XF 2.1 XF - Work well with others? Can it be used like WP?

[flowerpot132]

Sorry admins, not sure if this is quite the right place for this thread. It was the closest I could find.

We are creating a new forum on XF latest version. Love XF and want to use it for the forum area of our site. But the forum will be just one area of the site. The other site will detail our paid products. I know we can just create pages in XF and fill them with static content. But would like to make it possible for users to purchase our products on the same site. I am sure there is an ecommerce addon etc. But the more we create pages and a checkout the more we are stretching XF core strengths to the point where it might be better to build the non-forum areas of the site using magento or a CMS like wordpress or even our own PHP pages and back end.

Does XF work well with others? Can the usernames and passwords be used in other areas? Eg through the checkout process. So users can add an invoice address etc. If I wanted to use say Wordpress or shopify, can the XF user account be easily incorporated. Or is it a pain?

Does XF work well as a CMS for non-forum related web stuff? Eg static pages or categories. Or should I keep XF to the forum only.

Any advice, much appreciated. And I hope that makes sense!

 

[Mr Lucky]

My experience is that pages in xf are OK for what they are but not CMS. It it sounds like you need a full blown CMS really. There are a couple of admins that will connect xenforo with Wordpress so users and passwords can be consistent.

I have my own beef with WP due top the recent horrible "upgrade" with new block editor, and there is a promising fork of WP called ClassicPress that keeps it the way it was and works.

There is a xf commence add-on, but I can't recommend it due to recent disturbing info about the company which I'm not going to get into here.

 

[flowerpot132]

There are a couple of admins

Thanks @Mr Lucky, I take it you mean addons not admins?

 

[Mr Lucky]

Yes, addons that was spell corrector.

 

[sbj]

Does XF work well with others? Can the usernames and passwords be used in other areas? Eg through the checkout process. So users can add an invoice address etc. If I wanted to use say Wordpress or shopify, can the XF user account be easily incorporated. Or is it a pain?

You will need custom development for all of that.

Does XF work well as a CMS for non-forum related web stuff?

Not really. It depends on what you want to do so you might find some addons for your case where you can tweak it a bit other than that XF is a forum software, not a CMS.

 

[mcatze]

To integrate your XenForo in Wordpress you had to choose between, https://xenforo.com/community/resou...dge-for-bringing-wordpress-into-xenforo.6551/ and XenWord Pro Annual License.

For paid products i can recommend the eCommerce from @DragonByte Tech it is one of the best add-ons within XenForo.

 

[flowerpot132]

Thanks a lot for your replies. I wonder if I could use that WP bridge addon with an WP ecommerce extension like Woocommerce or Shopify. As I think these might be more powerful than https://www.dragonbyte-tech.com/store/dragonbyte-ecommerce.371/ ?

 

[mcatze]

What do you need or what do you want to do with an commerce add-on? I think that the Xpress add-on also works with WooCommerce.

But eCommerce has also digital and physical products, so this is massiv.

 

[djbaxter]

If you don't need automatic integration between Xenforo and Wordpress with WooCommerce, you can simply use Toplinks in Xenforo to add links back to relevant pages on your main site. Much simpler.

 

[flowerpot132]

If you don't need automatic integration between Xenforo and Wordpress with WooCommerce, you can simply use Toplinks in Xenforo to add links back to relevant pages on your main site. Much simpler.

Thanks. But to install WP, that would need to be on a subdomain or /wordpress/ maybe. The XF logins wouldn't transfer across to the ecommerce side of things I don't think.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Thanks. But to install WP, that would need to be on a subdomain or /wordpress/ maybe. The XF logins wouldn't transfer across to the ecommerce side of things I don't think.

Yes, xf and WP cannot exist in the same directory. I have a site with WP in the root and xf in /community/ directory. I would recommend WP with a bridge as discussed above, then you have Woocommerce or other WP commerce options.

 

[flowerpot132]

Ok thanks again everyone. I think I will go for:

XF forum
Xpress bridge with Wordpress
Woocommerce

Got some questions for Xpress that will ask them now, including if XF customer details can pass through to Woocommerce.

 

[entelechy]

+1 for XPress addon by Themehouse.. have been using it for a while, really good quality bridge between wp and xf and carries the styling across both cms'