XF 2.3 ?

[Chris D]

I mean, you don't even need to use page nodes anymore.

1. Create an article forum, not displayed in list, give it a node name like portal
2. Set the indexPageRoute to forums/portal/
3. Create threads or move threads to that forum

That's your "portal".

There is of course more advanced things you can do by adding widgets. Whether that is complete enough depends on whether you have the widgets you want in the core or via an add-on.

You can target the display of widgets so they're exclusively only shown in the sidebar of the article forum you're using as your portal page using widget display conditions.

 

[Forsaken]

• AMS by @Bob
• UBS by @Bob
• Featured Threads & Content by @ThemeHouse
• Feeds by @ThemeHouse
• XenPorta by @Jaxel
• Pages (with widgets)
• Nodes (with widgets)

The majority of what people considered to be a portal was just the use of widgets on a page, which you can do easily...?

 

[Russ]

I'd be happy with drag and drop widgets, that alone would allow for a nice little "page builder" which you could use to set up a "portal" way easier.

 

[Kevin]

I'd be happy with drag and drop widgets, that alone would allow for a nice little "page builder" which you could use to set up a "portal" way easier.

Yep, if we could get the features of vBAdvanced CMPS for XF there'd be some happy people.

 

[Mendalla]

I'd be happy with drag and drop widgets, that alone would allow for a nice little "page builder" which you could use to set up a "portal" way easier.

I like this idea. I've been toying with a widget-based portal page but something like this would make it easier. Might also get Xenporta back in place but I was finding there was a lack of interest from other staff in maintaining it and keeping it current, so I was doing most of the work. Which inevitably meant it tended to slip and got badly out of date at times, full of dead threads and old articles. Ape got cranky and decided to see how things went with just the forums as the front page.

 

[sbj]

A forum portal is outdated unless you have a very busy forum. I would assume 90% of forums don't have enough daily/regular content to showcase on their portal the latest news, articles, etc.

Nobody likes to land on a page with outdated stuff. It just makes the site look dead and not visited much.

I would like to see a page builder, too, but as a general tool.

We don't need to invent the wheel again. Look what reddit is doing. What we need is like "new posts/threads" just looking like reddit portal page. Since new posts and threads are daily fresh content, that will work on almost any forum. Meanwhile since we don't have sth like that, I've been using this and this is very popular in my country.

We kind of have that build in in XF as a "new posts" widget, but that widget is clunky, not compact enough, and doesn't provide much info. This addon makes the forum so much more alive and makes finding content easier. Because once you land on the forum main page, you get immediately the content served to you and it updates all the time. Just like reddit, but the content delivery is different (reddit has upvoting and images attached, which makes it more appealing) but it works great.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Nobody likes to land on a page with outdated stuff.

I'd slightly disagree.

They like to land on a page with interesting stuff and if it is interesting what's wrong with reviving an old thread.

This is why my portal has not only new posts but popular posts (based on number of replies likes etc.)

New members do revive old threads and breathe a new lease of life into them.

We are now getting totally off topic (2.3) as it probably won't have a portal

 

[Forsaken]

I'd slightly disagree.

They like to land on a page with interesting stuff and if it is interesting what's wrong with reviving an old thread.

This is why my portal has not only new posts but popular posts (based on number of replies likes etc.)

New members do revive old threads and breathe a new leadoff life into them.

We are now getting totally off topic (2.3) as it probably won't have a portal

to be on topic we'd have to focus on panicked speculation again.

 

[Mendalla]

to be on topic we'd have to focus on panicked speculation again.

Frankly, I'll take discussion of how a portal should work over panicked speculation but I guess I am in the wrong thread, eh.

 

[Mendalla]

They like to land on a page with interesting stuff and if it is interesting what's wrong with reviving an old thread.

OTOH, if it is a thread about a news event or something else timely, you probably don't want it up there once the hype dies down. I find the portal needs review maybe weekly just to keep things fresh. Sure, some old or ongoing threads can stay, but getting some new threads up there helps show that the site still has life in it. A static portal that never changes seems like a bad idea, esp. when people are used to social media feeds that update constantly.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Frankly, I'll take discussion of how a portal should work over panicked speculation

Me too. And given that the whole thread seems pointless, at least this off topic stuff maybe has some merit!

 

[deslocotoco]

Common guys, you are all admins and are asking for a noob page builder?

Seriously?

Better move for Wordpress then

 

[Russ]

Common guys, you are all admins and are asking for a noob page builder?

Seriously?

Better move for Wordpress then

So because we're admins we shouldn't have features that make admin lives a little easier? Interesting

 

[Mr Lucky]

Common guys, you are all admins and are asking for a noob page builder?

So admins of forums (even common guys) should also be developers?

 

[Max Taxable]

So admins of forums (even common guys) should also be developers?

Is he saying common guys or did his phone autocorrect into that when he means "c'mon guys?"

Or, come on guys

 

[Mr Lucky]

you are all admins and are asking for a noob page builder?

No

 

[Miri]

I wish I could extract the content from the database in a quirky way and wow the audience with a dynamic add-on that can create widgets like the attached image:

and give me the power to dynamically map each widget field to my desired data, with a filter or condition.

Have I gone overboard?
Sorry, I must have watched too many sci-fi movies.

The attached image is from a well-known PB (YT) available for Joomla and Wordpress. Those who use it know what I mean.

 

[JamesBrown]

I just want xF to work with Zapier.

 

[wolfgangm]

A forum portal is outdated unless you have a very busy forum. I would assume 90% of forums don't have enough daily/regular content to showcase on their portal the latest news, articles, etc.

Nobody likes to land on a page with outdated stuff. It just makes the site look dead and not visited much.

Please allow me to completely disagree here.

My landing page has 20 to somedays 50 times more visitors than the forum. From my personal point of view my portal really looks rather kind and of course changes with each media and posting - means here about at the moment one posting per day.

HTML-Landing page

My site has a HTML-landing page which has much more - about 20 to 50 times more visitors than the forum. There are serveral reasons, mainly a popular domain-word and the short Url which is published in a lot of books, newspapers and other media. So I wanted to draw the visitors interest to the...

xenforo.com

Wolfgang

 

[tajhay]

I wish I could extract the content from the database in a quirky way and wow the audience with a dynamic add-on that can create widgets like the attached image:
View attachment 280884
and give me the power to dynamically map each widget field to my desired data, with a filter or condition.

Have I gone overboard?
Sorry, I must have watched too many sci-fi movies.

The attached image is from a well-known PB (YT) available for Joomla and Wordpress. Those who use it know what I mean.

What is it called? Would love to try this on WordPress