Add-on 2.0 Suggestions

I stand corrected. Doesn't really change anything though. It's been a "standard forum feature" in a single forum product for less than a month.
 
I try to give you my two cents.

I'm actually using on my forum an addon that's no longer maintained and for me is absolutely needed. Basically this addon let the user upload on imgur (but could be any service like this one) the images so that they don't addup to the server space and are served from imgur. I think that such an addon can be very interesting for everyone since it automates the uploading on an external service, copying the code and inserting it into the forum. What do you think?
 
Second try if you mind @Syndol 2.0

A bridge between Xenforo and one of the best, for me, image gallery around Imagevuex? I use it a lot for our gallery, work like a charm and it's very customizable. I've had a custom addon developed from a member here that show on the forum home page random images from my Imagevuex gallery. Could be very interesting if someone need a strong gallery script.
 
^This so much.
An add on that ties into the YouTube API to allow video upload and embed direct to posts would be fantastic.


I'm not 100% sure about IPS's implementation of reactions. I look forward to seeing what the XF 3rd party devs can do and improve upon with the concept. It seems lots of people are working on that though, so I'd put your focus elsewhere Syndol.


A quality calendar and events system is needed. Jaxel's is mediocre. UI isn't great, it's nearly impossible for users to figure out how to upload event images without being shown. It would be great to have a calendar system with good support.

A decent mapping add on would be good too.

I think ultimately the core would benefit from some kind of google map integration as it could tie into so many different add ons.

Events often have locations, they could be placed on the map.
Users have locations, they could be placed on the map.
Social groups could have locations, they could be placed on the map.
Social group events have locations...
Gallery albums can have locations
Individual photos in albums can have locations
Resources could be tied to locations

A well designed and extendable mapping feature that can be utilised and extended by any add on could become a fantastic place to discover new content in a community. Being able to filter content types on a map could be pretty sweet.

Browse for photos taken in certain locations.
Find members near you.
Find meetups near you.
Find local social groups near you.
The ability to invite members in certain locations to events or social groups

Something like that could really turn XF into a very powerful piece of local or global community software for any niche where users also get together offline, or have any any content at all that's location specific.
 
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Most every social media platform allows members to upload video from their phone to a post. Give me an add-on that will allow me to do that and I'll pay you well, I'm sure others will too.
Hmm ... that's possible out of the box? You just have to configure attachments to accept common video file extensions like .mp4.
 
That user experience is terrible though, I'm doing that on one of my sites and I get people uploading videos from their phones. You have to download the video file before you watch it, plus it's incredibly resource heavy on the server. Playback often doesn't work at all on mobile too, depending on your device and the size of the file.
 
That user experience is terrible though, I'm doing that on one of my sites and I get people uploading videos from their phones. You have to download the video file before you watch it, plus it's incredibly resource heavy on the server. Playback often doesn't work at all on mobile too, depending on your device and the size of the file.
I’m not seeing the benefit over just uploading the video to YouTube and embedding it in a post. You’re correct that it’s resource heavy so again I just think YouTube is the place for this, or FB even.

The bandwidth from uploading and hosting the videos could be extremely high but then again I have zero experience or need for the feature.

I think this thread should be titled somewhat differently as it seems to be turning into a discussion of core functions and that isn’t what it was intended for.
 
nearly at beta like we are
Chris said Beta :eek:
Basically this addon let the user upload on imgur (but could be any service like this one) the images so that they don't addup to the server space and are served from imgur.
This
I think that such an Add-on ist useless as you always risk loosing content when the used service goes down or "suddenly" changes the business model.
Well, AWS isn't going away, you just have to pay them for bandwidth, which is really nominal...I'd say that is a long term solution, unless the board admin dies and doesn't leave anyone else the ability to take over.

Or Cheveretto, which is totally under the control of the board, but kind of defeats the purpose of the 3rd party idea.
 
Most every social media platform allows members to upload video from their phone to a post. Give me an add-on that will allow me to do that and I'll pay you well, I'm sure others will too.

^^ again, AWS. On one board I maintain, we have an AWS account for some older version of software, and we had videos uploaded to AWS that would stream from there, and we paid monthly bandwidth charges for whatever was viewed (and it wasn't much $$). If that could be configured to allow direct video uploading to AWS then tie into a link, you have my money...
 
^^ again, AWS. On one board I maintain, we have an AWS account for some older version of software, and we had videos uploaded to AWS that would stream from there, and we paid monthly bandwidth charges for whatever was viewed (and it wasn't much $$). If that could be configured to allow direct video uploading to AWS then tie into a link, you have my money...

