- Joined
- Dec 1, 2015
- Messages
- 15
Hello all!
(Sorry for the wall of text - just excited to be here I guess!)
I have been using vBulletin since 2002 (holy cow, I just looked that up on their forums), and for the last few years or so I haven't had the need to make any major updates to my website. Recently, however, I decided to give it a facelift, and that was an eye-opening experience to say the least. I caught up on all the drama with the vBulletin 5 release, staff departures, lawsuits, and probably the saddest part for me, the decline of a once awesome community of modders who were the real reason I stayed with vBulletin all these years.
Adding simple features missing in stock vBulletin was a minefield, going over mods and posts from 2012 - 2013 that were no longer updated. Every demo page or modders page I visited had switched to Xenforo, and I realised I was in for a battle to get things exactly how I wanted. I spend about 3 months working on my site, patching everything in and getting it just right. And then it dawned on me - the first problem I have with any of this code, and I have to start almost from scratch JUST to have a forum that can ALMOST keep up with all the new software out there. I had to change.
So now I am setting up a new Xenforo forum. To someone like me, who has been out of practise anyway and so used to how things are done in vBulletin, it's a steep learning curve. I hate to admit, but I still think mainly in tables, so all this CSS stuff makes me break out into cold sweats! Luckily I made one very good choice from the beginning, and that was to spend a lot of time researching theme developers, and I found PixelExit, who has already gone above and beyond the call of duty to help me with a few customisation issues.
And that brings me today!
I'm looking for some help with some not-quite-xenforo stuff for my website. I was an avid user of the popular portal software vBulletin Advanced (the developer has now stopped working on the product, one of the reasons I decided to look at my forum options). With this, I had my 4 latest news articles displayed on my homepage (but were not separate from the forum like a real CMS - just the first 1000 letters, and then a link to the forum post to read more). It seems I can replicate this in Xenforo easily enough with either Xenporta 2 or CTA Featured Threads & Portal.
However I also, rarely it seems, used vBAdvanced to add the other sections for my website - static pages with things like a links page, a guild history, a page showing some of our YouTube videos, etc. All of these pages were statically coded by me, and just fed into the vBAdvanced page which added all the widgets / site design to it.
I do not believe either of the 2 Xenforo addons I mentioned can do this second part - they seem to be for a single home page and nothing else. And all the demos I look at are more simple website structures with just a home page and a forums page (or forum pages like members list, etc).
So what is the best solution to achieve what I had before? I do not want or need a full blown CMS product like Wordpress, I just need something that can create a dynamic homepage, and then static pages based on Xenforo.
Another less difficult choice I am looking for suggestions with:
What is a good chat script to use? I previously used vBShout from DBTech. I know they have a Xenforo version, but I wouldn't mind a change - they don't tend to have the best design choices for their products. I see Siropu is popular here?
Many thanks! This has been much more of a challenge than I anticipated. The hardest part with making changes is knowing *where* everything is, *which* CSS file to edit, etc. I was so used to vBulletin. But I know that it'll be worth it to have a fully responsive website that actually looks good on my mobile
(Sorry for the wall of text - just excited to be here I guess!)
I have been using vBulletin since 2002 (holy cow, I just looked that up on their forums), and for the last few years or so I haven't had the need to make any major updates to my website. Recently, however, I decided to give it a facelift, and that was an eye-opening experience to say the least. I caught up on all the drama with the vBulletin 5 release, staff departures, lawsuits, and probably the saddest part for me, the decline of a once awesome community of modders who were the real reason I stayed with vBulletin all these years.
Adding simple features missing in stock vBulletin was a minefield, going over mods and posts from 2012 - 2013 that were no longer updated. Every demo page or modders page I visited had switched to Xenforo, and I realised I was in for a battle to get things exactly how I wanted. I spend about 3 months working on my site, patching everything in and getting it just right. And then it dawned on me - the first problem I have with any of this code, and I have to start almost from scratch JUST to have a forum that can ALMOST keep up with all the new software out there. I had to change.
So now I am setting up a new Xenforo forum. To someone like me, who has been out of practise anyway and so used to how things are done in vBulletin, it's a steep learning curve. I hate to admit, but I still think mainly in tables, so all this CSS stuff makes me break out into cold sweats! Luckily I made one very good choice from the beginning, and that was to spend a lot of time researching theme developers, and I found PixelExit, who has already gone above and beyond the call of duty to help me with a few customisation issues.
And that brings me today!
I'm looking for some help with some not-quite-xenforo stuff for my website. I was an avid user of the popular portal software vBulletin Advanced (the developer has now stopped working on the product, one of the reasons I decided to look at my forum options). With this, I had my 4 latest news articles displayed on my homepage (but were not separate from the forum like a real CMS - just the first 1000 letters, and then a link to the forum post to read more). It seems I can replicate this in Xenforo easily enough with either Xenporta 2 or CTA Featured Threads & Portal.
However I also, rarely it seems, used vBAdvanced to add the other sections for my website - static pages with things like a links page, a guild history, a page showing some of our YouTube videos, etc. All of these pages were statically coded by me, and just fed into the vBAdvanced page which added all the widgets / site design to it.
I do not believe either of the 2 Xenforo addons I mentioned can do this second part - they seem to be for a single home page and nothing else. And all the demos I look at are more simple website structures with just a home page and a forums page (or forum pages like members list, etc).
So what is the best solution to achieve what I had before? I do not want or need a full blown CMS product like Wordpress, I just need something that can create a dynamic homepage, and then static pages based on Xenforo.
Another less difficult choice I am looking for suggestions with:
What is a good chat script to use? I previously used vBShout from DBTech. I know they have a Xenforo version, but I wouldn't mind a change - they don't tend to have the best design choices for their products. I see Siropu is popular here?
Many thanks! This has been much more of a challenge than I anticipated. The hardest part with making changes is knowing *where* everything is, *which* CSS file to edit, etc. I was so used to vBulletin. But I know that it'll be worth it to have a fully responsive website that actually looks good on my mobile
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