XF 2.1 Has anyone made Xenforo look like a social site yet?

drastic

Well-known member
I'd like to have a setup that mimics the look/feel of Twitter/Facebook, so newcomers are familiar with the site and can figure it out.

I think it's possible if you skin/style the threads and give it a general timeline/newsfeed homepage, rather than a listing of forums/threads.

We already have the ability to do a quick post and tons of features for posting - it's just that the forum "look" is so outdated, that so many of the newer users are not figuring it out, or don't have the attention span to do so.

Xenforo software in general is just so damn good that I don't want to try any of the actual social scripts that already exist, and those I did try, like PhpFox, are just absolutely worthless.

It's a big task, but if anyone wants to chat about doing a custom style like this, I'd be listening for sure!
 
Its a very tricky subject.
When I look at Twitter, and Facebook and Reddit groups and forums etc. all I see is memes and jokes, and one liners. Not really what I want for my forum
That is not what we want in a forum!

How hard is it to learn to post a comment in a forum?
But conversley, we must not be left behind.

WordPress (which I hate) has some forum add ons, but they look more like Pinterest!
 
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Its a very tricky subject.
When I look at Twitter, and Facebook and Reddit groups and forums etc. all I see is memes and jokes, and one liners. Not really what I want for my forum
That is not what we want in a forum!

How hard is it to learn to post a comment in a forum?
But conversley, we must not be left behind.

WordPress (which I hate) has some forum add ons, but they look more like Pinterest!
We all have very different audiences.

Mine comes straight from social media and trying to convert them to forum users has been a major fail for 5 years and running.

They are not used to the format either. I even setup post registration messages that teach them how to use it and I get no action. They want the quick hitting "post a status" style action, not the more in-depth titles etc. It's a challenge, for sure.
 
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PS My forum is a general, political one and my members appreciate their privacy, so would not be interetsed in posting their real names or photos.

They don't have to. They register the same way they always do, but posting would just be done on the profiles and the forum start page would be like the what's new page or my feed page, with ability to post at top and the posts show rich media.

It's really not that drastic of an addon (tsk tsk) I don't think.

I'm actually surprised no one has done this. I think it would be a social media script killer.

There's several scripts out there that mimic facebook/social media, but let me tell ya, they are trash and never tested on high traffic.
 
We all have very different audiences.

Mine comes straight from social media and trying to convert them to forum users has been a major fail for 5 years and running.

They are not used to the format either. I even setup post registration messages that teach them how to use it and I get no action. They want the quick hitting "post a status" style action, not the more in-depth titles etc. It's a challenge, for sure.
Most of my members came from another forum that was closing down, so I did not have your problem of the last 5 years. (I was very lucky)
But now I must find members via search engines and social media etc.

One of the advantages Facebook has is that their members go on there to check out their familiy and friends, and then may be a Facebook group.
But then they have to log on to your or my forum!
 
I believe only way for forums to compete with Facebook Groups, Reddit etc is to have unique content. I'm not sure how an influx of morons is going to help that. I tend to ban posters for being idiots, they pollute the waters for the rest of us.

If your goal is simply more eyeballs to increase your ad revenue, then I guess it makes sense?
 
@drastic I have been looking into XF alternatives for my private membership site because of the lack of social engagement....

Circle, mighty networks, tribes, etc.

They all have a social first approach and it seems to foster a lot more engagement in communities.

At this point I'm still on XF because I have a monstrous amount of content archived... So I've been looking into ideas about how to build around the XF platform to create a more social experience.

I'm not a developer I do have a budget for custom development.

If you have an idea of what's possible in vision for potentially implementing it I'd love to chat
Did you go with any of them?
 
I believe only way for forums to compete with Facebook Groups, Reddit etc is to have unique content. I'm not sure how an influx of morons is going to help that. I tend to ban posters for being idiots, they pollute the waters for the rest of us.

If your goal is simply more eyeballs to increase your ad revenue, then I guess it makes sense?
Ha ha!
I have a few members I'd like to ban for being idiots!

But I agree, its not so much making your forum look like FB.
Its getting users to find your forum
The other advantage is that people go on to FB to check their friends and family, and messages, then they can go into a Group.
Then they need to log into our forums
 
I made a major change to my forum's layout a few days ago


I put the New Threads Widget (with 40 new threads) rigth at the top of the page and above all the ofum noade.

Now, when members log on they see activity rather than static Forum Categories

So far most of my members are liking it.

What do you think?
 
You don’t really need titles when the subject matter is right in front of you. You can tell whether or not you want to read more with the first sentence.
I totally disagree. Books have titles. Chapters have titles. News items and magazine articles have headlines and sub headings. Probably the only reason I’m reading this thread is because it has a title that grabbed my interest.
 
I totally disagree. Books have titles. Chapters have titles. News items and magazine articles have headlines and sub headings. Probably the only reason I’m reading this thread is because it has a title that grabbed my interest.
Unless I’m mistaken we’re discussing a totally different format where instead of scrolling down though discussion titles, you’re scrolling through actual discussions. In that event, you’d see the first post of every discussion - so you wouldn’t need to look for it. You’d just scroll past it if you weren’t interested.
 
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