Adventures of a Forum Newbie—Vanilla helped us focus and get our forum off the ground
Rating: 10 out of 10
IncentivizedUse Cases and Deployment Scope
Our forum, called StorageForum, is designed as a place for the open exchange of information relating to SiteLink software customers and members of the self-storage industry. The goal of the forum is for active participants as well as casual visitors to benefit from the forum’s free exchange of ideas, expansive knowledge base, and entertainment value. In addition, we dedicated a large section of the forum to our Marketplace Partners (vendors) and gave them moderator privileges as an added value to their partnership with us.
In addition to StorageForum being a knowledge base for the self-storage and SiteLink communities, we hope the forum will increase sales as it reaches new people and also increase current customer satisfaction.
In addition to StorageForum being a knowledge base for the self-storage and SiteLink communities, we hope the forum will increase sales as it reaches new people and also increase current customer satisfaction.
Pros
- The Add-ons and Badges features in the Dashboard are very user-friendly. The interface is visually well-organized is super-easy to understand — I never have that "I'm really not sure what this is about" feeling when implementing these options. Confidence is key!
- Vanilla Forum software is brand new to me so I've had lots of questions, especially in the beginning. But Tech Support has been extremely helpful and prompt! Shauna always provides thorough explanations, along with screencaps, whenever I'm stuck.
- Users really appreciate the notifications options—they're very specific as to emails or popups, with dozens of scenarios to specify especially for moderators. This reduces frustration (like getting too many emails) and worrying (wondering) if someone responded, etc. It's very customizable.
Cons
- I'd really like to see an option to list discussions in order of views—most to least. Right now the "Best Of..." feature is awesome but relies completely on Reactions alone.
- Seeing the view count reduce to "1" every once in while is a little disturbing, especially for us as a small community just starting out. I know this is a side effect of resetting the cache, but maybe Vanilla could find a way to keep the views intact.
- I'd like to be able to apply more than one Rank to a user. This is fairly specific to our community, but I'd like to recognize the expertise of some users and Ranks would be perfect. Using Roles for this has been cumbersome.
Likelihood to Recommend
Because the Search feature is really precise, Vanilla Forums seems very well-suited for knowledge-based communities where you need to find something specific quickly.
SC
Sue Creaser
Copywriter in Marketing at SiteLink (Computer Software, 51-200 employees)
Vetted Review
1 year of experience