So after doing a lot of testing in XenPorta 2, figured I'd leave a bunch of suggestions together here. As a note up front on why I'm making this post:
Between clients and myself, I'm looking to move at least four medium to large websites off of other platforms (one vBulletin, two Wordpress, and one XF1) and onto Xenforo 2 in the next few months. All of them will need at least a fairly robust content management solution for their existing articles or member generated content. As of right now, there's a few aspects of XenPorta 2 which would make this either not very ideal, or not work at all in its current format.
Disclaimer: The following suggestions are based on the scenario where site owners wish to have a very article heavy website, with clear organization between articles and forum discussion. I do understand this scenario is not a necessity for 100% of admins.
URL Structure
As mentioned in an earlier post, it would be great to have more control over URL hierarchy if possible. I know there are some limitations with how Xenforo works in this area.
How XenPorta works now:
(
the following assumes the user has added a Route Filter changing 'ewr-porta/' to 'articles/')
.com/articles/
--> .com/articles/categories/health-fitness/
----> .com/threads/article-name-here.xx/
Traditional Hierarchical URL Structure
.com/articles/
--> .com/articles/categories/health-fitness/
----> .com/articles/health-fitness/article-name-here.xx/
Typically it's desired to use such a structure to not only benefit user flow but for SEO & content organization.
It's also great for site owners who wish to have a bit more divide between article content, and forum discussion. Which leads me to...
Page Flow & Duplicate Content
This one, for me, is the major one which I'd love to see changed!
Currently, when you click on a XenPorta category via the main article index, it will take you to the category list page (so far so good). Then when clicking on an individual article, it will take you to that article (ok.). However, as the article is rendered within the forum but just with an article-type layout, clicking on the breadcrumb back to your category name will now take you to the forum category instead. This completely breaks user flow and will suddenly drop the reader in an area they were not in before. Screenshot examples (I've setup some dummy categories for this):
Page Flow
This leaves no clear indication for a visitor of what just happened or where they're at. Suddenly they are in a forum category and have no clear way to get back to the articles list they were just in. Also, as the template has changed, there is also a different sidebar with potentially different widgets. At very best the site owner can duplicate the XenPorta and Forum Category List widgets exactly the same, but this isn't an ideal solution. Also, the navigation tab and breadcrumb changes which leaves more confusion for the visitor.
I can see if users are XF junkies or are very familar with XenPorta itself, this may not be a huge issue. But for general sites attracting traffic for article content, this can be very confusing, and can't be accomplished via Route Filters.
Duplicate Content
Another issue is that this leaves tons of duplicate content if the site owners wishes to organize their articles. I feel this is bad not only for user experience, but SEO as well, as the URL's for each will have the same titles & keywords.
Examples:
Lots of similar links:
This leaves the choice, what will be the definitive location for this content? Where should the user really go to find what they're looking for? I don't feel leaving both is a good idea. So how to give the visitors (and Google) a clear indication of where they're at, and how the site is organized?
Temporary solution: Hide nodes & change forum tab location
This will at least rid the categories from the Forums from a UI perspective, so visitors will only encounter these categories and access their content via the Articles section (XenPorta).
This is an ok mid-solution, however it still leaves the issue of page flow again, where clicking through to an article will lead the user back to the forum category via the forum breadcrumb/template. It may be even more confusing as they are now in a forum category which actually doesn't show up on the forum index at all.
Widgets
This final suggestion is purely aesthetic and just my interesting touch. I feel that a few more Latest Article/Thread layouts would be great.
Recent articles widget but with featured image icon instead of avatar:
Traditional recent blocks layout:
These examples are pretty common on most any modern web layout but aren't found in XF/XenPorta. Creating them requires either custom addons, or extensive template customizations and/or widget definitions which can get messy once things start getting updated.
I would even be willing to help design and do rough UI/HTML/CSS for anything like these, no credits wanted either.
Conclusion
I'd just like to wrap up by reiterating that I understand, not everyone may care about or need these suggestions. I do leave these after about 13 years of administrating sites across nearly a dozen platforms (Joomla, phpBB, Wordpress, vB and many others) so these stem from a general aim to produce good user flow and experience.
Personally for me, the page flow issue is the biggest one and will likely require me holding off on converting several websites. But in the meantime, this is currently all we have for a CMS solution and I don't feel Xenforo staff is interested in an official addon at this time.
If anyone does find these valuable, feel free to like my post - most importantly, for Jaxel to know. I realize his development time would be best spent on areas which would be useful for many people.