The general 'blog' integration

clarkwinkelmann

amdad I wouldn't bet on the completeness of the current doc but it's definitely a good starting point ?

I usually just check the source code or the browser console to check what exists ?

amdad

Thanks for tips.

hrvoje_hr

@amdad have you ever managed to do anything from this?

amdad

hrvoje_hr nope

MikeJones

Why not just use Flarum as your blog?

That is what I am doing, and its insanely faster than my old WordPress blog.

[deleted]

MikeJones agreed. I do exactly the same. Have a look at some samples here
https://discuss.infosecforge.io/t/meta

rob006

[deleted] Not so great first impression:

And not really SEO-friendly.

Flarum may be great as forum engine, but don't pretend that it is blogging platform.

MikeJones

rob006 have you checked out the SEO plugin?

I know flarum is not designed as a "blogging" platform but I have had great results and am getting some good returns from search results using the seo plugin.

You can see my implementation here: www.seekadventure.net

[deleted]

rob006 perhaps not so great, I agree, but my site doesn't allow insecure ciphers for obvious security reasons.

In addition, the SEO extension is also needed which I am running. I'm not pretending flarum is a replacement for a blog at all, but it's definitely better than WordPress.

andreherberth

[deleted] That's a matter of opinion though.

The thing with wordpress is that it is an industry standard, and for many synonym with blogging.
There are loads of documentation, tutorials and for many the most important, managed services in plenty.

Speed has been it's main weakness. (And security, mainly because of it's popularity = increased focus from hackers).
But, with later versions, it is possible to create/Æuse a theme that only relies on the rest-api and thus be very fast. Such as https://themes.redradar.net/foxhound/.

As for security, there are many options to counter those weaknesses, and most serious managed solutions takes these into account both on server level, and trough hacks in wordpress itself.

rob006

[deleted] perhaps not so great, I agree, but my site doesn't allow insecure ciphers for obvious security reasons.

This has nothing to do with it. There are people with NoScript-like plugins enabled (for obvious security reasons 😉) and this is what they see when they go to your "blog". There is literally no HTML content on that page, everything is loaded by JS - pretty bad for no-JS browsers, SEO and accessibility. Not so great for initial loading peed too. And none of this is a problem on my WordPress-based blog.

[deleted] I'm not pretending flarum is a relaxer fire a blog at all, but it's definitely better than WordPress.

Please, be serious... I know this is Flarum forum, so there are many Flarum lovers here and praising the Flarum will be welcome, but please avoid such ridiculous statements. As a programmer I'm not a big fan of WordPress - this is a piece of outdated software without any architectural improvements for about 10 years. It is pretty hard to write plugin or theme using modern tools or standards (no Composer support in 2019...). But it is stable, mature, incredibly easy to setup and use from the user perspective. I have my blog on WordPress and advises like "use Flarum as your blog - it is better than WordPress" puts a smile on my face 🙂. Please fill this features checklist, so I could treat discussion about replacing WordPress by Flarum as sane:

Ability to save drafts of post and schedule publication.
Save posts revisions.
Use raw HTML in your posts (but not in comments).
Post comments by guests.
Search which will find only posts, ignoring comments.
Ability to easy create and display custom taxonomies.

That would bad a good start 😉. And I know that not everyone needs these features, and for simple publication of posts Flarum will be enough - that's great. But you can say the same about using notepad to write raw HTML files with content of your blog, and this is not a reason to say that notepad is definitely better than WordPress. 😉

BTW: performance comparison:

My blog (WordPress): https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?hl=en&url=rob006.net
Your blog (Flarum): https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?hl=en&url=discuss.infosecforge.io/t/meta

[deleted]

andreherberth That's a matter of opinion though.

I agree. I use WordPress on my main site of https://InfoSecForge.io and have done elsewhere for years. The reason as to why I use flarum as the blog is because it allows for a much better commenting experience than WordPress currently does - even with plugins such as wpdiscuz etc. The uptake of comments via flarum is 100 times that of WordPress.

[deleted]

rob006 interesting response, thanks. You should know that my main site of https://InfoSecForge.io is based on WordPress, and I am also a developer.

rob006 Please, be serious... I know this is Flarum forum, so there are many Flarum lovers here and praising the Flarum will be welcome, but please avoid such ridiculous statements

Whilst we are all entitled to opinions, it might be better if they are kept to yourself as this can cause unnecessary offence to others.

MikeJones

rob006 there is a plugin for saving drafts, it works great.

rob006

[deleted] Whilst we are all entitled to opinions, it might be better if they are kept to yourself as this can cause unnecessary offence to others.

Sorry if it offended anyone, but I gave an argumentation for my opinion, while you... well, just an opinion, without any meaningful context.

I just want to make clear that proposing a forum engine as blogging platform may be harmful to both, users who follow this advice, and Flarum reception overall. You need to have very specific requirements (focusing more on the community than posts content) and be ready for many compromises if you want to use Flarum for your blog. Many people may be pretty disappointed if they try to use Flarum for their blogs.

andreherberth

[deleted]

I agree completely that the commenting part of WP is horrendous. And I guess this is also the reason why other newer alternatives, like Ghost, decided to not ship it integrated 😛.

