Xenforo & Wordpress Bridge

[Deepmartini]

Everyone knows the crap forum called BBpress is like the ugly stepchild of Wordpress, left alone and abandoned. SimplePressForum (a Wordpress Plugin) is a good start but doesn't have the "wow" factor but integrates perfectly with Wordpress.

If Xenforo could release a Wordpress plugin that has full integration with Wordpress including all user information and a single login, it would be a POWERHOUSE. Do you know how many Wordpress sites want to add a forum to their site but can't?

Any mods like this coming?

 

[Digital Doctor]

A bridge/integration to Wordpress 3 would be an excellent idea until Xenforo is able to make their own.
Alot of people want this.

 

[Markos]

I'd like to see a project similar to IP.Nexus for Xenforo...i want to pay for this.

Just see how awesome the forum is, then imagine how the XFCMS and XFBlog will be if they built in-house.

I think the cms of other forum scripts (vbcms, ip.contest) is too basic/limited, a XFCMS and XFBlog can have a better integration with the forum, but doesn't have the extension of features of a mature cms...a "serious" website can't use a basic cms.

 

[Shamil]

A serious website would want to make their own CMS, to a certain extent, becuase their demands are so more specific.

 

[Markos]

With "serious website" (excuse me, but my english is very basic) i intend "a website with advanced needs"...Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal have a plenty of features, and hundreds of addons who extends the core-features... a "website addon" of xf is necessary limited. That is my opinion.

 

[Floris]

I would not mind a wp bridge

 

[Grover]

Maybe we should find out who's interested and pool resources (money) to get a really full featured bridge that migrates vBlogs to WP 3.0 (which pretty much merges WP and WPMU)? I'm sure that a ton of folks with vBlog would like to get their member's blogs into something that actually accomplishes something , and if a site HAS vBlog and the members have used it at all, that'll be a show stopper that keeps them from moving to XF at least until there is an XF blog component.

Personally I think that WP 3 blogs for all vBlog users would be a HUGE upgrade .

James or anybody else,

Can you explain to me (I know almost nothing about Wordpress or WPMU) what the big benefits are of a bridge between XenForo and Wordpress MU compared to a new integrated XenForo XenBlog system?

I am not talking using Wordpress as a CMS, but using the WPMU<>Xenforo bridge as an alternative for integrated Xenforo Blogs. You see, my members are novice computer users and the majority of them never used any Blog software. The interface of XenForo is absolutely simple and very user friendly. Imagine if we would go for XenForo (which we can't by now, because it offers no Blog system) and then having to confront our members with a completely new Wordpress interface to be able to construct their Blogs. Because I understand that a bridge does that (linking 2 different software/interfaces together?), please correct me if I am wrong (I am not into this material at all).

From a users point of view I would absolutely prefer to offer my members a way to publish blogs on XenForo, by making use of the interface they are already familiar with: the excellent UI of XenForo. I am convinced (for my particular situation) that will attract much more members to publish a Blog on my platform compared to having yet another complete different system like Wordpress attached to it.

 

[Nick]

James or anybody else,

Can you explain to me (I know almost nothing about Wordpress or WPMU) what the big benefits are of a bridge between XenForo and Wordpress MU compared to a new integrated XenForo XenBlog system?

XenForo is a forum. The developers are experts in designing forum solutions. WordPress is a blog. Its developers are experts in designing blog solutions. Why make the forum developers re-invent the wheel and try to create their own blog platform, when they can instead work on a seamless integration with an existing, already-superb product?

 

[Grover]

Why make the forum developers re-invent the wheel and try to create their own blog platform, when they can instead work on a seamless integration with an existing, already-superb product?

Well... because of exactly the reason I stated in my previous post?

 

[Mitchell]

I can't like Nick's post more than I do. God bless vB and IPB but I have no use for their own blog or gallery or CMS add-ons because I am perfectly happy with Wordpress which does a fantastic job already and I think most people would much rather link a great forum with a great but different blog, rather than a great forum with a good in-house produced blog just because they can merge better. The vB and IPB blogs don't do what Wordpress can do. BBPress can't do what Xen can do. So why not try and help them work side by side? That way, everyone wins out in the end.

