XenForo architecture in ten minutes

With the publication of our Building with XenForo 2 video series, we've received various questions about a presenting broad overview of the XenForo architecture as a jumping-off point for would-be developers who want to know roughly what's going on behind the scenes.

Therefore, with dubious penmanship, we've put together a ten minute overview of how XenForo works.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

Presenting ideas like the Router, Controller Actions and Replies before handing off to the Renderer, this overview aims to clear up some of the MVC mystery.

This video is meant to be representative rather than literal, and to show some of the flow of execution rather than to accurately represent how various systems interact, but as a something that can be presented in just ten minutes this is about as detailed as it can get.

We hope you'll find it useful!

 

[JoyFreak]

Very useful! Thank you for sharing.

 

[Hoffi]

Thats really cool, thanks.

Sometimes I am not sure, if I should build my new Code as a service or as a ControllerPlugin.

Both can be used in different Controllers.

My starting point was: Will the new code use some Controller mechanisms, then choose plugin. If not, use a service.

Is this the recommended way, or did I missed something?

 

[DeltaHF]

Really fascinating and extremely useful! This is something that has always been opaque to me.

This type of high-level architecture overview seems to be glossed over by many other platforms' documentation, probably because the people writing it already find it to be "common knowledge" or think it is intuitive or obvious — even though, to outsiders, it definitely isn't!

 

[Kier]

Will the new code use some Controller mechanisms, then choose plugin. If not, use a service.

Is this the recommended way, or did I missed something?

yes, that’s essentially it

 

[DigNap15]

Great, now I can start writing my own forum software in oppsition to Xenforo
I should have it ready for sale in a couple of days

Wow and all of that happens in seconds or milli-seconds!

 

[MacSeah]

With the publication of our Building with XenForo 2 video series, we've received various questions about a presenting broad overview of the XenForo architecture as a jumping-off point for would-be developers who want to know roughly what's going on behind the scenes.

View attachment 252030Therefore, with dubious penmanship, we've put together a ten minute overview of how XenForo works.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

Presenting ideas like the Router, Controller Actions and Replies before handing off to the Renderer, this overview aims to clear up some of the MVC mystery.

This video is meant to be representative rather than literal, and to show some of the flow of execution rather than to accurately represent how various systems interact, but as a something that can be presented in just ten minutes this is about as detailed as it can get.

We hope you'll find it useful!

it is useful. Thank you!

 

[Anomandaris]

This is super helpful

 

[JohnLogar]

I just knew about the importance of dispatcher.

 

[Dixie McCall]

I have to ask who is speaking? Good grief..... ( in a good way)

 

[Chris D]

@Kier you have another fan

 

[Dixie McCall]

@Chris D

I identify as a "Cougar" LOL

 

[StarArmy]

Might have to add [ASMR] to the video title .

 

[Oersted]

When viewing this "Have you seen?" forum in "preview" display style, this article in particular seems to use the thumbnail from the YouTube video as the article image. But when I try to do that on my website, it doesn't use the Youtube video and just shows as blank. Only if I attach an actual image then it will show. How did you guys do this?

 

[beerForo]

I wish it was possible too. In this case, it's an attachment with a 0x0 size setting.

 

[Oersted]

Yeah, thanks. Just as you mention, I just found this in one of the thread about articles:

It's worth noting that the cover image only has to be the first embed in the article in order to be used as a cover, but it does not necessarily have to be visible. A sneaky trick to get a cover image that is separate from the content of the article is to set its width and height to 0, rendering it invisible in the actual article body.

 

[beerForo]

Yeah good luck I can't even get members to mark a question Solved. But if you are the only author, now you know.

 

[fantomex]

XenForo is literary huge.

 

[Oersted]

Yeah, thanks. Just as you mention, I just found this in one of the thread about articles:

Wait a second. This trick works fine on desktop. But on mobile devices, the browser always seems to display pasted images in full size, even when I've set them to 0x0, and this happens even when i choose "Desktop site" in my Android Chrome browser. Am I missing something? @beerForo

 

[Myke623]

@Kier apologies for going off-topic, but what whiteboard (blackboard?) / drawing / scribbling application were you using during this video?