I’ve long loved the original Vanilla forum by Mark O’Sullivan, but I’ve got to say that the new Garden and Vanilla 2 release has bowled me over. Although still in BETA I was so excited about using it in my latest project that I sat down and wrote a module for Prestashop to allow you to provide a slick single sign-on to both the store and the forum — utilising the SSO plugin that comes with Vanilla 2.
On top of integrating the two accounts I’ve also been looking at how to integrate some Prestashop content on the forum pages too, as I can see certain circumstances where engaging a community through a forum while promoting your products to them could be a winner.
I’ll release both the Prestashop module and the Vanilla 2 plug-in once i’ve ironed out the last few wrinkles, as I’m sure the combination will not only be popular with store owners but a winner with customers too.
Comments
2 responses to “Vanilla 2 and Prestashop”
This sounds like an awesome module. I was going to try and integrate phpbb with Prestashop but I had no idea where to start. I think alot of people would appreciate something like this.
It’s looking really good so far and the single sign-on works great however we have to bear in mind that Vanilla 2 itself is still in BETA, so it may be a while before it would be wise to launch a site based on it (although from my testing it seems to be very stable). I’m slowly adding functionality that allows content to be cross-posted between the two as both are really still separate installations which happen to reside on the same server (and share authentication). Once that’s complete I think it will be a powerful combination, and a much more natural fit than the more common shop/blog combination.