Today is the day we sadly have to report that this is the final 'Have you seen...?' thread for XenForo 2.3. While there are still changes planned, these will almost exclusively be changes to existing features, bug fixes and miscellaneous improvements that aren't significant enough for their own thread. But this only brings with it the implication of very good news to come as we start wrapping up the beta process for XenForo 2.3 and rocket towards a stable release as soon as possible.
There's still a lot of work ahead but at the very least we will still be aiming for (almost) weekly Beta/Release candidate releases from this point forwards. Of course our very next release will be Beta 5 and that's what we're here to talk about today. The...
Have you seen...?
This forum spotlights some of XenForo's interesting features. Spotlights on features in upcoming releases will be posted here.
Since the initial release of XenForo 2.3, there has been a new system working away behind the scenes. One that some developers might have spotted but one that we hadn't actually talked about yet, because it wasn't relevant. Until now!
Let's talk about this somewhat underlying system first.
Content activity log
This is a generic system, based on content types, which we strongly recommend you consider using for your own add-ons. Essentially what this does is keep a log of content and tracks various metrics including view counts, reaction count, reaction score and content vote counts/scores. A deeper dive into the technical bits involved in its implementation is beyond the scope of this post, but developers might want to check...
First thing's first, don't panic, don't rush to your customer area, there is no Beta 3 release today! We are likely to be moving the remaining HYS posts to Thursday/Friday, coinciding with those features rolling out to this very forum so we get some extended testing and feedback before they appear in a subsequent Beta.
Next order of business, before we get into what's coming in Beta 3, is a big thank you to Shawn, AKA @digitalpoint. We're big fans of Shawn's work and he's genuinely a stand up guy, always very willing to help out. Shawn was kindly willing to give us his Security & Passkeys add-on and this gave us the leg up we needed to introduce this feature at rather short notice. It has morphed slightly, and does not entirely replace...
Brand new in XenForo 2.3.0 Beta 2 is support for a few long overdue enhancements related to our payment and purchasable system. Let's look at each of these below!
Stripe Checkout
Stripe Checkout is Stripe's native and hosted checkout page which not only brings with it some powerful customisability, it also makes accepting new payment methods completely trivial and available in an instant. Allow user upgrades and other purchasables to be purchased with options for "Buy Now Pay Later" (e.g. Klarna, ClearPay), popular region-specific bank redirects (such as iDEAL and Sofort), and popular online wallets (such as Alipay and Revolut). You can even accept payments through PayPal! Through Stripe! 😲
You can enable and configure as many payment...
It's finally here! Today we are pleased to mark the next major milestone towards a stable release of XenForo 2.3 and this time we need your help!
As per the announcement XenForo 2.3 Beta 1 is now available to all licensed self-hosted customers. We'd very much appreciate your thoughts, your feedback, and your uncanny ability to break things in ways we can't even imagine. But, as ever, please do not even contemplate installing it on your live forum at this point. There will be bugs; some of which we know about and are yet to be fixed, and others which are yet to be discovered. No support is provided for Beta releases aside from saying "we told you so" and advising you to restore from a backup! 😉
Please for goodness sake, take a backup...
As promised, this week we're going to take a quick look at some of the more developer-centric changes coming in XenForo 2.3.
If a certain topic interests you more than others, click one of the links below:
JavaScript
SwiftMailer to Symfony Mail
Doctrine Cache to Symfony Cache
Updated Emogrifier
Registry preload event
Native IP conversion methods
Support for class strings
Updates to <time> tags - short date format
Template names in HTML output
AbstractCollection nth method
Smart Javascript cache buster
XF.createElement
Template macro syntax changes
Direct messages
Please note that the following libraries are no longer bundled with XF 2.3:
ccampbell/chromephp
doctrine/cache
league/flysystem-ziparchive
swiftmailer/swiftmailer...
