Articles - WP or XF?

[Steve Freides]

Our website is WP-based since the company was founded in 2012. It originally used WP's forum feature and also it's blog/article feature.

In 2015, we switched the forum to XF. We still have the WP site and the WP blog/article feature. Along the way, XF offered an Article forum type which, to be perfectly honest, I haven't explored. All of our forum is still Discussion type.

I'm curious to know the benefits and drawbacks of switching our blog/articles to be part of our forum.

I have noticed that, at least in our community, the expectation for an "article" is that people expect the author to reply. We currently limit blog/article comments to a few months after publication in order spare authors from having to answer questions ad infinitum. People can and do start a thread on the forum to discuss further if they wish. A XF approach would be more integrated, I think, and encourage both author replies and member participation.

Thanks in advance for your ideas.

Steve Freides

The Forum

Welcome to the StrongFirst forum for strength discussion

StrongFirst.com

 

[Dad.]

Its all just preference, for you and for your users. What I tell people typically when they need to make this decision (as just about everyone weighs this out at one point or another) is to consider a few key factors:

1. Does your team have experience/preference towards WordPress/editorial CMS tools? Is it more comfortable for them?
2. Do you need more marketing level tools in your editorial side such that having WordPress plugins could be beneficial?
3. Is your audience far more heavily involved in the forum than the blog or vice versa?
4. Do you have forum-level features (permissions, paywalls, emoji, etc.) that you'd really enjoy seeing in "article comments" and such?

Ultimately if you aren't sure, I tend to tell people that when in doubt go with what is more familiar/simpler. One software is objectively easier to manage than two, cheaper, etc. You can do a forum (technically, at least ) on WordPress and you can do articles on XenForo.

Hope that helps.

 

[bzcomputers]

I find it inconvenient to create articles of any length on XenForo currently. The editor used by XenForo (Froala) has been limited in quite a few ways, one of them being it is not capable of going full screen. This requires the writer to scroll both the editor up and the page up to get to the toolbar just to make a title bold or insert a link which is annoying and time consuming and can really break the flow of the writing process.

I put in a suggestion to fix/add this, but as of now it has not gotten much attention.

Add Full Screen function to the Froala Editor

Please add the Froala Full Screen option to the toolbar. Now with the introduction of Article Threads I think the ability to uses Froala's built in full screen option is necessary. Over the last couple weeks I've written a few decent length articles and the annoyance of having to scroll both...

xenforo.com

 

[Steve Freides]

@Mike C and @bzcomputers,

1. Does your team have experience/preference towards WordPress/editorial CMS tools? Is it more comfortable for them?

Yes, I know they have spent the time to become proficient with the WP editor and perhaps they are using some WP addons/tools - I'd have to ask about the latter, but I have editing capability solely for the purpose of fixing broken links, typos, and the like, and I can see that it's a somewhat complex process.

Is an ideal solution perhaps to somehow move the article comment facility to XF while keeping the article in WP? I don't know if/how it could be done. Essentially an article-specific XF thread, one for each article, that could be somehow displayed/embedded to look at least somewhat like the WP comment feature.

Another way would be to mirror, I suppose - have something that ran behind the scenes to copy WP comments to the article-specific XF thread, and have the XF thread start with a link to the article.

-S-

 

[Dad.]

@Mike C and @bzcomputers,



Yes, I know they have spent the time to become proficient with the WP editor and perhaps they are using some WP addons/tools - I'd have to ask about the latter, but I have editing capability solely for the purpose of fixing broken links, typos, and the like, and I can see that it's a somewhat complex process.

Is an ideal solution perhaps to somehow move the article comment facility to XF while keeping the article in WP? I don't know if/how it could be done. Essentially an article-specific XF thread, one for each article, that could be somehow displayed/embedded to look at least somewhat like the WP comment feature.

Another way would be to mirror, I suppose - have something that ran behind the scenes to copy WP comments to the article-specific XF thread, and have the XF thread start with a link to the article.

-S-

There are a few tools that do just that. If youre leaning towards WordPress, the next question is just what level of integration you want. Good to make a list or something, like wish list vs must have.

 

[Steve Freides]

@Mike C, I think I started my wishlist above.

1. Every time a new WP article is published, a XF thread is created automatically if one doesn't exist.

2. An integrated-into-WP, two-way, behind-the-scenes mirroring of WP comments. Once a WP user hits Save, it mirrors to the XF thread, and once a XF user hits Save, it mirrors to the WP side. Whether that mirroring is a way of displaying XF content or whether the content is stored in both places would be a techie design decision. If a WP user doesn't have a XF account, handle that somehow, e.g., mirror the username and password; if a WP user already has a XF account that matches on email, use that. We already have something in place but I don't know how it works, that a XF user can access our WP site without needing to create a WP username - I'd have to ask. But all this as part of the wishlist.

