In a way, the name isn’t entirely fair. Forums created through the service have plenty of features, including:

• The ability to control how public the forum is.
• The ability to assign users to several different roles. Each role can be assigned a different level of access, and can even be allowed to invite a certain number of others to join the forum if desired.
• Email notifications of posting activity.
• The ability for users to participate in private conversations.
• Basic spam filtering, through limiting the number of posts and length of comments.
• User profiles and avatars.
• Search capability.
• A customizable URL, like your_name.vanillaforums.com.

What the hosted version of Vanilla doesn’t have, at least right now (the current release is 1.1.8, but version 2 is in beta).

• Themes. If you want a look other than the standard blue-and-white design, you’ll need to host the package yourself (see below).
• Documentation. The hosted version has zero help, although the service does use tool tips and panes with helpful hints like “Here’s some stuff you might want to do.” But I found using the site to be pretty simple.
• Clarity on pricing and features. I’m not sure what storage and activity limitations may be placed on the free hosted version. The web site does mention a premium service, although I couldn’t find anywhere that lists features and prices.

The Vanilla open-source software package for forums is also available, if you want to host a forum yourself. It’s set up so that you can add CSS-based themes, or create them yourself. There is, by the way, considerable documentation for this version, including a wiki and (guess what?) a discussion forum.

All in all, Vanilla Forums is a surprisingly robust alternative to other discussion forum options, and may appeal to those who don’t want to deal with hosting a discussion forum, or who don’t want the hassles of managing something like phpBB.

Have you used Vanilla Forums? What do you use for discussion forums?

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However, early on, many companies were not monitoring the site and not addressing the complaints. In fact, one of my rants was actually addressed by a former employee of the company in question.

Now I’m finding that GetSatisfaction is becoming a key tool in troubleshooting all of the technical – and vendor – issues that come up in my web work.

First, I had to make sure that I was accessing the right forum to vent my frustrations. Then I had to decide if I had a question or was announcing a problem. GetSatisfaction prompts you to provide as much detailed information as possible to expedite the process of getting a response and appropriate answer or recommendation.

My latest GetSatisfaction interaction occurred when I discovered that a Firefox Add-on that I was trying out – Power Twitter – wasn’t working well for me. In addition to a few bugs that were driving me crazy, my typical twittering flow was being interrupted by the app. Granted, I knew the app was in beta, but when I realized it wasn’t for me at this time, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to remove it from my browser.

My first thought was tweet it so I put out the question “How do I remove Power Twitter from my browser?” The recommendations that initially came in were telling me to download an application cleaning software to remove it. This didn’t sound right to me. Then I noticed a tiny T3 at the top of my Power Twitter’d Twitter page. Clicking on it led me directly to the company’s GetSatisfaction page. Smart. Very smart.

I posted my quandry in the company’s support forum, and gave my question a catchy title (per GetSatisfaction’s recommendation): “How Do I Kill Power Twitter?” Okay, maybe I was a little harsh. But it got responses from other users. The trick was to go to my Firefox menu: Tools > Add Ons > Extensions > Uninstall.

To be honest, the first person to give me the above solution was on Twitter, and the tweets came in within about an hour of my initial question while the GetSatisfaction responses were hours later than that. Still, I’m impressed that a company would have the foresight to build in a link or button to get users – beta or otherwise – straight to their GetSatisfaction forum. While I didn’t hear yet from an actual employee of the company, clearly harnessing the combined knowledge and experience of customers is working.

You may also want to use GetSatisfaction to make suggestions and recommendations to a company for their product or application, especially if you’re a beta user. Sending your ideas to a company directly may get lost in the ether while posting it on GetSatisfaction creates a permanent record which has obvious value.

Companies can benefit from paying power users of their products to monitor and participate on their GetSatisfaction page. Or GetSatisfaction could build in some kind of payment or “tipping” process for very helpful members. The helpful advice and solutions are really worth the money.

Have you been getting satisfaction from GetSatisfaction.com yet? What other ways are you getting great customer service?

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During my first go-around, I wasn’t savvy enough to take advantage of what was available, but with the benefit of hindsight, I’ve identified the following three categories of web apps that could make studying easier and more effective.

1. Wiki
When I was teaching, students often expressed uncertainty about the validity of using information from Wikipedia in academic essays. Regardless of what you think about Wikipedia’s academic merits, a wiki itself is a very useful online collaborative tool.

With sites like PBWiki and Wikispaces offering free, easy-to-setup wikis for public use, it’s hard to argue against setting one up for a variety of study-related purposes. For example, the class I taught was Introductory Composition, or English writing for non-majors. A central component of the coursework was peer editing. Giving and receiving feedback happened in class, taking up a fair chunk of lecture time, which is fine considering it was the purpose of the course.

For those in other classes, time is not an available luxury. An informal wiki shared between classmates can provide a quick way to give and get feedback on writing projects that might not otherwise ever get read by fresh eyes.

If you’re already working full time, and taking courses on the side, finding available time to sit down and review your own or other people’s work is virtually impossible.  With a wiki you can pick at it at leisure, drop in and contribute whenever inspiration strikes, even if you’re working or at the office.

2. Forum
Like a wiki, forums offer the chance for students to connect with one another and share valuable experience, advice and support. That can be especially important in distance ed. situations, which a lot of web workers often find themselves in. Online courses can lack an essential and motivating sense of community, which a forum can help to provide.

While not necessarily as collaborative as wikis, forums provide clearly threaded and demarcated discussions have their own advantages, especially if you’re dealing more with problem solving and less with writing and composition. Sometimes, courses provide their own forums, but these may not be conducive to true collaboration.

When setting up forums in the past, I’ve generally been lucky enough to have my own server space, where I would usually install a phpBB board. YaBB is another popular option if you go self-hosted, but although the boards are free, hosting is generally not. Forumotion.com offers users the ability to create a free customizable forum, and allows you to choose from a few different board software options.

3. Project Management
Advanced students, experienced professionals, and those doing extensive group work will recognize the need to keep tabs on projects in detail. If the parts don’t come together, everyone loses, regardless of who’s to blame.

Online project management can help make sure everyone stays in the loop, or, if you’re working alone, can help make sure you don’t lose track of any of the various parts of complicated tasks. For this, there’s a variety of options, but considering the average student’s budget, the free alternatives are probably best, unless you’re already investing in a more expensive solution for your professional work. Goplan offers the ability to host two projects simultaneously with four users attached to each. It’s a barebones option, but it should fit the needs of most student uses, and it can scale up with a number of paid options to suit the needs of even the most seasoned web worker.

Of course, the effectiveness of these tools will always depend entirely on how they’re used. You might have a leg up if you’ve been working online for a while already, but repurposing the same tools for academic purposes isn’t necessarily as simple as doing what works professionally. Take the time to re-examine what you know and strike a proper balance, and your studies will benefit.

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