Missing: Social Groups + Group-forums

[erich37]

XenForo is great as it is, but I think one of the Core-Features which are still missing are some sort of "Groups" so that users can associate themselves to certain Groups.

Maybe also having Group-Forums for each of those Groups ?

For example, XING.com is using Group-Forums (public or invitation-based), which can be applied for by moderators to "run" a certain Group, so people can set-up their own Group-Forum based on their interest and they can invite already existing members or people who are not yet members of your website to join this specific Group.

So this would be free viral-marketing for your very own Forum.

Also see this suggestion:
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/suggestion-replace-members-page-with.2773/

 

[Eagle]

Social groups are bad and it's not required. Because you can share everything in forums. You can create a group node category and your members can share everything in that category.

Please do not add social groups. Just dedicate your product to forums.

Fully agreed.

 

[Alpha1]

I have never understood why people feel the need to negate others needs. If you have no use for social groups then just do not use such functionality. Meanwhile Reddit with 174 million users and thousands of social groups is arguably the most successful forum on the internet:
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/social-groups-are-perhaps-reddits-biggest-strength.72355/

 

[Paul B]

As it is not possible to dislike a suggestion, the only way of showing your objection is by posting on the thread.

This is perfectly acceptable and is the recommended practice.

All views are taken into account when evaluating suggestions.

 

[bcercan]

IMO, It should be added as official add-on as Media Gallery.

 

[Snog]

Personally I never like social groups because the idea behind a forum is to build a community.

But like any community, discussions can become politically or otherwise charged and can be a detriment to the community. Social groups allow those discussions to take place in an area that is not normally visible by users without the user actively joining the group. And anything that allows a user to join a group without admin intervention makes sense and it keeps discussions that might be offensive to others out of the normal flow of the site.

The bad part about user created social groups is admins/moderators must police them to be sure nothing illegal is taking place in them.

 

[Alpha1]

The interesting thing is that social groups are just forums that members can create & join. Almost all the functionality needed for groups is already present in xenforo: forums, threads, posts, media albums, member list, pages, XFRM for group listing. It just needs to be tied together. It's not a major leap from normal forum functionality. You still have the same forum and thread functions.

@Kier posted this years ago.

I personally can see a great potential for social groups to enhance the forum experience when fully integrated into a bunch of other functionality that XenForo will offer, but that's a discussion for another day and a later version.

I hope that XF2 will be the point when social groups will be considered.

 

[eriche]

I wanna say that Social Groups are the core Feature of my Forum once I find the right Plugin

Like other already mentioned, it is easy to implement, because it`s just a "private Forum" but managed by members.
So the main work would be in the ACP to set the permissions.

I just want to bring down the Features a social Group has to have

• Permission in how many Groups a member can join
• Permission how many social Groups a member can create
• Giving the Group creater the Chance to promote members as Moderators (co-leaders) or Group Administrators (Leders)
• creating Groups open to join, approve to join, invite only
• Give the Administrator the Chance to change usernames of members inside the Group
• Additional custom fields for this Group
• The ability to search for all fields of this Group
• a private Gallery for the Group
• maybe something like a blog and a calendar (Events) for the Group?

Non of the existing 3 Social Group Plugins has all of this Features

I hope you like my summary a social Group has to have.
Please vote for it - when XF2 would have this Features on board it would be a killerfeature compared to other Forum Software!

Erich

 

[naia]

I would like to see this as an official addon.

 

[Jim Boy]

I find it frustrating that this hasn't been added yet.

XenForo can either be a forum software with a standard set of features and that is that. It'll be the best for a while, then something else better will come along. Or it can step back and say what is it that forum owners are actually trying to do. In our case its building a social networking site around particular interests, Xenforo can be the framework that provides the core functionality, whatever that is, and third party add-ons provide the trimmings, but really the core conductivities between users should be core of the product

 

[eriche]

@Jim Boy you say it - also I think that in future many boards will go into the social Groups direction - so I think the Forum Software which 1st implements all the Features I mentiuoned above will win the battle!