I think that's it. Our current article creation could continue unchanged - that would be the big plus.

-S-

 

[Dad.]

Try a few of the wp bridges out there. I think they all do what you are looking for.

 

[Wildcat Media]

I had zero luck with WP bridges--none that I looked at could work across different domains. When you have a half dozen satellite sites on different domains that use a common board for discussions, the bridges I tried did not play nice. It's been so long now that I don't remember any details. Instead, I've started shutting some of the lesser sites down and doing all the articles in XF. Everyone visits the forum and reads content there; the satellite sites never had much traffic, and none of the staff ever would contribute there. But with a forum being around for 26 years, this sort of thing happens.

Besides that, WP has gotten so useless lately that I'm trying to move away from it. That Gutenberg rubbish basically turned me away, even though I use a plugin to use classic mode. Typical of something written to amuse developers, but makes creating articles an effing nightmare. It's fine for laying out static pages, but when I write content, it needs to work like a traditional editor (I've used Word for decades).

 

[Mr Lucky]

When you have a half dozen satellite sites on different domains that use a common board for discussions, the bridges I tried did not play nice.

This is a really shame. I have only two "linked" sites. The articles site has about 100 pages though, so I think transferring that to Xenforo articles could be a pain as the navigation in xenforo may be tricky - whereas the various menus plugins are good. I'm using max mega menu which is great for this kind of thing and probably what keeps me persevering the Wordpress in spite of...

That Gutenberg rubbish basically turned me away, even though I use a plugin to use classic mode. Typical of something written to amuse developers, but makes creating articles an effing nightmare.

Yes Gutenberg is a disaster for serious sites, I only hope the classic plugin keeps working. I believe they did this as part of "dumbing down in the face of competition such is Wix or whatever, but they have really shot themselves in the foot I think with this blocks concept.

 

[Wildcat Media]

Yes Gutenberg is a disaster for serious sites, I only hope the classic plugin keeps working. I believe they did this as part of "dumbing down in the face of competition such is Wix or whatever, but they have really shot themselves in the foot I think with this blocks concept.

I think you're right--I didn't realize the connection to the built-it-yourself sites out there.

I also hope the classic plugin keeps working, as they first touted it as being a temporary solution to blocks. Thing is, weren't blogs originally created so blog owners could, you know, write something? I was using WordPerfect up until the GUI version of MS Word came along, and it's so much easier to create content when editing is unimpeded and the words can just flow straight to the editor. With the block concept, forget trying to insert something without the entire page shifting around. It's not made for content creators anymore, apparently.

I've been starting to create more in XF's Article system, and actually have been enjoying it more since I am more familiar with the editor and am able to include attachments without all the weird steps WP still makes you go through. It's been great for tutorials as well--screenshots can be pasted in easily, resized, moved around, etc. where it was always clunky in WP. I just wish I could assign individual forums to subdomains, as it would make accessing my article areas easier than burying them in a forum.

 

[Steve Freides]

We have a single site and XF exists in <domain.com>/community.

If anyone wants to recommend specific bridges/add-ons to look into, I'd be grateful.

-S-

 

[MQK8]

I had zero luck with WP bridges--none that I looked at could work across different domains. When you have a half dozen satellite sites on different domains that use a common board for discussions, the bridges I tried did not play nice. It's been so long now that I don't remember any details. Instead, I've started shutting some of the lesser sites down and doing all the articles in XF. Everyone visits the forum and reads content there; the satellite sites never had much traffic, and none of the staff ever would contribute there. But with a forum being around for 26 years, this sort of thing happens.

Besides that, WP has gotten so useless lately that I'm trying to move away from it. That Gutenberg rubbish basically turned me away, even though I use a plugin to use classic mode. Typical of something written to amuse developers, but makes creating articles an effing nightmare. It's fine for laying out static pages, but when I write content, it needs to work like a traditional editor (I've used Word for decades).

I have longed for a very long time for the day where you could easily log into WP and be integrated into WP and Xenforo in an instant. Meaning just logging in one time and you have full functionality to both. Obviously it's not that easy cause it has yet to be done. Least far as I know but I don't know much lol. I guess there's just not enough demand for it, I don't know. But I love WP and I love Xenforo and to use them together without a bridge that never really works or cost a fortune. I know a coder could do it but I guess people like them separate but to me they both serve a purpose. I'm sure Matt Mullenweg could code it but he's doing okay doing what he's doing. But seriously I'm gonna add a blog to my future project and I guess the article way is the way to go with Xenforo. I'm looking forward to it actually. Xenforo is such a great light piece of software.