XenForo Network

[zethon]

About a decade ago now I released a plugin for vbulletin, which I was running at the time. I called it vbNetwork. It allowed different boards to network together and share one or more forums.

The way it worked was pretty straight forward. AdminA of BoardA decides he wants to start a network, and his buddy AdminJ of BoardJ decides he wants his board to join it. AdminA sets up the network and adds AdminJ's board as a node on the network, and AdminJ configures his board accordingly. AdminA creates a few "network forums" and AdminJ joins his board to one or more of them. Now when user CoolUsername of BoardJ makes a posts in one of the shared forums, users of BoardA will see those posts as being from CoolUsername@BoardJ. In this sense the forum is "networked". Boards could also belong to one or more "networks", though a forum itself could only be tied to 0 or 1 forums.

The protocol to share data was plain ol' XML and very straight forward. For a while I was working with someone who was writing a phpBB version that would have easily allowed users on a phpBB board to share forums with vbulletin forums. Unfortunately I lost interest in the plugin because interest in general seemed minimal.

I've been toying with the idea of writing some kind of XenFory-Lemmy bridge, but now I wonder if maybe just a Xenforo version of my old network plugin might be better. I'm posting this thread to gauge public interest and see what the community thinks, what suggestions you might have, and to see if anything like this already exists for xf.

Thanks!

 

[beerForo]

Thread 'Bring Xenforo to the Fediverse'

Jul 19, 2023

There seem to be two ways people are federating forums. I'd be happy with either one really, or a different method you dream up. I just like federation.

1) The singular timeline. Users "subscribe" to various forums: neogaf, ign, stevehoffman, the forum you run, et. al., and then popular threads appear in their fediverse timeline. This replicates the experience of joining facebook groups or reddit subs, where interesting threads from followed communities are pushed to the user. An example with activitypub.

2) Community-owners pick and choose forums from other communities...

• sub_ubi
• Replies: 67
• Forum: XenForo suggestions

• 

 

[zethon]

Thread 'Bring Xenforo to the Fediverse'

Jul 19, 2023

There seem to be two ways people are federating forums. I'd be happy with either one really, or a different method you dream up. I just like federation.

1) The singular timeline. Users "subscribe" to various forums: neogaf, ign, stevehoffman, the forum you run, et. al., and then popular threads appear in their fediverse timeline. This replicates the experience of joining facebook groups or reddit subs, where interesting threads from followed communities are pushed to the user. An example with activitypub.

2) Community-owners pick and choose forums from other communities...

• sub_ubi
• Replies: 67
• Forum: XenForo suggestions

• 

I saw that, which inspired this thead.

 

[CedricV]

Go for it and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

 

[Ivancas]

I'm posting this thread to gauge public interest

Was your avatar part of that strategy? It got my attention more than the thread itself

 

[FreshFroot]

About a decade ago now I released a plugin for vbulletin, which I was running at the time. I called it vbNetwork. It allowed different boards to network together and share one or more forums.

The way it worked was pretty straight forward. AdminA of BoardA decides he wants to start a network, and his buddy AdminJ of BoardJ decides he wants his board to join it. AdminA sets up the network and adds AdminJ's board as a node on the network, and AdminJ configures his board accordingly. AdminA creates a few "network forums" and AdminJ joins his board to one or more of them. Now when user CoolUsername of BoardJ makes a posts in one of the shared forums, users of BoardA will see those posts as being from CoolUsername@BoardJ. In this sense the forum is "networked". Boards could also belong to one or more "networks", though a forum itself could only be tied to 0 or 1 forums.

The protocol to share data was plain ol' XML and very straight forward. For a while I was working with someone who was writing a phpBB version that would have easily allowed users on a phpBB board to share forums with vbulletin forums. Unfortunately I lost interest in the plugin because interest in general seemed minimal.

I've been toying with the idea of writing some kind of XenFory-Lemmy bridge, but now I wonder if maybe just a Xenforo version of my old network plugin might be better. I'm posting this thread to gauge public interest and see what the community thinks, what suggestions you might have, and to see if anything like this already exists for xf.

Thanks!

With the avatar you have... I am more worried the plugin would have spyware in it....

 

[FTL]

Well, Kim, Dear Leader, I rather suspect that your login federation idea could well cause security issues with XenForo, so that's a no from me.

 

[Wing]

 

[Vercingetorix]

About a decade ago now I released a plugin for vbulletin, which I was running at the time. I called it vbNetwork. It allowed different boards to network together and share one or more forums.

The way it worked was pretty straight forward. AdminA of BoardA decides he wants to start a network, and his buddy AdminJ of BoardJ decides he wants his board to join it. AdminA sets up the network and adds AdminJ's board as a node on the network, and AdminJ configures his board accordingly. AdminA creates a few "network forums" and AdminJ joins his board to one or more of them. Now when user CoolUsername of BoardJ makes a posts in one of the shared forums, users of BoardA will see those posts as being from CoolUsername@BoardJ. In this sense the forum is "networked". Boards could also belong to one or more "networks", though a forum itself could only be tied to 0 or 1 forums.

The protocol to share data was plain ol' XML and very straight forward. For a while I was working with someone who was writing a phpBB version that would have easily allowed users on a phpBB board to share forums with vbulletin forums. Unfortunately I lost interest in the plugin because interest in general seemed minimal.

I've been toying with the idea of writing some kind of XenFory-Lemmy bridge, but now I wonder if maybe just a Xenforo version of my old network plugin might be better. I'm posting this thread to gauge public interest and see what the community thinks, what suggestions you might have, and to see if anything like this already exists for xf.

Thanks!

Excellent idea!
This is exactly what myself and several other collaborative admins have been looking for since last year.

It's definitely not the same thing as that Fediverse, which seems to be more like a fancy version of an RSS feed and doesn't enable any actual forum < to > forum interactivity.

Hey @CedricV , what was that other collaborative inter-forum thing you were promoting a few months back?
Think it was called "community hive" or something like that.
Whatever it was, it also doesn't enable actual forum < to > forum interactivity either aye?

@zethon I think your idea is brilliant.
If you really can create a legitimate & fully functional Networking add-on, I would be very interested in utilizing it—as would at least two-(though possibly up to seven)-other board's admins.

We have previously tried using the limited tools available to create a loosely networked meta-community with each of our independent community boards being linked with things like basic RSS feeds, the Link Directory, standard link forums, affiliate links, etc....however all of this stuff simply is not capable of enabling the proper direct forum < to > forum interactivity we are wanting.

Note: I don't want to give the wrong impression here. Obviously I'm absolutely enthusiastic and eager to see your add-on become reality, however I must point out that I'm apparently not the usual kind of admin. Neither are the other admins I collaborate with, and nor are our communities run like the common sort.

Even though I am interested in your Networking add-on, I doubt too many of the other common admins would be.
So I just want to make sure not to give an erroneous perception that others would share my eagerness.
Who knows, maybe everyone will love it once they've seen it in action.

Regardless, I simply don't care what the common admins think.

Whether or not you're hoping to create a commercially available product or a private custom product, doesn't matter to me, coz either way I'll throw down some cash to get it done.

Welcome to hit me up via DM.

 

[CedricV]

Hey @CedricV , what was that other collaborative inter-forum thing you were promoting a few months back?
Think it was called "community hive" or something like that.
Whatever it was, it also doesn't enable actual forum < to > forum interactivity either aye?

It was IPS's initiative on a community wall, but they neglected it so bad it's ridiculous.