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Thread 'What's new with Enhanced Search, Resource Manager and Media Gallery in XenForo 2.3?'
Today is the day we sadly have to report that this is the final 'Have you seen...?' thread for XenForo 2.3. While there are still changes planned, these will almost exclusively be changes to existing features, bug fixes and miscellaneous improvements that aren't significant enough for their own thread. But this only brings with it the implication of very good news to come as we start wrapping up the beta process for XenForo 2.3 and rocket towards a stable release as soon as possible...
Thread 'Trending content'
Since the initial release of XenForo 2.3, there has been a new system working away behind the scenes. One that some developers might have spotted but one that we hadn't actually talked about yet, because it wasn't relevant. Until now! Let's talk about this somewhat underlying system first. Content activity log This is a generic system, based on content types, which we strongly recommend you consider using for your own add-ons. Essentially what this does is keep a log of content and tracks...
First thing's first, don't panic, don't rush to your customer area, there is no Beta 3 release today! We are likely to be moving the remaining HYS posts to Thursday/Friday, coinciding with those features rolling out to this very forum so we get some extended testing and feedback before they appear in a subsequent Beta. Next order of business, before we get into what's coming in Beta 3, is a big thank you to Shawn, AKA @digitalpoint. We're big fans of Shawn's work and he's genuinely a stand...
Thread 'Introducing Stripe Checkout, PayPal's REST API and more!'
Brand new in XenForo 2.3.0 Beta 2 is support for a few long overdue enhancements related to our payment and purchasable system. Let's look at each of these below! Stripe Checkout Stripe Checkout is Stripe's native and hosted checkout page which not only brings with it some powerful customisability, it also makes accepting new payment methods completely trivial and available in an instant. Allow user upgrades and other purchasables to be purchased with options for "Buy Now Pay Later" (e.g...
Thread 'XenForo 2.3 Beta 1 now available. What's next? What's new?'
It's finally here! Today we are pleased to mark the next major milestone towards a stable release of XenForo 2.3 and this time we need your help! As per the announcement XenForo 2.3 Beta 1 is now available to all licensed self-hosted customers. We'd very much appreciate your thoughts, your feedback, and your uncanny ability to break things in ways we can't even imagine. But, as ever, please do not even contemplate installing it on your live forum at this point. There will be bugs; some of...
If you are using a computer or mobile device using dark mode, and you have been living under a rock for the past several weeks, you might be rather surprised at the appearance of the XenForo Community Forums at this point. On the other hand, if you have been paying attention, you'll understand that we have now upgraded our own forums to XenForo 2.3, which means we are getting ever closer to a public release, while showing our usual confidence in the stability of our products by 'eating our...
Resource 'Customising the layout with custom user fields'
This is a simple guide explaining how custom user fields can be used to customise the layout and allow members to have some form of control over the content, depending on the options you provide. For the purposes of this guide, we will be creating a checkbox for members to opt out of seeing the forum statistics in the sidebar. Create the custom user field The first step is to create the custom user field, like so: A new option will then be present on the account preferences page...
Resource 'Randomising content'
Randomising content can be used in various ways, the most common of which is for header images and logos, or advertising banners. This guide will explain how it can be done simply with one line of code (which ironically has taken a hundred lines of explanatory text). For the purposes of this guide, we'll be adding an image in the Container header advertising position, which will randomly change between 5 different images. Prepare the images The first step is to prepare your images. I...
Resource 'Identifying and using variables in templates, advertising positions, navigation entries, and widgets'
What are variables? In simple terms, variables are names which hold values. These values are stored in the database and are used in templates to evaluate and present the content and data. Using variables in templates opens up a lot of possibilities for customising and modifying the look and behaviour of an XF installation. Most of you are probably already aware of using variables in some way or another, via conditional statements for example - <xf:if is="$xf.visitor.user_id">, or widget...
🎶 Yo I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want So tell me what you want, what you really, really want I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna really, really, really wanna localhost installation which works over https, has push notifications, supports PWA, and optionally has Elasticsearch capability 🎶 Spicy! Huh?! This guide will explain in detail how to get a localhost installation working using XAMPP, served over https, so all XF features and functionality are available...
Resource 'Creating custom User banner styling'
By default, XF comes with the following user banner styles: Creating custom styling using the Other, using custom CSS class name option is fairly straightforward. This guide will explain how to. The easiest way by far to add new prefix styling and to ensure it inherits all of the core styling is to edit the app_user_banners.less template. Look for the section in the template highlighted in the screenshot below: Then just add your custom entries after the orange entry and before the...
Resource 'Creating custom prefix styling'
By default, XF comes with the following prefix styles: Creating custom styling using the Other, using custom CSS class name option is fairly straightforward. This guide will explain how to. The easiest way by far to add new prefix styling and to ensure it inherits all of the core styling is to edit the core_labels.less template. Look for the section in the template highlighted in the screenshot below: Then just add your custom entries after the error entry and before the closing }...
Resource 'Creating a custom Reactions sprite sheet'
By default, XF ships with a Reactions sprite sheet with 7 emojis: https://xenforo.com/community/styles/default/xenforo/reactions/emojione/sprite_sheet_emojione.png Adding new Reactions is fairly straightforward, either as individual images, or by using a secondary custom sprite sheet, but why not combine them all into a single sprite sheet? Doing so has several benefits; the browser only has to download one file and if XF ever changes the sprite sheet in the future, your Reactions won't...
Resource 'Using DigitalOcean Spaces or Amazon S3 for file storage in XF 2.1+'
XenForo Version Compatibility The download is only compatible with XenForo 2.1 and above. Why this guide? Since XenForo 2.0.0 we have supported remote file storage using an abstracted file system named Flysystem. It's called an abstracted file system as it adds a layer of abstraction between the code and a file system. It means that it provides a consistent API for performing file system operations so that whether the file system is a local disk-based file system or a distributed and...
Resource 'Using Custom user fields with User group promotions'
This guide will show how easy it is to allow your members to choose which additional user groups they wish to be members of and subsequently affect their forum experience. For an explanation of both features, see the following pages of the Manual: Custom User Fields User Group Promotions Custom user fields in conjunction with user group promotions allow your users to choose to become members of user groups from their account preferences page. Some uses could be: Special interest forums...
If you want to provide an extra layer of protection to admin.php, the /install directory, and test & development installations, you can do so with .htaccess authentication. Protecting admin.php To protect admin.php, edit the .htaccess file which is in your forum root directory (e.g. /community) and add the following to it: <Files admin.php> AuthType Basic AuthName "ACP" AuthUserFile "path/to/passwd/file" Require valid-user </Files> The "path/to/passwd/file" will look something like...
These instructions explain how to create a test installation which is an exact duplicate of your live installation. On Your Server Create a new test database with a different database name, user name and password to your live installation Export your current live database and import it into your new test database Create a new directory on your server, e.g. /test Copy all of the files from your current live site directory to the new /test directory - ensure you also copy any hidden...
Resource 'Implementing permissions across multiple user groups'
Having logged in to quite a few installations to resolve permission issues, it's clear that a lot of people haven't quite grasped the concept. So here are a few pointers: 1. All members should have the Registered user group as their primary group - that includes moderators, administrators and super administrators. Like so: 2. Configure the Registered user group to set the minimum permissions you want all members to have. Set those permissions you want them to have to Yes, leave...
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