XenForo Usage Guide and Advanced Tips

XenForo Usage Guide and Advanced Tips is helpful for the basic users as well as the users who want to use XenForo Addons and do Template Modifications. We published an guide on Installing XenForo Forum Software on Rackspace Cloud Sites. We have video guide on YouTube for Installing XenForo Forum Software on Rackspace Cloud Sites too. This XenForo Usage Guide and Advanced Tips is for both the Administrators and Moderators who will use XenForo from user end only for moderation works and for technical users who will work for the backend. For XenForo or any Forum softwares, there will be moderators and administrators who knows nothing about technical part, in fact do not need to know; unlike single authored WordPress Installation. XenForo is definitely better in all aspects than vBulletin, but it will look more better in GPLed form.

If you compare with WordPress.org, XenForo has no such huge free support, documentation plugins, solid core to cost a dime for running on Open Source LAMP server. That is why Matt Mullenweg is Matt Mullenweg. But do not use illegal version of XenForo. The question is not about getting in to legal trouble; the question is about security. To increase security, always buy XenForo, check all the files individually and if needed modify them. You have bought it, you are modifying the core for your own usage. Especially for Cloud Platform, it is important to perform that core work for security. BBPress is quite good for small forum purpose, it has better coding; other is MyBB. These are free Open Source alternatives which you might think when security is a big question. There are calls in source files of legal version of XenForo (and vBulletin) which does arise the question of breech of privacy of server. These are not actually not related to XenForo Usage Guide and Advanced Tips really, but probably you needed to know.

XenForo Usage Guide and Advanced Tips : For Non Technical Users

Never click any link to XenForo within your installation. There are reasons, try to avoid clicks like own AdSense Ads. After login you will get three areas :

We have marked with three different colored bounding boxes – red, green and pink. On this first screen, Display Node Tree is the only option which you will need for management. Node is actually the forums and threads with hierarchy. It is quite easy to use.

The only other thing within the red bounding box you will need is – Users. Click it to open a new options page. Your left sided menu (within the green bounding box) and the main area (within the pink bounding box) will get changed. The options are self explanatory.

XenForo Usage Guide and Advanced Tips : For technical Users

The first thing you will do is, adding an webpage to catch all outgoing links – like deviantArt. It needs basic knowledge of PHP and JavaScript. Apart from SEO, it increases the security as it is not a blog. Basically you can optimize XenForo by making all static contents to be served from Content Delivery Network.

Addons can be added by, downloading the add-on and uploading the add-ons files into your XenForo within the library/ directory in your XenForo installation.  From your control panel, go to the “install add-on” page and add the XML file.

Think in the way you do for WordPress. Because that is the normal or may be optimized way of thought. So the Addons should be installed, which we basically need for WordPress. XenForo has very primitive listing of Addons, you can not compare with WordPress Plugins. There are useless junks comes in front and useful Add ons get buried. For example, we found very useful New Registration Email Addon :

XenForo Single Sign On, Mobile Agent Tracer, Sitemap for XenForo version, XenForo Enhanced Search are examples of useful Add-ons. One thing you must remember for XenForo Usage Guide and Advanced Tips – for any Add-ons and themes, you must check each files individually unlike WordPress as there is no practical community standard testing and reporting.