Question: How to shoehorn a Blog area and a CMS-lite function into XenForo

[HydraulicJack]

Ok, I'm prolly gonna embarrass myself, but here goes...
Currently I've got Forum- and Blogs content sitting in vB 3.8.6
And the more I think about vB and read their Forum, the less optimistic and enthusiastic I am about mid- to long-term prospects. I've seen the pattern several times before, since the O'Reilly WebBoard days.

So my question is, just for speculation...
If I really want to get my content into XF as soon as XF becomes available, could I do the following:

I would hope Forum content migration would be no biggie.
Now re: migrating vB blogs.
Functionally what is a blog? It seems to me (not a programmer or designer, etc.) that as an interim measure until somebody came out with a fully featured XF Blog, perhaps (with a little customization here and there, and hopefully just some semi-fancy rights management) I could create a Forum called Blogs, and configure it so each user will have the right to create one but only one sub-forum in it (where a little coding might be necessary but maybe not, eh K & M?), titled by username, and only that user has the right in that sub-forum to start a new thread, but everyone would have the rights to REPLY.
Voila! Blog!
Am I missing something other than some layout finesse (which could arrive as 3rd parties bring goodies to the XF market and K & M continue to do the hoodoo that they do so well)?

Then to the matter of CMS-lite kinda sorta function (no rants necessary re: what I'm talking about is not a true CMS... I don't care necessarily at this time, just wanting the following functionality to the extent possible):

Create another Forum called Articles. Editor-Moderators would have the rights to Promote (copy) selected Forum content to a Pages container at the beginning of a thread, and wah-lahhh people could reply with comments to the article.

Um... Isn't that pretty much a very very very bare-bones posts-promoted-to-articles function pretty much within what XenForo appears to offer? Perhaps of course with a little extra customization coding (but may just require setting forum- and sub-forum rights and config variables correctly)?

Like I said at the beginning, maybe my naivete and programming ignorance is blatantly obvious at this point and I should be embarrassed. But I just thought I'd ask. And... what have I overlooked, and what would it take to be remedied?
Thanks!
HJ

 

[Shanj]

For me I find separate blogs and articles overly fussy - but then I run small boards with high intensity services.

I like Jack's original idea a lot and I'd like to extend it to a RECIPROCAL system.
(As Mike says this is a system that wouldn't work with 1000s of users unless the blog and article services were restricted to certain usergroups.)

1. A Page presents an article.
There is an option to generate a COMMENTS FORUM linked to this Page-article.
(This could generate based on a founding forum as in copy forum structure in admincp)
LINK appears to forum at the bottom of the Page -article text.
Option to the author to restrict forum to one or more usergroups to view/ or to write.
So far this is Jack's idea.

2. On the linked forum the TITLE of the Page-article is the TITLE of the forum.
A BOX - at theTOP + BOTTOM- of the forum page/ pages,
gives LINK to the Page -article plus name of AUTHOR plus a SNIPPET.
Snippet is possibly a separate description/ summary text given by author when writing the article.

3. These Page-articles + linked forums can appear in their own section e.g. Blogs / Articles with Comments, on the forum lists.
Or else can be integrated individually into the forum tree according to topic.

This could provide a basic blog and cms/ article system and also keep things based on forums.

 

[HydraulicJack]

It was not directed at anyone specifically...

Thanks for your clarification Ruven, and for your comments.

 

[Booth]

I want to run an article system for news, articles, media and blogs - but for staff only. A front page to summarise all the new posts and articles. And static content for our project pages, with the option of guest commenting underneath. Any posts by guests and members on an article, will also display on the corresponding forum topic (and vice versa).

I can already do this with ip.content on ipb3 so I would need these features at least I'm afraid.

 

[HydraulicJack]

You could probably use what we have as a poor man's X, but they're not necessarily going to have the features to make it stand out.

Mike, thanks very much for taking the time to respond. I appreciate it very much!

My goal with this kind of rigging is to have SOMEplace HEALTHY to put my content that is now sitting in my vB forum, and maybe eliminate going to vB 4.x with all of its remaining unknowns.

I appreciate your reply that this is indeed feasible (as I suspected it was), with the understanding that of course this is an interim measure, and has limitations.

My expectation is that this kind or rigging will be a short- to intermediate term thing, until K & M and/or 3rd party folk come up with a more robust blog and CMS add-in to the native XF package.

I want to have the option of offering the cool functionalities of XF to my users AND a safe home for my current Forum- and Blog content where it may continue to grow in a healthy environment (i.e. XF, rather than vB4.blah), UNTIL more robust XF-Blog and XF-CMS appear on the scene.

If you just use forums, you're not going to get customizable blocks or styles for the users, unless you go about setting all that up for them.

Right - noted, thanks!
I'm inclined to put up with that shortcoming in the short term to achieve what I've mentioned above, with the expectation that the Blog- and CMS functionalities for XF will become more robust and probably quite more than adequate, in due time, and at such time I can then migrate the data in my sorta-Blog and sorta-CMS areas of XF into these new containers (i.e., into the fully featured Blog- and CMS functionalities for XF) when they do become available.

Additionally, while we can support a number of forums, there is an overhead to doing that; the system is designed around having a known--and reasonable--amount of forums. If you have 50 people blogging, that's fine; if you have 50,000, you might run into a few more problems.

50,000 to me at this time is what's known as a higher-level gripe... that is, I should be so lucky!
In other words, for now that's not a big concern.

If you're willing to accept the limits of multi-purposing a forum and do whatever custom coding is necessary for your ideas, I'm sure you could get something you'd be happy with.

Likewise great to hear, Mike. Hopefully it won't take too much if any custom coding for the simple stop-gap that I have in mind... given the hope that full-on Blog and CMS for XF will prolly appear B 4 2 long.

This probably sounds a bit like a cop out answer...

Not to me, lol. It's the answer I was looking for. Thanks very much for offering it!

 

[HydraulicJack]

... I like Jack's original idea a lot and I'd like to extend it to a RECIPROCAL system.

Thanks, and I like yours and Ruven's additional suggestions as well. Seems within reach!

(As Mike says this is a system that wouldn't work with 1000s of users unless the blog and article services were restricted to certain usergroups.)

Definitely noted. Looking forward to the higher level gripe of needing a system to handle thousands of bloggers. My topic merits it, what is needed is a community support engine the likes of XF to foster it.

...This could provide a basic blog and cms/ article system and also keep things based on forums.

Yes, for me that would do the job for some time.
Thanks for your comments, Shanj!

 

[Shanj]

Thanks, and I like yours and Ruven's additional suggestions as well. Seems within reach!
Yes, for me that would do the job for some time.
Thanks for your comments, Shanj!

well next stop is finding mod coders
for me too
I'm expecting them to come out of the woodwork within days of the beta arrival -which should b e with us by next week ....