Add-on XF CMS Crowdfund: what features would convince you to invest?

TeflonDon said:
The same methodology could perhaps be the reasoning behind bugs being present in the software package itself. I understand you would rather isolate your addon so its not effected as much by Xenforo version updates but I see several negative aspects of that methodology. To me, the biggest issue is, if you're reinventing the wheel instead of using existing Xenforo framework it provides a foreign experience for the user instead of something they are used to. This also means that when Xenforo does update something, your addon might not receive whatever improvements the Xenforo team has made. You mentioned Social Groups not needing an update for 1.2 or 1.3. While the addon didn't break, it feels out of place because its still not responsive while the rest of the site is. Also, if you are reusing Xenforo code instead of rewriting your own you can almost be assured that its well coded and won't contain bugs.

I hope that this potential CMS integrates smoothly with Xenforo and provides a seamless, professional transition for the end users. Potentially sacrificing these things because the developer doesn't want to do updates when Xenforo releases a new version doesn't seem like the best idea to me and would probably discourage me from getting involved in any crowdfunding.
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I agree with most of what you mentioned.

If this add-on can get a developer that guarantees to be around to fix things every release (probably for free, right?), then there is absolutely no problem with downplaying the maintenance effort.
 
Rigel Kentaurus said:
I agree with most of what you mentioned.

If this add-on can get a developer that guarantees to be around to fix things every release (probably for free, right?), then there is absolutely no problem with downplaying the maintenance effort.
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Not necessarily for free. This is large project, I'd suspect that whoever undertakes this would probably want to do some sort of licensing to help with maintenance. I think it's a little premature to get into those type of details right now...
 
There has been more than a few threads like this in the past regarding a CMS for xenforo. At this point, I feel like a commercial one man/two men developed solution isn't going to make it far if it isn't an official one from xenforo itself. Perhaps it's better choosing the route of an open source CMS with multiple contributors on a voluntary basis. For this to be accomplished a developer is needed who is willing to make the first step.
 
Luxus said:
There has been more than a few threads like this in the past regarding a CMS for xenforo. At this point, I feel like a commercial one man/two men developed solution isn't going to make it far if it isn't an official one from xenforo itself. Perhaps it's better choosing the route of an open source CMS with multiple contributors on a voluntary basis. For this to be accomplished a developer is needed who is willing to make the first step.
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I don't think you'll find many developers that are willing to develop such an enormous add-on "voluntarily" and especially not open-source because the project it is built off of costs $140/license. Any developer that is going to code something on top of XenForo that is almost as large as XenForo itself is going to prefer to make close to the same amount as the XenForo developers do. I've been working on a fairly large project myself for XenForo which I've invested time into nearly every single day for the last 6 months and though I do enjoy the project and am excited that I'm doing it -- I can assure you I would've never taken the leap into beginning the project if it weren't for the upfront and potential long-term profit from it. With that said though, I think I can speak for most developers that once you get so invested in a project you'd finish it with or without the money just because it really is exciting and rewarding to develop a good product - it's just always getting started that takes the monetary motivation.

As far as this project though, I think it's well-needed for XenForo and a good solution will exist eventually whether it be now from this thread or down the road, and guaranteed it will be successful. With XF growing as fast as it is there will just be more and more demand for such an add-on, and somebody will eventually fill that demand. It's also a mutual benefit to XenForo itself as some people may currently be avoiding the switch to XF just because of the lack of a good CMS option.

There is a ton to discuss on this topic, just thought I'd throw my two bits in there.
 
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Yeah, in the end the issue can be narrowed down to money as usual with forum communities. It seems the days of open source developed products by people who do stuff because they simply like to do it are over.
 
That's not necessarily true. Open-source projects tend to be passion projects for their developers. It's usually a project that's either for a good cause, because they're passionate about it, or because they make enough in donations and advertisements to compensate for it being open source. Developing a CMS is not much of a passion project though, whomever ends up developing it is going to be developing a lot of features that he/she will never use themselves.
 
I would like the ability to transfer threads to the CMS and vice-versa. When converting, I would like to be able to apply a "template" so the content could look like an article, review or thread, etc.

This conversion feature would be essential as a lot of my content originate from my forum. It would also be good to have if you no longer wanted to use the CMS as it would allow you to convert the content back to threads.
 
I have been following this thread from the beginning and read through all the posts. I agree that for a successful CMS add-on, it needs to be easy for people to use it AND for developers to work on it. The idea is the more people use it, the higher chance developers will develop for it (and designers will pay attention to not break it). And then everything will fall into places afterwards. I witnessed this myself with [bd] Widget Framework, which started as a hobby project of mine. At the time, there were very few add-ons and I thought it might be a good idea to publish it for free at xenforo.com so people can benefit from it. It took a while but support grows overtime and by now most of the top add-ons include widget renderers. In fact, it is the best reviewed add-on (drum roll please :love:).

