XF 2.2 Xenforo 2.2.15 on WPEngine

[m0nty]

I have spent a couple of days trying to install Xenforo 2.2.15 on my WPEngine hosted server, with a view to importing a very old and large SMF 2.1 install. However, I haven't even been able to get to the install screen yet. So far:

• had to add ?> at the end of every PHP file, WPEngine doesn't agree with Zend on that style apparently
• had to modify or hardcode some of the folder references
• had to upgrade my server from PHP 7.x to 8.2

Now I am not getting any errors in my server log, and I can see the initial install URL, but it shows no content. I am trying to track down where the hidden error is occurring in the Xenforo code, but not having much luck. I am an old school PHP hacker, not up to date with namespaces and all that modern stuff, so the app structure is foreign to me. I can echo out things to break it at some points, but I can't seem to follow the flow of the functions.

The server behaviour suggests to me that the showstopping bug may be to do with the fact that WPEngine does not allow exec, proc_open and popen commands, among others. Apparently this is a hard rule and can not be fixed. WPEngine is a particular kind of host, I respect that, and its inflexibility has its advantages.

Have I wasted my money on buying Xenforo given that I am committed to WPEngine, or is there a workaround to this?

 

[MySiteGuy]

?> not just a style choice by Zend. It's a bad coding practice because it can cause bugs such as HTTP headers being sent earlier than intended, unintended spaces at the end of output, cause file downloads to break, break output buffering in some instances, etc.

If your host requires ?>, I suggest leaving them. Not only due to the problems above, but modifying all Xenforo files means the file modified security checks no longer work.

You haven't wasted your money on Xenforo. Respectfully, you've wasted it on WPEngine.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Wordpress

If you outline what you want Wordpress to do ... maybe others could suggest how to accomplish it all with Xenforo.

 

[m0nty]

If you outline what you want Wordpress to do ... maybe others could suggest how to accomplish it all with Xenforo.

To be honest my site is not reliant on Wordpress, it just uses it as a template. It gets millions of page views per week for the niche of fantasy sports liveblogging, involving a lot of high-frequency AJAX calls on flat text files. Kind of outside the scope of both WP and XF. But the back-end cloud system WPEngine has set up to cache WP files also works well for my needs.

 

[picnic]

To be honest my site is not reliant on Wordpress, it just uses it as a template. It gets millions of page views per week for the niche of fantasy sports liveblogging, involving a lot of high-frequency AJAX calls on flat text files. Kind of outside the scope of both WP and XF. But the back-end cloud system WPEngine has set up to cache WP files also works well for my needs.

Is it some kind of Headless WordPress deployment you have ? If I guess correctly, WPE has made its infrastructure highly optimized for WordPress and hence you should NOT host any other software like XF. If you still want to integrate XF with your existing setup, may be you need some other host ,with an API based setup

 

[m0nty]

Is it some kind of Headless WordPress deployment you have ? If I guess correctly, WPE has made its infrastructure highly optimized for WordPress and hence you should NOT host any other software like XF. If you still want to integrate XF with your existing setup, may be you need some other host ,with an API based setup

The WP-tuned caching system is turned off in the forums folder.

I was reading in other threads that those three commands are only used in optional elements of XF, so maybe the showstopper I am running into is unrelated. I will keep trying to figure it out.