Have you seen...?

Today, I'm going to show you a handful of changes in XenForo 1.3 that are all related to posting and editing messages. View on Vimeo Editor toolbar adjustments [SPOILER] BB Code MultiQuote

When we debuted the Pages feature, it was intended to be a simple way to get some custom HTML onto a page surrounded by the standard XenForo user interface chrome. By the time we reached Beta 1, it had evolved into an altogether more powerful system. Pages now support a PHP callback, so your pages can request data from the database and be used as a platform for building any kind of single-page application you might want to build. They also allow you to override the default and specify your own template to be rendered by the page, so the possibilities really are limitless. This two-part video shows you the basics of building a simple application using the Pages system, and delves into the realms of the template editor to create and...

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback on our first Have you seen...? thread about the upcoming Add-on update notifications for XF 2.4. It's exciting for us to start this process so soon after the release of XenForo 2.3! And while we are not sticking to a specific schedule for this series of HYS threads, our next one is already here! This time around we are adding Direct message labels as a way for people to be able to add a little more organisation to their inboxes. This is a long standing suggestion (or two) which, when coupled with direct message search which we added in XF 2.3, makes direct messages much more user friendly and intuitive for members and staff alike. One of the best parts of this is that the functionality will...

Here at XenForo, we like to keep our development environments up-to-date and as useful as possible, and from time to time we include some of our findings in our online documentation. Recently, we've published an easy setup guide for a Windows-based development environment and now we've added both a guide for building a very flexible macOS-based system and instructions for setting-up a similar multi-PHP deployment in Linux. Multiple, simultaneous PHP versions The macOS and Linux installation guides bring the ability to simultaneously run multiple versions of PHP with Xdebug without having to switch the active version. This can be invaluable for developers who want to build new code with PHP 8, but also want to maintain add-ons...

XenForo 1.1 brings with it a powerful system to record and display daily statistics about your forum and its related data. This video shows you how.

One of the most requested features for XenForo 1.1 has been the ability to define custom fields for your users. Here's a first look at the user field system we've built.

Today, we have a video showing upcoming improvements to the XenForo help system, and a new way to surface profile posts. View on Vimeo My apologies for the sound quality, I'm hoping that some new audio gear will be arriving before I record the next one of these. Just a reminder: Please do not post suggestions in this thread (even if you feel they are related). Use the dedicated suggestion forum so they can be tracked; suggestions made in this thread are unlikely to be implemented.

Some of you may have spotted this in a previous Have You Seen, but today we're going to look at XenForo 1.3's custom BB code support in detail. At a high level, custom BB codes let you define BB codes to fit your site's needs. This allows you to give your users more options for mark up, without opening up arbitrary HTML and the various issues (security and otherwise) that come with that. A BB code may take an "option" parameter if needed, such as in .... Basic Options Let's look at the main BB code creation form. It's a biggie: This is just the "basic" fields. We'll get into the advanced stuff in a bit. Many of these fields should be self explanatory. The title/description mostly relate to the help page, as well the example...

In an attempt to decrease the number of HTTP requests made (and thereby speed up pages), virtually all of XenForo 1.1's UI icon graphics come from just two sprites. xenforo-ui-sprite.png node-sprite.png Attached below are the 24 bit versions of the same sprites, for those of you who wish to edit them but don't have a graphic program which supports the 8 bit versions.

By exposing code events and allowing listeners to attach to them, XenForo makes it easy to alter its default functionality with simple callback classes. The API for doing this is well-defined and documented, so modifications made in this way stand a very good chance of remaining backward compatible through future version updates. This video shows me creating a simple add-on that allows us to see how an existing thread would look with over a thousand pages. As usual, it's a large, HD video, so I suggest you view it at its original size by clicking the full-screen gadget in the bottom-right corner of the video. Edit: If for whatever reason you can't view the video here, view it directly on Vimeo (but please leave comments here, not...

While the conversation concept in XenForo works well, there have been some challenges managing your conversations, particularly if you have a lot. XenForo 1.2 makes some changes to improve this. Most of the changes can be seen in this one screen shot: So the first thing to note is that conversations now have their own tab, which allows us to give a few additional navigation links to specific lists. From there, you'll note that conversations can be starred. You can see the conversation listed there is starred. Starring works like you're probably used to in emails; it's mostly to allow filtering. You can also bulk manage your conversations (over multiple pages) using the inline moderation-style check box. You can star/unstar...

Ahh, it seems like only yesterday (as I write this, it was!) we were talking about the fifth in our HYS series for XF 2.1, and already we're onto the sixth, so welcome! In case you've not yet seen the previous entries, (why not?!) you can check them out here. As ever, to ensure you're kept up to date, we strongly recommend giving that "Watch forum" link a tickle and make sure you enable email notifications if you haven't done so already 🙂

The proliferation of human-backed CAPTCHA breakers and all manner of other means to break through anti-robot protection on forums means that spam prevention systems must now be joined with spam clean-up utilities. With this in mind, XenForo introduces the Spam Cleaner - a one-stop shop for quickly and easily dealing with spam that has made it onto your forum. I suggest you view this video at full-size by clicking the full-screen gadget in the bottom-right of the video.