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.

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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!

 

[DevPandi]

So, now I would like to give some feedback. On their own, your videos are a great thing. At the same time, it's a shame that important information is still not mentioned in the documentation and that you have to search for a lot of things in your code.

Your videos are no substitute for a proper reference for the template functions. Neither does a proper documentation of the JavaScripts and Co.

I've now got my first 2 plugins for XenForo to the point where I can publish them and I'm getting better at your code with every hour of development. But I also had to search for a long time until I had the information I needed.

Your current documentation is a start, but it needs to be expanded. Your Have you seen also contains too little information to work well with.

You should also bear in mind that not everyone likes working with videos. You have put a lot of effort into it. But the videos are more of a nice gimmick than a real substitute for more comprehensive documentation.

 

[Taylor J]

Their documentation is open source so it's kind of a shame no one has really tried to help out as of yet and fill out the missing spots.

I currently have a good few Obsidian notes full of documentation for myself for the future but also for me to parse through and make sure no Texan way of talking has come through so I can create some pull requests on the docs.

I am in the same boat as you though with the exact same situations when it comes to searching for answers/solutions and I am also a person that prefers to read documentation rather than watch videos