Xenforo can really LEARN from ForEm....seriously....

[🔥Iggy🔥]

Are you trying to say you can't do that on XenForo?

Looking at the dev.to site, a lot of the initial features seem like they could be replicated in some form fairly easily within XenForo.

well...yes, i said that wrong if you count "full size" which shouldnt even be allowed in posts for most cases...

technically i meant "at least 3 sizes"....that is where u can really make a diff in post data size.

regards

 

[MacSeah]

Looking at their stack I think it would be much easier to develop in Xenforo. One will have to wait for their open source updates and who knows how long they are willing go support. Also, their UI is actually quite acheivelable within XF 2 itself, other than the Preactjs part.

My take for Xenforo that there are trustable people and the architecture of the script is easy to understand even for a non coder. Over there, by not paying them a cent, I cannot expect them to be delivering updates as needed.

But I do agree though that they are implementing a few things to do more than what a traditional forum do. Xenforo could use something like that too. Expanding out of a standard forum is definitely good for us. Forums like ours should evolve too so we can reach out to the younger generation.

Xenforo is probably in a hard position. One side, they have to retain the existing customers and on the other, hey have to attract new customers.

There won't be much incentive to start a new forum especially when adsense went to ****. So what's next?


What would the people need in the next 10 years?

 

[mazzly]

And infinite scroll, yeah, why have a footer... (and they do).

That was my initial thought also, how can I see what was in the footer Luckily the infinite scroll doesn't happen on other pages

 

[surfsup]

If you don't like the way of XenForo, just don't use it.

ive been using Xenforo for like 8 years, used to be on vbulletin and so glad I switched way back when. We have couple million posts.

This is going to be an interesting thread. ForEm is really snappy and you can tell it is all on the latest tech but looking past that I see a blog with basic comments and a taxonomy structure like is traditional on WordPress sites.

The features of XenForo go much deeper and any developer with the right vision can take the existing system of thread types, user profiles, permissions, reactions, and all the other stuff that makes our forums the best of the best and take it in a similar direction.

Maybe we'll see official moves like this but right now XF is a gold mine of possibilities and I think we'll see more advancements as forums regain dominance from people moving away from social media.

I looked at dev.to and there's nothing there that stands out to me screaming I NEED THIS!

It is SUPER fast.
It seems light-weight, and that can be skinned in XF if you lose some features to match dev.to's vanilla approach too.

I ran a light house and they have CLS and FCP issues.

The accessibility claim is nice. I didn't test it. This is an XF gap.

Overuse of SVG that a common forum owner won't have a clue about how to setup/generate graphics for their own branding?

What exactly are you thinking about in terms of the gaps to fill?

Looks like a facebook clone IMO. Doesn't resemble a FORUM at all, in my opinion, which is what Xenforo is, FORUM software.

If you want medium to long form communication, you use a forum software like Xenforo. If you need social media-like components to survive, you should be using a different platform. The reason why social media platforms do not move the needle to me is I prefer longer, detailed conversations.

I just don't understand the incessant desire to try and social mediatize forums. What needs to be focused on is creating thoughtful, useful tools and add-ons to get visitors writing more.

yes exactly....it may not be the point of the OP, but thats what im trying to get at....

to me the real competition...its not with becoming another facebook, it is doing what forums do, except at a level that will actually make people want to spend time creating content instead of fighting the software then deciding its not worth the effort...

things are better than they have been in the past for sure....i dont mean to come off so negative but the bottom line its just that forums never fully "ripened" for more than casual forum use.......which is what social medias are filling the spot of......so, the logic i see is that forums need to be better and EASIER TO USE for creating more complex content....

To answer most of you above, lets admit - fb/twitter/reddit is stupid simple to post on mobile and desktop, straight forward, more communication and proves that people dont need a million bells n whistles of a thread editor - main key factors text, pics and video uploads to communicate with the mass. Xenforo is great at what it does, but it still is based off the same old forum logic with no real options to be like a social media platform - social media platforms took the best of what forums did best 10 years ago and went above and beyond, it shows that the mass amount of people rather use those 'easy' to use platforms vs the old forum logic. Im not hating on xenforo, they made our forum into a business many years ago and love the team - but lets face it, forums have been dying 4+ years ago, look at have the largest fb group in our industry and other social media platforms BUT I wish we had that same response on our forum BUT it is the largest resource now in our industry and were ranked in search engines for every term. In reality I would love to find some sort of social media software OR if Xenforo can really be light weight into a fb/reddit clone - please have any dev reach out to me about this! I am serious.

If XF ever ends up looking and functioning like the examples posted, I'm switching to VB5.

Hilarious. All in All brogan, xenforo has been great for us all these years reaching millions of posts - just wish xenforo had a better public roadmap or options to get the mass back and move away from the old school forum approach that everyone has been leaving these past years, like take reddit software for instance but then again ign/macrumors etc. are large enough to still keep the convo going....

 

[surfsup]

Are you trying to say you can't do that on XenForo?

Looking at the dev.to site, a lot of the initial features seem like they could be replicated in some form fairly easily within XenForo.

Hey Russ, long time - lets connect cause I would be HIGHLY interested.

 

[RobinHood]

And infinite scroll, yeah, why have a footer... (and they do).

It can be done if you have a collapsible sticky footer. HotUKDeals.com implements this well.

They've managed to combine infinite scroll, with pagination so you can still jump to exactly what page you want (and so you end up in the same position when backing out of a thread), and managed to get the footer to work with all of it together.

View attachment footer.mp4

 

[Forsaken]

ive been using Xenforo for like 8 years, used to be on vbulletin and so glad I switched way back when. We have couple million posts.


