Xenforo needs a CMS.

jmurrayhead said:
The future: No public roadmap.

As a project manager, I can't imagine there is not an internal roadmap that they are going off of on a project this size.
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This.

The XF team have always told us what's coming in terms of development when its close to release (as an alpha/beta) for various reasons, which no doubt include not giving details of their plans to rival developers as well as trying to avoid disappointment from customers (look at what happened over XenForo 2 with the long development time and the long notice the XF devs gave for this, lots of complaints and grumblings from customers that it wasn't delivered sooner).
 
Mackeral_Fillet said:
It would be good to hear from @Kier @Brogan etc if there are any plans? Or do we need to work it out ourselves?

Cheers
Rob.
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Mike has said this about a CMS:

“Some suggestions are just plain massive. A good example is the CMS suggestion. This isn't a feature suggestion; this is a product suggestion, a potentially very complex product suggestion. While XenForo is a framework, it is primarily based around the forum software; that is presumably why you're all here. That is likely to be our primary product for the foreseeable future. While it may be worthwhile for us to create a CMS, this would have a knock on effect on everything else we do so this (or any new product) is not something we could take on lightly. In my opinion, it's unfair to cite the lack of a CMS as a failing of a forum software package. It may be something that you need and it may be provided by others, but it's still separate from a forum and our primary product. If you need a CMS that is natively integrated with your forum, unless there's an add-on that you're comfortable with, XenForo is unlikely to fit that and I'm not in a position to say if or when it would fit that.”
Source, https://xenforo.com/community/threads/xenforo-2-0-discussion.79603/page-38#post-889527
 
ozzy47 said:
Mike has said this about a CMS:

“Some suggestions are just plain massive. A good example is the CMS suggestion. This isn't a feature suggestion; this is a product suggestion, a potentially very complex product suggestion. While XenForo is a framework, it is primarily based around the forum software; that is presumably why you're all here. That is likely to be our primary product for the foreseeable future. While it may be worthwhile for us to create a CMS, this would have a knock on effect on everything else we do so this (or any new product) is not something we could take on lightly. In my opinion, it's unfair to cite the lack of a CMS as a failing of a forum software package. It may be something that you need and it may be provided by others, but it's still separate from a forum and our primary product. If you need a CMS that is natively integrated with your forum, unless there's an add-on that you're comfortable with, XenForo is unlikely to fit that and I'm not in a position to say if or when it would fit that.”
Source, https://xenforo.com/community/threads/xenforo-2-0-discussion.79603/page-38#post-889527
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Thanks.

Shame. I see so much value in communities online but fear that unless we see Xenforo be bold and innovate that they will slowly die. How many new Forums are being created vs being lost? How can we inspire the new generation of communities? How can we innovate? They are the questions I’d be asking myself if this was my business.
 
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Mackeral_Fillet said:
Thanks.

Shame. I see so much value in communities online but fear that unless we see Xenforo be bold and innovate that they will slowly die. How many new Forums are being created vs being lost? How can we inspire the new generation of communities? How can we innovate? They are the questions I’d be asking myself if his was my business.
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Forums have been dying for a long time.
With Facebook forums and Reddit ... hard to say if there is medium term home, especially since Xenforo the Leader isn't blazing a clear future in a good direction.

There has been virtually no innovation since vB3.
or longer really.

Should you expect some innovation ? Time has provided that answer.
 
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Digital Doctor said:
Forums have been dying for a long time.
With Facebook forums and Reddit ... hard to say if there is medium term home, especially since Xenforo the Leader is blazing a clear future.

There has been virtually no innovation since vB3.
or longer really.

Should you expect some innovation ? Time has provided that answer.
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But it doesn’t need to be that way.
 
I hope a contrary opinion is welcome.

In my opinion modern forums (not just xf) shouldn't go the bloated CMS way.

I would say what we need is a better way to save, to archive, to store information.

Simple example, which I always bring up. Your computer has a virus. What do you do?
Any Wikipedia article won't help you. So passive-information-archives are no help.
How about Social Media? Facebook, Twitter? Anything comes to mind? Will they help you to get the virus out of your system? No.

And what will? Yes, forums->their users.

You can get help or information or an opinion of anything in forums from the users. They will help you to solve your problems, your virus problem or whatever help you need to buy a new car or to get you into fishing or whatever.

The problems with forums are, that the (only) way of storing information are in threads. Sometimes hundreds of pages long threads about same topic. Or just a jungle of threads in a forum-node.
It is really hard to find the information you need.
You are pretty sure that someone else had the same virus problem, and someone solved the problem somewhere in the forums, but where? The problem is stored, the solution is stored, but nobody can find it. Buried in threads.

But what if there would be a system to save, to archive all those information? What forums need is a better way of storing information. So it can be used again, it can be addressed again. The only way right now the storing works is to store the information in some thread in some forum-category. But this is just a vague direction.
And the search system in forums are mostly god-awful.
Yes, we have some additional things like prefixes, tags and Custom Fields now in xf2, but they need to be focused more and extended more.
When I post a solution to get virus x out of your OS, then the forum should store that information immediately AND make a good way of presenting it. So future visitors make use of it too.

If you just need plain general knowledge, go to Wiki, if you need the interaction of people, go to Social Media.
Forums can be Wiki AND Social Media at the same time. We just need to make use of this, but we don't.

And as tried to explain above, I think going the CMS is the wrong way. We need a better way of storing the content.
 
On a content related note... I'm just hoping for pages to get a nice big update. Plenty of suggestions out there for them but, with widgets some sort of drag and drop builder for pages, upload attachments, default front-end editor for ease-of-use and a few other simple ideas I'm missing.

Pages haven't really changed since the launch, except for XF syntax which is nice but you could always do that via a template edit anyways.
 
My opinion? We don't really need a CMS. With the Page node, we can also add XF widgets via a piece of code. So in my humble opinion, a CMS isn't really needed, when you can get close with what we have already.
 
I am just thinking about migrating a community from vb5 to xenforo... but ... after testing xenforo 2 now, I really miss some great features that vb5 has: the CMS ... and most of all the suite builder. Sorry, but time is money I don´t want to spend hours in coding... on vb5 I just click.. create a new page... can choose between different layouts, add widgets on the page, and lots more... and thats not only for custom pages, but also for forum pages. Everything is much easier to customize. So right now I am not really sure if I will move to xenforo. There are a lot of things missing and I don´t know if the few add-ons makes it worth a try.
 
I’d love to see some kind of roadmap for XF. Instead we have to keep guessing (or buying addons, hiring developers etc).

I’d be really interested in what the future plans are. How invested are the devs in the future of XF?

Most people <30 I speak to don’t understand what a forum is and I have to explain to them. What is being done to keep up with the times?
 
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