XF 2.2 Forum and thread types

Forums contain threads and threads contain posts. It's been the essential framework of forums on the Internet since the public migrated from usenet to the web.

The structure is well known and well understood - though the origins of some of the terminology are lost in the mists of time. Who ever came up with the notion of your site being a forum, but these separate containers for related threads also being forums?

But back on topic, and we all know that visiting a forum (the second type) will usually show a list of threads ordered with the most recently updated near the top, and that clicking on any of those threads will show a page with the oldest post first and newer posts underneath and on subsequent pages.

Bending discussion forums to varying purposes​

Over the years, forum administrators have been inventive and used the simple messages-in-named-containers structure of forums to build all sorts of content - let's look at the XenForo community as an example.

First, we have announcements and these "Have you seen" threads. These are quite focused on the initial post (or first few posts in some HYS threads), with these posts containing a lot of information... a bit like an article with subsequent comments.

Then we have the suggestions forums, where we ask people to up-vote the ideas they're interested in.

There are also support forums where people are looking for answers to questions or solutions to problems.

And of course there are also forums for general chat and discussions, which most closely fit the original notion of a discussion thread and where you can't really say the threads fit the same model as the other types.

Up until now, these forums and the threads within have all been displayed the same way.

But not any more​

With XenForo 2.2, we are introducing the concept of Forum and thread types. This is a massive change with enormous ramifications for forums. Today, we're only really going to talk about the admin and user experience of the new systems, but in a few days we're going to follow up with a developer-focused HYS where we will talk about what's going on behind the scenes here, because we're really rather excited about the potential it unlocks.

There is a lot to talk about, but let's just dive into some examples...

tl;dr​

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[beerForo]

Question. I like presenting the thread types as tabs as that makes the options more obvious. But can they then be assigned prefixes?
Question thread gets a Question prefix. Suggestion thread gets a Suggestion prefix etc.?
With prefixes, people can easily see and filter specific thread types.

Or have you got a different method of filtering thread types?

Implemented - Filter By Thread Type

Would be nice to be able to filter results in mixed content forums by thread type.

xenforo.com

 

[beerForo]

I really love that these new forum types are literally threads and not some other system or widget-driven content. So serious kudos to the team! Now let's talk about the official add-ons for a moment. Resources allows the discussion to be in the forum via a thread... brilliant! Why? All of this has to do with incorporation and discovery. But Media Gallery is the outlier. Isolated. I'm hoping the team is thinking of ways to improve Gallery discovery. Whether via an incorporated feed with all content, or threads, or using the new Search Forums function. It's my #1 wish list item. And it's not even specific. I don't have the answer. But maybe XF does. Looking forward to the add-on HYS!!!!
Show Gallery Discovery Some

 

[Pseudonym]

To have the overall XFMG or individual nodes from it feed into a 'forum' on the forum list, à la "Search Forums" would be a great future feature.

 

[corpex]

yes look perfect

 

[Blackchild]

thats amazing guys well done !

do the thread type expanded style support new feeds or whats new?

 

[Blackchild]

this expanded veiw just support articles or nodes also?

 

[Alpha1]

How do you change an existing forum node from General discussion to suggestion type?

 

[Chris D]

You simply go to the forum edit page in the Admin CP and click the "Change type" button in the top right corner.

 

[Alpha1]

Thank you. And how do you go about changing all threads in a node that have a 'question' prefix to become question type threads?

 

[Chris D]

That is not currently a feature but it is something we are working on.

 

[Alpha1]

Thank you! I was a little worried about that. I have a significant number of such threads.
Do Question threads have the QAPage microdata so that Google recognizes the question and the answers?

Schema for Q&A Pages (QAPage) | Google Search Central | Documentation | Google for Developers

Q&A pages contain data in a question and answer format. Follow these guidelines to learn how use Q&A schema markup for Google Search.

developers.google.com

 

[Chris D]

Not yet...

 

[Anatoliy]

So if a member started a tread as discussion, but asked a question in it, do mods have ability to change a tread type, if it's in a forum, that allows all types? I can't find how.

 

[Mr Lucky]

So if a member started a tread as discussion, but asked a question in it, do mods have ability to change a tread type, if it's in a forum, that allows all types? I can't find how.

They can move it to a question forum (where it's questions only). It becomes a question.

Then move it back to the discussion forum that allows questions.

It remains a question from when it was converted during the first move.

 

[Anatoliy]

They can move it to a question forum

Thanks!

 

[Mr Lucky]

Suggestion here:

Implemented - Ability to convert thread type on demand (in mixed content nodes)

I posted a query regarding this here, but it remains unanswered, so I assume this functionality is not currently available or planned. So here is the feature request. The basic idea is to let admins/mods convert any thread type to another thread type from inside thread view. This applies in...

xenforo.com

(please upvote!)

 

[Gio~Logist]

This has been a long time coming! This is exactly the problem I was trying to solve when I released "Advanced Forums" for vBulletin, in 2010.

Account Suspended

modernvb.com

Account Suspended

modernvb.com

We developed that with the same idea in mind, that forums should have different layouts and "thread types" based on the intent of the user. We built some great stuff using that same mentality w/Advanced Forums. Not just with Q&A forums, but also marketplaces, site directories, wikis & more.

The reason I mention this is because I have a lot of thoughts on this topic and would love to chat w/the Xenforo team directly, if they'd be interested in bouncing ideas.

 

[AbuGhaith]

when I change the forum node to a question forum, the thread content disappears and the vote box doesn't appear in the reply...

Solved with Update style

 

[LukeWolf]

There's no option for making a forum for suggestions in the Admin CP?

 

[smozgur]

Thanks to the team for the great new features and improvements!

You simply go to the forum edit page in the Admin CP and click the "Change type" button in the top right corner.

This message will surely make me concerned before changing a node type including 5 million posts even I would do that in the test environment first.

Especially the "This may cause some data loss" part.

What I understand from this warning is the change action will remove the unrelated thread type fields from the existing threads. Such as votes, and solved markers.

So, if I switch a node from the Discussion type to Question, because the node only has questions, then basically nothing will be affected in the existing posts, but discussions will be considered as questions after the switch and posts will include upvote/downvote counters as well as the solved indicator.

Am I right?