To answer most of you above, lets admit - fb/twitter/reddit is stupid simple to post on mobile and desktop, straight forward, more communication and proves that people dont need a million bells n whistles of a thread editor - main key factors text, pics and video uploads to communicate with the mass. Xenforo is great at what it does, but it still is based off the same old forum logic with no real options to be like a social media platform - social media platforms took the best of what forums did best 10 years ago and went above and beyond, it shows that the mass amount of people rather use those 'easy' to use platforms vs the old forum logic. Im not hating on xenforo, they made our forum into a business many years ago and love the team - but lets face it, forums have been dying 4+ years ago, look at have the largest fb group in our industry and other social media platforms BUT I wish we had that same response on our forum BUT it is the largest resource now in our industry and were ranked in search engines for every term. In reality I would love to find some sort of social media software OR if Xenforo can really be light weight into a fb/reddit clone - please have any dev reach out to me about this! I am serious.

Hilarious. All in All brogan, xenforo has been great for us all these years reaching millions of posts - just wish xenforo had a better public roadmap or options to get the mass back and move away from the old school forum approach that everyone has been leaving these past years, like take reddit software for instance but then again ign/macrumors etc. are large enough to still keep the convo going....

Roadmaps rarely ever stay on track, and are usually just an overview of what a project wants to achieve, rather than any form of reasonable guideline. While maybe not the case for forum software, publicizing your plans in a competitive market is a good way to have competitors cut your plans out from under you.

It can be done if you have a collapsible sticky footer. HotUKDeals.com implements this well.

They've managed to combine infinite scroll, with pagination so you can still jump to exactly what page you want (and so you end up in the same position when backing out of a thread), and managed to get the footer to work with all of it together.

View attachment 245034

This is one of the few ways that makes endless scroll somewhat useful... But it still is a nightmare accessibility wise.

 

[Earl]

Clearly, What it has and what XenForo doesn't is very little.

And what XenForo has and that example doesn't have is a lot.

I feel like the OP knows that too.

But he just wants to get the feeling of social media website when he's browsing, because most people are familiar with the interface and the same time he wants it to be a forum.. Of course, like a perfect forum which has tons of tools and features just like XenForo.

Okay, okay, he might want it to be the exact Xenforo or he wouldn't ask about the ROADMAP of xenforo this year

Part of me agrees with the idea of giving a familiar interface for users. I remember @Kier also had mentioned it in a xenforo insight episode, he recommends us to use New Post as the homepage route as opposed to forum view page, because more people are familiar with social media type interfaces.

Well, which features would we need to cannibalize /implement / ADD? Or whatever you call IDC

I guess that the contents of the one in the example is based on #hash #tags

It doesn't have nods tree, right? So it looks more like Reddit?
The XenForo has given more than enough powers to the add-on system so a skilled developer could easily build an add-on create a bridge / link / relation between a new hashtag entity and nodes.

Then all you need to do is install that add-on and a skin (style) Which would give a feeling of that social media site.
We also have a powerful criteria system too. We can extend it and give permission or user promotions to specific members so they can create hash tags / nodes.

I remember the @ThemeHouse @Mike Creuzer and his team have had developed an amazing add-on called Topics, but unfortunately they have discontinued that add-on. I was planning on installing it too

 

[Forsaken]

Clearly, What it has and what XenForo doesn't is very little.

And what XenForo has and that example doesn't have is a lot.

I feel like the OP knows that too.

But he just wants to get the feeling of social media website when he's browsing, because most people are familiar with the interface and the same time he wants it to be a forum.. Of course, like a perfect forum which has tons of tools and features just like XenForo.

Okay, okay, he might want it to be the exact Xenforo or he wouldn't ask about the ROADMAP of xenforo this year

Part of me agrees with the idea of giving a familiar interface for users. I remember @Kier also had mentioned it in a xenforo insight episode, he recommends us to use New Post as the homepage route as opposed to forum view page, because more people are familiar with social media type interfaces.

Well, which features would we need to cannibalize /implement / ADD? Or whatever you call IDC

I guess that the contents of the one in the example is based on #hash #tags

It doesn't have nods tree, right? So it looks more like Reddit?
The XenForo has given more than enough powers to the add-on system so a skilled developer could easily build an add-on create a bridge / link / relation between a new hashtag entity and nodes.

Then all you need to do is install that add-on and a skin (style) Which would give a feeling of that social media site.
We also have a powerful criteria system too. We can extend it and give permission or user promotions to specific members so they can create hash tags / nodes.

I remember the @ThemeHouse @Mike Creuzer and his team have had developed an amazing add-on called Topics, but unfortunately they have discontinued that add-on. I was planning on installing it too

They have Filters and Trending now, but that has some pretty bad query performance, and doesn't really offer quite the same functionality.

My issue with XenForo (and it's not really XenForo or any dev) is that everything is just an addition, and it doesn't always feel like it's seamless integration. This goes for the media gallery, it goes for the resource manager, and it goes for every functional add-on.

When I have free time (if that ever happens again) I plan to look at re-doing the whole profile page the way I had started in XF1, and make it more focused on user content and user activity. I also probably need to look at doing something similar with a portal and the forum listing.

 

[Max]

We seriously need tag based thread categorizing, modern social media inspired interface with unlimited scroll for xenforo.

No addons will provide proper integration and performance. And its a headache to convert the addon data when xenforo implement them in its core.

 

[drastic]

That center column of content is such a nice homepage. Their threads load nice in social media too.

The look and social friendliness right away would make things easier to promote and gain new members. Most of my audience comes from social media and I think they get confused when they see the forum format. Sucks, I know... trying to get them signed up and posting has been a task that I still struggle with years later.

This would be a goldmine for a style designer... or at least a copper mine... lol