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Feature-complete ASP.NET Forum Software
The APG vNext forum (version 4) is a feature complete platform
proven to help people build communities online.
You will find post notifications, private messaging, WYSIWYG editor, drag 'n drop file
attachments,
photo sharing and anything you want in a modern community software.
This new software is built to take advantage of the newest web technologies,
including HTML5, CSS3, jQuery and JSON Web Service.
Integrated Blogging for Content Marketing
A special blogging engine is integrated into APG vNext.
It helps you repurpose existing content without you having to write additional articles.
Simply configure the forums and labels to pull articles from,
and the software will extract and publish matched posts on your blog.
You can create an instant blog from existing content in your
community.
And you get to seed your forum discussions, too -
any comment to the blog becomes a reply to the forum. Any contribution from your
blog readers helps you build your community faster.
We use this software for cakewalk.com, supporting 70,000 users and 2.5 million of posts.
It has never let us down despite this heavy load and nearly constant usage.
Ron Kuper | Cakewalk.com
Built-in Lightweight Mobile Web App
Using the new Mobile Web App, your members can access your community from anywhere in the world using their smartphones.
The software auto-detects mobile devices
so your members don't have to hunt for the mobile app link.
And it is complete with features, so your members can do
virtually anything without using the full version on their small screens.
Powered by jQuery Mobile, the web app is lightweight, too.
Mobile users only download what they see, so page loads fast even on slow networks.
Social Networks Login Integration
Traditional registration process is really a hassle:
84% of adults online dislike being asked to register on a website.
APG vNext supports one-click authentication with Facebook, Twitter, and Google+,
so your visitors can sign up without filling out registration form and verifying their
emails.
Fast & Powerful Search Engine
Your members can search and retrieve results from any community page,
without navigating away from their current page.
They also have the option to apply filters on search results, making it
easy for them to locate what they are looking for.
And the search engine helps you prevent duplicate posts, too by
suggesting a list of similar threads automatically while users are creating new threads.
The search engine is comprehensive, too. Because of the tight integration between forum and blog,
the search results cover both blog and forums in one shot, including users' comments.
Community Spotlight w/ Content Slider
With the new "Content Slider" and "Featured Articles", you can spotlight hot topics
with attention-grabbing headlines and images on your community homepage.
You'll capture visitors' attention immediately and entice members
to come back more often. Once you grab their attention, getting them to participate becomes
much easier.
Create a Community Around User Photos
A full-featured photo gallery app is included in APG vNext. Your members can share photos
and organize them in albums, making it easy for you to build a community around user photos.
Users can drag 'n drop multiple photos to upload, and the software auto-resizes
them to fit viewer's browser resolution.
Survey and Learn About Your Community
APG vNext lets you embed multi-question polls in your forum and blog posts.
You can survey your members easily without relying on third party solutions.
You can conduct as many surveys as you want within your community,
which makes it easy for you to understand your members and make adjustments to keep them happy.
Built-in SEO to Help You Attract Traffic
APG vNext helps you rank on Google. It produces Search Engine Friendly URLs
for your posts, making it easy for Google to understand your site.
You'll be able to incorporate Google Analytics AND 3rd party analytics tools
(heatmap e.g.) without touching the source code, too.
For content pages, the software generates Canonical URLs to ensure
Google directs "link juice" correctly and prevents duplicate content penalty.
High Performance Under Heavy Load
Performance means a lot: Google's traffic & revenue drop 20% when search results take 0.5 seconds
longer to show; 40% of people abandon a page if it takes more than 2 seconds to load.
This is exactly the reason I created APG Forum 10 years ago: to provide a platform that can scale with
your community. And the software has been proven to perform well on some of the
largest communities on the Internet, without complex hardware.
The new APG vNext is further optimized with the following enhancements:
- No dependency on the ASP.NET Session Object, helping you save memory on the server
and making it very easy to set up a web farm (load balanced web servers).
- Viewstate disabled on most pages to reduce page size and save bandwidth.
- Optimized caching on the server to eliminates unnecessary database calls to further
speed up page rendering.
- The software combines and compresses CSS and Javascript to cut down the number of
requests and reduce page payload, so that your community loads fast even on the
first visit.
- The software produces "eTag" for CSS and JavasScript to help browser reduce download
size when users hit the refresh button.
- Use of SQL stored procedures and combined queries to reduce the number of database
round trip.