There is always always going to be a need for a CMS in the 'article and front page' sense. Nothing can convince those people who want that feature set that they should instead have a boring list of forums as a home.
There are many solutions to this including bridges to full featured publishing platforms, xenporta, featured threads, etc but nothing yet official or as nicely integrated as native core or official add ons.
Agreed. I am in need of "article and front page" type of publishing, and WordPress does
exactly what I need, and the add-ons give me the additional functionality I require.
Sure, some sort of article system that would replace WP and integrate nicely with XF would be nice. But what I really want is quite simple--I want a reliable way to bridge WP and XF. If there were only some sort of bridge that would utilize some as-yet-unwritten common (even open source) authorization system to let the two "talk" to each other in common formats, that is really what is needed. All I want from my sites is this:
1) Allow myself and others to write articles in WP.
2) Article cross-posts to XF as a new thread (with the full text, or just teaser text).
3) Comments under the article post to XF and appear in the thread.
4) Thread replies appear as comments under the article post.
In both #3 and #4, reading comments under a post would be the same content as reading the thread. Why? Blog (and blog comment) readers are more comfortable in that type of environment, and forum participants are more comfortable in the forum. Readers would be free to comment in whichever place felt more comfortable. Asking them to head over to a forum to comment results in, well, nothing. I've done it. Even with ample links provided.
I've already tried two bridges. Neither worked, or are well supported. Can interchange of data be all that hard? Even some sort of article system would work for us. Yet I have yet to find anything ideal there as well.
Yeah, I'm sort of off the "Xenforo does a CMS" topic, but really, maybe we don't need a full-blown CMS as opposed to simply an easier way to exchange data between two platforms. My coding days are long past, but how hard could it be to create something that lets two different platforms "talk" to each other reliably?