Last time I had a community with wordpress as frontend, I solved it by having WP creating a new post in the forum (Xenforo based), with a summary, and then use that thread for comments. (Displayed on WP as well). But so far, I don't think there is an up to date solution for this for flarum.

rob006

MikeJones I know, but it does not support publication scheduling (probably useless on forum, but I'm using it on my blog). And without content preview of new topics it is far from convenient workflow.

[deleted]

MikeJones yep. I'm using it

tankerkiller125

rob006 We have a content preview plugin already that works very well, and a plugin for publishing post on a schedule could certainly be made and probably even integrated into the drafts plugin. I think something your failing to realize is that flarum may not be perfect but that's because it's built in such a way the the core product is nothing more than discussions and posts, without extensions everything else about flarum just doesn't exist. Flarum is possible one of the most extendable platforms I have ever seen and doing so is super easy generally speaking.

rob006

tankerkiller125 I think something your failing to realize is that flarum may not be perfect but that's because it's built in such a way the the core product is nothing more than discussions and posts

But I'm not expecting from Flarum to be a blogging platform. Actually, I'm feeling that I'm the only person here who understands this and does not advocate to use Flarum as blog engine... 😛

tankerkiller125 Flarum is possible one of the most extendable platforms I have ever seen and doing so is super easy generally speaking.

Then I suggest to back to this discussion after some time, maybe someone will create a bunch of plugins which turns Flarum into a decent blogging platform. Right now it lacks a lot of important features, and "you can write a plugin for this" is not an answer that most of "bloggers" want to hear 😉.

010101

rob006 WordPress is great. Flarum is great. Both designed for different things. But, I say, if you want to use Flarum as a blog, go for it. If you don't, then don't. It seems like the main argument above has been that Flarum isn't a good blog choice because it requires JavaScript. Maybe not by default, but, a lot of people enhance their WordPress sites with a lot of JavaScript. Sure, maybe the site is still readable with JavaScript off. But, it's not going to be a nice experience (in some cases).

I'm weird but, I don't agree with a site being bad just because it requires JavaScript. To me, blocking JavaScript is like blocking CSS - it means your Internet experience is going to be pretty bad. Websites use HTML, CSS, and the majority, JavaScript. Some use a ton of JavaScript. That's their choice. And it might mean you can't use certain sites if you prefer browsing with JavaScript blocked.

Side note for anyone who may be interested... There is a RSS/ATOM extension for Flarum. I wonder if that could be a work around. In other words, someone comes to your Flarum with JavaScript blocked, they get the JavaScript warning message and a link you click to see the RSS feed. This way, you can at least read posts, via the RSS feed, with JavaScript blocked.

rob006

010101 It seems like the main argument above has been that Flarum isn't a good blog choice because it requires JavaScript.

I gave a list of missing features, and non-JS support was not on it.

But I also disagree on your point that JS is required to browse the web in these days. I would say that it is exactly opposite - right now HTML and CSS is so powerful, that you can do really impressive things without even touching JS (there are so many things that could be done in CSS that was JS-only area 10 years ago). If a website is unreadable without JS, this is usually a result of laziness or ignorance of its creator, to real requirements. 😛
There are web apps which does not have any sense without JS, because the whole point of is existence is interactivity (like chats for example). We could even say that forum is such case and Flarum approach is correct (although it still could be improved - you don't need JS to just read forum content). But you won't convince me that for blog interactivity is more important than content 😉. Something really goes wrong if main page of your blog essentially does not have any content and you need a bunch of JS and AJAX requests to fill it with something to read.

010101 To me, blocking JavaScript is like blocking CSS - it means your Internet experience is going to be pretty bad.

HTML, CSS, and JavaScript have different purposes. HTML is for defining content, CSS for styling it and JavaScript to provide interactive elements and advanced features. It is expectable that if you disable JS site may not contain interactive elements or some advanced features. It is expectable that if you block CSS, the site may look ugly. But if after disabling JS your website looks ugly or does not have content, that means that you used the wrong tool for the job.

Also, I'm browsing the web with NoScript for years (and just for the record, I'm not the only one - NoScript on FF has over 1.5 million users, and there are other plugins like that). Believe me, most of the websites work perfectly fine without JS (many of them works even better without JS 😛). Most of the rest may have some issues, but at least there is some content on them and I can decide if it is worth adding an exception. Even in the age of frontend frameworks like react or angular, websites that are useless without JS are a minority (usually I'm just ignoring them since probably there is an alternative with better no-JS experience).

010101

rob006 I gave a list of missing features, and non-JS support was not on it.

You started all of your arguments with a screenshot showing non-JS support. You just want to argue. I'll agree to disagree. Peace and love to you. Keep on browsing the web the way you want to browse the web. 🙂

And, I need to correct myself. This just goes to show that I never turn off JavaScript 😆 ... I made a comment about linking to RSS as a solution so that things are at least readable (010101). Turns out, Flarum already has great non-JS support. I just turned JavaScript off and you can read all the posts. Which I'm sure most people reading this will say, yeah, duh. But, throughout my 25 years of using the Internet, I just never feel the need to turn JavaScript off. The only time I turn it off is when I'm building a website and have to turn it off to see what will happen. Because of people who turn it off.

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