Integration tips and tricks
Vanilla comes loaded with a ton of features to help you build, manage, and scale your community. It is also very flexible in terms of integrating into your vision of visual presentation. If you are integrating the forum into an existing site you can configure the template to match its look and feel. If you are looking at integrating the user authentication with your site, Facebook, Google, Twitter and/or OpenID, there are a number of options to do this. One of the key benefits the Vanilla platform offers is the way it handles integration.
Getting started
Once you have activated your VanillaForums.com account, you should login to VanillaForums.com using the sign in button located in the left panel of your forums home page. After you login click on the Dashboard link, first menu item in you main navigation at the top, to start making changes and setting up your shiny new forum.
To get the most out of your community here are a few standard features we recommend.
- Embed Vanilla – You can embed Vanilla into any site in the world with a single line of code. If you use WordPress we offer a suite of plugins and widgets that enable you to fully integrate your community throughout your WordPress blog or site.
- Vanilla API – Vanilla’s powerful API enables you to create social experiences to drive growth and engagement on your community. With our powerful API anything is possible, imagine all the powerful features you build to give your community a unique experience .
- Social Connect – It’s important to keep the barriers low! With Social Connect new and existing users can easily sign up or login to your community with popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
- Vanilla Mobile – We understand the importance of being be able to take your community with you everywhere you go. With Vanilla Mobile your members can access your community on the go and start a discussion from anywhere on their iPhone, Android, WinPhone, or Blackberry. Here’s the best part: It’s standard with all Vanilla accounts and automatically detects!
- Single Sign-On – With our Proxy Connect tool users can login to your site and forum with a single account. This is by far the easiest method for seamless entry on large and small communities!
- Import Tool – Importing your old forum to Vanilla has never been easier. We support most popular forums like vBulletin, phpBB, bbPress, SimplePress, and SMF.
Here are a few video tutorials to help you get started. View more videos on screenr.