With all that said, I want to introduce my plan to kick start the CMS add-on: I will start a crowd fund project to open source a currently-under-testing add-on of mine which has the potential to become the needed CMS add-on as requested by people. For those who don't know, I have developed [bd] Content List since April 2013 as an add-on to let users to manage lists of contents on the site. Think of it this way: home page usually a list of threads, bookmarking is actually a list of threads/posts/profile posts, featured threads is of course a list of threads. If you want News layout with multiple categories on homepage, each category is actually just a list of threads. So "list" is really generic and useful. The add-on started with the bookmark idea but then it grew and now it is being tested by multiple people to use as a Portal. With permission support, option to customize rendering template for thread, highlighting in forum view, ability to support more than just thread and post (anyone wants to put resource into their homepage?), etc. This add-on does one thing and does it well: managing list of contents. My intention for this add-on is to offer it as a paid solution but paid add-on tends to get little to none support from other developers (which as proved above: very important for a successful CMS) so that would be a wasted opportunity... With the crowd fund, for a monetary goal, I will donate the add-on for a group of developers to work further on it, improve it for the community. I would like to lead the group (of course) but that's not required, I am still happy to take the money and go working on other projects of mine :ROFLMAO:. The project is pretty low risk: if the crowd fund succeeds, supporters at least get a copy of a working add-on immediately which does all the above + the source has an open source license attached and they can hire other people to work on it; If the goal is not met, supporters pay nothing, I release the paid add-on as planned, people who want it can buy it from me and get supported at xfrocks.com as usual.

How does that sound?
 
It sound great. As i see, [bd] Content List (i see in this forum) is not more different to Xenporta/Extraportal. I like the support of Resources/other content types but personally i need a CMS like IP.Content, something like CMS developed for Avforums and TechSpot. IMHO there are already enough portal solutions, we need something more...example the possibility to have articles in own route in homepage (like Avforums/TechSpot CMS), article/topics integration, html editor etc.

However, your idea is great for a start.
 
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@xfrocks - Is there any ETA on your addon? I'm guessing your framework will be the base and this "cms" will be an addition to it? One thing I've wanted in more portals is what Xenporta has and that is the ability to manipulate certain forums and how the design of the threads look; i.e. when viewing his articles on the homepage, they look like news articles you'd find on sites like IGN or you can even say they look more like blog type posts. For many of us who promote our content on the net, a lot of these news submission sites do not want forum looking sites so having the content view to be different than that of the regular forum threads would be huge for us.

I'm interested in funding as I was planning on having my coder extend upon your framework to create a CMS that can support homepage news, reviews, videos module, etc. but if you are planning on that, I'd put that money into this project. And if you are looking for additional help, I'd like to see you chatting with my coder to see if he can help you with the project to move it along quicker. I can pay you both accordingly as I want this system done YESTERDAY lol
 
Markos said:
It sound great. As i see, [bd] Content List (i see in this forum) is not more different to Xenporta/Extraportal. I like the support of Resources/other content types but personally i need a CMS like IP.Content, something like CMS developed for Avforums and TechSpot. IMHO there are already enough portal solutions, we need something more...example the possibility to have articles in own route in homepage (like Avforums/TechSpot CMS), article/topics integration, html editor etc.

However, your idea is great for a start.
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If you check https://xfrocks.com now, you will see that featured threads have their own route + a different layout: notice the breadcrumb, I haven't changed much other than the rendering template to demonstrate the add-on ability.

AzzidReign said:
@xfrocks - Is there any ETA on your addon? I'm guessing your framework will be the base and this "cms" will be an addition to it? One thing I've wanted in more portals is what Xenporta has and that is the ability to manipulate certain forums and how the design of the threads look; i.e. when viewing his articles on the homepage, they look like news articles you'd find on sites like IGN or you can even say they look more like blog type posts. For many of us who promote our content on the net, a lot of these news submission sites do not want forum looking sites so having the content view to be different than that of the regular forum threads would be huge for us.

I'm interested in funding as I was planning on having my coder extend upon your framework to create a CMS that can support homepage news, reviews, videos module, etc. but if you are planning on that, I'd put that money into this project. And if you are looking for additional help, I'd like to see you chatting with my coder to see if he can help you with the project to move it along quicker. I can pay you both accordingly as I want this system done YESTERDAY lol
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The add-on is working already. I have been postponing its release because I keep improving it everyday as I saw its potential. I'm not sure about the "base" and "cms as an addition", the add-on by itself can work as a CMS solution. Check https://xfrocks.com, all threads featured in the home page are being render with a custom template. Admin can enter a template as needed (see screenshot) amongst other layout setting.