The XF attachment system can be extended to remotely host attachments using an S3 bucket so that would at least handle putting the files onto S3, then you'd just need something to recognize an attachment as a video and be able to embed it in the post, but I think it may be best to leave something like that to XFMG probably
 
Now that XF 2 is officially out I'm looking for suggestions for my first 2.0 add-on.
For example, is there anything that is still missing from the core that you consider a must have?
Yes

Conversation quota per usegroup. I know it's part of conversation essentials but that means paying for all the other stuff as well. I'd be happy to pay a bit for just that one aspect and I've seen a lot of posts from other people saying the same thing.
 
The ability for users to engage with content (i.e. post ratings) and for the good content to bubble to the surface (i.e. trending content) are the two big things missing in terms of content discovery. Having those two things working together (a la Reddit) would be a game changer for a lot of forums).
 
As for other suggestions, there's a HUGE potential for using widgets in XF2 but I've not seen anyone mention any dedicated plans for developing any. I think this is much the same as Wordpress moving from just being a blog to being THE website platform, widgets offer the same potential for XF.

I imagine widgets would be relatively quick/simply to produce and building up a library of widgets might help you "corner" that market.
 
I’m not seeing the benefit over just uploading the video to YouTube and embedding it in a post.

Because members don't want to have to visit another website, register, learn that new website, figure how to upload video there, configure the video privacy settings, go back to the forum, figure out how to embed that post....

Heck, as an admin I don't want to have to bother with all that. If I'm in a thread and I decide I want to upload video, I want to click one button, pick the video, and let it upload. Done. Nothing more.

There's an API available, why not utilise it? YouTube do video better than anyone, let's capitalise and embrace that. Last time I checked it seems like it was free for about 600 videos a day.

Don't forget, the video player is just as important as the converted file, hosting and delivery of that file. Again, YouTube maintain that on their end.

Look at all the trouble Reddit is having with their new video upload feature the last two weeks. The player they're using is crap and it's driving the users nuts. It doesn't work half the time on mobile or in most of the mobile apps, it's not amazing on desktop either.

If you could integrate YouTube live streaming with this kind of add on, even better. Live streaming has gone nuts in many of the facebook groups I frequent. Members love being able to go live and share live video with the rest of the community - and the community loves contributing to those live threads. Perhaps YT LiveStreaming could be integrated somehow.

If a user registers on your forum, and they want to contribute and share a video on their phone or computer to a single post on your forum, they should be able to click 'Upload Video' and everything else should be taken care of by the forum. They shouldn't have to visit a gallery, upload to the gallery, get a share link, return to the thread, and post it there. It's nearly as bad as having to to to an external site. No one wants to do that, it's far too convoluted.

Direct video upload is expected behaviour for any app now and if you can't do it, that will frustrate many users, who will likely leave and go to facebook or some other platform where you can upload video more easily.

I just think YouTube is the place for this, or FB even.

If you tell users to leave your website to go upload their video elsewhere, then much of the conversation will also continue elsewhere. A huge amount of the subsequent commenting, activity and page views will be on YT or FB, not your forum. I see it daily in communities with lots of fan created video.

If the attitude to video of lots of forum admins is to go elsewhere for their video uploading needs, then no wonder so many of them are losing traffic to other platforms and many new community admins are picking facebook groups over forums. One of the big edges that forums still have is that they're not facebook. Privacy conscious people and people who are burnt out by traditional social media don't want to have to visit facebook for their video sharing needs.

If they're a member of a forum community, we need to let them have the ability to upload direct to us and let us do the heavy lifting somehow.

Video content creation and sharing is increasing at a very fast rate and shows no sign of slowing down.

Nearly 500k hours of video is uploaded to YT every day, have you seen how active some of those comments sections are?

Whether your users are creating and wanting to share text content, image content, or video content, we need to be able to accomodate all of it and it must be easy for them to submit all three direct to a post to spark conversation. Whether that's a post in a normal forum thread or a comment elsewhere on the site. Video is an essential online media content type now.

Until that's available in the XF core, I think an add on to enable some kind of seamless video upload and playback direct to posts would be a worthy add on for someone to work on to help XF reach feature parity with many of these other community platforms. Whether the back end is YouTube/Amazon/Wistia, whatever.

Price and ease of use will make or break it though, which is why I think YT may be a good option to try. It will lower the barrier to entry for new and smaller forums to enable this feature due to being free after purchasing the add on. With 1M quota units you can upload over 600 videos a day, which should be more than enough for even the busiest of forums as well as the new or small ones.
 
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From what I can understand, there's at least three different versions of this planned by different developers for XF 2.0. Probably one to avoid, with that in mind.
I just wanted to further clarify my earlier comment to avoid some confusion.

There are a number of very capable developers already working on a post ratings / reactions add-on, so I was merely suggesting that Syndol should avoid doing one to avoid entering a potentially crowded market.
 
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