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

[Jeff Berry]

This is a great start.
By custom route i mean also to have a separated CMS area (NOT inside the "forum" breadcrumb, but to have a custom breadcrumb). A good CMS should be really separated by the forum (IMHO it's good only a comments/replies integration).

What do you think about the comments/replies integration like AVForums/TechSpot? This should be a killer feature for me. I think your [BD]Content it's a GREAT start, if you can develop this i'm surely want to join the crowfund with a good amount. I like the @Jeff Berry XFGrid, if there will be possible to integrate this with a CMS, i'm surely buy a license...
Also, there are Widget Framework Support for this addon in your addon?

Hey, I apologize I didn't notice your questions directed at me earlier.

It would be possible to integrate XRGrid with a CMS, and actually XRGrid is almost a CMS by itself. I would feel it would work more along the lines of integrating content like xfrocks' List add-on into XRGrid. My XRGrid add-on does not currently support the widget framework that I feel you are talking about (bd Widgets or whatever it is called). Instead, it has it's own widget framework which is very simple to develop for. Later down the road I may add a bd Widgets -> XRGrid converter or I may find a way to support those widgets as well, though they probably would lack some of the features that XRG Widgets will have since they aren't designed for my system. I have a feeling there will be a lot of people trying to make the switch from bd Widgets to XRG though, so I definitely plan to support those people somehow.

 

[EQnoble]

@Jeff Berry

I am a very tactile person, what you have done looks very nice (juice was a classic btw nice choice) but I am one of those people where I have to get hands on and see what I can make of and do with it.

I am hoping to launch my project site in 2 months or less (all of my tools wont be ready for launch unfortunately, but one man jam bands can only play so many tunes) and would be interested in extending this for a very specific aspect of my site that needs to be built yet and is a major part of the site that has a supporting role in what will be our cycle of events.

If you ever at some point soon setup a 2nd sandbox and don't mind giving someone a bucket and a shovel I would like to play.

 

[Jeff Berry]

@Jeff Berry

I am a very tactile person, what you have done looks very nice (juice was a classic btw nice choice) but I am one of those people where I have to get hands on and see what I can make of and do with it.

I am hoping to launch my project site in 2 months or less (all of my tools wont be ready for launch unfortunately, but one man jam bands can only play so many tunes) and would be interested in extending this for a very specific aspect of my site that needs to be built yet and is a major part of the site that has a supporting role in what will be our cycle of events.

If you ever at some point soon setup a 2nd sandbox and don't mind giving someone a bucket and a shovel I would like to play.

Thanks for your interest in my project! I don't want to hijack Alfa's thread here so this may be better discussed elsewhere, probably on the project's site; but what I can say is that I definitely want to encourage others to use and develop for XRG because I think it can become a very important staple of XenForo.

The unfortunate thing (right now anyway) is that I haven't figured out a release-plan for it; meaning I don't know if it's going to be free, if I'm going to sell it, etc. Right now I can't give any of it away for free though because that is unfair to my XenReviews investors who have put up their honest money in wait for my project(s). It wouldn't be fair to allow others to have it right now when they've had to pay to access it.

I will have to have a discussion with my investors to see what the best plan-of-attack is. The fortunate thing however is that XRGrid is developed independently from XR but it was developed as a direct result of XR, so I will be able to release it on it's own and at a cheaper price than XR, I just haven't set that price point yet.

All XenReviews purchases come with all of my add-ons (XR, XRGrid, XRCustomFields, XRMerchantFramework) though So it's a bargain.

 

[Adam Howard]

Thanks for your interest in my project! I don't want to hijack Alfa's thread here so this may be better discussed elsewhere, probably on the project's site; but what I can say is that I definitely want to encourage others to use and develop for XRG because I think it can become a very important staple of XenForo.

The unfortunate thing (right now anyway) is that I haven't figured out a release-plan for it; meaning I don't know if it's going to be free, if I'm going to sell it, etc. Right now I can't give any of it away for free though because that is unfair to my XenReviews investors who have put up their honest money in wait for my project(s). It wouldn't be fair to allow others to have it right now when they've had to pay to access it.

I will have to have a discussion with my investors to see what the best plan-of-attack is. The fortunate thing however is that XRGrid is developed independently from XR but it was developed as a direct result of XR, so I will be able to release it on it's own and at a cheaper price than XR, I just haven't set that price point yet.