The very first thing I thought about this forum software when I saw it was "wow, this is exactly what BBPress should be." And for me personally, that's what I would love it to be.

So in short, yes, I'm all for any bridge in any shape or form.

 

[Tigratrus]

James or anybody else,

Can you explain to me (I know almost nothing about Wordpress or WPMU) what the big benefits are of a bridge between XenForo and Wordpress MU compared to a new integrated XenForo XenBlog system?

From a users point of view I would absolutely prefer to offer my members a way to publish blogs on XenForo, by making use of the interface they are already familiar with: the excellent UI of XenForo. I am convinced (for my particular situation) that will attract much more members to publish a Blog on my platform compared to having yet another complete different system like Wordpress attached to it.

Why use WP instead of the interface they are familiar with? Good question:

1st off, the interface wouldn't need to really be much (if any) different. Out of the box, WP uses tinymce as the editor, which just so happens to be the editor that XF uses. Convenient that... In addition to that, WP is incredibly easy to style, with a bazillion themes available, and a really simple and easy to use template system. We're planning to basically tweak an existing WP theme like sandbox so that it uses the same classes as XF and just use the same exact CSS file for both. So WP will look, feel, and act almost identical to XF.

Now, why use it?

Lot's of reasons... Over 10,000 of them in fact
WP is a really REALLY mature blogging platform. There are solutions already implemented, widgeted, versioned and repeatedly improved for problems and features that you don't even know you have a need for yet. Seriously, Wordpress is the gold standard for a blogging platform, and it's that way because it's the best. It IS the best of breed tool for the job. It takes like 5 minutes to install, can be updated to the latest version with a single click and has a community that puts vb.org to shame. Wordpress is so capable as a blogging platform because it's BOTH fantastically flexible (best platform for building a simple website actually, and is often the tool of choice for folks developing quick effective sites for brink and mortar clients) and exceptionally easy to use.

As an example for why it would be a great platform for use in an XF integrated community I'll give you an example:

Lets say you want to restrict your members to having very limited (or no) choices of theme that they can use, that's simple to do. You get to choose what's available for them, and with over 1,200 mostly free themes available there's tons of choice without needing to do more than minor tweaking to brand them for your site. But lets say you have some vendors that want to have a strong presence on your site and want to have a branded blog to support that? You can add another theme and give only that blog access to it. Multi-user is really picking up steam now that it's part of the the main WP trunk, so you're going to see a lot of excellent functionality added to build an effective blog network. Right out of the box though you can load "must use" plugins so that all blogs must share some common functionality, and you can make other plugins optional. The possibilities are endless...

Worried about scaling? There are over 11.4 MILLION blogs hosted on wordpress.com, granted I'll bet the server farm is an incredible beast, but the software is clearly capable of scaling well .

Seriously, I would VASTLY rather that Kier and Mike focus their time and effort doing what they do better than anybody else in the world right now... Making XF a worldbeater of a forum and community platform, and leverage existing projects like Wordpress to do what IT does better than just about anything else be the best damn blog system available.

 

[Markos]

I agree...a solution like IP.Nexus for Xenforo is very useful, is more simple to create a professional, paid bridge for WP/Joomla to create a little/limited cms...more users want that.

 

[bookmark]

this would be an add-on.Don't integrate this into the forum platform.

 

[Markos]

this would be an add-on.Don't integrate this into the forum platform.

Yes, for me is sufficient if is an official addon

 

[Cupara]

I say let the bridge be an addon and not part of the core package. Bridges to various software will happen but doubt its a good idea to have it part of the core package.

 

[Shamil]

I say let the bridge be an addon and not part of the core package. Bridges to various software will happen but doubt its a good idea to have it part of the core package.

I agree.

