Mike
Well-Known Member
I'm just thinking out loud, here, so bear with me for a few minutes. But I am hoping to hear your thoughts and opinions, so don't be shy about letting me know what you think.
Now that it appears the good shop XenForo is righted and sailing toward the future, I am willing to continue looking at ways of adding more features and functions to this site. When we left vBulletin (wow, that was back in the Fall of '09), we lost a script I really enjoyed using - GARS, which was short for the Geek Article and Review System. We used GARS to drive our tech articles and it worked quite well for us. When I made the biggest mistake of my life (OK, maybe that 2nd marriage was bigger
) and converted the site over to Invision Power Board, I used IP.Content to power the articles.
We were an early adopter of the current XenForo software, which meant there were not many add-on scripts available. And shortly after we got up and running on XenForo, the silly Internet Brands lawsuit against XenForo was filed, so everything came to an abrupt, screeching halt.
But now, it looks like it is safe to start looking to the future again, so I am wondering about an official XenForo add-on, to drive an articles library. But I have some real questions and so I thought I would invite each one of you into this decision-making process.
First off - We converted to XenForo, back on 25 November 2011. Since that time, we've added over 500 members and nearly 20,000 posts, so it is not as if the site has been dying on the vine without a separate articles library script. So I am not sure this is something you are interested in, or would even use.
Second - We've recently had some pretty thin months, with respect to the site donations. Have we reached a saturation point, where interest is now (or already has) peaked and are we starting to experience a decline in activity?
Here is a graph, representing our traffic, since January 2011, through the end of March 2013. The red line is an approximation of when XenForo was installed. There was a slight drop in traffic a couple months later, which was February 2012. We always see a sag in February's traffic numbers, because we are dealing with a short month. There was a another sag in June and an outright drastic drop in November. But, as you can see, we recovered from the drop in December 2012 and with the exception of February, we're zooming right along. Actually, since November 2011, our traffic has just a little better than doubled, so I don't think we've peaked out.
I was concerned about the conversion to XenForo, as we were not going to have a photo gallery any longer. The IP.Gallery script was pretty popular and I worried that the loss of the Gallery might have a negative effect on site traffic. But that doesn't seem to have had an adverse effect, same as the loss of a tech article library seemed to have no real effect. So, as is common when trying to second-guess the target audience, I'm confused.
What do you think?
Let me show you an example of what the article add-on would look like. A pal of mine has just opened a brand-new, invitation-only XenForo Admin forum and she is using the Resource Manager on the site.
The Resource Manager offers the initial resource in a separate area, but keeps discussion for each resource in the forums, with easy-to-use links to get back and forth between the two.
Here is the actual Resource Manager page. The Manager is actually very flexible, as it can be used as a place to download actual computer files, as well as holding tutorials. Since we would have no need for that download capability (at least that I can foresee), that would be a feature we would likely never use.
I don't expect the tutorial to mean anything to any of you, but you can see where Lisa has come up with a template modification for XenForo. And she is sharing it here, complete with the code snippet and images to help explain how the modification works. But there is a button, right above the tutorial, that allows a user to zip from this page, directly over to the discussion forum.
Here is a look at her Resources forum category, with the various forums listed.
And there is her Template Changes forum, with the topic showing.
The Manager displays a snippet of the tutorial in the forum view, with links to zip back to the Manager to read the full tutorial, or there is a reply panel there, had I wanted to comment on her modification.
The site can be partially viewed at xenadmins.com, but since membership on the site is by invitation only, what you will see is limited and there are no registration links. I think the above screenshots give you a pretty clear look at what the Resource Manager offers.
Talk to me, tell me your thoughts. Do we need this thing? Would installing it bring additional value to the forum experience?
The license is a $60 expense and annual renewals are $15. The amounts seem rather insignificant, but when we are regularly operating in the red, they cannot be ignored.
I am keeping my ear to the ground on a photo gallery add-on, as well. As soon as there is something to show you, I will likely be looking for your input on that, as well.
Resource Manager? Good? Bad? Indifferent?
Photo Gallery? Same questions.
