XenBlog + XenCMS: It's already here!

Tigratrus

Well-known member
Well... Mostly ;)

I've spent years thinking about ways to tightly integrate Blogs and CMS systems into a forum based site. This morning a final piece of the puzzle fell into place, and I'd like to get some feedback from others before making it into a "Suggestion."

Basically, BOTH The CMS and the Member Blogs should be nothing more, or less, than a different VIEW (in the MVC sense) of the existing community content (forums). Building a separate parallel system which stovepipes user content is counter productive, presents a unnecessary barrier to user adoption, and fragments the community.

The solution to both a native XF CMS and a native XF Member Blogging solution is essentially:

An extended XenPorta. Let's hear it for Jaxel! :)

Let me explain.

XenCMS

With the "Promote Thread" functionality Jaxel has already implemented, XenPorta can act right now as quite a good CMS using the forum system to store the articles. About the only thing that's missing is the ability to provide category pages that show a chronological list of "Articles" in a given category.

Category pages could be handled one of two ways (off the top of my head):
  1. Each category == an existing forum name. That ties in directly with your communities existing content structure, so it prepares newcomers arriving via the home page for the community forum structure.
  2. When "Promoting" a thread from the community forums to the home page, you specify a matching category for that "article."
In both cases, clicking on the category name brings up a page that functions identically to XenPorta, except it has a filter that shows only articles that match the appropriate category. If these category pages have the ability to have their own module configuration/layout, you now have the ability to (very easily!) craft customized landing pages for various topic areas of your site. Each of which will be dynamically updated with topically appropriate "articles" simply by promoting threads from the forums. How do you add custom crafted articles with in depth info? By doing what you should be already doing in the first place...creating really GOOD threads in your forum system!

Basically each category page acts as a separate WP style blog (displaying carefully selected content from the forums), and the homepage acts as an aggregator (showing all selected content in all categories).

XenBlog

Building on the existing XenPorta functionality we use a single forum to hold all "Member Blog" OP's and present them in a member specific manner. Basically XenPorta, but with the "RecentNews" module set to pull from the designated "Blog" forum (Project Blogs in the example below) with a filter to only pull threads started by the member whose "Blog" you are visiting.

Example:

Let's say you have a DIY forum, and you have a forum named "Project Blogs" where your members chronicle their projects. Now I can either go to "Project Blogs" and create a new thread there, or I can click "My Blog" in the site Nav menu to go to my "Blog" (www.domain.com/blogs/tigratrus) then click a "New Post" button to create a new blog entry. In both cases the results are identical:

A thread is created in "Project Blogs" sharing with the community whatever I want to share. A new "Post" shows up in Tigratrus' Blog showing the first 400 (or whatever you have the excerpt set to) characters of the OP followed by a "Read More..." link to the thread and a note that there are "X" comments (which are actually replies to the thread).

POOF! :)

Now it's super easy to keep up with all the details of an individual blog you want to follow, just go to that member's "Blog" page. In fact, it might make sense to merge this functionality with the existing user profile.

In addition there's a single place to go to see an activity stream of ALL Member blogs: The Project Blogs.

As an added benefit, it's perfect for the many existing forums that have a thread based blogging tradition already. Nothing has to change, this just gives them a better interface.

Conclusion

Forums... Blogs... CMS Articles. They are all basically the same thing, User Generated Content, initial post and replies/comments. So let's apply the concepts of MVC design to take the existing content, and present it in different ways to more effectively suit different needs. Google loves blog style home pages, that's why so many large sites go to a WP/Joomla/Drupal CMS homepage. But by taking the creative output of the Admin (and other article writers) and funneling it into "Articles", we deprive the community (forums) of that same creative energy, and also deprive the member of the sense of personal accomplishment that goes with having THEIR content on the home page.

Our communities are all about the people in the forums and their stories. Let's take that energy, that sense of community and show it to the world directly! Give the internet a fresh "VIEW" of our communities ;)
 
vbcms =>

1. cms index => only excerpt
2. article page => full text
3. pseudo thread => first post is only a link to the article and the comments are "duplicate" BUT normally you shouldn't be able to go to the thread (because of the many vb4 bugs, you are able^^ but IMHO you shouldn't^^)
 
vbcms =>

1. cms index => only excerpt
2. article page => full text
3. pseudo thread => first post is only a link to the article and the comments are "duplicate" BUT normally you shouldn't be able to go to the thread (because of the many vb4 bugs, you are able^^ but IMHO you shouldn't^^)

It was a mod from vB.org that allowed me to have the duplicate info.
 
Exactly!!!!!!! The difference is only how the content is displayed. People expect to be able to do the exact same thing in their blog as in a forum post. The posts should just be sorted by user instead of by forum, and displayed a little different.

I dont get why other community software developers make such a big deal out of writing complete different code for a blog and a cms when they already got a forum. Its maintaining code that does the same thing 3 times, which is really stupid
 
Exactly!!!!!!! The difference is only how the content is displayed. People expect to be able to do the exact same thing in their blog as in a forum post. The posts should just be sorted by user instead of by forum, and displayed a little different.

I dont get why other community software developers make such a big deal out of writing complete different code for a blog and a cms when they already got a forum. Its maintaining code that does the same thing 3 times, which is really stupid

Check out CMF - it does as Alfan says.
 
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