All XenReviews purchases come with all of my add-ons (XR, XRGrid, XRCustomFields, XRMerchantFramework) though So it's a bargain.

Avast! does not like your website

 

[Adam Howard]

 

[Jeff Berry]

Avast! does not like your website

View attachment 75020

I know. That is very unfortunate. I've been around the block multiple times trying to figure out why -- myself and the support team at my datacenter that holds my server are confident it is a false-positive. I've e-mailed avast and several other companies several times and have yet to receive a response. I can assure you there's nothing on my site that is malicious (at least not that I am aware of, and I have done extensive digging/scanning).

 

[drastic]

A good "cms" should not be separated from the forum, but rather integrated seamlessly. If you want it separate, then why not install wordpress and make the layout match?

Seamless integration is way better.

 

[Markos]

A good "cms" should not be separated from the forum, but rather integrated seamlessly. If you want it separate, then why not install wordpress and make the layout match?

Seamless integration is way better.

With "separate" i mean to NOT use threads for articles. You can visit AvForums andò Techspot for see a live example of CMS. I'm agreed, integration is the point.

But using the threads for the articles is imho a bad system that i never liked and don't want to see in a CMS.

 

[Jeff Berry]

There's going to need to be a good balance between separation and integration. @drastic is right in that you don't want to separate the projects too much or else you might as well use wordpress. However @Markos is right in that you don't want to integrate them too much or else you lose out on potential functionality. If everything is based off of a thread then you have begun to *******ize the thread model and turn it into something it's not and this will most likely lead you straight into a brick wall as far as development / potential features go. This is something I had to battle when developing XenReviews. It's such a large system that having all the features we planned and also basing it off of the thread model would not have worked. I managed to integrate the right parts of the system though, so it still feels seamless but the content is just stored separately in the back-end. If it's just as easy for the admin to manage the new content types as it is for them to manage threads then there shouldn't be any issues.

 

[drastic]

i really think most of what you guys want is available in some sort of addon - you just have to get a nice html editor added (does it have one, I don't know) for the articles. can't you use the articles addon as the homepage, the same way xenmediagallery can be made to be the homepage?

perhaps wait a bit and see where the featured threads with portal, by @Brogan and XenReviews turns out. XenReviews seems like it could be a nice article system with ratings. You don't exactly have to do "reviews" - the script wouldn't know if you're reviewing something or just blogging about nonsense.

I'd say hold off on a crowdfund and see where these current addons take you. they're already in progress and it could save a lot of time, back and forth with features, and risky investment cash.

 

[drastic]

btw - doesn't http://xenzine.com/ cover a lot of the things people want as well? seems like a pretty nice option, especially for articles and a nice custom homepage while giving you that separation of articles and forum chat, but still seamlessly integrated.

might be worth checking out as well as http://xenreviews.com

 

[Jeff Berry]

I like the interface of xenzine alot, it's very smooth and intuitive. However I think it's horrible for a homepage. Unless you are going for a pinterest style website that homepage layout does not work, it's not informative or directive at all. It looks like it should be more of a gallery style sub-page. With that said I don't think XenReviews makes a good homepage either. XRGrid gives the flexibility for the homepage to be whatever you want though. You can have a forum category rendering on top of a members list rendering on top of an image gallery, etc.. You can place any element or any sub view anywhere on the page and make those elements any size with any combination of grid layouts. That's what a CMS should be. A CMS is a lot more than just articles, it should give the user the ability to customize their website and make it unique; not just put articles on a homepage.

If you're aiming for just articles on a homepage, yes I'm sure there are several add-ons that would accomplish this.

 

[drastic]

I don't like the pinterest look either and hopefully designers can pull those elements (title, description, thumbnail) to customize it.

"Articles" can mean lots of things. Since you can place text, pictures, videos in there, you could create a category for pictures and simply post pictures. Then another category for videos and post only videos.

It somewhat mimics the ability of wordpress in that you don't limit yourself to just text simply because it's called "articles" - you can totally manipulate it. Of course, it's probably confusing to your users. Someone who does what I mentioned would be better off with XenMediaGallery AND an article addon to make things less confusing for the users. That's what I used to do with wordpress and the categories, but I was the only one using it - so no confusion for me.