We're approaching the conclusion of the 'Have you seen...?' series for XenForo 2.3. While it may seem like a bittersweet moment, we've intentionally saved one of the most exciting revelations until last. In the upcoming weeks, we might delve into a few more miscellaneous changes and improvements and provide a more developer-centric round up. However, our primary goal is to have XenForo 2.3 up and running on XenForo.com by the end of November. Beyond that milestone, we're excited to share a couple more surprises with you, which will include an overview of the latest enhancements in XenForo Resource Manager, Enhanced Search, and Media Gallery 2.3.
But, back to today, and not only is this an exciting revelation, but it also signals the...
This week, we're delighted to introduce a new feature in XenForo 2.3 that enhances the way you can share content on your forum. Plus, we'll show you how easy it is to share any content from your forum to other platforms using our new content embedding feature.
Rich previews for content
If you're already familiar with URL unfurling, content embedding works similarly. In XenForo 2.2, when you post a link to content on your forum, we perform an HTTP request, download a portion of the content, and extract metadata such as the page title, description, and a logo. If you need a refresher on URL unfurling, you can find our original announcement from XenForo 2.1 here...
Due to time constraints and family matters, this is a slightly different HYS to what was planned, but it is still a bumper feast of new features coming in XenForo 2.3. This week we will be mostly focusing on a bunch of smaller new changes and improvements we're no less excited to show you in the near future.
This is a somewhat lengthy post so we will say goodbye here and we will see you for more 2.3 goodies next week.
Sign in with Apple
To join our existing suite of connected account providers, in XenForo 2.3 we are adding support for Sign in with Apple. The set up for this one will be a little more onerous, requiring an Apple developer account and the creation of a certificate file that will need to be uploaded through our UI...
In what is probably one of the worst kept secrets in XenForo 'Have you seen...?' history, the eagle eyed amongst you may have picked up on one or two... or three... clues that we may be talking about this soon, and the day has finally arrived! Today we're excited to show you our take on the highly requested webhook implementation in XenForo.
For those of you who haven't heard of webhooks before, they are a powerful utility that allow one application or service to send information to another when certain events occur. These can be everyday actions such as when making a payment for access to a product or service, or more specific implementations such as having a new Thread from your forum posted to Discord automatically.
It is likely...
We hope you're enjoying the "Have you seen...?" series for XenForo 2.3 so far. We still have quite a bit more to show you while we work on adding the last finishing touches before we unleash XenForo 2.3 on this very forum.
This week we're going to talk about various improvements we have made which are mostly focused around images.
Check out the index below to skip to a specific post:
Image optimization with WebP support
Enhanced image resizing
Use any emoji for smilies and reactions
Size variants for the admin asset uploader
Tracking sizes for embedded images
While that is all for this week, we continue next week! We will be focusing on only a single new feature next week, it is a doozy and we're excited to hook you even further...
While the first few 'Have you seen...?' posts for XenForo 2.3 have focused on mostly aesthetic or performance changes, today we are taking the opportunity to talk about one of the first new major pieces of functionality we've been working on. Every release cycle we like to focus on at least one significant feature related to content discovery and 2.3 is no different with the introduction of what we are calling Featured content.
"But wait, don't we already have featured resources?"
Indeed we do but the ability to feature resources is now joined by threads, media items, and practically any content type you fine developers out there add support for or, naturally, content types we may add ourselves in the future.
Let's take a look at the...
In today's 'Have you seen...?' entry for XenForo 2.3 we're going to look at how we've zeroed in on enhancing performance, ensuring your community has a swift and seamless experience. We're going to take a deep dive into the advancements we've made and how they stack up against various performance metrics.
But, before we get into the individual changes, let's take a quick look at the baseline - this is our current Performance score as calculated by Lighthouse for the XenForo Community forum list:
Here's the performance scores for some other forum software:
It's crucial to note that while this score provides a performance benchmark, it isn't the only indicator of success. Indeed, results can fluctuate slightly with multiple test...
