Is there an XF addon that can emulate how Facebook Sharing & WP "Press This Button" work?

[Doctor]

So speaking of replacing WP with XenForo, and speaking of having XF do what you want to do and make life happier and easier, it has occurred to me to inquire about something I would definitely want.

So more or less everyone uses FB, yes? And everyone absolutely loves how whenever you are surfing the Web and want to share on FB, the FB share link is just so great to use and makes what essentially amounts to "blogging" so easy and well formatted?

Now WP has something that is similar to a degree, which is "Press This," but it's still not as good or quick or pleasant to use. It's not bad and pretty good under the circumstances, but just not the same as how easily and nicely the FB sharing works.

What about XenForo? Does XenForo have anything like this? If it does, it is any good, or is it disappointingly nowhere close to how FB sharing works?

And what if:

If not yet, what if XenForo were to simply make use of the tags present for FB sharing the same way FB does? For instance, in order for the sharing to look so good and work so well, you merely have tags in your header code that refer to various graphic files and text entries. I see no reason whatsoever why a XenForo addon could not makes use of those same items if they are present. It would have to be a total piece of cake to code that for XenForo, yes? In my view, that would both be perfectly legal and there would be no reason why it could not be done whatsoever.

That would be revolutionary, a game changer, and I want that if it doesn't exist for XF yet.

 

[TPerry]

And yet another joins the select few.

 

[n00bsaibot]

I liked your suggestion thread. It's a great feature idea for desktop users. Unfortunately that demographic is getting smaller and smaller for me.

 

[Mr Lucky]

So more or less everyone uses FB, yes?

No

And everyone absolutely loves how whenever you are surfing the Web and want to share on FB, the FB share link is just so great to use and makes what essentially amounts to "blogging" so easy and well formatted?

I don't think so. It's probably a good idea to speak your own preferences, but without projecting on to everyone else. I do occasionally use my Facebook page, but I really dislike Facebook.

 

[Kevin]

I'm also talking about being able to publish "blog style" as a 100% substitute for something like WordPress if desired, not just create a forum thread.

Have you just considered using WP to be begin with using one of the forum plugins? You'd have a lot easier time going that route versus trying to turn a forum into WP.

 

[RobinHood]

Gosh, it seems there's a lot of people here automatically hating on this idea purely because it has the word facebook in it.

Zero friction link sharing is a real problem that was solved quite elegantly years ago by facebook. The problem of how to easily share content from around the web with a particular audience within the fbook ecosystem.

What Doctor is proposing is a way to modify this to make it easier for forum members to share content within the forum ecosystem, specifically the forums that you're a member of. The problem with that is that facebook was able to get a massive percentage of all web page admins around the web to install a proprietary facebook widget to their pages to facilitate this, which is why it works so well for them. That is never going to happen for your individual forum. Perhaps if XF ever becomes the defacto forum software globally then perhaps there's a chance a XF widget will eventually get developed, but that ain't coming any time soon.

The next best thing is something along the lines of the Wordpress bookmarklet that allows individual users to use that bookmarklet to more easily share links to their favourite forums. A bookmark you can click, choose from a list of all the forums you're logged into on that device, pick a sub forum on that forum, create a thread title (or have it autogenerated), and submit. All without having to leave the page or manually visit the forum and create a post in a new tab.

It's definitely something that could help admins and forum power users more quickly and easily create new threads and submit new content.

The biggest problem with it, is that it requires the user to consciously modify their browser and bookmarks bar to install this widget. Only forum admins and the most dedicated of forum participants will do this.

It's not a bad idea, and probably a worthy mod to be built by someone, I would use it if it worked well. But it's difficult to scale and get it to work as well as what you experience with facebook sharing because we're a long way off from having a 'Forum Like' or 'Share on Your Favourite Forum' widget getting mass adoption by publishers.

I think the effort at this stage instead really needs to be focussed on easy thread creation on the forums themselves (the XF 2 new posts button on the home page helps with this).

But also formatting and converting links into pretty rich embeds when pasting them, especially in the OP.

Most forum users have no problem copying and pasting the link into a post in a new tab, the link sharing isn't the biggest problem. I think most users are more deterred by the fact they don't want to paste a plain naked link into a new post. If key opengraph data or snippets from that page was automatically parsed and formatted to make the post pretty and readable, complete with thumbnails or images so other forum members don't necessarily have to visit the link to get the gist of it, then that would be a real winner.

