Is Xenforo the solution I need?

[GameDevJon]

Hi there,

I was on the verge of purchasing Vbulletin connect when I remember seeing something about xenforo. After hours of research, I am convinced that Xenforo is the better option for speed alone.

There are a couple really major points that I require. Before I state the points, I would like to reccomend that Xenforo crate a feature list for their product. VBulletin feature list is so well laid out that it didn't require a pre-sales post.

1. Is there a CMS Portal that ships with XenForo or do I need to purchase an add-on from a developer? I would like to have a home page with a side bar etc.

2. Is there a blog system that ships with XenForo? I would like to allow my users to maintain their own blogs. Is this supported?

3. Is there anything that can allow my users to have a "portfolio" on their profile of "projects" they have worked on etc. similar to how behance works.

My goal is to basically create a community where I can have an official site blog, users can maintain their own blogs, and they can have their own portfolios etc and then have a forum community within the same site.

Thank you and I look forward to being apart of this community!!

Best,

Jonathan

 

[whynot]

1. Is there a CMS Portal that ships with XenForo or do I need to purchase an add-on from a developer? I would like to have a home page with a side bar etc.

Need to purchase the addon.

2. Is there a blog system that ships with XenForo?

There isn't one.

 

[Grover]

Hello Jonathan,

Concerning your questions about a CMS, Blog and portfolio:

@whynot already answered question 1 and 2.

In addition to these answers, here's some more in-depth info that was posted before on these subjects:

1: CMS

This tidbit (but was posted 7 years ago in 2010 upon initial release of Xenforo. Things can change and have changed already, since XenForo now does offer a Gallery). 5 years later in 2015 this was posted :

Some suggestions are just plain massive. A good example is the CMS suggestion. This isn't a feature suggestion; this is a product suggestion, a potentially very complex product suggestion. While XenForo is a framework, it is primarily based around the forum software; that is presumably why you're all here. That is likely to be our primary product for the foreseeable future. While it may be worthwhile for us to create a CMS, this would have a knock on effect on everything else we do so this (or any new product) is not something we could take on lightly. In my opinion, it's unfair to cite the lack of a CMS as a failing of a forum software package. It may be something that you need and it may be provided by others, but it's still separate from a forum and our primary product. If you need a CMS that is natively integrated with your forum, unless there's an add-on that you're comfortable with, XenForo is unlikely to fit that and I'm not in a position to say if or when it would fit that

As it stands now in 2017 there is a Gallery (since 2014) offered, but no CMS or Blog. As I understood it the last 3 years development was primarily focused on the creation of Xenforo 2.0. Maybe with these new fundaments in the form of a new software basis and 3 developers instead of 2, we can see more additional products coming? But there are no guarantees, as stated in the quote above.


2: Blog

You could support this suggestion (by liking the first post). But by the looks of it (last 7 years showed no news on this) I would not expect an official Blog product anymore. Maybe the demand is just not big enough to make it feasible for XenForo development to create such an additional product?


3: Portfolio

As mentioned, there is an official Gallery available. And this does integrate in a member's profile like this: https://xenforo.com/community/members/grover.117/#xfmgMedia
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As it stands now, XenForo is simply not the all-in-one solution for you or anyone who has the same needs as you. Which is unfortunate imo because of the obvious fact that it's main product (the forum) is of such an outstanding quality that one can only imagine what that same quality would do for an in-house developed Blog or CMS or whatever future product.

I think core 'essentials' like a Blog or CMS should indeed be part of the core product (in the form of additional official products) and one should not be depended on third party plug-ins to offer such comprehensive products. The past has learned for example that 2 unofficial XF Blog add-ons were abandoned by it's developers sooner or later.

Other platforms do offer a more divers package out of the box, for example Woltlab. It has a CMS, Forum, Gallery, Calendar, Filebase and ... Blog. I have no knowledge of the quality of their products/service. My wish for 2018 is that XenForo may expand to a new broader horizon.

 

[Grover]

@GameDevJon,

By what you wrote I understand you are not coming from a situation where you need to migrate your existing forum platform to XenForo, but you are starting a fresh new platform.

In that case, you could also give it a go by simply using the XF forum for your blogging needs.

My goal is to basically create a community where I can have an official site blog, users can maintain their own blogs, and they can have their own portfolios etc and then have a forum community within the same site.

An official site blog could be realized by using a dedicated forum for this, like this one. One could also see regular user threads as blogs, since the user has all freedom to post a new thread and one could see that first posting in a thread as a blog post and the replies that follow as blog- comments. My own experience with using vBulletin Blogs for example is that users (at least when my site was powered by an old version of that software platform) is that most activity still went on inside the forums and that the Blogs in the end turned out not be the success that we hoped it to be.

The Gallery covers your portfolio needs. The only thing you would be missing then is an official Portal, but it may well be that when you start a forum you do not need this. My vB forum grew exponentially the moment I started it (and continued to do so for many years), without any support of a CMS or Portal.

So I would give this a try first.

 

[GameDevJon]

Thank you everyone for your replies! Really helpful!

I'll continue doing a little research and reading more into the existing third party plugins.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Depending on what you want on your home/portal, you may not need an addon. I have home page that is built purely out of the xenforo widgets. (See signature link)

 

[Russ]

Depending on what you want on your home/portal, you may not need an addon. I have home page that is built purely out of the xenforo widgets.

Pretty easy to do as well!



This is just 2 widgets in the content area and a few on the left side. Pulls recent media + threads of your choice.