Have you seen...?

Where are we? TL;DR: We're working hard to release XenForo 2.4 ASAP, but it's taking longer than expected due to scope changes and strategic decisions to wait for certain upstream developments that will benefit the long-term roadmap. Here's an analogy to explain why: Software development is like planning a cross-country expedition with multiple destinations. When you set out for version 2.4, you're not just driving to the next town over. You're charting a course through unknown territory with several strategic stops planned along the way - each representing a major milestone or feature release. But the challenge is the landscape keeps changing along the journey. New roads open up (better technologies emerge) Bridges get washed out...

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...

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...

So you've got people to register on your forum and they've made their initial contribution, but once they've done that, how do you keep those members engaged and coming back to your forum? It's an age-old problem. A user registers, they may participate for a while if you're lucky, and then it's really a toss-up as to whether they will stay and become a semi-permanent fixture of your forum, or you never see them again. Of all the challenges facing forum owners, this one requires the most creative approaches. There are various existing features that are geared towards keeping your members engaged. They can receive alerts, push notifications or emails when content is posted in threads or forums they watch, or you can manually email...

Image optimization with WebP support Arguably, we could have talked about this in our bumper Boosting performance entry but it wasn't quite ready to be shown at that point. (I started working on it this week and I haven't yet mastered the art of time travel). Initially the scope of our WebP support in XenForo 2.3 was to merely allow users to upload WebP files and have them correctly displayed inline. This would have been a positive change on its own as the format becomes more prevalent across the web, but it doesn't really do much on its own to solve the issue of disk usage which, of course, then also has a positive effect on performance. But, this wasn't enough. If you wish to optimize, automatically, all future image uploads you...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...