The future of forums (vs social media)

That's a good point and I don't doubt that's true. However, I'm curious why you are posting here if your forum is in VB and not XF (I saw it). Are you thinking of moving to XF, or do you have any other forum in XF?
I'm in the migration process. My forum is 11 years old, I have a bunch of style and add-on's that I'm attempting to mirror with Xen. I will hopefully be going live with the migration in the next couple of week. Check again after the New year to see the Xen edition. I'm pretty excited how it's starting to come together.

Facebook has already announced it's going to start censoring "Fake News Stories". That is an alarming slippery slope.
 
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I'm in the migration process. My forum is 11 years old, I have a bunch of style and add-on's that I'm attempting to mirror with Xen. I will hopefully be going live with the migration in the next couple of week. Check again after the New year to see the Xen edition. I'm pretty excited how it's starting to come together.

Facebook has already announced it's going to start censoring "Fake News Stories". That is an alarming slippery slope.
Your forum site looks like a winner, and quite useful for the subject matter. I saw the headline about "fake news." It's a real problem. The bias of the gatekeepers is very obvious, however, so I don't doubt the "correction" will lean unevenly against some and not others. I'm going to send you a PM now to ask another question...
 
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Okay, so after looking at this thread a number of times on different days, it seems that what people really want in a "forum" and in the evolution of forums is not really a forum, but is really more like...

Joomla (or Drupal for the really really motivated and ready for trouble)

Plus a forum with the "not forum" CMS. Presumably XenForo or another. (Can you do that - can you add XF to Joomla the way I've seen another forum with it?)

People are saying XF by itself is just a forum, though it seems there are some good added options for it beyond "just a forum." WordPress may be good for what it is, but it is still not nearly at the level of a "community" or CMS as Joomla is. And Drupal is a huge uphill climb, tougher than Joomla, you really have to be ready for climbing a mountain in winter, and probably not really necessary for most things when Joomla would do well.

Sound right?
Drupal 8 is awesome and easy compared all other drupal versions. I am dreaming about integrating xenforo with Drupal 8 now. I have already built a beautiful CMS with it, now running a year and it is amazing. If I could get Xenforo and Drupal under one roof (one login) this would solve everything for me.
 
Drupal 8 is awesome and easy compared all other drupal versions. I am dreaming about integrating xenforo with Drupal 8 now. I have already built a beautiful CMS with it, now running a year and it is amazing. If I could get Xenforo and Drupal under one roof (one login) this would solve everything for me.
Thanks for posting that. You definitely got me curious. Looking at you in front of that equipment there, I wondered just how much easier it could really be, but after searching on "drupal 8 review" this article is definitely intriguing: https://www.freelock.com/blog/john-locke/2016-01/8-reasons-why-drupal-8.

The guy may have an incentive for people to use Drupal, but his article nonetheless is compelling enough to look into it. Frankly I would rather be able to use Drupal if it wasn't too hard. Fortunately I'm not completely without experience with certain kinds of code and how databases work, but my skills are also definitely nowhere near the "major league" level either. I'm also extremely ambivalent about taking any plunge with WordPress. In fact, after just some dabbling personally I really do not like the WP interface and the way it works in general even though I still may try it anyway.
 
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Drupal 8 isn't hard, its just different from what forum builders are accustom to. CMS building takes time. Especially when it is so open ended, meaning... how do you know what you want, or can do... :) until you start building it. Its like endless amounts of Lego's.
The past versions of Drupal were pretty complicated for everyone but those days are gone. Its a core open to the world of plugins.

Stock Drupal 8 is setup to install and start building a CMS. The complicated thing about Drupal 8 is when you start to expand individual needs and have to figure out how to do it sensibly. But its also fun because you know its possible.
The stock install is all most people need but once you discover how open it is, you will be amazed and without question, start thinking outside the box. At that point you need to put your thinking hat on and take time to learn how to get it to do what you want.

If you run into problems, need advise... online tutorials are very helpful. The Drupal community is like a Xenforo community. We all want it to keep growing and become greater. The add-ons available are massive and free. However, there are also others, just like here where people build things and may charge a fee too.
The contributors and core coders take security and improvement very serious. Updating is easy as well. Add-ons, including themes can all be installed from your CPAdmin. You simply find modules (plugins) to try, copy/paste the link of a module into your CPAdmin, hit upload and it installs right from the Drupal database. If you don't like it, you uninstall it much the same as xenForo. Its direct link to link.

The minds behind Drupal are brilliant and in constant touch with "today". I may be making this sound simple because I understand it but I am also not a coder.
I know enough to keep learning because I realize how much more it offers than just a forum. There are thousands of forums and they are all the same. They offer not much more than the next one, So we pick a forum and hang there until someone else repeats it.

I have been running forums since 1998 and right from the beginning of those years (I'm sure others can relate) , I have always wished for a CMS around my forums. Its finally here.

So, I am planning to migrate a xenForo forum to Drupal forum this coming winter. Its not intended to replace xenForo, its intended to move on from forums, thus using the past forum content and expand into a CMS that goes way beyond a closed in system.

I believe we have reached a time where we need to work with open source cores like Drupal or Joomla etc. Where we have a main core that is designed to expand the excellence of other modules. I don't believe xenForo has the ability to be the core. I see it as a plugin to a global system.
As an example: In the music recording world, the companies growing are modular. Meaning, I choose a core recording system (called a DAW) that opens my recording studio up to a hybrid system that allows me to use other third party "software or hardware" to create the perfect recording system for me.
My main recording software (DAW) has all the basic essentials (same as example Drupal). My DAW ( core) has the ability to install plugins to expand my needs.

