How difficult is it to skin XenForo?

System0

Active member
Another long suffering vBulletin here who is very impressed with the xenforo script (plus encouraged by the fact it was developed by kier etc), vBulletin went downhill the minute it was sold. I was one of the suckers duped into buying their cms system...it seemed 10 years old at launch!!

Anyways, my situation is this. I run a WordPress blog. At the moment I have bbpress integrated with the site. I was encouraged by the development of bbpress being converted into a plugin and hoped that it would kickstart the community. This doesn't seem to have been the case. The forums are dead, there's little or no documentation and even if it does get a bit better, the script itself is still way too basic.

I've been messing about with the xenforo script. It seems great and less bloated than vbulletin (in the end vBulletin arguably had too many features).

I'm actually quite happy with the default xenforo theme however I am keen for it to be integrated with my blog design. I'm not too bothered about a bridge i.e. I'm happy for the forum to be stand alone with regards to memberships etc. However, I do want the forum integrated with my blogs header and footer so that they share the same navigation menu etc.

I have did this many times with other forum scripts including vbulletin, smf etc; however my first attempt at doing this with xenforo didn't go too well (in the demo area).

Could an experienced XenForo user advise how difficult it is to integrate a header and footer from a websites main design. Any examples of this out in the wild? :)

Thanks,
Kevin
 
I was one of the suckers duped into buying their cms system...it seemed 10 years old at launch!!
Sadly, you are bang on there.

Could an experienced XenForo user advise how difficult it is to integrate a header and footer from a website's main design. Any examples of this out in the wild? :)
This really depends on the details of what you want to accomplish.
Is your goal to have Wordpress and Xenforo appear as one site ?
You want your WP and xF to have the same header and footer ?

These resources can help:

(1) Wordpress Login/Logout Integration. Bridge.
(2) Wordpress using your Xenforo Style. WPXenCSS.
(3) or a WP style that looks like xenforo Dark&Red.
 
Thanks for the quick response :)

Yeah I basically want them to appear to be the same site therefore they should share the same header and footer.

The wordpress style could be what I'm looking for however I can't seem to access any of the screenshots to see (I assume it's for customers only).
 

No sorry, that's not what I'm looking for. It's just the header and footer I need to match.

With previous forum scripts I have simply copied the header and footer code from the main site and copied it over to the header and footer templates in the forum, making sure to change any css classes that are duplicated. Though it didn't seem too straight forward doing this in the demo area.
 
I don't think it would look integrated.

Forinstance the Tabs: Home, Forums, Members, Help in Xenforo are not in the Header. They are a Part of Xenforo.

I prefer sites that have the same Tabs on them regardless if the user is looking at a WP page or a xF page.

oh ok. So they can't be moved at all. That may be a dealbreaker for me as I want the forums to blend with the rest of the site from a design point of view.

Thanks for your advice :)
 
http://www.shadowedsoul.net/
The homepage is Wordpress.
The rest is Xenforo.
The blending works well, IMO. This page looks integrated as well. http://www.shadowedsoul.net/guild-information/wow-roster/

The skinning you desire is accomplishable .. those two examples could serve as a basis for accomplishing what you want.

I actually don't need that level of integration. All I need is the header at the top of the forum so the menu/logo etc are all in the same positions. I'll mess about with the demo more tomorrow and see if I can get it working :)
 
If it's just the header and footer you need it's extremely easy :). Look in page_container for the overall layout of the style, then mess with some of the header part such as the logo block :), best of luck.
 
If it's just the header and footer you need it's extremely easy :). Look in page_container for the overall layout of the style, then mess with some of the header part such as the logo block :), best of luck.
thanks. I'll give that a try. Didn't release there was a page container template. I went straight to the header template :)
 
here's my site with custom header/logo for Contao CMS and Xenforo - http://ononeanimation.com

The CMS is not integrated with the forum in anyway. They just have matching themes.

IMO if you have some coding/programming/CSS skill, you'll be able to figure out Xenforo's template pretty easy. Only took me 2 weeks learning Xenforo from scratch to theme my site. And move bits and pieces of Xenforo navigation codes to where I want.
 
here's my site with custom header/logo for Contao CMS and Xenforo - http://ononeanimation.com

The CMS is not integrated with the forum in anyway. They just have matching themes.

IMO if you have some coding/programming/CSS skill, you'll be able to figure out Xenforo's template pretty easy. Only took me 2 weeks learning Xenforo from scratch to theme my site. And move bits and pieces of Xenforo navigation codes to where I want.
Thanks.

I've been testing things out and seeing if I can get it skinned correctly. If I manage to get it working ok in the demo area, I'll be clicking the buy button :)
 
No it isn't bridged. I've just tried to keep the header design etc consistent. In my opinion 90% of users won't need to create a bridge unless they want to integrate it with their member site or if they allow user registrations. I'm happy keeping the user databases separate as bridges are never a great long term solution.
 
No it isn't bridged. I've just tried to keep the header design etc consistent. In my opinion 90% of users won't need to create a bridge unless they want to integrate it with their member site or if they allow user registrations. I'm happy keeping the user databases separate as bridges are never a great long term solution.
If it is the site in your signature, it shouldn't be that too difficult to recreate the whole look in XenForo.
 
Top Bottom