I Forget to mention 1 more Feature - cool would be if users of Groups can share their Images , Videos (if they want) to the official Gallery with one klick .

Then others who have an Feed for this category will get a message and can like it, comment it,...

Erich

 

[vbresults]

@Alfa1 I think of this idea properly implemented like a 'Reddit' add-on which is not a small undertaking, and not fit to be a core feature IMO. It's a good fit as an official XF2 add-on though, on par with, say, the RM; I like the suggestion in this context.

 

[Lawrence]

This is something I would like to see added to XF 2.0. Not a full blown social groups, but a simplistic implementation that will allow developers to expand on it. A framework would be perfect,

 

[Unique Username]

This is something I would like to see added to XF 2.0. Not a full blown social groups, but a simplistic implementation that will allow developers to expand on it. A framework would be perfect,

I agree! As a community forum software, wouldn't it make sense to have groups? Because if a group of members wanted their own space, how would they? The only way you could do this is by creating a node/page and setting the permissions.

 

[The Geek]

Saddened to see nothing has appeared to address this need.

Personally would just like the ability for users to create and manage their own forums (to a degree). Would also want the ability to subscribe/unsub from said forums so when users view new posts, they get the content they are interested in.

All the constructs exist in XF. Would be great to tie them together.

 

[JamesBrown]

We use Snogs Social Groups with a lot of success.

Our forum is very busy but the niche is small and focused. I don't want to dilute that with a load of nodes that have nothing to do with the niche. Let's say my niche is Goldfish, a Soap opera node would look out of place. But, if I have many thousands of GoldFish enthusiasts there will be some who have an interest in Soaps, by allowing them to share another interest on the site keeps them on my site and not on someone else's.

 

[Ranger375]

Please bring back social groups for the new Xf..

 

[Alpha1]

I am really liking the IPS clubs function. It is very appealing and I know that it has resulted in sites switching from XF to IPS. Some are working on that now.

I do hope that XenForo will seriously consider adding this functionality as all the major competitors have it and Reddit is really growing fast.

The votes on this thread are really skewed. Almost no one in this thread who responded in favour have voted. Else the vote would be a few dozen higher.
As I can only tag 5: @JamesBrown @bcercan @Shiro @Jim Boy @The Geek please like the first post to support this suggestion.

 

[Unique Username]

Honestly wouldn't hurt to try.

 

[The Dark Wizard]

I am really liking the IPS clubs function. It is very appealing and I know that it has resulted in sites switching from XF to IPS. Some are working on that now.

I do hope that XenForo will seriously consider adding this functionality as all the major competitors have it and Reddit is really growing fast.

The votes on this thread are really skewed. Almost no one in this thread who responded in favour have voted. Else the vote would be a few dozen higher.
As I can only tag 5: @JamesBrown @bcercan @Shiro @Jim Boy @The Geek please like the first post to support this suggestion.

This is something that is insanely important to us and IPS' implementation is pretty good.

Currently using @Snog's as we picked it up this weekend.

 

[Grover]

I am really liking the IPS clubs function. It is very appealing and I know that it has resulted in sites switching from XF to IPS. Some are working on that now.

I am (still) working on going from VB to XF . Gosh time flies... 2001-2018 ... 17 (!) years long I was on vBulletin... 7 years too long (XF came out in 2010). I wish to be on XF for the rest of my existence or that of my community . VB Social groups never took off on my vB 3.x powered platform. Probably because I did not enable them ... ;-) In other words... we did not have any need for them, but everyone has different needs.

Still... I am always in favor of improving the social character of my forum platform. I believe Xenforo was the first forum product at the time channeling inspiration from Facebook by including 'like'-functionality into it's forum product. A really great idea.

It proved that typical social functionality can improve the traditional forum experience considerably or even hugely. The question (or one of them) only is: what can and will not serve the majority of all these forum sites?

Can you explain a bit more what these clubs are?