XenForo FAQ

XenForo is a new commercial forum software package that will be released soon (end of Summer 2010).^[1] It will be priced competitively in relation to vBulletin and IPB.^[2]

XenForo 1.0 Beta 1 will be released in the first week of October, 2010. It will be priced at $140 USD with an initial 24 hour sale during which it can be purchased for $100.^[3]

XenForo currently supports uploading only one attachment at a time, however this is done without a page load, allowing you to easily upload more than one file. A more sophisticated upload method is planned for the future.

There will almost certainly be a branding-free option/license, but it will come at a significant premium, since the branding is directly related to potential sales of the product.

There is no infraction/discipline system at this time.

XenForo will probably not support threaded mode in the near future, if ever.

The best (and official) places to get information about XenForo are:

• XenForo Community — Official company forums
• XenForo Main Site — when it becomes available
• XenForo on Twitter
• XenForo on Facebook
• Kier Darby on Twitter
• Mike Sullivan on Twitter

Whether for security reasons, obscurity reasons, or simply for simplicity, :D some people would rather the version number not be displayed on the front end. In XenForo, it will not be.

Kier Darby and Mike Sullivan are the XenForo developers. Ashley Busby is the business manager. Peggy Gurney and Lawrence Kazimer are moderators on the XenForo forums.

It is officially called the Mini Me. :)

Sub-forums are in a pull down menu instead of being given space on the main forum page to keep the page cleaner and to give them less weight than main forums, since they are sub-forums and not primary (main) forums.

The font is 11pt Georgia and was chosen for its readability.

XenForo does not currently support custom bbcodes, but there is a chance they will be supported in the future.

XenForo requires MySQL 5.0 or higher and PHP 5.2.4 or higher. Opcode caching, such as APC is strongly recommended. XenForo currently runs on MySQL only. It is unknown if other RDBMS would be supported in the future.

Currently there is no interface to customize the structure of XenForo URLs, however it would be possible to customize them via file edits.

The current thread URL structure is: /threads/the-thread-title.123/. This was chosen for its readability. The title comes first and the thread ID is separated from the title with a dot, which is analogous to file extensions. The dot was also chosen for technical reasons.

At the very least, there will be an importer from vBulletin 3.x series to XenForo. Other importers will follow, first for other vBulletin versions (vB4), and later for other software (IPB 3 likely to come first). After importing, members will not have to reset their passwords. A mapping of old to new IDs is kept, allowing old data to be accessed after the import.

Currently the focus is on the core platform and forum product. A content management system is an obvious expansion point and will probably be considered in the future. There is no timeframe for when a CMS or other addons might be developed.

In XenForo, avatars are the primary way of identifying members, thus they are given a very prominent display and are used through many areas of the forum software.

Possibly in the future, since they offer a lot of potential, especially when tied into other XenForo features.

XenForo will probably/possibly work with HipHop without too many problems. An alpha build was tested in HipHop without any visible problems.

XenForo currently does not have thread previews when mousing over the thread title in the list of threads. Adding the previews would not be overly complex, but would add some overhead. A decision has not been made on this.^[1] Update: When hovering over a thread title, a preview of the first post now pops up after a short delay.^[2]

A very simple set of rules that basically sends everything that's not a file or directory to XenForo, and the script figures out what to do with it. You can also run XenForo without rewrite rules.

XenForo.com runs on a modest server (quad core Xeon with 4GB RAM a single SCSI disk) that hosts additional sites, including http://forums.spacebattles.com/ and http://www.casualplayers.org/forums/

Not yet, but nothing has been ruled out. A gathering around Christmas may be a possibility.

Gallery functionality is not currently offered, but it has not been ruled out as a possible future area to expand into.

It was the best of the options they came up with.

There are plans to implement lightbox functionality, but a timeline has not been committed to.

XenForo currently still uses eval() for templates, which are compiled down to PHP. Storing templates in the filesystem and avoiding eval() completely will probably be supported in the future.^[1][2]

The hook system does not use eval. Instead there are code event listeners which will load a class and run a method that you specify. All plugins (technically event listeners) are stored in the filesystem.^[1][2]

XenForo 1.0 will probably not support profile customization, but a later version probably will.^[1]

Yes, XenForo natively supports Unicode.^[1]

It is officially written as XenForo, with an upper-case X and F. However, for aesthetic considerations, the logo has a lower-case X.^[1] The abbreviation is "XF".^[2]

Yes. XenForo makes use of several components from the Zend Framework library in the PHP code.^[1] It also incorporates the jQuery Javascript library^[2] and a few jQuery plugins. XenForo uses the TinyMCE rich text editor for creating and formatting content.

Probably, but this is not necessarily supported at this time.^[1]

You should not use the word "XenForo" as part of a domain name or site name, since it is a trademark of XenForo Ltd.^[1] However, the use of Xen- and XF- as prefixes (XenSomething.com, XFSomething.com) should be fine.^[2]

XenForo Trophies are awarded to users when the given trophy criteria are met. Criteria include the user's number of posts, number of likes received, number of trophy points, and number of days registered. The trophy point value and a user title (shown under the avatar) can be associated with each trophy.^[1] Default trophies can be edited and new trophies defined.^[2] More trophy criteria are planned.^[3] The ability to manually award trophies is also being considered.^[4]

jQuery was chosen after evaluating several modern Javascript libraries/frameworks, such as Mootools, jQuery, YUI 3, Scriptaculous/Prototype.^[1]

Debug mode is available by enabling it in the configuration file. It should never be used in a production environment, since it will cause some performance overhead and allows you to see potentially sensitive information.^[1]

It is a possibility, but has not been added yet.^[1]

The majority of the colors used in XenForo are posted here.

Yes. There is a simple paid subscription system that handles one-time and recurring payments, and gives the user an additional user group when active/paid. It is currently implemented via Paypal only.^[1]

Some degree of Twitter integration is planned for XenForo, including automatically sending your XenForo status updates to Twitter.^[1]

The XenForo style system supports importing and exporting styles,^[1] fully customizing styles through style properties,^[2][3] and full style inheritance.^[4]