Add-on XF CMS Crowdfund: what features would convince you to invest?

Alpha1

Alpha1

Well-known member
Many of us need an advanced CMS. Not only and article system and portal, but a content management system that allows for many content types and layouts.
Such content types could potentially include blog, articles, newsblog, downloads, bug tracker, surveys, tickets, forms, questions & answers, whatever. There is a multitude of potential functions that can be included. Everyone has different needs. We will have to see what should and should not be included.

In this thread I would first like to define what functionality people generally want and would be reason for them to invest. This is a major project, so it will need a significant number of participants and significant investments.

After the functionality scope has been defined and consensus about the project has been found, only then will qualified developers with a proven track record be selected.

So, what should an advanced CMS do?
 
Would there be any way to involve a large open-source project like Drupal or Joomla in the project? Perhaps there could be a bridge between the two products, with XF handling users accounts and the CMS handling everything else. Perhaps software could be made to make it easier to adapt a XenForo skin into a Drupal one (I like Drupal).

I'm being intentionally vague on this because I wouldn't presume I could predict the various strategies a clever programmer might come up with for integrating the platforms. I don't know how it would be done, but if we're talking about a project large enough to handle diverse content types like blog, articles, newsblog, downloads, bug tracker, surveys, tickets, forms, questions & answers and whatever else, then there is something to be said for tapping in to an active open source community rather than having one of the few XF programmers do it all in proprietary code. The sense I get is that Drupal and Joomla can do amazing things and already have libraries of add-ons.

Just a thought.
 
I don't think that its a good idea to base it on anything other than XF. The problem with bridging XF to other systems is that it would always be bolted on. The objective here is to get a very advanced CMS fully native to the xenforo framework. This way xenforo addons can interact with the XFCMS.

@Rigel Kentaurus I dont think it is. Even if it would have been then I would probably not be interested in the project. But lets focus on the current project.
 
Most important feature is a developer who promises to either be around forever - or, if not, that the add-on becomes community property.

I am not going to ever base my main content on something which may be here today and gone on the next upgrade....
 
Infrastructure
  • Basic framework for defining content types (may reuse the content types from XenForo, or not)
  • Basic framework for defining interactions (a content type can be commented on, shared, etc
  • A Modules infrastructure, so authors can later plug in and add new content types to the CMS (see Drupal modules)
Features

Pages
  • Ability to add any number of pages
  • Should be possible to categorize the pages, to create a hierarchy
  • Adding a table of contents as a basic operation
  • Ability to comment on pages outside of the forum comments
  • Ability to upload images on the pages
  • Custom Fields for pages
  • View Count of how many times a page was seen
  • Fully driven by permissions
Articles
  • Ability to post an article, and have an article split into multiple pages. The splitting should be automatic
  • Should be possible to categorize the articles
  • Comments on articles
  • Ability to watch comments in an article
  • Ability to subscribe to an author, and get notified when a new article is posted
  • Ability to subscribe to a category, and get notified when a new article is posted in a category
  • View Count of how many times an article was seen
  • Fully driven by permissions
Layouts
  • Out of the box different types of layouts, so we can just use a free flow, a 2-column, 3-column, or magazine like layout
  • Ability to create mashups, i.e. a Page with a sidebar that contains the list of threads in a particular forum
  • Ability to create ANY layout with ANY content type on it
Polls
  • Ability to add a poll (replicate XF features for polls, with the added flexibility of putting it anywhere)
Integration
  • Integration with XenAtendo Calendar (to add calendar data into widgets)
  • Integration with Better Blogs (to add blog data into widgets)
  • Integration with XenMedia Gallery (to add gallery elements into widgets)
Widgets
  • Integration with BD Widget for reusing all existing and defined widgets
  • Out of the box widgets for threads, users, posts, sortable, configurable
 
Rigel Kentaurus said:
Pages
  • Ability to add any number of pages
  • Should be possible to categorize the pages, to create a hierarchy
  • Adding a table of contents as a basic operation
  • Ability to comment on pages outside of the forum comments
  • Ability to upload images on the pages
  • Custom Fields for pages
  • View Count of how many times a page was seen
  • Fully driven by permissions
Click to expand...
Built to enhance XenForo pages (which is severely needed), or as a separate page system?
 
Rigel Kentaurus said:
Pages
  • Ability to comment on pages outside of the forum comments
Articles
  • Comments on articles
Click to expand...

I agree with your list but wanted to focus on these two bullet points. The XF Resources add-on is excellent because discussions are tied to a forum. Other devs then figured out how to get older threads tied to 'new' resources, etc. This same type of ability with pages and articles should be in any CMS.

There are a few other items:
Importers in general. Specifically, a WordPress importer into XF article system
Multisite / Domain mapping

Sheldon said:
Be developed by one of the following:

@Chris D
@Bob B
@xfrocks
Click to expand...

Agreed. However, they are all very talented and also very busy. Therefore, I'd love to see this as a community project with multiple developers and contributors sharing their code on Github. Others could then contribute in minor ways.

Just a thought ;)
 
Alfa1 said:
I think you have got the general idea of how solid developers should be. But I dont think this is a project for one developer. The project is too big.
Click to expand...

Unless this "team" includes one of the three, my point remains. One of those guys would have to be involved for me to consider it, or even feel add if it has a chance at succeeding.

It's going to be hard to get a team on the same page, equal pay, no arguments over time spent by one and less for the other, etc... I just get a feeling if this would go that route, it will be futile.
 