The recording world is no different to a xenForo / Drupal world. I want a xenForo forum plugin for my CMS. If xenForo doesn't find a way for me to use it in my main core (Drupal), then I will be motivated to drop it the moment I find another way to get a forum (close enough) inside Drupal.
Drupal has a Forum already that works flawlessly, its just not much of a forum in comparison to xenForo. Does it matter? That I don't know yet but what I do know, if someone comes along with a better forum plug-in, I will be all on it. Drupal forums work like articles or pages with comments. You can include deeper linking to posts that cross reference and expand into other sections of the the CMS. Everything from a personal website to a huge corporation is possible.

I would like to see a xenForo Drupal plugin. If it was possible, I would pay 5 times for a xenForo Drupal plugin. Plugins are where it's at. Drupal is open to the world and growing.
I don't see the logic of ever trying to make a Forum into what Drupal does, or where its going.

In a nut shell... I want a xenForo plugin for my Drupal CMS. Not the other way around.

That's how I see it.
 
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Then you have a forum like Topix Forums which has information on anything you can think of where you don't even have to sign up to make a post or comment on a post. :eek:
 
I'll throw in my .02 to this social media discussion vs forum discussion.

One key thing to remember with social media is it's controlled by a few players. They all have an agenda of what they want their masses to see and discuss. Having run a 2nd Amendment forum for the past 11 years I can tell you first hand that if the "Social Media Players" do not like your content they will control and suppress it. The right to own firearms in the United States is a constitutionally protected right. Yet everyone of the "Social Media Players" despise it and often control the message and content.

While my forum will never compete with Facebook, Twitter, Google, Instragram, etc, it has a very profound effect on the 2nd Amendment message in New England. It won't be suppressed or controlled by any of the "Social Media Players".
what is your website?
 
I'm in the migration process. My forum is 11 years old, I have a bunch of style and add-on's that I'm attempting to mirror with Xen. I will hopefully be going live with the migration in the next couple of week. Check again after the New year to see the Xen edition. I'm pretty excited how it's starting to come together.

Facebook has already announced it's going to start censoring "Fake News Stories". That is an alarming slippery slope.

You're using vbulletin?
 
Hello,

My name is Maxime Beneteau, I'm studying Interaction design at L'école de Design in Nantes, France. I'm currently working on my end-of-studies project focusing on how people create, consult, search and share meaningful conversations on the Web. I'm currently working on 3 concepts, and one of them focus on "the future of web forums". I bumped on this thread yesterday and found out very interesting questions and ideas, and I would love to discuss about those issues in a deeper way.

Ideally, I would love to share with you design of interfaces, prototypes I'm working on and get feedbacks from you.

I'm also currently looking for a tutor, don't worry you won't have to do anything, only give me feedbacks on my work through the next 2 months.

If this is something that may interest you, don't hesitate to contact me at : bemaxdesign@gmail.com

If you're wondering what I do as a designer, you can check my portfolio: maximebeneteau.com

Have a great a day,

Nice work :)
 
Humm an interesting thread as I'm deciding if I should buy xf for my site.

Most of my traffic comes from fb, but my posts on fb it's difficult to get into a discussion as most comments are just tags. Then again the content I post on fb is mainly food so it's not something to have indepth conversations on it.

Maybe it's because I'm over 30 but I just don't like fb and prefer forums.
 
I find that the "ethos" about commenting which takes over people on FB is practically a psychosis or mental illness. If you violate the "rules" by trying to engage in real discussion instead of super terse, and often super vapid spurts or fluff, it's like that scene in "Midnight Express" when the guy started going the other way in the walking around in a circle scene. And it spills over into "real life" too.

Check this out - apparently people were already talking about this at least several years ago:

Google search, "the discussion forum is dead" - https://www.google.com/#q=the+discussion+forum+is+dead
 
I find that the "ethos" about commenting which takes over people on FB is practically a psychosis or mental illness. If you violate the "rules" by trying to engage in real discussion instead of super terse, and often super vapid spurts or fluff, it's like that scene in "Midnight Express" when the guy started going the other way in the walking around in a circle scene. And it spills over into "real life" too.

Check this out - apparently people were already talking about this at least several years ago:

Google search, "the discussion forum is dead" - https://www.google.com/#q=the+discussion+forum+is+dead
Classic post!
 
It's in your own screenshot.

View attachment 133429
Can you talk us through the idea behind the placement of the Recent Posts button?

recent-posts.webp

To me it does not seem user friendly - specially given mobile is growing at such a huge rate. Our site is now to 40-70% mobile sessions depending on the time of day.

I can add nicer responsive themes but some of these usability issues probably won't go away with a new coat of paint. I can work out which options people are using and add big buttons in the header, but that is inelegant and can end up with a cluttered look given I'm not a designer and can only really make cosmetic changes.
 
I find that the "ethos" about commenting which takes over people on FB is practically a psychosis or mental illness. If you violate the "rules" by trying to engage in real discussion instead of super terse, and often super vapid spurts or fluff, it's like that scene in "Midnight Express" when the guy started going the other way in the walking around in a circle scene. And it spills over into "real life" too.

Check this out - apparently people were already talking about this at least several years ago:

Google search, "the discussion forum is dead" - https://www.google.com/#q=the+discussion+forum+is+dead

The act of listening in order to reply instead of listening to understand has all but taken over online interaction.
 
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