Let me introduce you to Vanilla. You are probably thinking that you don’t need any introduction to Vanilla since there’s a decent chance that it’s already your favorite flavor of ice cream. But I happen to be talking about a different flavor of Vanilla.

Vanilla is Open Source community forum software. When most people think about Open Source forum software they probably think about phpBB. For a long time it seems that phpBB has been the forum of choice for those looking to maintain a vibrant discussion on the web. Vanilla just might change all that.

From the looks of it Vanilla will do for discussion forums what WordPress did for blogging tools. Vanilla features a very simple install. Just upload all the files, go to a screen on the web and enter a few items about your database. This is a process very similar to the current WordPress install.

Once installed, you’re presented with a very clean interface. Browse through the administration settings and set things up to your liking. The process is very intuitive and shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

One thing you’ll probably want to do is create some ‘categories’ under which users can post their messages. The tool makes use of Ajax to allow you to drag each category into an order of your choosing. You also might want to check the permissions for the various user ‘roles’ defined by Vanilla.

One thing that Vanilla does extremely well is allow the administrator control over who gets into your forum and what they can within each category once they are granted access. By default, new users must ‘apply’ for a membership that must be approved by an administrator. You are free to change this setting so that people can be granted immediate access. You can even define your own roles as well. In the age of spam attacks on every form of social media the value of these types of features can’t be overstated.

Security features aren’t the only reason to consider Vanilla for building a discussion community. The base install of Vanilla does lack many of the social features that you’ll need in order to create a more vibrant community presence. Like WordPress, Vanilla has an ever growing list of contributed ‘extensions‘ that allow you to change the look and function of your community.

Some noteworthy extensions include RSS, BB Code, Profile Images, Invitations, Smilies and Enhanced Sign Up Form. Installation of extensions is dead easy. Upload a folder to the ‘extensions’ directory. Then go to the extensions section of the admin settings of Vanilla to click a checkbox and activate your extension.

There are other extensions I’ve got my eye on like support for Google Analytics, Flickr and File Attachments. There are a few options for extending the look and feel of Vanilla, but certainly not as many as more mature and widely used tools. I’m very sure that this will change in the coming months. Thankfully the default style is very tasteful and the tool is documented well enough to allow you to build your own style if you need to reflect your brand.

Vanilla aims to make the process of starting and building an online discussion community a much simpler task. The lead developers are succeeding in their task. I’ve worked with a number of forum building tools including phpBB and more recently BBPress. Vanilla is simpler, cleaner and best of all, it works!

Mark O’ Sullivan is leading development of Vanilla and a couple of other interesting looking tools as well. Kudos to Mark and the community who are developing Vanilla into a very sweet social media tool.

[tags]Social Media, Community, Forum, Vanilla, Lussomo, PhpBB, BBPress[/tags]