Scheduled Threads, Canonical URLs, and Performance Updates in XFtoWP 1.1
XFtoWP 1.1 is now available and brings two great new features as well as a slew of performance and stability fixes. Read on or watch the video demonstration below to see what’s new in the increasingly popular XenForo to WordPress integration plugin.
New Schedule Threads Feature
XFtoWP 1.1 is the first major update of the already very stable XenForo to WordPress integration plugin that adds two new useful features and plenty of performance and stability updates.
The first major new feature by popular demand is the new Schedule Thread feature which now enables new threads to be automatically created when your post is published.
That means when you manually publish a post or schedule a post for later, XFtoWP will now create threads at the exact same time your post is published and it couldn’t be simpler to use.
From the XenForo thread meta box in the post editor you will see a new button at the bottom labeled “Schedule”. Simply click this button to load the thread creation task into queue and configure your thread title and message.
Once you see the alert you don’t need to do anything else and can continue working on your post as you normally would. The difference now is once you press the main Publish button this thread will be created on your forum.
This has been the most requested feature of XFtoWP since its release in November and I’m happy to have it ready for you in version 1.1.
Protect the SERPs with Canonical URLS
In addition to Scheduled Threads you can now enable a behavior in XFtoWP’s thread creation process that will set the canonical URL on your forum to the post you created the thread from.
This new feature is easy to setup and requires a couple of one time setup steps to work. Read the quick setup guide here.
One common question about integration two website software’s like WordPress and XenForo is how it will affect site rankings, and this Canonical URL protects your website’s from competing with each other in search engine results.
As the most common use case for the XFtoWP Thread comments feature is to grab forum replies for use as comments in an article, we want to make sure that our article back on WordPress is ranking and not the forum thread, so setting a canonical URL in XenForo will always tell search engines to pay attention to the article and all but ignore our forum thread.
This feature is recommended for just about every site out there so take a few minutes to get it setup, and from there it will work seamlessly.
Other Plugin Updates
The XFtoWP 1.0 series enjoyed a stable inception to the XenForo and WordPress world and proved its features are reliable, accurate, and a delight to use.
Nothing is perfect of course and XFtoWP 1.1 brings many optimizations to the thread comments feature and ensures a more reliable refresh and user experience.
One big fix comes to the end of thread call to action that is now guaranteed to show once all comments are loaded. This important call to action will help stream your reader’s to the full forum thread to read the full discussion and bring new reader’s that much closer to registering to become a part of your community.
To fix the call to action I actually discovered an inefficiency in the entire comments loading process that once resolved, not only fixed the CTA but now better guarantees the proper comments data is loaded ever time.
In addition to a smarter comments loading process there were a number of other small bugs fixed like some special characters not rendering on the forums properly and even style improvements like adding a maximum height to blockquotes when long posts are replied in forum replies.
You’ll want to check out the changelog to see everything that made it into XFtoWP and know that you are in good hands with a more stable than ever XenForo to WordPress integration.
There are plenty of exciting new features coming soon to XFtoWP and if you want to help influence which ones make it first, post to the XFtoWP plugin forums to have your voice heard.
