Rigel Kentaurus
Well-known member
I have been busy improving my Blogging add-on, and while doing it, I realized that bunch of the work that I am doing is to actually integrate with other addons ....
One of the first things that I integrated was the widget framework, because, let's be real, a lot of people already use that, and I don't want to reinvent the wheel. So there I go learning what is the Interface or anything that XfRocks used for his widget add-on.
The results were pretty good, I must say, because now all my blog panels can be added anywhere in the forum (should the person want to), and admins can customize their sidebar in whatever way they see fit without me needing to do much really.
After adding more features, I decided to have a sitemap for the blogs. But again, why coding my own? There is already a really nice sitemap addon. I extended the model, added a couple classes. Done. The user benefits because instead of having two conflicting sitemaps they just use the default one, and if the blog is present, it will hook in to generate it's own xml files.
It didn't stop there ...
People wanted to change the structure of the URL. So I just decided to make sure that it worked perfeclty with the Route Changer addon. It does. It required a couple of hocus pocus but that was it.
And just this afternoon I was finishing the integration with the Tag Me addon. That will allow people to just use @username on their blog entries, and if the add-on is present, it will auto-link and notify the user. (If the add-on is not present it will do ... well, nothing)
The XenForo developers built an amazing framework. The plug & use characteristics of it make it really easy to start re-using other people's add-ons without any major conflict, and end up saving me a lot of time for features that would take days or weeks to code myself. This would not be possible if the add-ons were not properly namespaced, isolated, well structured, and using the advanced OO techniques that we have in XenForo.
I feel like the developers should have been the ones doing a 1.2 with widgets on the sidebar, 1.3 with Tag Me, 1.4 with a Sitemap, etc, etc. But in the absence of that, the community has filled the gaps pretty well.
My default Blogs add-on works without any of those. It just does. But if people have those add-ons installed, as I have found most people do, they end up getting additional functionality. XenForo turned out to be a truly modular product.
One of the first things that I integrated was the widget framework, because, let's be real, a lot of people already use that, and I don't want to reinvent the wheel. So there I go learning what is the Interface or anything that XfRocks used for his widget add-on.
The results were pretty good, I must say, because now all my blog panels can be added anywhere in the forum (should the person want to), and admins can customize their sidebar in whatever way they see fit without me needing to do much really.
After adding more features, I decided to have a sitemap for the blogs. But again, why coding my own? There is already a really nice sitemap addon. I extended the model, added a couple classes. Done. The user benefits because instead of having two conflicting sitemaps they just use the default one, and if the blog is present, it will hook in to generate it's own xml files.
It didn't stop there ...
People wanted to change the structure of the URL. So I just decided to make sure that it worked perfeclty with the Route Changer addon. It does. It required a couple of hocus pocus but that was it.
And just this afternoon I was finishing the integration with the Tag Me addon. That will allow people to just use @username on their blog entries, and if the add-on is present, it will auto-link and notify the user. (If the add-on is not present it will do ... well, nothing)
The XenForo developers built an amazing framework. The plug & use characteristics of it make it really easy to start re-using other people's add-ons without any major conflict, and end up saving me a lot of time for features that would take days or weeks to code myself. This would not be possible if the add-ons were not properly namespaced, isolated, well structured, and using the advanced OO techniques that we have in XenForo.
I feel like the developers should have been the ones doing a 1.2 with widgets on the sidebar, 1.3 with Tag Me, 1.4 with a Sitemap, etc, etc. But in the absence of that, the community has filled the gaps pretty well.
My default Blogs add-on works without any of those. It just does. But if people have those add-ons installed, as I have found most people do, they end up getting additional functionality. XenForo turned out to be a truly modular product.
