Pre-Sale Questions

Hondo

New member
Hi Guys,

I'm currently deciding on moving to xenForo or IPB from webSPELL. currently evaluating IPB & xenForo demo's to help me decide. I used to look after an IPB forum few years back and im more used it than xenForo but I do like the direction you guys are taking and had some questions that will help in deciding which way to go.

1. Can webSPELL be migrated from to xenForo? Any known work around?
2. What sort of spamming features included?
3. Does it have features to keep track of last known ip address of users available to admins.
4. Can IP addresses be banned? with our with out a wild card (eg . 123.67.* ) Yes i do have reasons as to why i want to do this.
5. Are there clan based addons?
6. anything similar to vwar addon where clan members can sign up for up coming matches and pracs?


I might have more questions and I will post when I come across them. But for the meantime if someone can asnwer me these questions it will be greatly appriciated.

Thanks,
Hondo
 
1. Not that I know of, someone might be able to assist you though.
2. Not much, spam cleaner is nice (one click removal of spammers). Other than that there are CAPTCHA (RE:CAPTCHA and Q&A Captcha are included by default). There are addons that include Stop Forum Spam blacklist.
3. Yes, just look up the user in admin
4. You can IP Ban, I assume it supports wildcards as well.
5. Depends on what you mean. There is a nifty one for steam (though basically just a gamer card and open ID registration / login for front end), Xbox live leaderboard and similar.
6. No, there is something similar being developed, but that will only be a ranking system, so only for already completed tournaments. You can use the event addon with RSVP though.
 
Hi Hondo,

Good questions, let's hope we have some good answers :)
  1. webSPELL isn't a common one - most people are moving from IPB or vBulletin so there are built in scripts for these. That being said, all database driven systems in theory can be imported into XenForo. In this particular case, something custom would need to be written which would pull the relevant data from the tables in webSpell and place them into the XenForo database tables. Jake Bunce is a pro at importing matters so he may have more details or even may have helped someone before with an import such as this.
  2. There is a Spam Cleaner feature right now. Moderators can have the power to click the "Spam" button on a user's post. They will then be taken to a form where they can check the user's IP address, ban the user, delete all of their content and send them a notification. In the next version of XenForo 1.2 it will have Stop Forum Spam integration. This is designed to prevent known spammers from registering.
  3. Yes absolutely. Again in the in-line moderation you can see all of the IP addresses used by that user and whether other user's have used the same IPs.
  4. IP addresses can be banned indeed. They can also be "Discouraged" which is a feature whereby they will experience random timeouts, page errors, redirection to irrelevant content. The idea of this is it's more subtle than being banned and therefore they might get bored and go elsewhere.
  5. Possibly - you may need to be more specific about the functionality you require. If something doesn't exist, there's people here you can create it for you.
  6. I'm no expert on clan systems etc. so I won't comment on this one, but again, if it doesn't exist then someone might be able to write it for oyu.
Hope this helps as a good start, Hondo.

Ask anything you like :)

EDIT: We're also so helpful here we all fall over ourselves to help new people. We call this "ninja'ing" So you rarely get one answer to your questions. You often get multiple! :ROFLMAO:
 
Here's a screenshot of the Ban IP screen. It confirms you can indeed do wildcard IP banning.

I had to check because I've not had to IP Ban anyone recently:

banIPs.webp
 
Excellent, thank you so much replying back so quickly.

That answered my questions regards to IP banning with a wild card. webSPELL has lot of security holes where spammers get to and most are originated from Asia or Eastern Europe
on my site. I know with IPB you could ban with a wild card and more than happy to ban ip addresses from other countries as our site is only for our country players only.

With regards to clan addons, ill do bit more search on your forums to find and ask around if anyone keen on working on something. MagnusB mentioned that you can use the calendar RSVP
feature. Can it be set where certain calendar items can only seen by only the members of the clan, not regular users of the forums, so only then can RSVP to upcoming events like clan matches,
meeting and pracs?

One other questions is to find out if the forum can resized to fit our current page. here is the current link to our forums:

http://www.clan-sod.com/index.php?site=forum

With the members section hidden offcourse.

Ideally i would like to rip out the current forums and integrate the new one to fit in underneath the menu etc. Is this something possible to do or will it need lot of coding to get it done.