Hopefully some of the new oEmbed support options will help with this. I think that's the best the XF team can do at this point, I really do hope that feature gets fleshed out further so that we get rich post embeds keeping users on the site.

It's a nice thought, and I agree it works fantastically for sharing into facebook. But we'll never be able to emulate it as effectively to forum content creation without getting share code installed on every page on the internet.

 

[Bionic Rooster]

I'm very well aware of the number of people posting cat pictures, dog pictures, sharing memes, and their daily meals and dirty laundry on it.
My point being it's not an avenue that apparently many are concerned with chasing as much as you are.

I tend to agree. Simple, one way posts of laughable content that have no meaning except to the person posting is definitely what people who don't have a life need to feel they have a place on the net.
They probably avoid forum because they would be required to participate in meaningful discussions where they aren't so quick to judge others opinions as trivial while they pontificate their own uppity opinions as fact.

 

[n00bsaibot]

It's not a bad idea, and probably a worthy mod to be built by someone, I would use it if it worked well. But it's difficult to scale and get it to work as well as what you experience with facebook sharing because we're a long way off from having a 'Forum Like' or 'Share on Your Favourite Forum' widget getting mass adoption by publishers.

It'll never compete at a facebook level and casual posters won't bother. I'd like to think 'the regulars' would install it and use it. Quickly sharing things you find on the internet and not making extra steps is always a plus.

Gosh, it seems there's a lot of people here automatically hating on this idea purely because it has the word facebook in it.

I agree. The actual suggestion is a ease of use feature. Nothing to do with Facebook other than they have a similar feature.

 

[JamesBrown]

People usually think I'm a pretty good writer, and I see no way anyone could mistake what I mean by the unambiguous title of this post

I appreciate the challenge that facebook is setting forums but I have no idea what you are rambling on about. Please put your writing skills to work in explaining it. Thanks

 

[Mouth]

I had to google it.. I think it's this:

https://en.support.wordpress.com/press-this/

Admittedly, seem like a pretty great way for users to post things they find all over the web. Should re-boot this thread as a suggestion.

Isn't that just https://xenforo.com/community/resources/wmtech-create-new-thread-global.4059/ and inform users to bookmark the create thread URL on their browsers bookmarks bar?

 

[Kirby]

In all honesty, I don't really get what exactly is currently wrong/too complicated with sharing URLs in forums:
Copy the URL, go to the forum, start a new post, paste the URL - done.
This is being done all the time, otherwise services like VigLink or Skimlinks wouldn't even exist.

I also don't think there is much that could be improved in that workflow, unless the forum ist that extremly big to convince other websites to install a widget/link.
(Which is being done by many websites for Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

Creating an Add-on that mimics "Press This" shouldn't be complicated, but I don't think it would help much:
You would have to make your users install and use it.
I am inclined to say that only a tiny fraction of all user would be willing (and able) to do so.
Seeing that dekstop traffic continues to go down, I somewhat doubt that this would actually help much.

 

[n00bsaibot]

Isn't that just https://xenforo.com/community/resources/wmtech-create-new-thread-global.4059/ and inform users to bookmark the create thread URL on their browsers bookmarks bar?

Not exactly. The WP plugin seems to be a global browser based clipboard. Basically letting you compile posts and shares from around the web.

I am inclined to say that only a tiny fraction of all user would be willing (and able) to do so.
Seeing that dekstop traffic continues to go down, I somewhat doubt that this would actually help much.

Both of these are the biggest issues. Looks like the WP plugin is 4 years old. Probably diminishing returns to chase desktop users now.

 

[RobinHood]

If it was done right it would definitely encourage sharing on forums.

Take this example on the BBC site.

One click of the 'F' above the article brings up this popup.

From there I could potentially share in seconds that link, along with a comment, and a nice image and article snippet to a particular subforum on website I frequent. I don't even have to think about opening a new tab. It takes seconds, as few as 2 clicks, and is a piece of cake, ridiculously easy.

If it could be implemented well for forum posting it would be great. It works wonders forgetting new content submitted to facebook. I can see why Wordpress spent time working on something similar.

Anything that can encourage users to post new content to your site more easily should definitely be encouraged. Users are so used to a ridiculously easy sharing mechanism on other social media sites these days.

Hell, I have users that can't figure out how to create new posts after registering. And we wonder why so much discussion and traffic is taking place on facebook these days instead. Because so many of us think the process to getting new content shared on forums is fine. It's not, compared to the other major discussion platforms out there.

If posting and sharing content from around the web to spark new discussions can be made easier for our users, then it's worth thinking about.

