Xenforo as integrated part of static website... possible?

MastaShake

New member
I'm in the process of building a website from scratch. Below are the list of requirements I have. I'm hoping for some advice regarding the feasibility of using Xenforo for this purpose:

1) Make a BBS forum 'just another page' on the site, sharing exactly the same header and footer. The body styling of the forum page(s) themselves should be customizable to match the site's styling, including media-query-specific scaling of fonts and images.

2) Allow users to log in/out from anywhere on the site.

3) Pull post snippets / topics / etc as items of interest, which I can display anywhere on the site (as links to the forum content).

4) I need to be able to query user data for non-forum purposes (geo-targetting ads, etc), preferably through a forum-supported API.

5) Probably a whole bunch of other stuff I can't think of right now.

Basically, I want to build a website in which the forum is an important, but supplementary, player. The bulk of the content, including the home page, will be static content (either straight html or php-generated). But I need to be able to display and link to/from forum content within the site in a seamless, tightly-integrated manner.

Is Xenforo the right tool for the job, and if so, what resources are available to learn what I need to know to make it happen?

If Xenforo is not the right tool for the job, I'd sincerely appreciate any advice on what might be.

BTW: I'm a one-person shop experienced in html, css, php, and (some) js... but I have zero experience with forum software and minimal experience with CMS software outside WordPress. I'll be working on this full-time, but I'm only one guy, so the solution I'm looking for needs to be something one person can reasonably implement and - more importantly - maintain over the long run.

Thanks!
 
This is not a detailed answer, but you can probably accomplish this with the "page" node and widgets. Try the demo.
What he said: try the demo. You can set up pages and navigation for said pages, and yeah, such things as the option to login from anywhere on the site and matching styling are no problem. As far as featuring thread content, there's widgets and addon's. Most people just create a homepage and feature content there. Here's a few addon's in no particular order that might be helpful, mostly paid but some free:



https://xenforo.com/community/resources/xd-feature-threads.6834/

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/xd-ftslider-featured-thread-slider.6852/




https://xenforo.com/community/resources/multi-custom-slider-by-xenbros.6829/

As far as your options for querying user data for non-forum purposes, I'll leave that for someone else to answer, as it's not something I've ever had any need for.
 
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