By the logic that everything should be made by XenForo, nothing would get done, or the platform would turn into a jack of all trades, master of none scenario such as IPB, which I definitely do not want to see.
The product mentality behind IPB is, I think, a fairly decent one in theory. No matter how malleable a bit of software is, it is never so malleable that add-ons can do everything. Some things rightfully should be part of the core software. Having said that, I don't believe XF has the manpower to spread itself so thin and should concentrate on what it does best for the foreseeable future.
- We certainly don't need User Albums since Pepelac already have made an excellent add-on for this (or maybe they can buy it from him to speed up development?).
- User blogs? I have yet to see a forum where this is being used a lot.
- CMS? There seems to be some very good bridges for Wordpress and the likes. Not necessary to bloat the XenForo software with this.
The website that me and a few friends ran could have definitely used blogs. I've never seen the point of having a blog for each user. However, having a select few people who can write articles to keep its members up to date and help neighboring communities would have been really good for us.
As far as bridges, no offense but I think that's the worst possible solution. To have multiple pieces of software on a server communicating through a bridge limits the usefulness of all software involved. There's no real integration much less deep integration that can enrich a users and administrators experience.
Of all the members that read this thread, only 1 came forward. That tells quite a lot. Keep the blogs (bloat) out of XF. Don't go down the same road that vBulletin did.
Not everyone considers it bloat. Many people enjoy only having one piece of software to maintain rather than multiple pieces all with their own add-ons, communities, code bases,, and architectural designs. Of course I don't think XenForo should have a blog built in as that dilutes its goal, there must be a happy medium.
1. PAGES. Use of bbcode editor - on the frontend. Access to edit as a user permission.
Otherwise they are practically useless to me as none of my mods do html and I don't want them accessing the ACP anyway.
BBCode isn't really great for making pages as it's not just some text you want to display. There's also structure, presentation, and possibly interactivity considerations which BBCode just isn't meant to do.
3. global sidebar + sidebar manager with in/export feature for blocks
To be quite honest the MVC architecture has never been able to handle widgets very well (which I assume you're describing). The code has always been quite garish. I do have a suggestion for this which I may write up at some point, but it's definitely a 2.0 suggestion.
