XenStaff: a flip-card team page and a private staff inbox you answer in one click 3.0.1

This update removes the "XenForo add-ons by ©XenSupport" line that XenStaff added to your forum footer, separator included. Nothing to configure: install the archive over the previous version from Admin CP > Add-ons and the line is gone once the upgrade has run.

The resource page now says so too: Visible branding: No.

XenStaff 3.0.0 rebuilds the add-on on XenForo itself. Every 2.1 feature is still there, your profiles, thanks, office hours, messages and badges move over on their own, and it is still free.

Messages that get an answer

• Members and guests write to a staff member from the card, in an overlay. The message lands in the staff member's account area, in an inbox with Open, Replied and Closed tabs, pages and an open count in the account menu.
• Reply from the message itself: one click sends your answer as a direct message with their message quoted, or by email to a guest who left an address. In 2.1 the only option was "Mark as replied". Reply times are now measured for real.
• Contact alerts read "Someone sent you a message" for anonymous senders instead of showing a grey question mark, link to the message and can be switched off in alert preferences.

Closed to bots, kind to privacy

• Guests pass XenForo's captcha, guests and new members go through the native spam check, the "Contact staff" permission now applies to guests too, and flood protection comes on top of the hourly limit.
• A staff member who hides their online status is no longer shown online, nor counted in "Online now". Online and Away follow XenForo's online timeout.
• The inbox and each message are open to the staff member they were sent to, not to any logged-in member.

A team page worth opening

• Staff groups picked from a list and ordered, tabs to filter by role, a top staff member once someone has been thanked, and a sidebar with who is online, who is on duty now, the most thanked and who to contact.
• Flip cards with a real Details button that works with the keyboard and fades when reduced motion is on. Office hours shown in the visitor's time zone, with slots past midnight on the right day.
• A Staff tab on member profiles, the staff badge under the user title in messages and the member tooltip at no query cost, and Most thanked staff in Notable members.
• The career timeline finally has screens: joined, promoted, paused, returned, milestones and custom events, edited by the staff member or by an admin.

Fixed at the root

• The 30-day thanks chart counts days in the visitor's time zone, so no thanks lands on the wrong day.
• The roster comes from XenForo's indexed group table and is cached, instead of scanning every member once per staff group on each staff page and each page with the widget.
• Thanks are reliable (no error on a double click, counters that match), staff get an alert when thanked, and a second click takes the thanks back.
• Deleted and merged members are cleaned up, and old card colors and website links are checked before they are shown.

For admins

• A staff overview, a sheet for each staff member (badge, status, contact settings, office hours, timeline, thanks with removal) and a contact log with filters.
• Native badge pages, statistics, a Rebuild staff counters tool, an admin permission, a read-only REST API and new options: guest captcha, automatic deletion of handled messages, badge in posts, "on duty now" widget.
• Every page is built from XenForo's components and follows light, dark and custom styles; the stylesheet went from 43 KB to 13 KB.

Upgrading: install the archive over 1.x or 2.x from the Admin CP, after a backup. Your data and permissions are kept and old addresses redirect to the new pages. Thanks counters are recounted from the thanks actually stored, so a counter that had drifted can go down. If the upgrade stops on an error, your data is safe: wait two minutes (some hosts keep PHP files in memory) and click Upgrade again, or upload the whole Staff folder from the archive and retry. Requires XenForo 2.3.0 and PHP 8.0 or later.

2.1.2. XenStaff 2.1.2 fixes the sidebar widget, makes flip cards size correctly on every screen, finally displays office hours and grants sensible default permissions on install and upgrade.

• Sidebar widget: each staff member is now a single link, so the grid, compact and spotlight layouts no longer break in the default style.
• Flip cards: the back face and the front face are now always the same size at every width, with no hidden or scrolling content; phones show one full-width card per row.
• Office hours are now shown on the back of each card, with an "On duty now" badge and the member's time zone.
• Saving office hours no longer drops the last time slot.
• Default permissions are now granted on install and upgrade (thanks, contact, stats, staff profile editing) without overwriting permissions you already set.
• Rich bios are rendered as BB code instead of raw HTML, closing a script injection risk. A bio typed as HTML now shows its tags: rewrite it with BB code.
• Custom card accent colours are applied again.
• Thanking a staff member who belongs to a secondary staff group no longer shows an error.
• The thanks button updates the counter in place instead of reloading the page.
• The e-mail address entered by guests in the contact form is now kept and shown in the staff inbox.
• Today's bar is visible again in the 30-day thanks chart.
• The office hours editor uses native time pickers and translated day names.

The full changelog, release by release, is on the version history.

This update brings XenStaff from 2.0.6 to 2.1.1. What each release added:

2.1.1. The Staff tab now lights up while a visitor is on the staff page.

2.1.0. The page title and the description no longer appear twice. The hero banner now carries its own phrases, and a new option decides which heading the page shows.

The full changelog, release by release, is on the version history.

Highlights​

• Flip cards large portrait vignettes on the front; hover (desktop) or tap to reveal member details on the back
• Redesigned card back hero blur, identity header, status, stats grid (messages / reactions / trophies / service), joined date, quote/bio/socials, primary profile CTA + thanks
• New page masthead cinematic intro with roster stage (lead portrait + orbiting avatars), live chips, and a floating stats dock

UI / UX​

• Theme-safe styling on native XenForo tokens (works with light & dark styles)
• Stronger vignette treatment: frame, sheen, glass meta, badge/medal/status polish
• Clearer actions on the card back (profile as primary button)
• Soft motion (orb float, pulse, face entrance) with reduced-motion support

Bug fix

• Fixed a database error that could block installation or upgradeon MySQL versions older than 8.0.13 (and some strict server setups):
  

  BLOB, TEXT, GEOMETRY or JSON column 'rich_bio' can't have a default value (MySQL error 1101)

  Click to expand...

  The staff-profile rich_bio column is no longer created with a SQL default value (the add-on now sets it in code instead). XenStaff installs and upgrades cleanly on every supported MySQL/MariaDB version.

Notes

• If your upgrade previously failed with this error, just update to 2.0.5 and run the upgrade again — no data loss and nothing to undo, since the failed step never actually altered your table.
• Stability/compatibility patch only; no feature or behaviour changes. Recommended for everyone, and required if you saw the error above.

Major release. Cinematic "Hall of Honor" redesign; rich profiles (quote, BBCode bio, socials, accent color); office hours + live online status; anonymous-capable contact form + staff inbox; performance stats (thanks, replies, avg response, 30-day chart); badge library; thanks button; 3-style featured widget. Drop-in upgrade from 1.x — data preserved.

Fixed​

• Admin link 404 — Clicking the "XenStaff" entry under Setup in the AdminCP no longer 404s. The redirect now correctly sends you to the option group page.
• Staff bucketed by secondary usergroups — On forums where every member's primary usergroup is "Registered" and staff roles are assigned via secondary usergroups (Admin, Moderator, Events, etc.), all staff used to appear lumped under "Registered". Now each member is bucketed by the first staff usergroup they belong to (primary OR secondary), and the order you list groups in the Staff usergroups option becomes the on-page display order.

Improved​

• The explanation for the Staff usergroups option now makes the ordering behaviour explicit: "Order matters: groups are displayed in the order you list them here. Members in multiple staff groups are bucketed under the first matching group."

Notes​

• Safe upgrade from 1.0.0 — no DB schema changes, no data loss.
• No new permissions or options added — existing config is preserved as-is.

Credits​

Thanks to the user who reported both issues in detail with stack traces and the multi-group context — the fixes are entirely thanks to your feedback.