This article provides a high-level look at the various addons that are available in Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla).
Addons notes
- Availability - Many of these addons' availability is restricted by plan level. If you're uncertain whether your plan includes a specific addon, contact your CSM or Vanilla Support.
- Enabling - If an addon does not display on the Dashboard > Settings > Addons page in your community, it might not be enabled. Contact your CSM or Vanilla Support for assistance.
- Testing - Always test new addons on your staging site prior to enabling them on production.
- Maintenance & Sunsetting - As Vanilla continues to develop its suite of features, addons are occasionally downgraded to a Maintenance stage and possibly "sunsetted/deprecated" in favor of newer and more robust technologies. Our Product Life Cycle article lists the current "stages" of various addons (as well as other modules and features).
View and manage addons
- Access the Dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings > Addons > Addons to access the Vanilla Addons page.
Advanced Editor 🚧
🚧 MAINTENANCE: This addon is in the Maintenance stage of the product life cycle.
We encourage all customers to upgrade to the latest editor, Rich Editor.
Akismet
Adds Akismet spam filtering to all posts by unverified users and applicant registrations.
All Viewed
Allows users to mark ALL discussions within a Category as read.
In Vanilla, new content in a Category is indicated with bold title text, making it easier for users to visually understand what's new. Enabling this addon allows users to quickly mark all content in a Category as viewed so they can more easily keep track of new content.
API v1 🚧
🚧 MAINTENANCE: This addon is in the Maintenance stage of the product life cycle.
We encourage all customers to upgrade to the latest version, API v2.
Author Selector
Allows admins and moderators to change the author of:
- discussions,
- questions,
- polls, and
- ideas.
Auto Signout Timer
Automatically signs out users who have been inactive for a specified period of time. After enabling, click the settings icon to set the number of minutes that must lapse before users are automatically signed out.
This is mostly used as an extra security precaution.
Automatic Role Assignment
Automatically assign Roles to users based on either:
- actions they have/have not taken or
- their email domain.
Avatar Pool
Create a limited stock of default avatars that members can choose from.
Badges
Give badges to your users to reward them for their contributions to and engagement in your community.
Badgify Comments
Assign a custom badge to a specific discussion. Each user who comments in that discussion will automatically receive the badge.
Bookmark Checkbox
Bookmark an open discussion by checking the "bookmark" box under the Leave a Comment text box.
Bulk User Import
Enables admins to bulk-add and bulk-edit users via CSV files.
When bulk-adding users, you can send invitations to join your Vanilla community or directly add them.
Bump
By default, discussions are only brought to the top of a Category if someone comments on them. This addon adds the Bump option to a discussion's (...) menu, allowing admins to push (or bump) a discussion to the top of a Category without making a comment.
This is a great way to bump questions that don't have answers or once again highlight certain discussions that may have become buried in a Category.
Category As Link 🚧
🚧 MAINTENANCE: This addon is in the Maintenance stage of the product life cycle.
Configure a category to display in the Category list and in widgets but have it link to a custom URL.
Civil Tongue Ex
A swear word filter for your community, helping to make it a "cleaner," more civil environment for everyone.
CleanSpeak
CleanSpeak subscribers can connect their Vanilla community to their CleanSpeak API to monitor new posts and edits for harmful, lewd, or problematic content. Posts that violate your CleanSpeak moderation rules are sent to the Vanilla Moderation Queue for human review before they can be published.
This addon is available upon request, and requires a CleanSpeak subscription and credentials.
Cloudflare Image Resize
This addon automatically generates several versions of each uploaded image and displays the most appropriate-sized image based on the device (phone, tablet, or desktop). This automatic adapting improves page-load speeds and mobile accessibility.
DeepL
Automatically translate your knowledge base content with this translation service.
Gravatar
Implements Gravatar avatars for all users who have not uploaded a custom profile picture and icon.
Hero Image 🚧
🚧 MAINTENANCE: This addon is in the Maintenance stage of the product life cycle.
You can add a hero image through our Theme Editor or Layout Editor.
Ideation
Enables users to to upvote and optionally downvote discussions in an Idea category.
Ignore
Allows users to ignore others, filtering their comments out of discussions.
Keyword Blocker
Allows you to define words that will cause an entire discussion post to be sent to the moderation queue for review.
Knowledge
A community-centered knowledge base that helps your customers with self-service and tribal knowledge.
Link Types
When enabled, the Link Types addon automatically opens links that are not on the same domain as your Higher Logic Vanilla community (i.e., external URLs) in a new browser tab.
Multilingual
Allows users to select their preferred language via a link in the footer, and administrators may embed their community in different languages in different places. This addon only translates Vanilla community elements, not user-generated content.
OAuth2 SSO
Connect to an authentication provider to allow users to log in to your Vanilla community via SSO.
Online
Tracks who is online, providing a full list of users in the side panel. You can place this addon on any page across your community (or all pages).