What is something you would like to see added to the site that we do not already offer? Let the discussion begin...
Now that it appears the good shop XenForo is righted and sailing toward the future, I am willing to continue looking at ways of adding more features and functions to this site. When we left vBulletin (wow, that was back in the Fall of '09), we lost a script I really enjoyed using - GARS, which was short for the Geek Article and Review System. We used GARS to drive our tech articles and it worked quite well for us. When I made the biggest mistake of my life (OK, maybe that 2nd marriage was bigger
) and converted the site over to Invision Power Board, I used IP.Content to power the articles.We were an early adopter of the current XenForo software, which meant there were not many add-on scripts available. And shortly after we got up and running on XenForo, the silly Internet Brands lawsuit against XenForo was filed, so everything came to an abrupt, screeching halt.
But now, it looks like it is safe to start looking to the future again, so I am wondering about an official XenForo add-on, to drive an articles library. But I have some real questions and so I thought I would invite each one of you into this decision-making process.
First off - We converted to XenForo, back on 25 November 2011. Since that time, we've added over 500 members and nearly 20,000 posts, so it is not as if the site has been dying on the vine without a separate articles library script. So I am not sure this is something you are interested in, or would even use.
Second - We've recently had some pretty thin months, with respect to the site donations. Have we reached a saturation point, where interest is now (or already has) peaked and are we starting to experience a decline in activity?
Here is a graph, representing our traffic, since January 2011, through the end of March 2013. The red line is an approximation of when XenForo was installed. There was a slight drop in traffic a couple months later, which was February 2012. We always see a sag in February's traffic numbers, because we are dealing with a short month. There was a another sag in June and an outright drastic drop in November. But, as you can see, we recovered from the drop in December 2012 and with the exception of February, we're zooming right along. Actually, since November 2011, our traffic has just a little better than doubled, so I don't think we've peaked out.
I was concerned about the conversion to XenForo, as we were not going to have a photo gallery any longer. The IP.Gallery script was pretty popular and I worried that the loss of the Gallery might have a negative effect on site traffic. But that doesn't seem to have had an adverse effect, same as the loss of a tech article library seemed to have no real effect. So, as is common when trying to second-guess the target audience, I'm confused.
What do you think?
Let me show you an example of what the article add-on would look like. A pal of mine has just opened a brand-new, invitation-only XenForo Admin forum and she is using the Resource Manager on the site.
The Resource Manager offers the initial resource in a separate area, but keeps discussion for each resource in the forums, with easy-to-use links to get back and forth between the two.
Here is the actual Resource Manager page. The Manager is actually very flexible, as it can be used as a place to download actual computer files, as well as holding tutorials. Since we would have no need for that download capability (at least that I can foresee), that would be a feature we would likely never use.
I don't expect the tutorial to mean anything to any of you, but you can see where Lisa has come up with a template modification for XenForo. And she is sharing it here, complete with the code snippet and images to help explain how the modification works. But there is a button, right above the tutorial, that allows a user to zip from this page, directly over to the discussion forum.
Here is a look at her Resources forum category, with the various forums listed.
And there is her Template Changes forum, with the topic showing.
The Manager displays a snippet of the tutorial in the forum view, with links to zip back to the Manager to read the full tutorial, or there is a reply panel there, had I wanted to comment on her modification.
The site can be partially viewed at xenadmins.com, but since membership on the site is by invitation only, what you will see is limited and there are no registration links. I think the above screenshots give you a pretty clear look at what the Resource Manager offers.
Talk to me, tell me your thoughts. Do we need this thing? Would installing it bring additional value to the forum experience?
The license is a $60 expense and annual renewals are $15. The amounts seem rather insignificant, but when we are regularly operating in the red, they cannot be ignored.
I am keeping my ear to the ground on a photo gallery add-on, as well. As soon as there is something to show you, I will likely be looking for your input on that, as well.
Resource Manager? Good? Bad? Indifferent?
Photo Gallery? Same questions.
What is something you would like to see added to the site that we do not already offer? Let the discussion begin...
