Xenforo Common concepts

 

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Common concepts​

Some concepts and principles are used throughout the XenForo system, so having an understanding of some of these will save you some head-scratching later.

 

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Display order​

Display order is a concept widely used in XenForo.

It allows items to be set in an order relative to one another that is quickly and easily changed.

The system is based on each item having a display order value, which is an arbitrary whole number. Items with higher numbers are displayed after items with lower numbers, as shown in this example, where the item's display order is shown in parentheses:

• Blue (5)
• Purple (7)
• Red (29)
• Green (1578)

Display order applies only to items with the same (or no) parent item. If an item is a child of another item, it will only be affected by the display order of its sibling children, and not by the display order values of its parent, or children of another parent.

Here's another example showing this, with a list of parent items, each of which have their own child items. Again, the display order value is shown in parentheses:

• Colors(1000)
  • Blue (5)
  • Purple (7)
  • Red (29)
  • Green (1578)
• Animals(2000)
  • Badger (100)
  • Hedgehog (101)
  • Otter (102)
• Fast food(10000)
  • Hamburger (30)
  • Hot dog (50)
  • Fried chicken (75)

In this example, the top-level items (Colors, Animals and Fast food) are ordered by display order values of 1000, 2000 and 10000. These are entirely independent of the values of their child items, which relate only to their own siblings. The color codings help to illustrate the relative display order values.

 

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Criteria​

Multiple systems in XenForo allow you to apply criteria to whether or not an item is visible or available.

These criteria can also be used to fine-tune searching processes.

The uses of criteria are many, but you will most likely use them when searching the control panel for users, or defining when Notices should be displayed.

Data fields containing text will be searched using any text entered into corresponding text boxes, so entering jo into a 'username' text box would return users named Jo, John, Joanne, Bjorn and Marjory.

When searching a numeric field, options are provided to specify a minimum and or maximum value for a particular data field, and to select all users that match the given parameters.

For example, to find all users who have posted at least one message, enter 1 into the first Message count between box, and -1 into the second (to specify no maximum).

 

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User criteria​

These criteria draw from information about a user, and include things like being a member of a certain user group, or having a user name containing specific text.

Many of these criteria are of the form 'User has something', and are frequently paired with the opposite 'User does not have something'.

User search criteria are used across the system, including:

• Users > Search for users
• Users > Member statistics
• Communication > Notices
• Communication > Contact users