Over the next few weeks, we'll be adding to the Building with XenForo 2 video series, starting today with a look at how to make your custom add-on content taggable!
Part 15 - Implementing tagging
Part 16 - Busting out of the PAGE_CONTAINER
Part 17 - Building a filterable admin control panel list
Have you seen...?
This forum spotlights some of XenForo's interesting features. Spotlights on features in upcoming releases will be posted here.
With the publication of our Building with XenForo 2 video series, we've received various questions about a presenting broad overview of the XenForo architecture as a jumping-off point for would-be developers who want to know roughly what's going on behind the scenes.
Therefore, with dubious penmanship, we've put together a ten minute overview of how XenForo works.
Presenting ideas like the Router, Controller Actions and Replies before handing off to the Renderer, this overview aims to clear up some of the MVC mystery.
This video is meant to be representative rather than literal, and to show some of the flow of execution rather than to accurately represent how various systems interact, but as a something that can be presented in...
A long time ago, in a forum not particularly far, far away (may the fourth be with you), we produced a series of videos showing off how easy it was to build rich pages with XenForo's templates and javascript framework.
While many of the principles demonstrated in these videos remain a key part of XenForo 2, most of the syntax employed by XenForo 1 back then has changed, and there are many more tools at your disposal, like entities and command-line functions.
Building with XenForo 2
Alongside the release of XenForo 2.2.5, it seemed a good time to put together a new series, rounding up all of the key parts of XenForo add-on development, starting with the basic steps of creating a new add-on and moving on to the template system, working...
Here at XenForo, we like to keep our development environments up-to-date and as useful as possible, and from time to time we include some of our findings in our online documentation.
Recently, we've published an easy setup guide for a Windows-based development environment and now we've added both a guide for building a very flexible macOS-based system and instructions for setting-up a similar multi-PHP deployment in Linux.
Multiple, simultaneous PHP versions
The macOS and Linux installation guides bring the ability to simultaneously run multiple versions of PHP with Xdebug without having to switch the active version.
This can be invaluable for developers who want to build new code with PHP 8, but also want to maintain add-ons...
When we first announced support for article-type threads and forums, we noted that this was an initial foray and that revised styling was in the pipeline.
Today, we can show you some of those revisions and the options that come with them.
Revised article styling
Firstly, we have some updates for the main article thread page.
The author section at the bottom of the article has had some attention to visually separate it a little more from the article body, and in order to provide a bit more meat for search engines to bite into, the author's about text is rendered underneath their name too.
As articles can be very long, we also show the author's name in the attribution bar at the top of the article too, along with the number of comments...
Not so long ago we showed you the new progressive web app functionality coming in XF 2.2 and since then we've added a couple of related bits which we are including as of XenForo 2.2 Beta 2.
PWA setup helper
There are a number of requirements you need to meet before a PWA becomes installable by most browsers. Some of these requirements are server config related, others are options, some are language based and some are style based.
While they're not particularly strenuous, we thought it would be worth highlighting all of these requirements in one place to make the process of setting up your PWA even easier.
To check if your forum meets the requirements to be installable as a progressive web app you now just need to head over to Admin >...
Have you been sitting there thinking "I just wish XenForo 2.2 had a little bit more awesome"? Yeah so did we. So here's a few extra features that we're introducing in XenForo 2.2 Beta 2.
GIPHY integration
Everybody loves GIFs, right? Well, maybe not everybody but personally we love them... ok ok... maybe it's just @Chris D that loves them. Every day is a GIF (with a hard G) day for Chris.
So in XF 2.2 Beta 2 we're introducing GIPHY support. It can be enabled from this option in your Admin control panel by populating it with an API key you can obtain from GIPHY.
Once enabled, we add a handy new GIF button to the rich text editor. When you click the button you will get a list of the latest trending GIFs. But you can also...
Understandably, many of you are chomping at the bit to start utilising our new forum and thread types. But in a lot of cases if you don't want or need to convert entire forums to a specific type (which would convert the threads within to the associated type) your existing threads will remain as standard discussions.
There are a few use cases to be considered and we have addressed these in XF 2.2 Beta 2.
Converting a single thread to a specific type
Moderators who have the "Manage any thread" permission will now be able to access the "Change thread type" option in the "More options" menu when viewing a thread.
If a specific type requires additional configuration then that is displayed after clicking "Continue..." and a confirmation...
Today marks the day when the alpha stage of XenForo 2.2 comes to an end and we mark that occasion by unleashing the first public beta. Look out for an announcement on that shortly.
Before that, however, we wanted to highlight a few more things that we've been working on over the last couple of weeks. Some of these you will be aware of as they have been running here for some time and we may have mentioned them elsewhere. Others are slightly more subtle...
Image and video improvements
Lazy loading
Last year Google paved the way for Native lazy loading images. Lazy loading images is a fantastic way to reduce page loading times and data usage as rather than loading all images on a page, it instead loads images as you scroll, just before...
XenForo Media Gallery (XFMG) 2.2 sees a range of new features and improvements. Some of these are a result of new integrations with XenForo 2.2 itself, while others are exclusive new features to XFMG itself.
Lightbox navigation
Starting with XenForo 2.2 we are introducing a brand new lightbox which as well as being a much improved user experience also affords us some flexibility in how and where we use the lightbox.
One such use case which we couldn't resist treating you to for XFMG 2.2 is of course navigating through media items in the media gallery. Before we get into it, this is what the experience looks like.
The lightbox as used in the media gallery supports all media types including media embeds, video and audio.
By...
XenForo Resource Manager (XFRM) 2.2 sees a range of new features and improvements. Some of these are a result of new integrations with XenForo 2.2 itself, while others are exclusive new features to XFRM itself.
Resource teams
Software projects are often collaborative efforts, and even when they are not, there may be ancillary staff on hand to handle customer support and sales.
This fact is recognised in XFRM 2.2 with the advent of Resource teams.
After enabling the option through the admin control panel, resource owners will be able to delegate tasks to members of the team they define.
Team members may perform any action on a resource as though they were the owner, although deletion of the resource is reserved solely for the...
In the beginning, XenForo Enhanced Search (XFES) was intended to be a simple drop-in replacement for MySQL full text search, primarily aimed at large forums whose operation would potentially suffer when attempting to search very large database tables.
As a drop-in, XFES only made use of the enhanced search index and speed for the formal search system, but with version 2.2 we are starting to leverage more of the power afforded by the Elasticsearch back-end.
Similar threads
A useful tool for surfacing content on your forum is a list of Similar or related threads, which can be displayed along with a primary thread. Visitors who have landed on that page from a search engine will often look for related material to continue their reading...
Having upgraded XenForo.com yesterday, we've fielded lots of feedback and implemented a fair few changes.
Here's a handful of things we've done in response to your feedback.
Editor styling
We've removed the gradient entirely from the unfocused editor, and changed the styling when the editor is focused so that the background now gets lighter on focus, in order to give an editing background that is more like the final destination background.
XenForo 2.2 RTE unfocused
XenForo 2.2 RTE focused
We have also rolled out this change to all input fields across the entire system, changing from the approach we've used since XenForo 1.x, where the background would get darker on focus.
XenForo 1.x
XenForo 2.1
XenForo 2.2
Question thread...
