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XenForo 2.3 has been out for a few months now, and after a few patches has become a solid choice for XenForo users to upgrade to. Most major 3rd party addon and theme developers have released updated versions of their products designed to work with XenForo 2.3 and some have even stopped supporting XenForo 2.2 as well.
Is XenForo 2.3 worth the upgrade for you, though? Here’s just a handful of the important improvements XenForo 2.3 has brought to the table.
XenForo 2.3 improves performance
While not nearly as interesting as a new theme or feature, speeding up your site’s performance has the potential to create a more positive experience for your users than a number of other features.
These performance gains are accomplished via a number of technical improvements; here are just a few.
Using SVGs for icons
- In XenForo 2.2, icons were loaded via an icon font file. This implementation gave users an easy way to make use of icons in a variety of situations, and was pretty easy overall to understand.
- XenForo 2.3 changed things up: Rather than using the standard FontAwesome icon font file, it switched to using SVGs for icons, which is much more performant, and also gives you some extra control in visuals & positioning.
WebP image support
- XenForo also added WebP support for images.
- WebP is widely considered to be a more performant option for most images (compressing to a smaller file size while still retaining good image quality), and has been supported by major browsers for long enough now that it’s safe to utilize it as the default image format for most websites.
Image compression
- In addition to WebP support, XenForo also changed how images are uploaded and processed when it comes to user generated content: Rather than uploading a massive image to the server and having it squish and resize the image, images are now resized on the visitor’s browser before being uploaded to the server.
- This saves you space on the server, and also helps reduce frustration for users who can’t figure out how to resize their 40-megapixel image down to something acceptable for display on your forums.
Code optimization
- In a less obvious – but still impactful – change, XenForo has also stripped out the full jQuery implementation and optimized their Javascript code.
- This means users are downloading less code, have fewer delays in rendering of content that relies on dynamic code, and can even save a little battery life in some limited situations due to a reduced reliance on heavy Javascript code.
There’s a lot more going on under the hood, too, but those are what we consider the “big leaps” in performance improvements in XenForo 2.3. Let’s move on and talk about features next!
XenForo 2.3’s new features
XenForo 2.3 doesn’t change a lot for those using it, but a handful of new features have been added that do enhance the quality of life for you and your users.
Theme variations
- The most obvious feature is called “Variations”: This feature allows you to build a theme that has both a light & dark mode built-in, and also provides a method to auto-detect the users’ color mode preferences and set the site to use that color mode automatically.
- There are still some quirks with Variations, and not all theme developers currently make use of it, but in the future it’s sure to become a must-use feature for all new XenForo themes.
Featured content
Speaking of features, XenForo has added a new “Feature” system: This is a simple method for moderators and administrators to flag content as Featured, which is then displayed on a special featured page, inside widgets, carousels, and more.
Embedded content
- Content embedding also gets a boost: You may have noticed that when you share a link to a tweet in XenForo, it’ll “unfurl”, showing a special embedded version of the tweet.
- XenForo threads now can do the same thing! As well, XenForo threads can be shared using a more traditional embed functionality, so you can embed XenForo content on non-XenForo sites!
Single Sign-On improvements
- Another major feature added to XenForo 2.3 is the improvements to user authentication: Single Sign-On, Passkeys and more are all now available in core XenForo, providing you and your users with simpler and more secure options for registering and signing in to your forums.
- SSO, in particular, is great for sites that have multiple platforms that require a user account: Rather than requiring users to use 2 separate accounts for your main website and your XenForo install, SSO can simplify things and allow your users to use 1 account for both!
Honorable mentions
There have also been a handful of other improvements: Post editor updates, a dark mode for the ACP and more are all welcome changes that you and your users will appreciate.
Are you ready to upgrade to XenForo 2.3?
It’s a major change, and will require careful planning and testing to make sure any addons, styles and more all function as expected, but now is the right time to consider making the change. The improvements for both you – and your users – are definitely worth the effort.
If you or your team don’t have the time to do it yourselves, consider reaching out to us! We’ve helped numerous customers upgrade their XenForo install to 2.3, and we’d be glad to do the heavy lifting for you so you can just focus on enjoying all the improvements XenForo 2.3 has to offer.