Once a user gets confused, they're no longer your user. They're OUTTA there!

Either XenReviews or XenZine could be a good landing page of content provided that you had it customized nicely. A simple and easy to use homepage should be the goal of everyone's website.

@Jeff Berry - I haven't had an issue going to your site at all. Not now or months ago. XenReviews has always been fine over here.

 

[Jeff Berry]

I don't like the pinterest look either and hopefully designers can pull those elements (title, description, thumbnail) to customize it.

"Articles" can mean lots of things. Since you can place text, pictures, videos in there, you could create a category for pictures and simply post pictures. Then another category for videos and post only videos.

It somewhat mimics the ability of wordpress in that you don't limit yourself to just text simply because it's called "articles" - you can totally manipulate it. Of course, it's probably confusing to your users. Someone who does what I mentioned would be better off with XenMediaGallery AND an article addon to make things less confusing for the users. That's what I used to do with wordpress and the categories, but I was the only one using it - so no confusion for me.

Once a user gets confused, they're no longer your user. They're OUTTA there!

Either XenReviews or XenZine could be a good landing page of content provided that you had it customized nicely. A simple and easy to use homepage should be the goal of everyone's website.

@Jeff Berry - I haven't had an issue going to your site at all. Not now or months ago. XenReviews has always been fine over here.

I agree that article can mean a lot of things and I guess the WordPress example is a perfect one. My day job consists of a lot of WordPress modifications for clients (unfortunately) because I hate WordPress. However they do have a very manipulable system which gives you the ability to do almost anything with "articles" or what they call posts.

Avoiding confusing the users is definitely important. The system should be as easy to use as XF itself where posting an article (or custom content type) is as easy as posting a thread. In order to have a strong and scalable feature-set the content types are either going to need to be stored in their own database tables though so they can be sortable and searchable, or have a very strong custom fields system that will allow this capability. That is where the limitations with threads comes in.

I don't like the idea of a landing page with a CMS. Sure there should be a default layout but if you have a landing page you lose the uniqueness that we can easily make happen with XRG. With XRG every single user can have their own landing pages with their own blocks of content.

I'm glad the site is working for you! Been struggling with the Avast problem for a few months now. I've switched servers and uploaded a fresh batch of files (several times) and the issue still persists I'm confident it's a false-positive but unfortunately I can't get in touch with anyone that can help me resolve it.

 

[TsinJu]

No more Crowdfund!
Built up a proper CMS that integrates into xenforo and sell it for xyz price
A CMS made by KAM would be the best solution to be honest

 

[Daniel Hood]

No more Crowdfund!
Built up a proper CMS that integrates into xenforo and sell it for xyz price
A CMS made by KAM would be the best solution to be honest

Obviously a CMS built by KAM would be the best solution, so would a gallery and a blog. Who knows when they'll get around to it though. As for the crowd fund, I get the logic behind saying that after having two failed ones but at the same time without a crowd fund I don't see a project this large being done (in a quality fashion). You aren't going to find a developer that will put out the hundreds (possibly thousands) of hours without any gauranteed money in return.

Lets not turn this into a debate about crowd funds though, the topic is the feature set requested for a CMS.

 

[Markos]

@Jeff Berry have you an ETA of XFGrids "standalone version"? (I have to buy XenReviews to use XFGrids for other uses?)

Your addon seems a more advanced and simple version of Widget Framework and i can't wait to see it released.

 

[Jeff Berry]

Currently I do not have an ETA and I'm going to refrain from even throwing a guess out at you because I have to focus on/finish XenReviews before I can dedicate any of my time to releasing something on the side -- it wouldn't be fair to my investors otherwise.

Development of XRGrid still continues though, just within the context of XR and until further notice XR will be the only way to get it.

Your addon seems a more advanced and simple version of Widget Framework and i can't wait to see it released.

"more advanced and simple"... I like that That is what I was going for with this. I think I installed the Widget Framework once and it was just so cumbersome and unintuitive that I didn't even bother taking the time to figure it out, I just deleted it and started on my own which I impressed even myself with -- I am very happy with it. When I began it I really didn't expect it to come to this.

 

[Markos]

@xfrocks are you still developing the Portal? I can't wait to test it!

 

[Markos]

It's sad to see no updates on this topic, because as i see, it's very difficult that we will see a official CMS in XF 1.4.