Key Differences Between Khoros Classic and Aurora

By contrast, Aurora, Khoros's new community platform offering, offers improved functionality and increased configurability out of the box, rendering many common types of Classic customizations unnecessary. 

Here’s how Aurora changes the game: 

• Configuration over Customization: With Aurora, the focus is on configuring all aspects of your community through a simplified Admin interface rather than customizing core functionality using a wide array of customization points.  You can still extend the platform in ways which bring business value if you have access to development resources, but these extensions are built around the edges, enhancing functionality without disrupting the foundation. 

Aurora encourages you to use the core product the way it was designed. This means the platform remains stable and consistent, and updates and new features can be picked up automatically with little to no adjustment to custom code required. 

• Styling and User Interface: For those who have experience customizing the look and feel in Classic, a common question during their first foray into Aurora is, “Where do I put my CSS”? Unlike Classic, Aurora doesn’t provide a global stylesheet to be overridden. Instead, customization of the look and feel is handled through a theme tool backed by style variables that abstract the style of the community. 

This helps ensure that core platform updates won’t break your custom themes. The Theme tool makes branding your community a snap! 
 
Aurora also provides a Page Builder tool for easy drag-and-drop configuration of your community layout and pages. This is also where your navbar is configured, and in contrast to Classic, you have complete control over the mix of internal and external links you want to include.  Page Builder also makes it easy to override your pages for specific categories or boards, a feature that was a lot less intuitive and click-heavy in Classic.  

Enhanced Default Features:

Here are some examples of configurable out-of-the-box features provided by Aurora that Classic lacked and required customization to achieve:

• Message Lists: One of the oldest features in Classic but also the most commonly customized, as every change to sorting, filtering, or visible columns, or replacing pagination with “load more” functionality required building a custom message list from scratch – and sorting and filtering options were pretty limited in many cases. Aurora offers more modern and configurable out-of-the-box functionality for message lists, reducing the need for complex custom rewrites. 
• Wayfinding/Navigation Tiles: Another common customization, visual navigation via wayfinding or navigation tiles, which had to be custom-built in Classic, are readily available and easily configurable in Aurora. This feature enhances the user experience by providing intuitive and visually appealing navigation paths within the community. 
• Featured Content: Aurora allows you to easily feature whatever content you like wherever you like in your community. While Classic has built-in featured content components, the lack of fine control over their content and placement was a common target for customization. 
• HTML Components: Classic offers “Custom Content Blocks”, which are confusing and error-prone to create and maintain using only a plain text editor. It requires a customization to add more than ten variations and another customization to give them useful names and descriptions in the Classic Admin interface. Aurora offers HTML Components instead, which can be conveniently created directly in Page Builder using a rich text editor and added to pages as desired. 
• Fire Hose (Coming Soon*): Complex integrations and event-handling in Classic usually required code-enabled plugins built by Khoros Professional Services or polling and processing Khoros data via a combination of API calls and huge daily bulk data files.  Aurora will put the power in your hands and streamline the process when it introduces its new “fire hose” feature, a dynamic feed of all community actions and events to which webhooks can be added.  This will allow customer dev teams and their partners to build some really powerful extensions and integrations.  (*This functionality is on the roadmap for later in 2024.) 

By moving to Aurora, Khoros is addressing many of the challenges faced by users of Classic, offering a platform that is easier to manage and more aligned with modern web standards and user expectations. 

This transition is not just about new features; it’s about simplifying the user and administrator experience, minimizing tech debt and long-term cost of ownership, and enhancing overall community engagement. 

Whether you're looking to build from scratch or transition from Classic, Aurora presents a compelling case for a smoother, more sustainable community platform. 

Simplify the transition with iTalent Digital 

At iTalent Digital, we understand that transitioning to a new platform can seem daunting. However, our team is here to ensure that your move to Aurora is smooth, efficient, and tailored to your business’s unique needs. 

Our comprehensive support includes strategic planning, customization guidance, and ongoing optimization to ensure Aurora meets and exceeds your community engagement objectives. 

Contact us at khoros@italentdigital.com to book a free consultation and discover how iTalent can help you upgrade to Aurora.