Xenforo 1.3.x upgrade + new addons

[Cervator]

Edit: Made a milestone with related issues on GitHub​

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I got Adeon set up to help us upgrade our Xenforo here to version 1.3 or higher - many thanks! ​

As part of the upgrade I did an addon review and wanted to put the details here just for reference. Sub bullets for addons we might want to get rid off:​

• Tag me - provides the @ based user (and group!) tagging.
• TAC anti-spam collection - protects us from evil robots
• Tapatalk - mobile enhancements for the Tapatalk mobile app
• XenPorta - the portal "wrapper" around the forum (news blog, various content boxes, etc). I'm not sure how much XF itself has caught up feature-wise to this addon.
• Nodes as tabs - allows for custom tabs at the top that leads to nodes
• XenAtendo - calendar/event setup
• XenCarta- light-weight wiki, but somewhat awkward and feature poor
  • Dubious on this one, and we're not using it. We should probably discontinue it and if we need collaborative editing we can use a different tool
• XenUtiles - assorted utilities for the XenPorta set,
  • Explicitly discontinued and not available for XF 1.2 and above. We should uninstall it before upgrading base XF
• Spoiler - minimal addon that adds the spoiler tag.
  • Fairly outdated at this point, may still work, or may have been rendered obsolete by native XF or other addons (unsure)
• Conversation Manager- this just pretties up conversations a bit like adding what users are in a convo.
  • Looks like this was added in native XF 1.2 so we probably can retire this
• XenHabla - the "Chat" tab for IRC. Doesn't seem to have been updated for ages, might still work?
• Post Ratings - premium plugin I purchased, adds the little post ratings rather than basic XF "Like"
• Donation Manager - premium plugin begla purchased, adds the donation options to the site.
• Flexile theme - forgot this one first time through as it doesn't count as an addon in the manager, as it is a theme. Possible problem: Noted compatibilities issues with XenPorta as that author doesn't play well with others

We don't have more simply because we haven't had the volunteer effort to install them, but there are tons of other cool ones. I know a few suggestions have come up over time so if anybody finds some useful ones post them here!

• Halamix2 suggested BbCodes and Button Manager - this does include a replacement spoiler tag but it differs (spoilerbb instead of spoiler). Also offers LaTeX which I think Skaldarnar asked for at some point - nerd!
• We need something for social network integration - we currently have FB and Twitter, although Twitter seems broken (or is that just me?). Maybe this is just a template tweak somewhere with social widgets copy pasted in. Should add at least G+ and Reddit, maybe others?
• Maybe we should add some more trophies and start handing those out. Probably mostly a humorous thing, like throwing a "janitor" trophy at poor Mike Kienenberger
• There are more OAuth options in the newer Xenforo, maybe we should enable some (login with Google/Steam/Twitter/etc)
• We could add more rating icons, there are even entire addons that add more

 

[Halamix2]

I think Tag Me is useful, XenHabla still works (I used it on friday in school )
Or use the sweeper instead of janitor (from Terry Pratchett books )

 

[Cervator]

Slight update - XenPorta is unsurprisingly proving tricky to upgrade. On doing a bit more research I suspect it'll end up a dead-end one day, although it may be possible to get its v1.6 working for now.

A promising replacement is the Widget Framework, and maybe even the CTA Featured Threads & Portal - the latter is a paid addon, but the author looks both supportive and responsive, so I wouldn't mind paying for it if needed. It sounds like even just the Widget Framework alone would have potential. In either case we might need to also replace a few other pieces - work work work

Luckily this all is more about the elements of the site wrapping around the forums, which we can keep moving forward with separately (prefixes, organizing threads, etc)