xenforo 1.3 !

@Matthew Hawley - I agree. Blogs & Gallery may not become a part of every xF installation; but a CMS does have that potential. That's the reason I think KAM are indeed working on a CMS. Of course we've seen how vB messed it all trying to include everything in the core; but there are lessons to be leaned.
I think IPB handle this quite well where you can mix and match what you want and need.
 
I think IPB handle this quite well where you can mix and match what you want and need.

I personally think xf are doing things correctly. Concentrating on the core, building on it and improving features. I would think another 3rd official product would be stretching their resources and is a few years away though I could be wrong there. That said, improving the core and refining it is still a good move at this point imo.
 
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I personally think xf are doing things correctly. Concentrating on the core, building on it and improving features. I would think another 3rd official product would be stretching their resources and is a few years away though I could be wrong there. That said, improving the core and refining it is still a good move at this point imo.
What do you feel is left in order to improve/refine the core of XenForo? After 3-4 years, (minus downtime from law suit), I'd say the core is quite solid; especially the way that it is architected. Once you get to a point of having a solid core infrastructure, you should ideally be able to build anything off of it quite efficiently.
 
What do you feel is left in order to improve/refine the core of XenForo? After 3-4 years, (minus downtime from law suit), I'd say the core is quite solid; especially the way that it is architected. Once you get to a point of having a solid core infrastructure, you should ideally be able to build anything off of it quite efficiently.

Well up in till now the smiley manager needed more work done. Strike that off since it's a mature smiley manager feature rich and what I mean by that feature rich with essential features and functions which were badly needed (mass upload) etc.

What areas do I feel? I'll be honest, I don't care enough about other features since the smiley manager is the area I felt that needed upgraded but others throughout the forum think trophies could do with being expanded, username tagging expanded (profiles) but that would be a matter of opinion and/or preference. Don't care enough about those features since I seldom if ever use trophies.
 
Well up in till now the smiley manager needed more work done. Strike that off since it's a mature smiley manager feature rich and what I mean by that feature rich with essential features and functions which were badly needed (mass upload) etc.

What areas do I feel? I'll be honest, I don't care enough about other features since the smiley manager is the area I felt that needed upgraded but others throughout the forum think trophies could do with being expanded, username tagging expanded (profiles) but that would be a matter of opinion and/or preference. Don't care enough about those features since I seldom if ever use trophies.
The username tagging should be relatively simple because of the XenForo's framework. Unless there's something in user profiles preventing it from doing it's business. Same with user trophies. One of the major benefits of XenForo is that it's so extendable. So essentially, they should be able to extend this functionality quite easily.

That said, I'm not a php developer, I'm a C# developer. So I don't have an extensive knowledge of the implementation of XenForo's framework. However, design patterns aren't language-specific, so that won't matter anyway.
 
The username tagging should be relatively simple because of the XenForo's framework. Unless there's something in user profiles preventing it from doing it's business. Same with user trophies. One of the major benefits of XenForo is that it's so extendable. So essentially, they should be able to extend this functionality quite easily.

That said, I'm not a php developer, I'm a C# developer. So I don't have an extensive knowledge of the implementation of XenForo's framework. However, design patterns aren't language-specific, so that won't matter anyway.

Yeah, I have no doubt these are areas they could extend easily. But I guess, what I'm saying is I like the direction xenforo are going because they are concentrating on refining, building and extending the core features which is a good foundation I feel to build from. Not a developer myself either but a strong feature rich core would allow separate official add-ons to plugin and utilise a feature rich matured core. I could be wrong in thinking that though since I'm not a developer but do feel a strong feature rich core is potentially good for other official add-ons.
 
Yeah, I have no doubt these are areas they could extend easily. But I guess, what I'm saying is I like the direction xenforo are going because they are concentrating on refining, building and extending the core features which is a good foundation I feel to build from. Not a developer myself either but a strong feature rich core would allow separate official add-ons to plugin and utilise a feature rich matured core. I could be wrong in thinking that though since I'm not a developer but do feel a strong feature rich core is potentially good for other official add-ons.
I see where you're coming from, I'm just not sure what else is actually needed. Believe me, I'm not missing much, if anything, from what I was getting from vBulletin.
 
I see where you're coming from, I'm just not sure what else is actually needed. Believe me, I'm not missing much, if anything, from what I was getting from vBulletin.

Yeah - I mean 1.2 brought a lot in, a whole lot imo that really separated XF from being a light feature solution to something that matured very nicely with an abundance of essential features. 1.3 from what I am seeing in the HYS showing off the smiley manager seems to be following that pattern and continuing on from 1.2 which I personally like.

I noticed a lot of people struggle with the navigation and styling it. I think this would be good for xenforo to extend and make it easier for members to style (personally I use extra) and custom style properties so I wouldn't need such a feature extended but I know others may judging by the threads created, and that most xenforo styles are your standard xenforo default navs. I know this may be a users choice not to style it but alot of case people have tried to style it and gave up.

What I'm saying with regards to that is if more xenforo sites had visually nice and custom navigations this reflects positively on xenforo when potential customers see what can be done. I'm betting the average guest sees more default navigations than custom ones and wonder why they all look the same.

I rambled a bit there.
 
Yeah - I mean 1.2 brought a lot in, a whole lot imo that really separated XF from being a light feature solution to something that matured very nicely with an abundance of essential features. 1.3 from what I am seeing in the HYS showing off the smiley manager seems to be following that pattern and continuing on from 1.2 which I personally like.

I noticed a lot of people struggle with the navigation and styling it. I think this would be good for xenforo to extend and make it easier for members to style (personally I use extra) and custom style properties so I wouldn't need such a feature extended but I know others may judging by the threads created, and that most xenforo styles are your standard xenforo default navs. I know this may be a users choice not to style it but alot of case people have tried to style it and gave up.

