Lussumo Vanilla

August 3, 2005 in 5 out of 5 stars, A piece of software, Free

What is it?


Lussumo Vanilla: Vanilla is the "sweetest forum on the web" - really.  No kidding.  This forum software is the killerest.

Vanilla

Who makes it?

Mark O'Sullivan

Why is it the killerest?

Vanilla is a completely redesigned and re-imagined type of forum software.  It is mind-blowingly easy to install, easy to set up, and easy to extend.  Discussion, category, user, and role management is robust.  Database backups are a cinch.  You can style it any way you want using CSS.  It looks really freakin' cool.  It has a large community that is constantly developing new features, and is willing to help you out with problems.  The developer is constantly improving the system.  And it's open-source, so it's free to use.

What could be improved?

RSS feeds for individual categories, and immediate conversion of Markdown text to HTML (so RSS feeds render in HTML instead of Markdown).  The ability to set category read/write permissions separately by user role would be nice as well.

How much does it cost?

Zip-Zero-Zilch (open-source)

Rating?

Reviewed by Josh Kaufman

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Just started playing around with this for a site. its very very sweet. Simple to set up and looks easy to skin but i haven't got to that yet.

Doesn't come with all the bloated features of the 2 major forums apps and is stripped down to focus on its main purpose. Easy straightforward communication.

Posted by: Alan | Aug 5, 2005 2:37:16 AM

Thanks for the additional feedback Alan. This thing really does look sweet and I'm hearing it's praises all over. Gotta love returning to an age of simple function.

Posted by: Carson McComas | Aug 5, 2005 7:46:59 AM

Apart from the pretty interface, the same things can be set up using BBPress. But in it's current state it takes you a full day set it up..

Posted by: Tinus Guichelaar | Aug 6, 2005 7:15:47 AM

Thanks Tinus. So aside from being uglier and way harder to setup, it's the same. Cool. ;)

Posted by: Carson McComas | Aug 6, 2005 8:21:35 AM