After 10 or so years we’ve decided to set up a Forum. Drop on by and say hello! You can also now comment on our blog via an integration with the forums as well. Logins are handled via SSO, using your www.vr.org portal login.
It isn’t easy gaining traction with a new community, especially given the numerous ones out there. And while we’ve never been one to reinvent the wheel, we’ve seen enough interest that we think now is the time to get set up.
We’ll be prowling the boards and responding to requests – you can start discussions or use the “Ask a question” feature to get answers from other community members. In the very near future we’ll be using the forums to get feedback on the next version of our platform.
If you’re wondering, the Forums are powered by Vanilla, which we’ve found a refreshing alternative to legacy or large enterprise based forums.
Update 05/18–
Some of you expressed an interest in an update on why the forums moved. So yes, we’ve moved the forums from Vanilla Commercial to Vanilla Open Source. While we fully embrace the idea of deploying solutions “into the cloud” (including someone elses!) the commercial version of Vanillaforums.com just isn’t ready for prime time. We ran into quite a few (admittedly small) issues and felt like the lack of control was limiting us. That said, we’re very happy with the Open Source version and the team over at Vanilla were responsive.
If you are looking for a complete, enterprise level community you can’t go wrong with Jive’s ClearSpace based on our own experience. For a forums based alternative to the *BB*s, or * Bulletins* Vanilla seems to be an excellent choice. We’ll post further updates as we have a chance to build out our new community over the coming months.