One last questions, is there feature to have ranking for members?

For example we have Privates, Sargent, Captains etc with their own insignia assigned to them which shows on their profile and when post on the forums. This is normally underneath avatar.
See below:

irhek.gif



Is this something that is possible to do?


Thanks,
Hondo
 
You can do user ranks, either via user group promotions: http://xenforo.com/help/user-group-styling/
Or you can do user ranks in CSS: http://xenforo.com/community/resources/user-ranks-in-css.430/

The event addon is fully equipped with permissions, from view, RSVP and submit new events: http://xenforo.com/community/resources/8wayrun-com-xenatendo-events.99/

If you want to bridge Xenforo and webspell, I am not sure if there is anything that will do that for you. You can style xenforo to look like your webspell theme, though that will most likely require some work.

EDIT:
Yorick is right, there are no view permissions, only RSVP, submit, bypass moderation queue and moderate events.
 
Hi Hondo,

I believe this is the particular add-on that MagnusB was referring to:

http://xenforo.com/community/resources/8wayrun-com-xenatendo-events.99/

I've just had a look at its permissions, you can set usergroup permissions on who can RSVP - but I don't think it's possible to hide the calendar with the built in permissions. Though, it would certainly be possible to use template conditionals to hide the calendar from certain groups.

It really won't need loads of coding to get the current header of your site to be added to XenForo. Yes, it will involve some playing around with the HTML and CSS but people say this is a load easier with XenForo than it is with IPB. There's also loads of people here who can advise on the specifics of that.

User rankings can be done using the steps advised here: http://xenforo.com/community/resources/user-ranks-in-css.430/
 
Thanks mate... Im going to play around with the demo for the next couple of days to see if i can achieve all I need.

I'll also get in touch with Jake to see if he has any knowledge on migrating webSPELL to XF.
 
Thanks mate... Im going to play around with the demo for the next couple of days to see if i can achieve all I need.

I'll also get in touch with Jake to see if he has any knowledge on migrating webSPELL to XF.

Hondo, coming from the built in forums webspell has you and your users are in for an amazing treat with XF even if the posts don't convert over.
 
I don't see any import path for webSPELL. A custom importer would have to be written.


Ok thanks Jake. You know anyone keen on working on one? ;) I can see lot of people moving away from webSPELL as most users are getting spammed and they seem to be not doing anything about it.

Their forums are full of users complaining.
 
Hi Guys,

Another couple of quick questions.

1. Is there a Portal addon for XF? something like IPB Portal where new news announcements can go as the main page of the site?
2. PayPal addon? where clan members can contribute to running of the site as well up keep of all clan gaming servers. (Would be good to be able to set the amount to be collected and along with a set date to achieve by. It should also keep a track of who paid which amount and also display the last 5 donations. I know i'm being really scpecific about this as this is something I have seen with other sites.)

Thanks
 
Another option for donations is the built in User Upgrades system.

This allows people to purchase "Upgrades" with a recurring monthly charge. It could be that buying the upgrade gives them "member status" and if they stop paying or miss their recurring payment then they lose that "status".
 
Another option for donations is the built in User Upgrades system.

This allows people to purchase "Upgrades" with a recurring monthly charge. It could be that buying the upgrade gives them "member status" and if they stop paying or miss their recurring payment then they lose that "status".

That doesn't meet his requirement as noted in point 2. Otherwise, I would have mentioned it. The paid Donation manager does exactly what he's asking. :)
 
That doesn't meet his requirement as noted in point 2. Otherwise, I would have mentioned it. The paid Donation manager does exactly what he's asking. :)
Oh, I know. Certainly your suggestion meets his requirements, but I also like to throw free alternatives out there :)
 
You might be able to bridge webspell and Xenforo via the BBPixel addon.
Not sure if you want to try that.
http://bbpixel.com/products.htm

MSI engine
MSI vBulletin plugin
MSI Joomla plugin
MSI IP.Board plugin
MSI Pligg plugin
MSI XenForo plugin
MSI Wordpress plugin
MSI webSpell plugin
MSI php-Melody plugin
MSI My-Gaming-Ladder plugin
MSI PhotoStore plugin
MSI Elite-Ladders plugin
 
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