Anyone built a writing forum and story publishing site around XF?

[Mendalla]

I am currently in a bit of snit over the site where I publish my odd bits of fiction. They really need better software and design, among other things, if they want to get beyond where they are now. Curious if anyone has done a site along these lines based on a Xenforo board or if there are add-ons that would help in building such. Obviously if this got beyond the hypothetical level, it would be running some flavour of 2, hopefully 2.1 assuming it is out by the time anything happens.

Specs (roughly):

- forums
- ability for users to post and edit full text stories using the same login as the forums
- ability for moderators to approve or reject stories (for banned content or grammar/spelling) and for the user to do in-place edits for re-approval
- ability for users other than the author to rate and comment on a story
- listing of stories in categories (fantasy, s-f, romance, thriller, true story, etc.)

Initial thoughts would be a sub-forum for each genre. Story posted as a new thread with the comments as replies. Once 2.1 is out, the reactions could be used for the ratings. Use a thread approval process to approve each new thread (ie. story). However, as a user of 1.5, I haven't found the display and editing to the be the most conducive to longer text pieces like a story. Part of that may be my board's layout. I know the layout here would be better.

Of course, if it has been done post a link or send it to me in a conversation so I can have a boo (if you don't want it public for some reason).

 

[Mouth]

I am currently in a bit of snit over the site where I publish my odd bits of fiction. They really need better software and design, among other things, if they want to get beyond where they are now. Curious if anyone has done a site along these lines based on a Xenforo board or if there are add-ons that would help in building such. Obviously if this got beyond the hypothetical level, it would be running some flavour of 2, hopefully 2.1 assuming it is out by the time anything happens.

You want Article Management System from https://xenaddons.com/store/. XF2 version is currently in forth beta release, so should be no problem for your timeframe.

 

[Mendalla]

Thanks @Mouth . I'll look at it.

And thanks to whoever moved the thread. Wasn't sure if I put in the right spot or no.

 

[Live Free]

Ahh competition.

I run a writing forum and have considered what you are describing, but instead focus on workshops rather than publishing finalizes content.

 

[Xon]

Both https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/ and https://forums.spacebattles.com have heavy fanfiction writing sections, which use Threadmarks Pro to build chapters and a navigation UI on standard XF threads. Then the add-on Aggregating Forums is used to allow collapsing multiple sub-forums into a parent forum for navigation purposes.

There isn't any heavy moderation around writing however

 

[Mendalla]

So ... when I posted this 3 years ago, I was mostly speculating. Now it's threatening to become a reality. The owner of my writing site is shutting it down on Sept. 1 and for reasons we may not be able to take it over and just move it off of her servers. So, I am drafting a proposal to take over the domain and repoint it to a Xenforo-driven site.

The site has shrunk to a pale shadow of its former self so I am not sure how much cash and time to put into it. The big change since that post is the article forums. I am even thinking of just using article forums by broad genre for the stories rather than an AMS. But AMS is still an option. Anyone have other thoughts? My OP pretty much sums up the needs since that was based on the very site I am talking about.

 

[Mouth]

am even thinking of just using article forums by broad genre for the stories rather than an AMS.

Using Article type nodes will likely work, and configure for moderating new threads. Your 2nd criteria of "[...] user to do in-place edits for re-approval" not sure if that's possible though.

The site has shrunk to a pale shadow of its former self

Probably just start with core XF, then after time if the site grows again or you're constrained by article type nodes then you can consider AMS.

 

[Mendalla]

So holy crap, this is going down. Still trying to get some other board members involved, esp. in figuring out where the money is coming from, but I have a business plan and have been prototyping the site on a private dev. AMS is definitely where I want to go. Seems to replicate the story functionality perfectly and then some. Just have to change a bunch of phrases from "article" to "story" . Style-wise, I'm just tweaking Xenforo default since it is already close to the original site's style. I'll get fancy later once I see how things go and have more time. Had to do a quickie redesign on the logo (Paint 3D is my friend) since the only copy I could find that I could reach (have approached the owner to see what she has) was a 154x26 GIF used in the header currently.

I have an offer from the owner's soon-to-be-ex-programmer to set up a REST API for me to pull the stories over but we've realized there's a possible copyright issue since the T&C of the site don't explicitly grant the owner a license to transfer them to a new owner. So, we might start clean and get people to republish anything they want carried over. It's easy to export one's stories as an archive of text files so they can get them. I've tried with a few of mine and there's only one hitch that I can see.

Unfortunately, the woman I had hoped to make my other admin (she's an admin on the current site) is walking away. She had her own plan and is pissed that the owner went for mine.

 

[Mendalla]

So after all that, the owner actually shifted gears and decided she did want to keep the site and move it to the new platform she is adopting for her other site. Still, gave me an excuse to check out AMS, something I can't see needing for the site I admin now, but that I might find a use for down the road. Thanks to all who've had suggestions and to @Russ, @MySiteGuy and @Bob who provided advice and input in conversations.