A few pre-sale questions

[Fundah]

First off i'd like to praise the staff and members on their fast responses (from what I've seen and that is a sure fire way to get my monies ) when I submitted a few questions to vB it took them a day or 2 just to respond and as for IPB.. I submitted some questions and still no answer (was submitted around july of 2015) :I

Now, I shall get to the questions:

1. Now I'm in a start-up state for a couple sites and plan on using Xenforo as the 'backbone' of it all using SSO, I understand there isn't bridges for all my needs and I'm completely fine with paying for it, but the question is: would this be a good idea, could it cause any problems or what ever?

The structure I'll be looking for is this:

2. I looked through the demo, I might have overlooked it or something, but does Xenforo have a membership system?

• Where users can purchase 'sed membership
• Their grouping is changed to 'sed membership for x amount of days
• then switches them back to the normal 'members' group (or reoccuring payments?)

If so, could you point out how to do so, I'd like to take a look at it in the demo.

3. I was wondering just how customizable Xenforo was in terms of themes/skinning, I have seen tonnes of sites using this software and they do look nice and everything but for me, the navigation can be a pain sometimes, it adds links to pages I (just my opinion wish not to offend) find to be pointless, during the theme/skinning proccess is there a way to eliminate the links I don't want to be showed on my site?

4. When installing add-ons can we just upload a .zip/.gzip etc. through the admin portal (like with SMF) or is the process tiring like IPB's was, needing to play find the file and move it to the directory it belongs to.

Pretty sure that's it for now

 

[Chris D]

2. I looked through the demo, I might have overlooked it or something, but does Xenforo have a membership system?

• Where users can purchase 'sed membership
• Their grouping is changed to 'sed membership for x amount of days
• then switches them back to the normal 'members' group (or reoccuring payments?)

There is a user upgrades system, yes. Existing registered members can purchase account upgrades and in doing so (only PayPal is supported by default) users are upgraded to the specified user group for X days/weeks/months/years and then they revert back to normal, or you can set up a recurring payment which automatically renews.

3. I was wondering just how customizable Xenforo was in terms of themes/skinning, I have seen tonnes of sites using this software and they do look nice and everything but for me, the navigation can be a pain sometimes, it adds links to pages I (just my opinion wish not to offend) find to be pointless, during the theme/skinning proccess is there a way to eliminate the links I don't want to be showed on my site?

Most people can do what they need to with the styling system. Templates are easily editable and generally this doesn't cause too many problems, even during upgrades. Changes you make to templates will always take priority over changes we make to templates. When we do change a template you have changed, we mark it as outdated and from there you may be able to use the template comparison and merging tools to re-merge your changes back in to the new template.

4. When installing add-ons can we just upload a .zip/.gzip etc. through the admin portal (like with SMF) or is the process tiring like IPB's was, needing to play find the file and move it to the directory it belongs to.

A bit more like IPB, but generally an add-on ZIP file will contain an upload folder (just as the XF installation ZIP actually) and you just upload that upload folder to the root of your XF installation. Once you've done that, you upload an XML file in the Admin CP. There is an add-on available that allows ZIP file uploads but it doesn't always work depending on how the add-on has been packaged and server configuration.

 

[Chris D]

1. Now I'm in a start-up state for a couple sites and plan on using Xenforo as the 'backbone' of it all using SSO, I understand there isn't bridges for all my needs and I'm completely fine with paying for it, but the question is: would this be a good idea, could it cause any problems or what ever?

Nearly forgot this one This is a tricky question to answer, by the way. Theoretically what you're proposing to do is possible. People have created integrations for some systems which use the XF authentication system. I don't think I've seen anyone quite integrate it with so many different sources, but assuming those other applications have a reasonable API or are extendable then it should be possible. Could it cause problems? Maybe. That depends on the quality of the integration mostly, and the quality of the applications involved and what changes might get made to their authentication processes and code over time. Key thing, of course, is to make sure it is done in a secure way.

 

[Fundah]

Nearly forgot this one This is a tricky question to answer, by the way. Theoretically what you're proposing to do is possible. People have created integrations for some systems which use the XF authentication system. I don't think I've seen anyone quite integrate it with so many different sources, but assuming those other applications have a reasonable API or are extendable then it should be possible. Could it cause problems? Maybe. That depends on the quality of the integration mostly, and the quality of the applications involved and what changes might get made to their authentication processes and code over time. Key thing, of course, is to make sure it is done in a secure way.

I was afraid it might be a tricky ordeal, what I'll probably do is have Roundcube and Owncloud operate as separate entities for the time being to make sure the intergration between the core parts of the site are where I want them to be, then I could worry about having them intergrated into the mix at a later date.

Thank you for your replies chris