What's the correct directory setup for Craft with Vanilla Forums?

Question

I'm looking in to setting up a new site which has a Craft site in front of the open source version of Vanilla Forums. I'm a bit stuck on exactly where I should put vanilla though, and how to access it on the front end.

At the moment I've got this setup:

/
    /craft
    /public
        /vanilla

But then vanilla's URLs look like http://domain.dev/vanilla/index.php?p= and it seems to conflic with Craft's .htaccess.

I've also seen on another question that someone installed vanilla in the templates directory. Is that better or a bad idea?

Lastly, should I be trying to run the forums under something like domain.dev/forums/, or would it be easier to run it on a subdomain like forums.domain.dev? I'm going to be using the Single Sign On plugin to integrate it with Craft.

Answer 1

Daryl,

I've setup a few sites with Craft and Vanilla Forums, I've always named the folder "Vanilla" to either "Community" or "Forum" so the url being "vanilla" isn't a problem. Also you should know you can do a javascript include into another craft template so the URL can be anything you want really. I've never had a .htaccess conflict though.

I've always run the forums under /forums or /community or something of the sort when not using the javascript iframe embed method at which point the url can be anything. I've never attempted using a sub-domain, just did not see the point.