Welcome to Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla)! We’re excited to have you here. To get started, you’ll find common topics to get started with in this section.
Your Vanilla sites
Depending on your subscription, you may have two sites: Staging and Production.
Staging site
Your Staging site is your "sandbox" environment. Admins and Moderators can learn, test, and try out new features (like addons). Then, if you like the how they look and behave, you can push them to your Production site.
📝 NOTE: If your subscription includes a Staging site, you'll always have access to it: it will remain even after your community has launched.
Production site
Your Production site is your "live" community site, and is where your users will engage with one another and your organization.
You Production site will typically have its own custom domain. Learn how to set up your custom domain in:
Staging vs Production: Site differences
Your Staging and Production sites are essentially two distinct instances of your Vanilla community. It's important to understand that changes in one of these environments are unique to that environment.
This means that any changes tested, enabled, and made on your Staging site have to be manually copied to your Production site; currently, it's not possible to automatically move settings from Staging to Production.
Migrating to Vanilla
If you're migrating to Vanilla, note the following:
- Test and final migrations will go on your Production site, which will "wipe" its database.
- Your Staging site will not be affected by the test migration or the final migration, so we suggest that you create your Category configuration and any custom Roles on your Staging site while the migrations are taking place.
For additional information about migrating to Vanilla, see:
If your Vanilla community launch and your migration are occurring simultaneously, see:
Vanilla SuccessTeam™
Your main point of contact at Vanilla is your CSM, who:
- is your guide as you get to know Vanilla,
- will host training sessions, and
- will work with you to implement and grow your community strategy.
In addition to your CSM, you will:
- have contact with our Project Manager if you license professional services (Migration, Custom Theme, Customizations).
- receive the contact information for our Director of Experience (if ever you need a point of escalation).
CSMs are available Monday through Friday from 9:00am to 5:00pm, ET.
Onboarding with Vanilla
Throughout your onboarding journey, your CSM will walk you through training sessions to help familiarize you with Vanilla to get your community and your team set up for success.
You can expect the following from your CSM:
- Community strategy - Identify goals, strategies, and milestones for your community.
- Product training - Learn all about your Vanilla community, including Dashboard, Gamification, Moderation, Analytics, and Knowledge Base training.
- Implementation support - Regularly check on the status of your projects with your team, and the Vanilla Professional Services team (if applicable).
- Community launch - Support you throughout your community launch.
Additional resources
In addition to your CSM, Vanilla works to ensure your community is a success by providing: