Think of XenForo as a site, not (necessarily) a forum

[digitalpoint]

There are a lot of default phrases that seem to have been written with the general mindset that the XenForo software is strictly for forums. For me personally, I tend to use XenForo as a framework for a site and sometimes (but not always) use the forum function as a support venue for customers/users. It would be nice if XenForo itself didn't think of itself strictly as forum software. Phrases that tend to include things like, "this forum" when referring to parts that aren't the explicit forum functionality tend to sound silly when you aren't using the forum function. I've has users contact me asking where the "forum" is (when there is no such functionality used) because a random default message referred to the forum.

XenForo software is software for a site, not necessarily software for a forum (although it certainly can and often times can do that too). I've turned people on to XenForo purely as an application framework (and they use it as such, because it's fantastic at is), not because they are wanting to have a forum/community.

It's been an ongoing thing where I need to override the default phrases, and just ran into another one, (the description where users pick a username)... this_is_name_that_will_be_shown_with_your_messages (This is the name that will be shown with your messages. You may use any name you wish.). Except no... this site has no forum, no threads, no posts, no conversations (it has no messages). How about this "is your public username"? Be it a message, your profile, etc.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Re: Xenforo as a framework.

If the future for Xenforo was Xenforo Cloud, would making Xenforo into a framework with a forum addon be in their interest ?

I think it would be. What I mean by that is would it be easier to for them from a cloud hosting standpoint to host Xenforo Framework + forum addon than downloadable and cloud Xenforo (non-framework, forum baked in) ?

 

[Mendalla]

It could open the door to some use cases for their cloud that might not come up if the forum was the focus. Maybe some web apps and things like that could be built and hosted on their cloud. I doubt my company's new web app could go that route (very big and complex and we need Canadian data residency and fairly stringent security due to privacy requirements) but I see potential for sure.