CAN I make a seamless transition?

[sleepyc]

Hey guys, my business partner asked some questions today, and I need to know if we can make a new XenForo site that looks basically like this:

www.giantscalenews.com

The homepage is very important.
The forums, as long as the look is the same, we can work with, but the magazine style homepage is a MUST.
Can some people weigh in and make me feel better about possibly taking this step?

Bart listed the following requirements:
Long list of requirements though;

• Full time, professional development team
• Active 24 hour forums and support
• CMS magazine style homepage
• Fast (I mean really fast)
• Tapatalk compatible
• mobile functionality built in
• ability to upload up to 100 photo files per post (gallery in a photo in a post would be great)
• Photo browser to view collections of photos within a post without having to click-view-close each one individually
• Robust registration spam control
• integration with mass email services (MailChimp would be nice)
• username character flexibility (to include spaces, period, underscore, ampersand, etc.)
• can display thumbnails or full size photos within a post
• instant or digest email notifications of subscriptions
• real-time new posts list (doesn't need refresh to remain updated)
• can turn subscription and message notifications off
• users can start groups (private or public) and have friends designated and displayed on their profile pages
• centralized control of account settings
• Forum groups can be hidden and displayed separately via a link to another page
• video embedding in post
• individual users can be designated moderator status for individual sub-forum
• integration with advertising management software
• multi-quote support
• guest can read forum content but not see photo attachments
• manageable back end for new Admin guy (me)
• polls
• control of edit parameters for members
• achievement based user titles
• users can flag spam and inappropriate posts
• etc.
• etc.

And all of this is needed, but the LOOK is super important as well.
If there are any developers that can help this happen please contact me.
We need to have the new site flawless before we convert the members.

HELP!

 

[Amaury]

All of those questions were already answered here.

 

[sleepyc]

Yes they were answered, but I am really concerned about the homepage. I see that plugin's are available to make a homepage, but I have not seen an example of one. Would you have a link to a site using XenForo that has a graphic magazine style homepage?

 

[+DS_DV+]

Google.com

 

[Goodfella]

Yes they were answered, but I am really concerned about the homepage. I see that plugin's are available to make a homepage, but I have not seen an example of one. Would you have a link to a site using XenForo that has a graphic magazine style homepage?

I would highly recommend CTA featured threads as the add-on, very powerful and amazing. Plus you get the benefit of awesome support!

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/cta-featured-threads-portal.2599/

and here is the demo
http://support.cliptheapex.com

 

[Martok]

I would highly recommend CTA featured threads as the add-on, very powerful and amazing. Plus you get the benefit of awesome support!

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/cta-featured-threads-portal.2599/

and here is the demo
http://support.cliptheapex.com

I recommend that too which I'm using on my site.

 

[webducknj]

who is the developer of that addon or is it group of people that work on it?

 

[Paul B]

I am the developer.

 

[webducknj]

Is development your full time gig? what happens to the addon if you stop supporting it? as i understand it there was another good CMS homepage option that went away because the developer stopped supporting it.

 

[Paul B]

I wear several hats: I provide full time support for XenForo, look after my daughter (also full time), develop add-ons, maintain my own site, cook and clean, try to keep my wife happy and occasionally I even find time to "have a life".

My add-on and its future is as secure as anything else in this world; nothing is guaranteed.

 

[webducknj]

Thanks Brogan. I looked at the links you sent me this morning, it's a nicely done addon and we're considering using it. it's just that we put a lot of effort into our homepage and so we're also considering using our WordPress homepage with a WP/XF bridge utility to keep our users registered an logged in to both sides of the site.
Bart

 

[Paul B]

A lot of time and effort has gone into the add-on.

I know some who were using WordPress as a home page have converted to using this add-on.

I believe @Bram may have done that?

http://www.racedepartment.com/

 

[webducknj]

the only issue we have with it is that we're trying to make our homepage the site itself and the forums a feature of the site. your homepage is an extension of the forums so that brings us back to being a forums site which isn't really our development goal.
great looking content though, no denying that.
bart

 

[Bram]

@webducknj & @Brogan Jep, we have been using Wordpress until a couple of months ago. However we have decided to go full on Xenforo and are now using the CTA Featured Threads and Portal add-on which does the job excellent.

A few pro's and con's when using a wordpress bridge

Pro's

• The normal benefits of Wordpress: great SEO , plenty of add-ons availabe to spice up your blog
• Frontpage content looks like an article and comes with lots of Google love.
• Simple integration with one single login.

Unfortunately that's about it when it comes to pro's.

Con's

• You'll have to maintain two pieces of software (XF and WP)
• Pain in the bum to create two styles for both software packages that match. Nothing looks so horrible as a frontpage and forum that aren't identical in their design imo. Costed me at least countless hours of work (not worth it).
• Duplicate content (!!exclamation!) your WP articles will have a brief description posted with a link to the article in a forum, where the comments are stored. You'll have the same article twice, one time on your frontpage, one time in your forum, which seems to be confusing for search engines and its certainly not a pro to have duplicate content.
• If you are a forum centered community like we are its hard to convert die hard forum users to read your frontpage, they tend to stick to the forum and read only the snippet
• Bridges can be dangerous for your site stability when don't know how to use / install it.
• Totally depending on the modder that created the bridge to keep his mod up to date. In our case the support we got was ... almost none, unless you chased the guy. Not even sure if it would still work with XF 1.4

Safe yourself the hassle and put the fear aside that you rely on wordpress: believe me you don't. You rely on good content and that can be posted anywhere, also in xenforo.

My tip: go with the featured thread solution of Brogan and your users will love it and you'll see the engagement on your content take off.

Its easy to style and if an autodidact noob like myself can do it, everybody can Check out two live examples in action here and here.

Also if you plan to stick with Xenforo for a long time its good to have all your current and future content inside Xenforo. If KAM ever decides to build a frontpage add on for Xenforo you don't need to copy/paste a thousand articles as they are right there already

 

[Mr Lucky]

I would use a combination of CTA featured threads and something like xenzine for extra articles to make the site less like it's just a forum.

That's what I've done and I'm very happy with it, especially compared with other platforms I've tried such as vBulletin and IPB.

 

[webducknj]

@Mr Lucky;
does your sax site use xenzine?
happen to know of any other examples?
thanks,
bart

 

[Mr Lucky]

Yes. The home page is CTA Featured Threads, the Articles table lead to the xenzine pages. The reviews & resources section uses xenforo's official add on, Resource manager.

Articles via xenzine either created directly or can be threads that are promoted to an article.

 

[webducknj]

we tried a vBulletin/WordPress bridge that failed miserably. usernames weren't compatible between the two parts of the site and each part had different login/logout parameters so users would show active on one side and visitor on the other.
we're considering the WP/XF bridge as a solution, Todo10 is doing the site build for us and is testing it now.
if it doesn't work though we'll use the XF homepage option.
<<<fingers crossed>>>