Can XF do this?

[spiderman168]

Hey guys, been trying out various boards on trial, will tackle XF next but first wanted to find out if at least on paper XF will meet my needs?

1. Is their "site locking" that I could put on the main page to make sure those logging in are over 18 for instance? I imagine you can lock certain groups from guests but I want to lock the whole site with a enter and exit option.

2. My site will rely heavily on ad sponsorship, is there a summary of where ads can be placed? Is there a ranking of which ads are the most valuable?

3. I noticed there is a trophy system, how does it work? I've seen previous sites in my niche constantly shilled to death with fake reviews and then trolled to death with those just looking to cause trouble. Can XF help me automatically police bad comments without moderator intervention

4. What does resource manger do exactly, can I get an example, looks like you can use it to 'sell' digital content? It says it helps manage files that are uploaded? By who the users? Could they not upload videos and images in the forum posts?

5. With the trial can I get access to try any of the add ons? (Just the free ones of course) I'm looking for a nice gallery addon to allow users or the mods to create albums with URL links. Also want to test it out so I can see what my site will look like before taking the plunge.

6. What about "content locking" is there an add on that would allow me to say something like click here to receive this free ebook which would then ask them to register or fill out a survey or something like that before being able to download it.

7. Are there a list of server requirements in the case of getting a dedicated server or a VPS versus the number of users? Memory, processor, bandwidth requirements just general rule of thumb so I can plan my hosting properly.

Thanks in advance for the answers!

 

[Jeremy]

1. Is their "site locking" that I could put on the main page to make sure those logging in are over 18 for instance? I imagine you can lock certain groups from guests but I want to lock the whole site with a enter and exit option.

I do not believe so no. There may be an add-on, but if you require age at registration, you can manually approve each member.

2. My site will rely heavily on ad sponsorship, is there a summary of where ads can be placed? Is there a ranking of which ads are the most valuable?

The ad locations are each in a template by default. There is a visual ad locations resource located here:
http://xenforo.com/community/resources/visual-list-of-ad-locations.1383/

3. I noticed there is a trophy system, how does it work?

The trophy system awards Trophy Points based on certain criteria. If you have no trophies, you can disable the system without fault.

I've seen previous sites in my niche constantly shilled to death with fake reviews and then trolled to death with those just looking to cause trouble. Can XF help me automatically police bad comments without moderator intervention

No. If its posted off site, you'll have to contact those owners. If you place people into moderation, content won't appear until you tell it to. 1.2 has a spam keyword feature that'll place them in auto-moderation, but will require moderators to approve/disapprove.

4. What does resource manger do exactly, can I get an example, looks like you can use it to 'sell' digital content? It says it helps manage files that are uploaded? By who the users? Could they not upload videos and images in the forum posts?

You can see it at work here, by clicking on "Resources". It allows uploading of different versions, reviews, ratings, author tracking, etc. They can upload directly to posts, but it is much easier to follow things using the Resource Manager.

5. With the trial can I get access to try any of the add ons? (Just the free ones of course) I'm looking for a nice gallery addon to allow users or the mods to create albums with URL links. Also want to test it out so I can see what my site will look like before taking the plunge.

No. The demo is for the main software only.

6. What about "content locking" is there an add on that would allow me to say something like click here to receive this free ebook which would then ask them to register or fill out a survey or something like that before being able to download it.

No, this will require an add-on. There may be one in the resource manager.

7. Are there a list of server requirements in the case of getting a dedicated server or a VPS versus the number of users? Memory, processor, bandwidth requirements just general rule of thumb so I can plan my hosting properly.

The server requirements for XenForo are:

• PHP: 5.2.4+
• MySQL: 5.0+
• PHP extensions: MySQLi, GD (with JPEG support), PCRE, SPL, SimpleXML, DOM, JSON, iconv, ctype
• PHP safe_mode off

You can also download a test script, and run it on your server to see if your server meets all the requirements or what you need to do to meet them.

 

[MikeMpls]

7. Are there a list of server requirements in the case of getting a dedicated server or a VPS versus the number of users? Memory, processor, bandwidth requirements just general rule of thumb so I can plan my hosting properly.

Thanks in advance for the answers!

I run almost a dozen XF sites & half a dozen WP blogs, plus other personal stuff, out of a VPS-2 account at KnownHost.

Only 3 of the XF sites & one blog really matter, the rest are very "niche" oriented. Those 3 XF sites typically total about 500 active users midday, and about half a million pageviews are served up annually for that blog.

Normal midday usage for my VPS account is 3% CPU, 40% memory, 21% disk, 5% bandwidth.

I had to make the switch under duress when I ran into issues with a shared-hosting environment not being able to deal with a single popular thread (among other things they throttled DB access at 75K/hour) & I was really hitting the wall there. I chose the VPS-2 package based on what it offered & the RAM recommendations of others here. It seems to handle my 500 typical users with plenty of margin.

 

[MagnusB]

For age requirement, that is a core setting in xF, you can set minimum age. It offers no other verification besides what the user inputs as their date of birth.

 

[spiderman168]

Thanks guys, even attempting to run XF on a shared hosting is pretty impressive and a tribute to its streamlined code so that's great. My ideal situation is 500 users as well so I'll base my hardware usage on the VPS-2 package.

Regarding the age restriction I know the younglings will generally lie but it's more CYA as I want to at least have a disclaimer at the beginning of the page. I'll dive into the resource for more info.

As for my question about auto policing comments, I was really looking for the community to flag something to the mods so that comments can be auto published but if too many users say that it's not appropriate then the comment gets flagged and no one else can see it plus the user who made the comment would be restricted from posting more malicious information. Is that an add on or built into the core system?

 

[Jeremy]

No, that isn't in the core. I believe I may have seen an add-on from the early days, but haven't seen something recently. There may also be a suggestion you can throw your support behind.