Something

Positive Collaboration!
A real sense of Community!
Good old fashion Sharing!
Common sense!

VaultWiki is a commercial software application for online forums where users work together -- not compete against each other -- to make for a true collaborative experience. It’s just common sense and the evolution of online communities as we know them!

We believe that every forum can benefit from having a wiki, because at their core, every forum is a community dedicated to a particular topic or idea. These communities should be able to define, with a common consensus, what that is exactly to new people.

Many online communities have a common goal that goes unrealized due to excessive competition for that “top post” that everybody sees. New members become alienated while veterans never truly work together. This is not productive and certainly no fun!

When the community opts for a wiki, they typically install a second piece of software and may even “bridge” user accounts between the main community and the wiki. But often unsung problems quickly arise. Why suffer changes in layout, fonts, and color schemes? Why go back and forth at all when you can have the main wiki and discussion on the same page, as well as all your other commonly used tabs? Unfortunately many sites try to function this way, and the result is a disconnect from the main community which can lead to a site’s failure.

Here’s where VaultWiki excels. By installing as a functioning part of the existing forum community, right there at the users’ fingertips, a more seamless collaborative experience results.

How does VaultWiki improve the experience?

• Unified search. When you search on a website and you don’t quite know where to get the info you need, the search function must show results from all possible sources. These need to include forum conversations, relevant blogs, and most importantly the wiki page that is specifically about the info you are seeking.
  
  
• In site notifications. Suppose the user is reading a random discussion thread in the community, but a page the user has expressed interest in has been updated or commented on. This will trigger an alert in the nifty little notifications menu that the forum already provides so the user can learn of the update without even leaving the current discussion.
  
  
• Increased emphasis on the users. Where other wikis anonymize as much as possible, VaultWiki gives credit where credit is due. VaultWiki further encourages users to participate by tying into various rewards systems that the forum already uses. For example, XenForo has a trophy system where completing certain tasks in the community yields prizes. Collaboration in VaultWiki can earn points towards prizes.
  
  
• Auto-linking. VaultWiki automatically hyperlinks to site information utilizing only key phrases or words. Seriously, VaultWiki is very intuitive. So if someone mentions a topic in passing that the reader doesn’t understand but the site does have a page about, VaultWiki will provide the relevant link to the reader.
  
  
• Organize pages into books. That’s a novel idea. Let’s say you’ve written quite a bit and decide it would be best presented in a specific order, like chapters of a book.
  
  
• Ownership of discussion comments. In many wikis, discussions not only seem to be an after thought, but people can change each others comments since you’re basically editing one really long comment! That’s not good VaultWiki gives more weight to user feedback with prominent discussion placement and resolves the editing issue with individual comment posts.
  
  

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Branching out

Not all forums utilize the same base software to build their communities. There are multiple platforms, such as vBulletin, XenForo, Invision Power Suite, and phpBB. VaultWiki now supports XenForo and vBulletin. Currently, one of our main objectives is to add Invision and phpBB into this mix.

Invision represents the final frontier in the commercial market place for VaultWiki.
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Like clients of other commercial software, Invision clients are used to subscription based apps, and VaultWiki will be able to fill their as-of-yet unsatisfied need for a complete wiki solution that also installs as a native IPS application.

Upon achieving complete coverage of the commercial forum marketplace, VaultWiki will have access to hundreds of thousands of potential clients without itself being a victim to shifts within that market.

Conversely, phpBB represents a departure from VaultWiki’s usual clientele in that these users get their platform for free. In no doubt due to its favorable pricing, phpBB forums represent a significant body of web sites on the internet, with some sources quoting over 2 million installations. We are confident that many of these folks will appreciate the benefits that VaultWiki can provide enough to become paying subscribers.

The potential reach to millions of sites (and exponentially to the users of those sites) has extensive positive consequences not only to VaultWiki but online culture as a whole. Today’s consumer expects to discover, digest, and share content quickly and seamlessly. To this end they demand products, services, discussions, and information all at the tips of their fingers -- centralized, comprehensible, and easily accessible.