Combining Wordpress and Forum sites into a one Forum site

[MediaSVI]

Hello! For many years I have had a WP site and a VBulletin forum for the WP site. I have always wanted to just have a forum site and its time has come to join the 2 into one.

The question, can I install Xenforo on my Wordpress site? Once I move everything over to the forum I would then delete the Wordpress software of the server.

 

[Paul B]

If the server meets the requirements here - https://xenforo.com/purchase/ - then yes, XF can be installed.

 

[RallyFan]

Yeah you can, albeit consider keeping Wordpress as your site's frontend, and then Xenforo as a forum link off it.

You can even use default Wordpress RSS widget to feature recent threads/posts from your forum on the frontpage, all without needing a Xenforo to Wordpress bridge

 

[LatestGalactica]

Yeah you can, albeit consider keeping Wordpress as your site's frontend, and then Xenforo as a forum link off it.

You can even use default Wordpress RSS widget to feature recent threads/posts from your forum on the frontpage, all without needing a Xenforo to Wordpress bridge

Same situation as the original poster, but does it matter if my site is WP.com or WP.org?

 

[RallyFan]

Same situation as the original poster, but does it matter if my site is WP.com or WP.org?

I've only had a fleeting glance at wp.com, as I only ever use wp.org (aka self hosted).

Xenforo requires self hosted/vps to work. From memory you can't really install anything at a root or /publichtml level on wp.com.

As such no it won't work.

Happy to stand corrected though.

I'm running my setup on a Shared Hosting plan, but that plan has some serious grunt and a guaranteed low contention ratio.

 

[Urban Legend]

Why not use a bridge and keep run your WP site in tandem with Xenforo?

 

[RallyFan]

Why not use a bridge and keep run your WP site in tandem with Xenforo?

For me, I don't need a bridge because I'm not having user commentable articles or anything that requires a user account on the sites frontend. Hence it's pointless for my setup/site.

For others they'd have to look at Xpress or Xenporta or something to bridge the two. Xpress was removed from sale recently according to this post: https://xenforo.com/community/threads/wordpress-integration-options.178194/#post-1413092

 

[Urban Legend]

I had a site running XenWord. Not even sure if it is still for sale or not. But if you are going to write articles still, WP is still the way to go, I think. However, with the badges that are available, most also make a new forum post from the original article. Then when a comment is made in the WP side, it also updates on the forum side. I'm not 100% sure, but I'm assuming if you installed a bridge, let it make all of the threads for the WP content you have, then disable or remove the bridge, you would be left with just a Xenforo forum, with all of your content from the WP site transferred over. At least in theory I think this will work. Can anyone else chime in on this?

 

[RallyFan]

I'm not sure on that one, but it's great how flexible both systems are, and how they can integrate several ways without lowering the site security or passing over user details.