Using XenForo as an alternative to comment fields on a WordPress site

[TalkingCrocodile]

I run a bit over 10 different sites with very different content.
None of them income providing yet.

For primarily monetary reasons I am switching them over to static sites.

I will need an alternate way to interact with people than the comment section on WordPress.
I have tried a few of the standard replacements Disqus used it for a while. I did not like it. Esp the ad injecting.
Tried a couple of others including one self hosted.

Then I got the probably crazy idea that I could use a forum instead.
That way I have one way to handle all of them and the cost is fixed for the most part.

A couple of questions:
Does xenForo have a REST AP or some way to script creating a post in a group that is linked with the WordPress blog post or page (or an update to a static site)

My sites are on very different topics so the users should not overlap.

Lets say I have:

www.oldchristianhymns.com
www.greatgaysexnovels.com
www.ilovejobdiesomuch.com
www.teamTrumpforthewin.com


those are all made up, if they do exist it is not my fault.

My idea is to setup:

www.myVBulletinCommentServer.com

With something like:

www.myxenForoCommentServer.com/forum/oldchristianhymns
www.myxenForoCommentServer.com/forum/greatgaysexnovels
www.myxenForoCommentServer.com/forum/ilovejobdiesomuch
www.myxenForoCommentServer.com/forum/teamTrumpforthewin

Ideally, it would be

www.oldchristianhymns.com/forum
www.greatgaysexnovels.com/forum
www.ilovejobdiesomuch.com/forum
www.teamTrumpforthewin.com/forum

Anyways I have a guy over at oldchristianhymns who wants to let me know about some spelling mistakes in one fo the books
he clicks over to www.myxForoCommentServer.com/forum/oldchristianhymns Create a user and logs in? Can an anonymous post?
and he enters his comment and guys about his day.

Another guy comes across a huge plot hole in one of my gay sex books, that he has to let me know about and he heads over to
www.myxenForoCommentServer.com/forum/greatgaysexnovels.

This is getting long I apologize.

What I need to ensure is that oldchristianhymns people and greatgaysexnovels do not interact do not see each other's posts.
In fact, they should be entirely unaware of each other unless I actually do have a user who belongs to more than one of the categories.

Ideally, I think this would be done by having 4 different communities.
That gets too expensive for me, either on the cloud or self-hosted.
One license allows only one community right?

Is there a way to ensure "isolation" between the different forums, so they don't see each others users, posts, updates etc.
Or will it require 4 licenses?

 

[Paul B]

That would require 4 licenses.

 

[TalkingCrocodile]

Due to not being avle to isolate bases
Like Bug Repors and Tiipa and guides here?

cam a user be created that only has access to
Bug reports and none of their other forums?

I definitely don’t have a budget for 4 licenses.

Does XenForo have a rest api or something similar?

 

[Paul B]

Due to this:

Is there a way to ensure "isolation" between the different forums, so they don't see each others users, posts, updates etc.

cam a user be created that only has access to
Bug reports and none of their other forums?

Yes - permissions can be used to allow members to only have access to specific forums.

So in your case you would have 4 user groups, each with specific permissions to allow access to the 4 different bug forums.

Does XenForo have a rest api or something similar?

Yes.

REST API endpoints (2.2)

This document assumes you have already created an API key and setup the necessary headers for your request. Learn more about using the API.

xenforo.com

 

[kolakube]

I will need an alternate way to interact with people than the comment section on WordPress.

The XF to WordPress integration plugin I am almost ready to release that should help you out (see thread). There's a demo on my site's latest blog post if you want to see a live example.

 

[⭐ Alex ⭐]

A programmer would have to write an addon to support setting particular usergroups during registration, and managing seperate accounts per forum destination if you wanted to use one forum install / license.

 

[TalkingCrocodile]

A programmer would have to write an addon to support setting particular usergroups during registration, and managing seperate accounts per forum destination if you wanted to use one forum install / license.

Thank you.
The extension have to be written on in PHP?

 

[Alan_SP]

You could also setup things a bit differently.

You can make one forum (i.e. 1 licence) with multiple categories/nodes (i.e. forums within that forum), named after static sites. On static sites you just link that category/node you want to use for it.

And, you have one forum, users would write in logical positions and it would work. Of course, if you are fine with setup like this.

 

[TalkingCrocodile]

You could also setup things a bit differently.

You can make one forum (i.e. 1 licence) with multiple categories/nodes (i.e. forums within that forum), named after static sites. On static sites you just link that category/node you want to use for it.

And, you have one forum, users would write in logical positions and it would work. Of course, if you are fine with setup like this.

Thank you.
Yes, I am fine with almost any way to achieve it without having to buy 1 license per static site.
I just can't afford it, but if I am able to reuse the solution as time goes on that is very good.

I don't entirely understand what you mean.
That is my fault, not yours. I am not well enough familiar with the proper nomenclature yet.

If we have

XF-
--- StaticSite1. (is this a node?)
--- StaticSite2
etc

Or

XF-
--- MySites
--- -----------StaticSite1
-------------- StaticSite2

or
--- MySites
-------Category&StaticSite1
-------Category&StaticSite2
etc

 

[Alan_SP]

You got it more or less right. Let's see this location as per breadcrumb:

• Home
• Forums
• Public forums
• XenForo pre-sales questions

Home is Home (you can leave that out in settings).
Forums represent all forums you have on your site, something like starting point in navigation.
Public Forums is Category, you can use this for each site, i.e. each site can be one category.
XenForo pre-sales questions is a Node (or forum), you can have different forums within category, or just one (at first you can start with only one, let's say Discussion, later add more, or whatever).

Or you can skip Categories and go with only Nodes, one per each website you own. There's really a lot ways how you can set this up, but in short Categories hold Nodes, as you can see on Forums page. You choose how you like this. You can even made simple test with demo option here, just to see how it would like (I think each demo installation lasts three days, enough time for you to play a bit and set up test installation to see how it actually looks and work).