how to have a xara website with a forum on it

**photonkid** · 21 September 2013, 06:50 AM

Is it possible to have a forum such as MyBB, Simple Machines Forum or vBulletin on a website created with xara. If yes, can the web page with the forum on it have content that is statically generated with xara or only stuff that is generated by the forum script software.

TIA

**steve.ledger** · 21 September 2013, 07:57 AM

'Xara' is the company name, I'll assume you are using their Designer Pro or Web Designer software for your pages.
You can embed an iframe widget (from the Designs gallery) which will load the forum pages via the URL to the forum and display it inside the iframe, but you cannot integrate.
You can use Web Designer to create a static head with the iframe below it.
Though I really don't see any point to this approach.

**photonkid** · 21 September 2013, 09:46 AM

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I'm using Designer Pro. I didn't completely understand your answer. What do you mean you "cannot integrate". Would the iframe let you post messages etc to the forum without going to the "URL"?

You've made me wonder whether my question was sensible. Does forum software in general, "take over" a whole web page? What if I wanted to have a header that looked the same as the rest of the website and had the same menu bar as the rest of the website - in addition to whatever menu bar the forum itself had below the header?

**gwpriester** · 21 September 2013, 12:36 PM

Xara Designer Pro and Web Designer do not natively support bulletin boards.

So to integrate one you need to essentially link to the external bulletin board using an iframe, such as the Embedd Website widget in the Designs Gallery (see attached).

This displays the bulletin board or other external page in your website, but any additions and edits to the bulletin board need to be made in the bulletin board itself. That said, once you have set up the iframe, you can preview the page in Xara's build in browser and make your edits and additions.

All you are really doing is creating the illusion that the bulletin board, or other external content, is part of your site.

Does that make sense?

**photonkid** · 21 September 2013, 01:02 PM

ok, it sounds like you're saying that the forum is fully functional from within my website. So if I had this website (www.talkgraphics.com) appearing in a website widget on my website www.xyz.com, people could interact on this forum without ever going to www.talkgraphics.com. Is that correct? If so, if someone clicks on a link at the top of the page such as "http://www.talkgraphics.com/usercp.php" what stops the browser from going to the specified URL and leaving www.xyz.com?

**photonkid** · 21 September 2013, 01:33 PM

I'm now trying out the website widget but it's not working properly. If I point the widget at talkgraphics.com or xyz.com it says "fail to load preview.." or something and doesn't create the widget. If I link to www.google.com, it does it but the preview shows "This content cannot be displayed" and if I preview the website itself, it shows the same thing in internet explorer but in google chrome or safari, the widget doesn't show at all? Another website I tried does seem to work in all three browsers.

Anyway I can see that the embedding does actually work. Any idea why the widget doesn't work with some websites?

**zaphodeist** · 21 September 2013, 02:56 PM

Originally Posted by photonkid

ok, it sounds like you're saying that the forum is fully functional from within my website...[/url]

No, just the opposite. The forum would not be functional within your website.

**photonkid** · 21 September 2013, 03:01 PM

Originally Posted by zaphodeist

No, just the opposite. The forum would not be functional within your website.

But it would appear to be part of my website because it's running in an embedded browser window. Would it not?

**zaphodeist** · 21 September 2013, 03:04 PM

I got the impression from Steve and Gary's posts that the forum would be viewable but not usable when in an iframe ... could be wrong, hope I am

**gwpriester** · 21 September 2013, 03:39 PM

OK. I created an iframe, linked to TalkGraphics.com and I am responding to this post from inside the Web Designer browser (in Preview Page mode). If it posts, it works! One thing that does not work, and I think this was reported some time ago, is I cannot press enter to start a new paragraph. But this is a Web Designer problem. (new paragraph) Rather than copy the code and press Insert, which then takes a lot of time consuming resizing of the placeholder, I just created a placeholder the same size as the TalkGraphics forum page, and then copied the script, and pasted the script into the placeholder > BODY area.