as much, vanilla does look kinda like a blog but it seems nice and simple to use compared to phpBB3 and Vbulletin.
          It is very, very simple to use. It is a bit like running a wordpress forum.
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  • Profile picture of the author webmonopoly
    I use phpBB3... it looks like a forum and i customized it to my liking. I get a lot of spam tho so i have put registration to admin verified only. I will just customize the captcha soon to fix the spam problem.. but right now its looking prety cool.

    I chekced out v bulletin and vanilla before getting phpBB3 and didnt like them as much, vanilla does look kinda like a blog but it seems nice and simple to use compared to phpBB3 and Vbulletin.
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  • Profile picture of the author jaypoole
    I also think Vanilla is a really good forum software and has a lot of flexibility. It can be expensive if you take the paid version that allows you to have customised themes etc. If you use the open source software though then you have all the versatility - you just need to know what you're doing to change settings etc.
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  • Profile picture of the author louie6925
    Great share, agree, this is definately worth looking into!
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