Kolakube - software studio & support forums

kolakube

kolakube

Well-known member
Hi everyone, glad to finally be here!

I have been watching this community for the last few months as I was developing a major new version of my WordPress software called Marketers Delight, and today I have purchased XF, migrated from IPB, and redesigned my forums on XenForo!

Kolakube support

The official support forums for Marketers Delight, XFtoWP, CryptoWP, and other Kolakube products.
mdforums.org

The MD Forums is the official support avenue for my customers who want to ask questions about using the theme's features and get styling and customization help. As my product has grown the community here has also grown and I am currently expanding the support side of things.

Part of that goal was also to break apart the posts from the old "MD Support" forum into multiple forums, and with some great inspiration from the XF forums here (heh) I think I have a solid new structure that will help my customers greatly.

Overall I am still moving content around and playing with the design, and even though you can tell this is an XF site I got a big headstart on matching the brand to my main website at MarketersDelight.com.

Using the XF Style Properties panel I brought in lots of my brand's colors, personalized the header to make jumping across sites easy, and added custom web fonts.

Overall I am very happy with my new forums and beyond impressed at the quality of a product XenForo offers. For the importer to move my site perfectly and even keep things like reactions and signatures was unexpected, and to get this all done within 8 hours on a software I have never used before is just amazing.

This is a pretty niche site (mainly for my customers) but I'd appreciate any feedback you may have any any strategy tips you may have for growing a kind of forum like this.

Apart from finishing reorganizing my posts and cleaning up last details, my next project will be to integrate some of my WordPress content to display as a widget somewhere on my forums. As a WordPress developer I am very interested in having a clear-cut way to use data across both platforms, and already have ideas about creating a basic way to check my forum customers with their ecommerce accounts on my WP site.

...ramblings aside I am finally glad to have made the switch and look forward to learning more from all of you here!

-Alex
 
Last edited:
Looks great, dude. Very clean and professional. Maybe one day your site will end up in Xenforo's homepage list of businesses using its software :cool:
 
Man, I was just wishing there was a forum for Prism (for highlighting programming code) and bam - up pops your example of doing it the right way. Excellent. One small thing, there seems to be some overlap issue with "Home/Forums/What's new".

1585454046689.png
 
Joe Kuhn said:
Man, I was just wishing there was a forum for Prism (for highlighting programming code) and bam - up pops your example of doing it the right way. Excellent. One small thing, there seems to be some overlap issue with "Home/Forums/What's new".

View attachment 221410
Click to expand...

Wow what browser is that?

Yep, I installed @CMTV 's Code" addon after I got my forums reconfigured from the migration. It would be perfect on your site!
 
Last edited:
The Code addon is working well for me except for:

An error: "Undefined index: lang". I went into the php file called "Html.php", which is referenced in the error, and changed three instances of 'lang' to 'language' and have not had the error pop since. Coloring is working correctly still. Never written a stitch of php in my life until I felt I had to w this. The error doesn't fire every day, so we'll see how it goes for the next week.

Second prob is Prism doesn't have support for FoxPro so I've had to write a JavaScript program to do the coloring which has been great fun. I have a thread going about that effort on this site. Have never written a stitch of js as well.

If I remember right, the error started after I installed Code and before I added coloring for Foxpro.

The thing I like about your site is the level of support a forum offers fellow developers and XenForo is nothing short of wonderful. Also, I get quite a bit of encouragement from looking at your site because of your history that is so readily evident in the member and post counts. My site is quite a niche and just a hobby for me now that parallels what I have been doing at work for the last month or so.

Giterdun.
 
Last edited:
Nice site, and welcome to XenForo.

To address this the navbar issues displayed above:

.hScroller-scroll.is-calculated remove the overflow part, and decrease the margin bottom from -30px to about -48px (then you won't need to style the element directly)
 
Lawrence said:
Nice site, and welcome to XenForo.

To address this the navbar issues displayed above:

.hScroller-scroll.is-calculated remove the overflow part, and decrease the margin bottom from -30px to about -48px (then you won't need to style the element directly)
Click to expand...
And the people here are so helpful! I've gotten a ton of help on my site. The XenForo Community is the best as you can readily see.
 
Joe Kuhn said:
The Code addon is working well for me except for:

An error: "Undefined index: lang". I went into the php file called "Html.php", which is referenced in the error, and changed three instances of 'lang' to 'language' and have not had the error pop since. Coloring is working correctly still. Never written a stitch of php in my life until I felt I had to w this. The error doesn't fire every day, so we'll see how it goes for the next week.

Second prob is Prism doesn't have support for FoxPro so I've had to write a JavaScript program to do the coloring which has been great fun. I have a thread going about that effort on this site. Have never written a stitch of js as well.

If I remember right, the error started after I installed Code and before I added coloring for Foxpro.
Click to expand...

Very cool, I found the thread on your site and may do something similar. I'd love to get Prism to match the dark look of the code editor I actually use. Sounds like you and I learn how to write code the same way - when we have to get our hands dirty just get into the language and get out!

Joe Kuhn said:
The thing I like about your site is the level of support a forum offers fellow developers and XenForo is nothing short of wonderful. Also, I get quite a bit of encouragement from looking at your site because of your history that is so readily evident in the member and post counts. My site is quite a niche and just a hobby for me now that parallels what I have been doing at work for the last month or so.
Click to expand...

I couldn't agree more! Many companies in my industry move to private email support, which has its benefits, but I see so much more potential in having a community to help each other out and grow together. My product is just about 5 years old and finally starting to hit its stride and this new forum is going to be one of the assets that bolsters its growth.

Lawrence said:
Nice site, and welcome to XenForo.

To address this the navbar issues displayed above:

.hScroller-scroll.is-calculated remove the overflow part, and decrease the margin bottom from -30px to about -48px (then you won't need to style the element directly)
Click to expand...

Thanks a lot, I have been battling with the nav menu to get the red border breakout effect on the active nav but seemed to have caused the bug myself. I had to remove the overflow styles to make the effect work, and I tried removing it and also adjusting the negative margin but maybe I didn't follow your steps correct.

Here is the full custom CSS I used... do you see it possible for me to retain the breakout border effect with the overflows? I thought my workaround clearfix would make up for removing overflow, but I guess not. Any help is greatly appreciated, I have grown quite fond of this border effect!

CSS: 
.p-sectionLinks {
    box-shadow: 0 2px 8px rgba(0, 0, 0, .15);
    position: relative;
    z-index: 100;
}

.hScroller, .hScroller-scroll.is-calculated { overflow: inherit; }

.hScroller:after, .hScroller-scroll.is-calculated:after { /* clearfix */
    clear: both;
    content: '';
    display: table;
}

.p-navEl.is-selected { position: relative; }
.p-navEl.is-selected:before {
    background-color: #d12b2b;
    border-radius: 3px 3px 0 0;
    height: 5px;
    position: absolute;
        left: 0;
        top: -5px;
    width: 100%;
}
 
Last night I officially brought on two new forum moderators! I am particularly excited because I have been running the forums myself for the few years. It has been fun teaching them how to use XF's mod tools and I think having a couple of staff members will give us a more professional look.

From here I am eager to see how the quality of conversations increase and how having some help can get more customers to come to the forums. I will update the journey here from time to time, and also once I start making more advanced customizations to the site too (still haven't gotten the red border back yet :().
 

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