 

[Doctor]

Well, let's keep it simple.

I'm not concerned about the forum users. I'm only concerned about the forum publishers, i.e. me and others who would publish with XF.

I want to be able to publish content filled pages - like blogging - with a feature as nice and easy as the sharing on facebook.

I want to be able to do this with XF. WordPress has already provided something, Press This, but I still don't like that and don't want to use wordpress. I want to use XF.

I want to use XF as more than "just a forum." With a feature like this, you could continually post content that gets picked up by search engines and attracts traffic. That's what happens when you post so easily on a Facebook page. But I want it on my XF site, not anywhere else.

There is nothing to lose, and a great deal to gain with something like this, including pushing back against facebook causing forums to die like dinosaurs. Who wants "just a forum"? "Just a forum" is not a desirable thing.

By only being concerned about the XF forum site publisher and not the forum user, then you don't need other publishers across the web to install a widget or button. All you need is something like what wordpress provides publishers already with a button containing code in a bookmark link, and of course whatever back end code is needed in the software. Moreover, you can even take advantage of how so many websites have specific tags and graphics files designed to be picked up by facebook. You can simply makes use of all those tags and files too. That would even be a bit of "poetic justice" in that since facebook has been in effect killing off forums, you would now be using some of the very things by which they have been doing that in the existing html and graphics files. Unless of course people are simply afraid to make use of that public code in the html pages and those public files.

 

[Mouth]

With a feature like this

7 paragraphs, and you still haven't described what this feature is that you're requesting.
An XF widget that you want the worlds web site admins to install onto their websites?
Something like Wordpress's deprecated "Press This" browser bookmark feature that's had no update in 4 years, and gets extremely little usage?
Something else?

 

[Bionic Rooster]

@RobinHood @Doctor
from your example of BBC and easily posting to face book, I don't see how you will get sites like BBC to have a link to your site like face book.

I'm not concerned about the forum users.

I want to be able to publish content filled pages

It seems to me YOU want to be able to spam your site with unrelated content without consideration for user input.

I'd like to know where you are getting the content you are posting here because I would go to that site and request they remove their "Press This" button

Who wants "just a forum"?

I do and so do our members. And thankfully XenForo provides a great platform for that.

 

[RobinHood]

from your example of BBC and easily posting to face book, I don't see how you will get sites like BBC to have a link to your site like face book.

Yeah, that's kind of my point of the first post. To make it work as seamlessly and effortlessly as it does for facebook, you really need publishers to embed your code or have it included int the share icon set. That's the biggest hurdle.

Facebook were able to get such huge penetration at the beginning as the widget was a way for visitors to 'Like' pages you were publishing. So publishers were happy to include the code.

For a system to work well with forums, I'm thinking it would need to be generic to all XF forums, and have a forum select option that auto populates with any XF sites you're currently logged into.

If the tool was made, and discussions were had with some of the big share sheet providers such as add this, or even directly approaching large publishers then I'm sure some of them would be interested in implementing it if it helped them get better reach.

The press this bookmarklet is fine, but really only good for admins and power users who have the desire to have a dedicated button in their browser.

 

[RobinHood]

It looks like the BBC implements their own share sheet and gives prominence to the button that get the most clicks. Interestingly it seems facebook gets two of the coveted always visible top 4 spots. One for facebook, one for messenger.

Use sharing buttons
Some pages on the BBC have a button that lets you “Share” a link to that page. It’s a great way of telling your friends about something interesting. Click the Share button and you’ll see a list of services such as Facebook, Google+ or Twitter.

We’ve chosen the ones that are most popular with people who use the BBC. On some BBC pages, Facebook and Twitter are more prominent as they’re the most popular. All the sharing services we link to can be used for free.

When you share to a social media platform their terms will apply. Do read their terms (which you can search for online).

Seeing as their share sheet is curated, it's unlikely you'd be able to get a 'Forum Share' button on there for a very long time. It's the kind of tool that would take a long time to get traction, but if you could get it into the system of the larger share sheet companies you could start to get it on publishers websites and slowly people might start to use it.

Then again, if you're the type of forum that is constantly sharing links to particular sites, you could contact those publishers directly and ask them to embed the code. If it allows you or your users to share more of their content, faster and more frequently, they may be happy to include it.

 

[Chris D]

I was happy to keep this thread going but seeing as we can't seem to keep it civil and respectful and there's a Suggestion thread already been made in the correct forum, let's agree to disagree and move on to the other thread for a more constructive discussion about the idea.