Optimization, security, customization or: How I jumped on my own sword :)

[BikeGremlin]

After years of weighing pros and cons, I've decided to do it, and published my forum on bikegremlin.net domain.

A fresh install, and a brand new forum.

I suck at visual design. Thankfully, XenForo's default settings align with "my brand" pretty well, so I just made sure not to ruin it.

What I did concentrate on was security, spam prevention, and "technical customizations."
Here is where I took notes of most stuff I fiddled with (will try to keep that up-to-date with any new changes):
https://io.bikegremlin.com/32015/xenforo-forum-installation-securing-and-configuring/

Notably:

• Setting up Cloudflare Turnstile anti spam.
• Gmail and GitHub account registration (Microsoft sucks, and Linkedin integration seems to be broken).
• Configuring the footer copyright to automatically show the current year.
• Adding Google Programmable Search to the forum's advanced search.
• Adding a mod/admin only visible menu item, that lists the users with unconfirmed emails, sorted by the registration date.

I did my best to keep it "vanilla" so to speak: no addons, and no heavy customizations (at least as far as I know).

Left to do:

• Some kind of caching (LiteSpeed or Redis - we'll see).
• Configure Amazon SES or similar mass-mailing service.

I suppose both of these things can be done if and when needed (i.e. if more than a dozen people join the forum).

Any suggestions, especially corrections, are more than welcome.

Boring details:
I started in the BBS days, over Usenet, and forums, as user, moderator, and administrator.
After having seen a lot, and tried different software, my conclusion is that XenForo is the best the least bad (I'm a pessimist ) forum software.

The basic idea of the forum is to consolidate questions, comments & replies on various different platforms (in more detail about why I made the forum).
We'll see if I end up regretting that decision (so far so good). So far, it's been a lot of work to set it all up, but hopefully it will be more help than hassle in the long run (though I'm not sure - as the title of this post shows ).

Relja

 

[BassMan]

Hello Relja!

Nice to see you on XenForo and wish you the best with your forum project!

For the basic setup to run your ideas it is more than enough. I like your WordPress site too (especially the content - keep up!). Subscribed to your RSS

 

[BikeGremlin]

OK, I've done a few things since the start (almost two years already!), and I've tried to doccument it all in the article I linked in my first post of this thread.

This is the latest "tune-up" that I think is beautiful.




I've done this to make it clear when you are on an English part of the forum vs my native (Serbocroatian) - and to also differentiate the admin side of things.

How I did it:
https://io.bikegremlin.com/32015/xenforo-forum-installation-securing-and-configuring/#7.6

If there is a more elegant way to do it, I am lookin forward to hearing it. My goal was to not use any addons, keeping it as vanilla as possible (for the sake of easier future updates).

The forum is growing, slowly, but more importantly, it's working fine and is serving its main purpose. In hindsight: it was a good decision to start it, and to choose XenForo, and to start sooner rather than later.

Relja

 

[BikeGremlin]

I did a major redesign in terms of making the two language versions stand out clearly, while drastically reducing the number of stuff listed on the front page (no wall of text as is the case with most forums including this very XenForo community front page):

Basic layout​

https://www.bikegremlin.net/




I am no design wizzard, but I hope this makes navigation clearer and simpler - especially for new visitors as the forum primarily functions as a website & Youtube channels' Q&A section.

Also, I've fixed and enabled the dark theme option for those who prefer it - Litespeed cache addon had to go, it seems much more consistent without it, and works fine for now.

Layout and design details​

For anyone interested in details: I set the two main Categories ("English" and "Srpskohrvatski") and added the other Categories and a few Forums underneath them in the Nodes options ("Introductions, Rules and FAQ" is a Forum, the others are Categories.

I played with some custom code that could let me hide any forums from the front page - but ended up using two major categories to get the design I think is best (open to suggestions and corrections though). The custom code lets me list only Categories, while hiding any sub-Forums on the home page (not affecting other pages). Code listed here:

https://io.bikegremlin.com/32015/xe...ing-forum-lists-from-the-home-page-categories

Heading styles​

I made heading colours and styles stand out more - for structured posts and articles. The custom code used:

https://io.bikegremlin.com/32015/xe...ng/#heading-h2-h3-and-h4-styles-customization

Relja