Xenforo! And what to do with it

[Cervator]

Play around with out new toy and post your impressions + tricks & tips here - the Gelatinous Cube demands it!

My 1st: Being an administrator doesn't necessarily give you moderator rights, which is funny. I had to go find a place to add myself as a super mod before I could actually use moderator tools like moving threads

Also: There's a goofy ability to set a status on yourself. That's just for here on the board, doesn't connect to Twitter or anything. Lots of goofy stuff in Xenforo, but some of it could be fun. Trophies, Promotions, Upgrades, Badges, Ratings, Following, etc.

Haven't found an easy way yet to "watch" EVERYTHING - as in, email notification at a forum level. I suppose I could be a stalker and go "follow" everybody.

 

[overdhose]

All hail the Gelatinous Cube...

 

[overdhose]

well I don't know if this counts as an idea, but according to this : http://xenforo.com/help/trophies/
points can be distributed in categories. It could be a nice system to give people a general idea of which members are involved in either community / brainstorming / development / modding / art / music etc depending on the points they gathered in a certain area...

 

[Cervator]

There'll be outright badges for that, they'll show up under your avatar on the left

Trophies I'm not sure what to do with yet. There's a spiffy little Ratings addon with assorted "reactions" to posts (beyond the plain "like" system), but it is like 20 euros

 

[Cervator]

Tinkered with Events - seems pretty spiffy, special options for events taking place at a physical location or those involving a live stream. I set it up so Announcements is also our Event forum, meaning they're both moderated and promoted to the front Portal page - both probably not bad ideas.

 

[woodspeople]

I got a "keeps coming back" trophy after about five minutes, and 90% of me said "silly" and the other 10% said "wow!!!". As much as they shouldn't matter, things like badges and trophies are fun LOVE overdhose's idea on recognition for categories of contribution. Recognition is the gold bars of open source!

 

[Cervator]

Yeah I'm beginning to see it better now. Like a trophy for submitting a commit on Github, one for submitting a piece of concept art, one for posting a nice design on something, one for solving a user's support issue, etc

That seems like it would be compatible with assigning team badges on contributors (multiple of which could go on a single person if appropriate, not into splitting people into groups, just help label what they usually do)

 

[AlbireoX]

You should add donator ranks. People who donate to the project get some shiny badge or something.

 

[Cervator]

You should add donator ranks. People who donate to the project get some shiny badge or something.

Yep! I think we're finally doing this now that we have Xenforo with its "User Upgrades" thing - my understanding is you just feed it paypal info, create the ranks, and I guess users can just donate somewhere within the app at that point and the upgrade is automatic.

I haven't looked at that in any further detail yet tho, it has just been added to the imaginary list, somewhere behind finishing the forum structure stuff itself. Feel free to read up on it some if there's anything useful to look at / things to note. Probably also a thing to add to the logo/badge art request, to get a GelCube of varying colors / materials as the badge (copper, silver, gold, etc)

A different question is what to do with donations if we get any. Maybe get more Xenforo upgrades, pass it on to the freebie addon authors, or help with server hosting costs

 

[overdhose]

Had noticed something about it in their help, didn't quite get the flow etc, but wasn't really interested either.
I'd say cover costs first, grab some upgrades you need and yeah maybe start a discussion somewhere what to do with eventual rests if you ever reach that point. Not sure about other people's opinion about it and honestly not a debate I want to partake, just that things like this are based on trust and openness for the most part, and that will always create arguments at some point. As far as i am concerned : I don't really care, making a few bucks along the way for spent effort would certainly be welcomed if viable.

 

[Afforess]

Only suggestion I have is to add a Favicon for the site. It's weird seeing the default chrome one.

 

[Cervator]

Only suggestion I have is to add a Favicon for the site. It's weird seeing the default chrome one.

Yeah, need one of those - need to get our mascot some logo power

 

[Cervator]

We can now tag all the things - Cervator should auto-notify said user that they got tagged. Very GitHubby - among other things I expect

http://xenforo.com/community/resources/bd-tag-me.386/

Also re-found a guide for XenPorta: http://xenforo.com/community/resources/xenporta-user-guide-and-faq.383/

And one for the wiki: http://xenforo.com/community/resources/xencarta-faq.423/

Plus some templates: http://xenforo.com/community/resources/xencarta-template-repository.424/

Edit: Think I figured out the smilies too, oddly confusing default setup missing a pile of bundled smilies like and (bunch more I have to add, then sekkrit..)

 

[Immortius]

Is there a style or setting for Xenforo that fills the screen rather than using just a column in the middle?

 

[Cervator]

Probably, or even a way to set our Flexile theme to do that. I'm a fan of full-width myself. I'd have to look into it at some point tho, unless somebody else can find a good link - or maybe AlbireoX knows? (Yay using new features!)

 

[Cervator]

Got a test badge up - and what a badge! I hope it won't bleed dry the eyes of all our artists before one of them comes up with something better.

Just wanted to put a reminder link here for how they work: http://xenforo.com/community/resources/user-group-badges-per-usergroup.588/

 

[Cervator]

Note to self: There's a whole other "Blocks" category under XenPorta for more options for stuff like Twitter integration etc, in addition to the normal options where I searched for said settings for ages not realizing they were hiding elsewhere, sigh

Anybody really burning to help tweak Xenforo feel free to line up in an orderly queue to my right, there's too much for one mere mortal with limited time, argh!

 

[metouto]

Cervator ... got something simple (for a simple minded person) to do I will try to do it on my Monday off from work day till the block ID#'s increase

 

[Cervator]

All of this stuff is pretty technical I'm afraid

But I've been doing some friendly badgering of begla and Immortius occasionally on pointers or quick fixes to expand into using the negative range of the block ID byte so we can get you back up to speed and also add the nice new plants from eleazzaar as well

 

[metouto]

OK Cervator .... understand .... * standing in the wings till ......*