The Top Add-Ons Every XenForo 1 Site Needs

XenForo is known as a leader in the forum community. The platform's intuitive framework and large selection of products allows for a versatile product and experience. Of the thousands of add-ons available, some free some premium, we’ve compiled a list of some of the top add-ons our team regularly uses on projects.

1. Feature Content

Feature content allows you to feature and unfeature threads. Featured threads are displayed at the top of the forum lists, absove the thread list in their respective forums. CTA Featured Threads is packed with features, allowing users to not only feature threads but display polls with their accompanying thread, additional permissions options, and automatic featuring based on selected forums and criteria. [8WR] XenPorta 2 (Portal) PRO, though not as feature packed as CTA Featured threads, is also worth considering. This article system with widget framework allows you to easily promote valued content in your forums and manage fully modular widgets.

2. Widget Framework

The easy-to-use [bd] Widget Framework is packed with diverse widgets, such as forum statistics, feed reader, share this page, sidebar poll, birthdays, and users online now. Widgets are small applications with limited functionality that can be installed to enhance your site. These widgets allow you to customize your forum further and provide additional information to your members in the community.

3. Post Ratings

Post Ratings is a massive improvement on XenForo’s like system. It increases daily posts and improves the quality of posts by allowing users to react to posts through ratings. These ratings can be translated into a rating system that appears as trophy points, allowing members to track their positive, neutral, and negative reactions to their posts. Members can be alerted of their ratings through their alerts and recent activity. 4. Add-on Management Add-on management systems allow you to easily track your installed add-ons as well as upgrade as needed without getting too technical. Add-on Install & Upgrade is a diverse add-on management system. It installation feature allows you to instal by ZIP files, direct from XenForo Resource manager, or through the traditional XML import upload method. Through your instal log, you can easily track which add-ons you’ve recently installed or upgrade as well as which admin performed the instal or upgrade. The update checker allows you to easily manage which add-ons are up to date and which add-ons have an upgrade available. [TH] Install and Upgrade extends this management add-on system by also adding installation through adding rar upload, xml upload, files on the server, or the URL of any resource manager page. You can also upload multiple zip, rar, or xml files at once. The installation process includes support for basic authentication, making sure the add-ons you’re upgrading are what you intended. You’re able to check whether add-ons have become outdated as well as uninstall multiple add-ons at once. ThemeHouse’s Install and Upgrade add-on also includes the feature to upgrade your version of XenForo with just one-click.

5. Login as User

[TH] Login as User allows administrators, or other trusted members, to click on a link on a user’s member card and log in as that user. This allows the admin to see exactly what that user sees currently. This can be helpful when users are having difficulty performing a task so that the admin can complete the task on the user’s behalf. This add-on can also help manage misuse of the private messaging system. The admin bar allows the admin to quickly return to their user at any time.

6. Chat

The Chat by Siropu is a feature packed chat system that allows users to join multiple chat rooms and partake in private conversations. Chat systems allow your users to create chat rooms to discuss more target topics among smaller groups. Chat by Siropu is permission based, allowing admins to control who has access to each feature. As an admin, you can customize how many messages appear, the general display of the chat, commands within the chat, which BBCodes can be used, when chat can be used, and how long messages appear for. It also includes a tag alert system, allowing users to be notified when they are mention.

7. Media

The Showcase Item Management System add-on allows users to easily share and create galleries of images and videos from the XenForo's Media Gallery within the community . Users are able to tag their images, receive alerts and emails when a watched item or category is updated, rate and review images, and be alerted when someone likes their comment or item. Showcase Item Management has multiple responsive layouts to choose from, allowing you to choose a gallery style that best fits your community. Admins can control how large images can be and who can post where within the galleries through user permissions. Sonnb's XenGallery is a similar media gallery, but with additional features. XenGallery features a tag system, similar to Facebook’s, where members can tag other member’s within their photos. It also comes with an alert system, alerting users when their photo has been interacted with or if a user is tagged in another photo. XenGallery also comes with additional privacy settings, allowing members to control who can view their albums and photos as well as add contributors to their albums. XenGallery is also Photo Exif ready and can show photos with detailed information such as camera model, location, ISO, etc. Photos can also be tagged with a location, allowing users to see photos tagged at the same location. XenGallery also includes photo view where members can rotate their photos, move photos to other albums, set privacy settings, download the photo, or set the photo as their avatar or cover photo within the forums.

8. Advertisement Manager

Advertisement managers are a great way to control where and how ads display on your site as well as adding and selling your own ads on your forum. [TH] Monetize Pro is the first to officially support DFP integration, allowing full template conditional support. This allows you to have absolute control over where and how your ads display. With [TH] Monetize Pro, you also have the ability to create and sell advertisement space on your forum. Members in your community are able to apply to advertise on your site and admins are able to approve users to be added into the advertisement user group. You’re able to choose between four different ad types and track ads easily. Siropu's Ad Manager is a similar ad manager. It includes 6 different types of ads to display with over 60 different position options. You can create and manage ads, packages, promo codes, positions, invoices and style properties.

9. Tagging

[bd] Tag Me allows users to tag other users within posts. Users who have been tagged will recieve alerts, prompting them to visit the conversation. You can also choose to have users recieve email notifications whenever they have been tagged. [Tinhte] XenTag is a tagging system that focuses on hashtags. Hashtags are an easy way to organize topics within the community. Users are able to watch tags, based on their interests. This add-on also comes with widgets, such as tag cloud, trending tags, trending thread tags, related threads, and tagged threads to help users discover new tags within the community. It invluded auto tag linking for post and resource content, which is great for SEO and user engagement.