Screen Shot 2014-06-01 at 8.55.38 PM.webp
 
I would just want a better HTML editor for posts that uses permissions, so only Myself and a trusted user group could use it.

And a nice looking blog look to my homepage. Although I almost had that with extra portal, so maybe that just needs to be tweaked instead. At the same time, I'm using XMG as my homepage so I probably don't need a cms at all.

Most of the other things I feel can be accomplished with current addons or the core system. The HTML editor would make posts and pages look great and you could use a page of content as the homepage.
 
The "lists" seem nice, though I feel I still don't quite understand their use. From what I can collect from this proposal that's not quite what they're going for in terms of a CMS. A CMS for XenForo is going to need to be build on top of it, not just modify the output of thread_view. I feel that modularity will be a huge part of a CMS -- being able to place anything anywhere on any page.

This is part of the project I have been working on, you'll see how easy it is for me to alter the output of the page and add new elements. The days of plain sidebar widgets are gone (y) This add-on is titled XRGrid and will be released with my XenReviews add-on, but it also works independently and on stock XenForo pages just as well as it does on my Reviews pages. It only takes a developer a few minutes to make a new element to be rendered on the page, so it would be incredibly easy to build customized layouts.

You will also be able to drop an element onto the page and enter raw HTML into that element and it will be rendered exactly where you place it. Basically, I'm introducing you to the first real WYSIWYG solution for XenForo :) This is something that I feel will be very crucial to the success of a new CMS. Having just custom blog lists on the homepage is not quite enough by my standards.

grid-demo.gif
 
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xfrocks said:
If you check https://xfrocks.com now, you will see that featured threads have their own route + a different : notice the breadcrumb, I haven't changed much other than the rendering template to demonstrate the add-on ability.
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This is a great start. :)
By custom route i mean also to have a separated CMS area (NOT inside the "forum" breadcrumb, but to have a custom breadcrumb). A good CMS should be really separated by the forum (IMHO it's good only a comments/replies integration).

What do you think about the comments/replies integration like AVForums/TechSpot? This should be a killer feature for me. I think your [BD]Content it's a GREAT start, if you can develop this i'm surely want to join the crowfund with a good amount. I like the @Jeff Berry XFGrid, if there will be possible to integrate this with a CMS, i'm surely buy a license...
Also, there are Widget Framework Support for this addon in your addon?
 
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Here is a first draft of the feature scope that I am looking for:

  1. - portal pages (advanced widgets + content list layouts)
  2. - categories, nodes & entries
  3. - define layouts & content type per category
  4. - build custom content types by defining:
  5. -- page structure & layout
  6. -- custom fields
  7. -- custom templates for page elements and page layout.
  8. -- preset page elements.
  9. -- drag and drop layout tools to arrange page elements.
  10. -- preset entry/node layout for blog, journal, article, download, ticket.
  11. -- comments
  12. -- field calculations, including average ratings
  13. - entries can be threads, custom content types, pages, resources, polls.
  14. - permissions per category & node
  15. - import and export content types & layouts.
  16. - xentags
  17. - multisite
  18. - sitemaps.org support
  19. - nodes can have groups
  20. - filters on node view
  21. - treeview navigation menu
  22. - many widgets
  23. - define routes for categories and portal pages
  24. - move entries between nodes. Even if the nodes have different content types or are forum threads.
  25. - follows xenforos principles in every way.
  26. - that includes trophies, report center, help pages, profile tabs, alerts, find-new, watch, view count, etc.
  27. - excellent SEO and full implementation of microdata tags.
  28. - importers
  29. - highly polished system
  30. - fit for big boards with high traffic

While writing this up I realize that 60% of these points are implemented or planned in Xenreviews as its basically a CMS with reviews.
 
Thank you! I just started developing this add-on maybe two to three months ago, so it has a LONG way to go and the features I have planned for it will be revolutionary for XF. @xfrocks claims to have been working on his list add-on for over a year though, so there may be a lot more to his add-on than I am realizing. I don't mean to downplay his add-on at all, it just seems very basic from the examples he's provided us with.
 
0ptima said:
This is impressive!
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Yes, it is. That screener only shows a small peak into the very extensive feature set. It has a custom fields builder for example and you can export and import anything so that you can share whatever you create.

What I am striving for with this CMS crowdfund is something of similar quality and polish.
 
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