Have you seen...?

PWA Improvements Hot on the heels of the improvements announced earlier this week, we have another set of improvements to show you today, again, courtesy of @digitalpoint! This time we'll be focusing on some improvements to Progressive Web Apps which some of you will be familiar with if you're already using the [DigitalPoint] PWA add-on. Web app manifest editing We've been rocking a web app manifest for a while now but starting with XenForo 2.4 you will be able to modify the web app manifest using the new additionalWebAppManifest option: In addition to adding additional properties, you can also override existing ones. There are various resources which document compatible (and experimental!) options. { "name": "XF 2.4"...

Flash Message Improvements In the coming weeks, we will be showcasing a few improvements very kindly donated to us by XenForo development G.O.A.T, @digitalpoint! When digitalpoint heard that the primary aim for XenForo 2.4 was to implement some tangible quality of life improvements, he was very quick to offer up some code he has written over the years - some released, some not - which he wrote for his own sites. Is there a somewhat ulterior motive to this code philanthropy aside from our eternal gratitude and ongoing respect? Yes. Now he no longer has to maintain any of this code himself! No better motive required, in our opinion, and of course it still comes with our eternal gratitude and respect. It's 2025 so I hate the term "flash...

Since announcing Featured Content for XenForo 2.3 we have been closely monitoring feedback through various channels and our own overall vision for the feature and, as such, in today's Have you seen...? for XenForo 2.4 we are highlighting some of the recent changes we have made. Automatic feature expiry When curating content, sometimes it can take time to manage the list of featured content effectively to ensure it stays fresh for your visitors, and part of that is the inevitable time where perhaps content is no longer noteworthy and needs to be "unfeatured". You can, of course, do this manually but, now, you don't have to. For new and existing features in the "Customize" section you can now select "Unfeature after..." and specify the...

Welcome back to our Have you seen...? series for XenForo 2.4! The code reviews are coming in thick and fast as we complete our planned features so there should be plenty to show you over the coming weeks. Part of our process for this and previous releases has involved looking at the amazing pool of developer talent that we have in this community and considering how we can work with those developers to bring those features to the core. And that's the focus of this time where we'll be taking a look at the Chunked Uploads add-on by @JulianD which, starting with XenForo 2.4, will become a core feature. But first... We have decided to accelerate our plans to modernise the minimum version of PHP that is supported by XenForo. While we had...

Rich text editors are hard. When you drill down into how they actually work, it's a wonder why there are so many of them, and why developers would willingly spend a significant part of their life working on one. At XenForo we have been through ... counts on fingers ... three different rich text editors in our history, so if we're being generous we can at least attest to what a feat of engineering they are and how difficult they can be to get right -- and all we have to do is implement them. That's no easy feat either, though. We have an increasing number of features that we need from an editor, we have a layer of conversion from HTML to BB code (and back again), and we have an overall user base of millions of members across all of our...

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...

Welcome to the first "Have you seen...?" post for XenForo 2.4! As we discussed a couple of months ago, XenForo 2.4 will focus mainly on quality-of-life improvements for admins, moderators and users, and today's first look at our next version absolutely ticks that box. Occasionally the inspiration for new features doesn't solely come from the suggestions forum and at times we sit up and take notice of what is popular in the Resource Manager. In this particular case, the Add-on update notifier by @mazzly caught our attention as not only being widely sought after but also currently one of the highest rated resources so it appears to fill a need for enough of you that we decided to bring it to everyone. Once we roll out XenForo 2.4...

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...

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...