XF 1.4 Maximum amount of nodes and making a forum with many nodes manageable?

E

Emil JaBo

Active member
Hi guys,

The particular subject of a part of my forum required me to have a pretty complicated node structure which because of the subject inevitably will grow into what some might consider a ridiculous amount of nodes. I have already set up a test area with this structure and when undertaking moderation tasks like moving etc, the list of nodes that I have to scroll through is becoming unmanageable and when completed has the potential to run into the thousands. The structure at the moment is as follows:

> Main Forum
> (category)
> (category)
> (Forum)
> (forum)
> (forum)
> (forum)
> (forum)
> (forum)
> (forum)
> (forum)
> (forum)
> (forum)
> (forum)
> (forum)
> (forum)
> (forum)
> (forum)
> (forum)
> (forum)
> (forum)
​
The blue forums is the one that could potentially grow to at least 50 thus meaning that we would have 150 x 17 sub-forums. Add to that the requirement for at least 15 green categories and the subsequent forums and the numbers become insane.

As you can see this is could grow into a monster that although neat and tidy will be unmanageable when having to scroll through the forum list when undertaking moderation duties.

You may think this is a silly idea, but the subject of the forum means that all of these forums will get used on a regular basis and is pretty much essential as a way of categorising the different subsections of content.

Is there a maximum amount of nodes that an Xenforo forum can contain? Other than the worries I have posted above what other issues are there that can arise from having an extremely complicated forum structure?

The main issue for me is having to potentially scroll through a list of thousands of forums to get the correct destination forum to select whilst duplicating or moving something. The ideal situation would be to have the forum list when editing to appear as a folder based structure instead of just a long list of all of the different nodes in my forum. I'm not sure if that is even possible or if there are plans in the future to implement such a way to view the node list.

Has anyone got any better ideas as to how this could work? The above structure has already been condensed to the minimum workable amount and any more condensing will mean that the content will become hard to make sense of and untidy, to the point of me possibly having shelve the idea.

Are there any other forum owners that have a massive amount of nodes? Any advice on how you manage them? Are there any add-ons that can make managing lots of nodes easier?

Thanks for you time. :)
 
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No. I went against having many nodes. Because a) you will have performance issues and b) I don't know how to make that work (virtual or not).

My advice is to run all the subnodes in their parent node. And then create a menu system there (which needs custom development).

Ah and by the way, no user in the world would click himself through so many nodes. Specially when the list is big, nobody would scroll down. It is just too much.
 
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Thanks,

The subject is classified into many different sections and all of my members would gladly have it structured with many nodes. It would actually make their viewing experience much easier and less time consuming. As a user you wouldn't have to scroll down a massive list if they were categorised as planned. The only issue is the performance side effects and the forum list when editing, which is staff side.

Could someone point me in the direction of information about setting up virtual nodes in XenForo so I can look at the possibilities of that approach? :)
 
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This leads me onto my next question. What are the implications of having a massive amount of thread pre-fixes? Could there be any slowing down of the forum in any areas user side or admin side?
 
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You may still have some amount of scrolling issue, but you won't have the overhead of the nodes and everything that comes with that.
 
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Mike, again thank you. Having been thinking about it I can categorise the prefixes for certain areas so hopefully that could limit the amount of scrolling. Just planning it all out correctly should work.
 
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Pretty much what I did with my motorcycle forum. Originally I had a node for each Harley made. There were WAY to many of them. Ended up just having the different families and then used the prefixes for the models. Works out really well.

Screen Shot 2015-04-04 at 1.35.57 PM.webp Screen Shot 2015-04-04 at 1.37.31 PM.webp
 
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The prefixes can be a VERY powerful tool, if they are used. You can make it so that the user has to select a prefix before making the post - but I don't particularly like the way it does it when they don't select one. The error it gives is not really user friendly.

There is also an add-on that gives that list of the prefixes at the top of the node in the resources area. It allows you to filter based upon a particular prefix in that node just by clicking on the prefix you want.
 
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