A long list of suggestions for XenBase

[Alternadiv]

Hey Russ!

I installed a fresh copy of XenBase and played around with all of your awesome custom style properties for a few hours last night. I haven't really touched them since 2018, so it was fun and totally impressive.

As you know with me though, I always have more requests. Some things in my list might already be possible, some are probably reasonable and/or on your radar, and some are things I know are difficult and/or unnecessary. If you want me to make separate threads for the reasonable suggestions so you can track them individually, let me know.

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1. Option to add a responsive nav button (near search) to open the off-canvas sidebar
2. Better display for child nodes in nav drop down menus when using nav option "node". Ideally, allow parent nodes to expand to the right, showing the child nodes
   1. 
3. Option to move staff tool bar to bottom of page
4. Option to move staff tools to nav account drop down menu or a new icon next to the mail icon in the nav
5. Option to show sub nav on responsive
   1. 
6. Off canvas menu has option to add social links to it, under the default "contact" link
7. Off canvas menu has option to display default footer links and/or custom links that aren't from public nav bar
8. Option to hide RSS button in default footer
9. More options on style chooser overlay -- XF default style chooser button will open an overlay to choose a new style. Add links with light/dark switch, change width switch, and sidebar toggle switch to this overlay
10. Style property to add a widget to header logo block (as opposed to editing templates)
    1. 
11. Options to improve XF's default email wrapper -- emails from the official XF website look a lot better than the email wrapper that comes with the software
12. Ability to "dual column" a single node instead of an entire category. In the screenshot below, the "vendors" node would look like it does, but the "regional" and "classifieds" nodes would stay normal
    1. 
13. Option to hide child nodes inside parent node (in the screenshot above, you can see how my vendors section would be cluttered with a big list of child nodes)
14. Option to show child nodes on forum list as columns
15. Using node hover option can allow clicking anywhere on the block to enter the node (as opposed to only the title)
16. Using alternating thread list option can allow clicking anywhere on the block to enter the thread
17. Option to show node description on responsive
18. Option to show signatures on responsive
19. Option to show child nodes on forum list on responsive
20. Option to move responsive hamburger menu to right side
21. Custom social icons: allow adding a "custom" link in the list of social media websites -- choose your own Font Awesome icon and insert the link
22. Custom fonts: In description, add a link to Pixel Exit website with a page that shows what those fonts look like in the browser
23. Add more built in custom font options
24. Option to display the sidebar on ALL pages of then XenForo system
    1. 
       
    2. This would actually act as a side "nav" instead of a side "bar" so XF automatically adds a off-canvas button in responsive. It also automatically becomes a working off-canvas menu as expected
       1. 
25. Footer custom block "default links" on responsive can show style chooser link as well
    1. 
26. Custom footer blocks on responsive can be more than one column wide
27. Custom footer responsive styling options can allow for a little more customization to achieve something similar to XF website's footer
    1. 
28. Custom guest welcome message can be viewed by administrator account for testing/styling
29. Update the XenBase default prefix and banner styling. It seems outdated (too 3D with the gradient, maybe?) compared to the rest of the design. Add a few more options for for styling them quickly, similar to how there are a few options for button styles (circle, square, outline)
30. Option to move user name to above avatar in messages
31. Option to move node icons into node title block on responsive to save screen space
    1. 
32. Member profile customization options. XF's default member profile design is kind of lame. At the very least, options to have "about" tab as default or have all tabs shown on one page
33. Not sure if this is possible, but a style property to switch the main color of the style, in one click. XenBase is blue as a default. This would switch it to similar tons of a specified color, automatically. This would be an admin control panel option, not a frontend option (although that would be sweet)
34. Add custom style properties for page and article nodes
35. Add a custom widget or style property to automatically display thread prefixes in the nav bar, forum list, side bar, etc. Easier if it is just a basic paste the prefix link into the form (kind of like the social media links)
36. Option to add a user group legend to the members online widget
    1. 
37. Options to hide or add links to the drop down account menu
    1. 

 

[Alternadiv]

Again, these are just ideas that I have. I know you like a challenge so I figured I should share them. None of this is expected or even needed; XenBase is already awesome.

 

[Alternadiv]

Welp. I'm stupid.

I just realized the Bolt theme exists and it can do some of these things. My bad.

 

[Russ]

That's quite the list . To be honest, I'm at a good place with the framework right now. I'm still constantly improving it where I can, but honestly, the last thing I want to do is to flood it with options.

I made a big push in recent versions to eliminate some non-essential items to help declutter things. The more options we have, the more templates that need editing. The more templates that need editing... the harder the upgrades are. XenBase so far is a breeze updating, really merging templates works perfectly on it. Some of these things would require edits in various templates that I have no desire to touch.

I'd personally prefer people having simpler updates versus a ton of options. Some of them I will consider though , the footer links has been on my to do for a bit.

 

[Alternadiv]

That makes sense! I didn't consider the template edits/upgrade merges.