Have you seen...?

Central to the experience of interacting with forum software is the interface through which visitors will create their content. This is usually done through the text editor and attachment manager, so keeping these systems fresh and inspiring is very important to us. From the outset, XenForo has employed a rich text editor (RTE) to allow visitors to compose their messages in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) interface, so that bold text is shown emboldened, large text is appropriately large etc., rather than working directly with the underlying BB code in order to take the guesswork out of message editing. We've always built a custom implementation on top of what we consider to be the best-in-class tools, and through the life of...

Everyday administrative housekeeping often requires direct interaction with your server's file system. Installing or upgrading a style, switching out logo graphics and other images on your forum you will invariably require a dust-off for your rusty old FTP client and an exciting adventure into arcane directory structures in order to upload them manually, while desperately not trying to overwrite the server's kernel or otherwise accidentally lunch the normally smooth operation of your forum. Booooooring! We have already acknowledged that these archaic methods will no longer do. XenForo 2.1 removed many barriers in order to allow one-click upgrades and add-on installs/upgrades from archive to be performed directly from your admin...

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...

Mobile first. We hear it again and again, and with over half of all web traffic coming from mobile devices, it's more important than ever to provide your mobile visitors with a great experience. Of course, XenForo 2 is built on a fully responsive design that gracefully adapts to any display size and makes using XenForo a pleasure on all devices, but now we're taking it a step further by enabling any XenForo site to become a progressive web app. Progressive web what? Okay, let's back up a little. Imagine a technology that allows a web site to appear and behave like an app without having to produce native code for each platform, or go through any vendor's App Store equivalent. Progressive web apps, or PWAs, aim to bridge the gap between...

Participation. It's the life blood of a forum, and once you have a group of dedicated members creating and discussing content, your forum will flourish. But there's a barrier to entry when it comes to participation. When a new visitor stumbles upon your forum from a search engine, they may read the content that piqued their interest and then feel inclined to add their own thought-provoking response, but at that point they are confronted with the dreaded ... at which point, in many cases, the whim disappears and they disappear like a stranger in the night. The prospect of having to complete a form and go through the rigmarole of signing-up to a new service is quite a turn-off to new visitors, for obvious reasons. Visitors have a...

A new way to surface content Forums are usually devoted to a single subject matter and the threads they contain relate to that subject matter, unless it's all gone wrong and your users are wandering off topic. Threads belong to their parent forums, so if your board separates posts about kittens from posts about puppies into separate forums, you are never going to see a kitten thread and a puppy thread sitting next to each other within your forum hierarchy. This is how it has always been, it's the basic nature of the discussion forum paradigm. But what if you want to have a forum that contains all threads from across your entire board that were posted in the week before last, or all threads started by moderators, or all threads that...

Welcome to the first of our "Have you seen...?" (HYS) series for XenForo 2.2! To ensure you're kept up to date with future threads, we strongly recommend clicking the "Watch forum" link here and enabling email notifications if you haven't done so already 🙂 Over the course of the next few weeks we would like to not only introduce you to the new features we've been working hard on for the next version of XenForo, but also introduce you to some new members of the XenForo team! We'll introduce those new team members in the upcoming HYS threads. But first... New minimum requirements You might remember that we started requiring PHP 5.6 starting with the release of XenForo 2.1. We base decisions like this on the "anonymous usage statistics"...

Welcome to XenForo 2.1! We said there would be something special accompanying the final HYS in this series for XF 2.1, and here it is. This is your first opportunity to help us put the new feature set through its paces. We also said there would be a number of other miscellaneous changes/improvements to show you, so read on for more 👇

And here we are, already at the penultimate entry in our "Have you seen...?" series for XF 2.1. If you haven't seen the previous entries about what's coming in XF 2.1, check them out here. As ever, to ensure you're kept up to date, we strongly recommend giving that "Watch forum" link a... well... click, I guess... and make sure you enable email notifications if you haven't done so already 🙂

Welcome to another HYS for 2.1 and this one's a biggie. If you haven't seen the previous entries about what's coming in XF 2.1, check them out here. Although Halloween may be over, why not trick the "Watch forum" link into giving you a treat, by getting it send you an email whenever we post about new things in the pipeline. As I write this, our most popular suggestion was a REST API and with 2.1, it's here. While this is a fairly developer-focused feature on its own, it opens up many more integration options. This will make it easier to get data into or out of XenForo, without having to understand the underlying PHP framework that XF is built on. The API breaks down into a few distinct components, so let's look at those in turn.

It's ok, developers, breathe a sigh of relief... We do have some good things for you in XF 2.1 but at a slightly smaller scale than the changes we introduced in XF 2.0 😉 Welcome to the seventh (admittedly developer oriented) "Have you seen...?" thread for XF 2.1. As ever, if you've not yet seen the previous entries, (why not?!) you can check them out here. To ensure you're kept up to date, we strongly recommend giving that "Watch forum" link a scare and make sure you enable email notifications if you haven't done so already 🎃

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 🙂

Welcome to the fifth in our "Have you seen...?" series for XF 2.1. 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 tap and make sure you enable email notifications if you haven't done so already 🙂