Nothing Vanilla about this Blog Commenting System

It's common for different software systems to not always work well with one another. When they do, it merits a mention.

Vanilla Forums just announced the availability of a new commenting feature that enables publishers to use the forum software to power blog comments. And if you've ever run a blog and a forum, I bet you'll think that's pretty cool (and it is).

Here's how it works: when articles are published on a website, through Wordpress for example - but it can work on any site, a new discussion thread is created automatically in the forum. Commenters can then participate in the conversation and any comment they post to the blog or to the forum thread will be displayed in both digital locales simultaneously.

Other interesting features of Vanilla Comments include single sign one (SSO), and the same gamification, reputation and moderation featured found in Vanilla forum powered communities. The solution is available only to Vanilla's hosted customers on plans that start at $49 per month.

"It takes a lot of effort to get an active, vibrant community off the ground," according to Vanilla Forums co-founder Mark O'Sullivan. "Vanilla Comments let you use existing content and traffic to seed a community forum and really engage the readership. Using Vanilla to power both comments and the forum lets members have one identity, one reputation and one user experience on all sections of the website."