Daniel Hood said:
Built to enhance XenForo pages (which is severely needed), or as a separate page system?
Click to expand...
My personal preference is to steer away from modifying anything "out of the box" that comes with XenForo that is not Framework type. The reason being that in a future, it might be changed or updated. When that happens it will break whatever add-on is using that functionality.

So, if Pages were enhanced and later the devs change the way Pages work to do a massive rewrite of things, it is almost guaranteed said add-on would break. If it is a separate system, it might still break, but probably in a less involved way, or it might be a couple lines fixes, like adding one parameter to an overriding method or so, no rearchitecting the whole thing.

I have been following that philosophy for my add-ons and it has worked wonderfully since I have hardly had to do any updates on version changes. :) But there are drawbacks, for example, reusing existing functionality that is present there, you end up rewriting a few things.
 
That's my needs:
Multisite support: I need to have multiple sites connected with 1 single forum (like this website). Every website should have this own subdomain (like music.domain.com, television.domain.com) and also the community should have this own subdomain (forums.domain.com). Also i need the support of XenCentral Multisite (for every forum created with Multisite should be possible to create a site).
Article to thread: - For Every article in a website should be created a topic in the forum. The replies on the topics in the forum is copied in "comments" in the article (example - Forum topic: http://bit.ly/lYV0Vz Article: http://bit.ly/l6AR0R...2° example: article, forum topic). With every website you can choose the forums for pointing the comments (see examples...).
- 4 role permission levels: global admin, global editor, editor, collaborator
- Categories and tags
- Sitemap and RSS
- Frontpage with the last articles of every website with a "featured" area with accordion jquery slider
- Template and blocks customization for every website similary to the xenforo template
- Feature of the menagement of advertisment on the template of every website
- Custom navbar and column of every website
 
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Rigel Kentaurus said:
My personal preference is to steer away from modifying anything "out of the box" that comes with XenForo that is not Framework type. The reason being that in a future, it might be changed or updated. When that happens it will break whatever add-on is using that functionality.

So, if Pages were enhanced and later the devs change the way Pages work to do a massive rewrite of things, it is almost guaranteed said add-on would break. If it is a separate system, it might still break, but probably in a less involved way, or it might be a couple lines fixes, like adding one parameter to an overriding method or so, no rearchitecting the whole thing.

I have been following that philosophy for my add-ons and it has worked wonderfully since I have hardly had to do any updates on version changes. :) But there are drawbacks, for example, reusing existing functionality that is present there, you end up rewriting a few things.
Click to expand...

You said back on Oct. 3rd 2013 you were working on an update for Social Groups (Paid Addon) to fix various bugs and problems and its still yet to be released. I don't mean to be a jerk here, but I just find it odd that you're advocating that your methods are some sort of "wonderful" solution, especially in regards to updates.
 
Alfa1 said:
Can we please keep this thread on the topic of functionality and interest in a CMS? I appreciate that there is a lot to be said about the development of the addons of Rigel, but that's better suited in the dedicated thread about the social groups addon.
Click to expand...

It is about the functionality of a CMS. Rigel was suggesting a method of how it could be coded and I was simply pointing out the potential problems of his methods and using his social group addon as an example of why that might not be the best course of action for this project. I'm well aware of the location of his dedicated thread, however I have nothing to discuss in it as I no longer use his addon. I'm interested in a CMS and felt that some caution should be expressed if Rigel is either offering to develop this CMS or simply suggesting that his personal coding preferences should be used in such a project.
 
TeflonDon said:
You said back on Oct. 3rd 2013 you were working on an update for Social Groups (Paid Addon) to fix various bugs and problems and its still yet to be released. I don't mean to be a jerk here, but I just find it odd that you're advocating that your methods are some sort of "wonderful" solution, especially in regards to updates.
Click to expand...
I am stating a methodology to prevent add-ons from breaking from one XenForo release to the other, which I can validate to be effective since Social Groups was not difficult to upgrade when XF 1.2 came out or XF 1.3 came out, so my statement remains valid.

That has nothing to do with existing bugs, though, a particular coding style can protect you from XF updates but would do nothing to prevent bugs in the software package itself. Why social groups has not been updated has a different story that is unsuitable for this thread so I won't discuss it here.
 
Rigel Kentaurus said:
I am stating a methodology to prevent add-ons from breaking from one XenForo release to the other, which I can validate to be effective since Social Groups was not difficult to upgrade when XF 1.2 came out or XF 1.3 came out, so my statement remains valid.

That has nothing to do with existing bugs, though, a particular coding style can protect you from XF updates but would do nothing to prevent bugs in the software package itself. Why social groups has not been updated has a different story that is unsuitable for this thread so I won't discuss it here.
Click to expand...

The same methodology could perhaps be the reasoning behind bugs being present in the software package itself. I understand you would rather isolate your addon so its not effected as much by Xenforo version updates but I see several negative aspects of that methodology. To me, the biggest issue is, if you're reinventing the wheel instead of using existing Xenforo framework it provides a foreign experience for the user instead of something they are used to. This also means that when Xenforo does update something, your addon might not receive whatever improvements the Xenforo team has made. You mentioned Social Groups not needing an update for 1.2 or 1.3. While the addon didn't break, it feels out of place because its still not responsive while the rest of the site is. Also, if you are reusing Xenforo code instead of rewriting your own you can almost be assured that its well coded and won't contain bugs.

I hope that this potential CMS integrates smoothly with Xenforo and provides a seamless, professional transition for the end users. Potentially sacrificing these things because the developer doesn't want to do updates when Xenforo releases a new version doesn't seem like the best idea to me and would probably discourage me from getting involved in any crowdfunding.
 
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