 

[Crazyfruitbat]

Over the past couple of years I have been using a Joomla front end, and I have to admit I liked the system though when it went wrong it went majorly wrong and it generally became worse over time. Templates (that I paid money for) would break, you need a plugin for everything under the sun and when a good version gets upgraded to a bad version I found myself crying to sleep at night knowing that finding actual developers to help is impossible sometimes. I ran a bridge to VB using jFusion, and even Alan (the guy that dealt with the VB side of things) could not get it to work with my site.

So when the other site (who shall not be named) offered the CMS as an integrated system I was all for it, money down and I waited and waited - and it arrived and unlike most folks I was pretty damned exited. The basics of it works....but everything else doesn't. I'm not excited any more.

Here are a few reasons why it doesn't work:

• Because it's an add-on, the templates are separate - meaning some things worked in the forums that didn't work on the front page, meaning constant fixes.
• We all know the URL issue of not being able to put the CMS in the route folder (easily)
• The RSS feed does it's own thing, today my posts showed up only showing one section, later on all of them. Sometimes it never adds posts.
• Images are treated like attachments (this should never happen on a blog - it just looks stupid
• The system allows comments to be carried over into the forums - did you ever move the post to another place afterwards? nope? it breaks the connection meaning you have two sets of comments on the same article. Great! Users get confused and cry.
• Boxes. I love boxes, but I like boxes I can make on my own - not the ones that look the same on everyone else's site. Same goes for the menu system.
• Adverts. Why are they placed in boxes too? I don't want to box up my adverts!
• Page layout is insanely unusable
• Google loves my user blog, hates my front page.
• No plugins for the front page so it always looks crap

I think I have said enough, and I know I'm on the verge of ranting lol BUT, there is a reason for my ranting (damn, I just admitted to ranting!). These are all things that are errors because they think in the way of forums and everything else is just added. Putting things in placeholder boxes, and moving comments over to forums and style breaking issues are all because it wasn't designed as a CMS, it was designed as a mini forum and scaled down to act like a CMS.

So, it's a bit late for my current site - my users are narked at having issues (and so am I) but for my next site, I hope to be using a fresh install of wordpress frontend, and hopefully a bridge supporting users to go back and forth with xenforo.

Keep forums as forums, CMSs as CMSs - just please find a way for users to be able to sign into both at the same time.

so errrrr....+1 for wordpress plugins from me lol

 

[MordyT]

I support this...

 

[Jason]

A serious website would want to make their own CMS, to a certain extent, becuase their demands are so more specific.

This is exactly what we've done (built a custom 'CMS' using CakePHP (and Django in another instance)); however, that's probably not very feasible for most board owners, so I can certainly see why people would want some sort of bridge for a few of the popular CMS platforms out there.

 

[bb5999]

Cannot say how many times I tried to get a WP bridge working well with Vb. Came pretty close a couple of times, but it always came back to bite me.

I think the bridge is a wonderful idea, support it.

 

[HydraulicJack]

...You see, my members are novice computer users and the majority of them never used any Blog software. The interface of XenForo is absolutely simple and very user friendly. Imagine if we would go for XenForo (which we can't by now, because it offers no Blog system) and then having to confront our members with a completely new Wordpress interface to be able to construct their Blogs.

Yes I am in the same situation with my user base... They need >more< integration AND more intuitively obvious ease of use, not 3 new learning curves (XF, WP, AND Joomla/Drupal!)

From a users point of view I would absolutely prefer to offer my members a way to publish blogs on XenForo, by making use of the interface they are already familiar with: the excellent UI of XenForo. I am convinced (for my particular situation) that will attract much more members to publish a Blog on my platform compared to having yet another complete different system like Wordpress attached to it.

I absolutely agree. I want the new Forum to really wail first, but meanwhile my community members and I are stuck in vB limbo, and hoping that at least a CMS-lite solution and a Blog mod appear a little sooner rather than a little later. Once we can give them $ for licenses, maybe they could hire someone to help rough one out that they could then polish or vice versa.

I >really< want to be able to support this kind of entrepreneurial innovation and not just shovel more dollars into Wall Street for half-fast viscous solutions.