What I'm saying with regards to that is if more xenforo sites had visually nice and custom navigations this reflects positively on xenforo when potential customers see what can be done. I'm betting the average guest sees more default navigations than custom ones and wonder why they all look the same.

I rambled a bit there.
Now you've touched upon a subject that I have personal interest in. I can style the navbar using straight CSS. But even then, I would like it to be simplified further. For example, I don't always want the navbar width to be the pageWidth. Sometimes I want the background of the navbar to extend to the width of the browser viewportm but having the actual navbar tabs set to the pageWidth. Sometimes I don't want the logo to sit on top of it, I want it to be floated to the left of the navbar.

So, we're not just talking about pure CSS every time. Sometimes we need to modify the HTML a bit, or at least the change the classes particular element has. I'd love to see this be configurable to where these things could be changed with a check of a box...or more.
 
Now you've touched upon a subject that I have personal interest in. I can style the navbar using straight CSS. But even then, I would like it to be simplified further. For example, I don't always want the navbar width to be the pageWidth. Sometimes I want the background of the navbar to extend to the width of the browser viewportm but having the actual navbar tabs set to the pageWidth. Sometimes I don't want the logo to sit on top of it, I want it to be floated to the left of the navbar.

So, we're not just talking about pure CSS every time. Sometimes we need to modify the HTML a bit, or at least the change the classes particular element has. I'd love to see this be configurable to where these things could be changed with a check of a box...or more.

Like so? where the main nav runs past the pagewidth but the tabs stay within the pagewidth? If so this can be done with css. It can also be done with the tablinks too but I wanted that within the pagewidth on this occasion.

Screenshot_1.webp
 
What do you feel is left in order to improve/refine the core of XenForo?


There's still TOO much:p
  • Navigation Bar Manager (Easy Management of ALL tabs (default xenforo + addon tabs)
    • Easy way to add/register own Tabs
    • drag and drop feature to change the position
  • code refactoring to stop several show stopper situations where an addon have to replace the whole core method which will result in addon conflicts or c&p too much code
    Some examples out of my head:
  • MUCH more reusable code (e.g. the RM category system is the perfect example for the failure:p... it's a great system which is copied by several addons, but the code can't be reused..
    Each addon have to copy & paste the whole code and replace the table names and some fieldnames... (or implement a own abstract category system and reuse it)
  • addon system improvements
    • xenforo should handle much more addon specific data & tasks automatically (e.g. create sql installcode, content type & content type field handling, or just think about a standardized installer.. ATM each addon have to implement the same logic to create/alter/delete the tables and for the cleanup of the orphan data like attachments, modqueue, newsfeed,... IMO this could be much easier and 3rd party dev friendlier
    • file version system support => all addondata which are stored in the DB (phrases,templates,permissions,options,...) should be stored also to the filesystem and it should be possible to automatically import this data without any version conflicts
      There's aready a way to do this in XenForo, BUT only for xf core data...
      This should be in the core to allow better collaboration
  • A Widget/Box System is also essential in the core!:P
    1 API which could be used by all users is much better then having 3 different types (xenporta, bd widget and custom Widget System Boxes )
    It would also avoid such problems http://xenforo.com/community/thread...sergroups-on-a-page-node.64667/#post-683410:P
 
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Like so? where the main nav runs past the pagewidth but the tabs stay within the pagewidth? If so this can be done with css. It can also be done with the tablinks too but I wanted that within the pagewidth on this occasion.
Yeap, that's one of the things I was talking about. I had done it before at one point, but thought I had to do more than just CSS. Guess I was mistaken.

There's still TOO much:p
  • Navigation Bar Manager (Easy Management of ALL tabs (default xenforo + addon tabs)
    • Easy way to add/register own Tabs
    • drag and drop feature to change the position
  • code refactoring to stop several show stopper situations where an addon have to replace the whole core method which will result in addon conflicts or c&p too much code
    Some examples out of my head:
  • MUCH more reusable code (e.g. the RM category system is the perfect example for the failure:p... it's a great system which is copied by several addons, but the code can't be reused..
    Each addon have to copy & paste the whole code and replace the table names and some fieldnames... (or implement a own abstract category system and reuse it)
  • addon system improvements
    • xenforo should handle much more addon specific data & tasks automatically (e.g. create sql installcode, content type & content type field handling, or just think about a standardized installer.. ATM each addon have to implement the same logic to create/alter/delete the tables and for the cleanup of the orphan data like attachments, modqueue, newsfeed,... IMO this could be much easier and 3rd party dev friendlier
    • file version system support => all addondata which are stored in the DB (phrases,templates,permissions,options,...) should be stored also to the filesystem and it should be possible to automatically import this data without any version conflicts
      There's aready a way to do this in XenForo, BUT only for xf core data...
      This should be in the core to allow better collaboration
Good post. And definitely a +1 for the navigation bar manager. I love your addon system improvement suggestions.
 
It seems so far that we will see IPv6, at least some bounce management, custom bbcode, smiley manager. Navigation tab manager is the top voted suggestion so it seems likely this will come as well.
The fact that bounced email management has been hinted at (at least some functions will be in 1.3) while this suggestion is at page 2 of the suggestions ranking, this seems to suggest that 1.3 may be a massive update. I know this is highly speculative and time will tell.
 
Some nice news with 1.3, I hope to also see some innovative user facing features implemented besides the admin side of things mentioned here so far... do something with profile pages or the trophy points, make that more interesting, surprise me, or more importantly, the users.:D
 
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