OpenID
Allows users to sign in with OpenID. This addon must be enabled before using the Google Sign In and Steam Connect plugins.
Pockets
Allows administrators to add areas (i.e., pockets) to their community where they can insert custom HTML, CSS, or JavaScript into their theme. This addon makes Vanilla flexible for ad placement, Google Analytics, and other small customizations.
Polls
Allow users to poll the community for their opinions or thoughts on topics of interest.
Private Discussions
Allows administrators to display a restricted version of discussions with a 'call to action' requesting that the user registers (or signs in if already registered). Admins can also:
- limit how much of a discussion displays and
- set whether embedded images and videos display.
Profile Extender 🚧
🚧 MAINTENANCE: Allows administrators to create new fields for users to add to their profiles.
This addon has been replaced by Custom Profile Fields.
Q&A
Allows users to designate a discussion post as a Question, and officially accept one or more of the comments as the answer.
Ranks
Enables ranks to be assigned to a user to grant or remove certain privileges across your community.
📝 NOTE: A rank is not the same as Roles & Permissions, which govern content access, moderation abilities, and administrator access.
Reactions
Adds one-click reaction options to discussions and comments, allowing users to indicate an emotional (e.g., “Awesome!”) or empirical (e.g., “Agree” or “Vote Down”) response without typing a comment. This introduces feedback that is otherwise missing from a community when members don’t have anything to add to a discussion via a comment.
reCAPTCHA Support
Adds an anti-bot captcha as part of the new user registration process.
Reporting
Reporting is a way for members to bring moderators’ attention to content that they believe is inappropriate. Report is an option under Flag in the Reactions available under each post.
Resolved Discussions v2
Allows staff users to mark discussions as "resolved." The resolved status is shared among all staff users (i.e., if one staff user marks a discussion as resolved or comments on it, it will appear as resolved for all staff users).
Rich Editor
The latest WYSIWYG editor for Vanilla. Easy to use, with support for rich content embedding. Also supports a more minimal text mode, Markdown, and BBCode.
We encourage all customers to upgrade. Check out the article below to learn more.
Role Titles
Enables the display of all of a user’s roles on any content they contribute. If the author has multiple roles assigned, all roles will be shown, unless the role is set to “Private.” Additionally, this addon adds role-specific CSS classes to their comments for theming.
Salesforce
Allow staff users to create leads and cases from discussions and comments.
Salesforce OAuth2 SSO
Allow users to sign in to your Vanilla community using their Salesforce credentials.
SAML SSO
Allows Vanilla to SSO to SAML 2.0 compliant identity providers.
Signatures
Enables users to create custom signatures that display after their comments.
Sitemaps
Creates an XML sitemap based on .
Split / Merge
Allows moderators with discussion edit permissions to split and merge discussions.
Spoof
Administrators can "spoof" (i.e., impersonate) other users, meaning they temporarily sign in as that user. This is a helpful tool to troubleshoot issues someone may be experiencing.
⏳️ AVAILABILITY: This is no longer an addon that has to be enabled; it is enabled by default and available in all Vanilla communities.
Steam Connect
Allows users to sign in to your site using their Steam account.
📝 NOTE: This requires the OpenID plugin to be enabled first.
Stop Forum Spam
Is your Vanilla community experiencing issues with spam? This integrates the spammer blacklist from stopforumspam.com to mitigate the issue.
Subcommunities
A subcommunity is one method of dividing a community into multiple "mini communities" (often by language or product). Subcommunities are a great way to manage a community in multiple languages on the same instance.
Troll Management
A "troll" is a user who spends their time intentionally starting fights within a community, upsetting other users, posting off-topic comments, etc.
This addon allows you to mark users as trolls, making it so that only they can see their comments and discussions. This typically results in them no longer posting or leaving the community altogether.
Twitter Social Connect
Allows users to sign in to your site using their Twitter account.
Vanilla Analytics
Track important trends in your community and chart them in a customizable dashboard.
Vanilla jsConnect
Enables custom single sign-on (SSO) solutions that can be same-domain or cross-domain.
Vanillicon
Vanillicon is one of five options for user Avatars. These are fun default user icons (avatars) from vanillicon.com.
Vanilla Pop 🚧
🚧 MAINTENANCE: This addon is in the Maintenance stage of the product life cycle.
Walk Through
This addon allows other plugins to display custom tours to administrators.
Warnings & Notes
Allows moderators to warn users and add private notes to their profiles. This addon is used to help moderate activity across your community.
Zendesk
With this addon you can:
- Link your Zendesk account to your Vanilla user profile.
- Submit users’ discussions and comments as tickets to your hosted Zendesk.
Additional resources
Product Life Cycle articles
The following Higher Logic and Vanilla articles provide information about the life-cycle stages that our Product and Customer Support teams have defined for our products.
