4 years later: let's talk about 2.0

I would guess after at least another 1.x release we will see work move to a 2.x release in about a years time (probably next summer). A new 2.x release means XF could update libraries, drop support for older browsers and freshen things up a bit with a newer style. I would also like to see 2.x focus more on mobile i.e. work more like an app (with drag to refresh, easier navigation etc...). Perhaps we will see some more official add ons in between then as well.
 
Daniel Hood said:
A first point release doesn't mean a rewrite.
Click to expand...

If everything everyone wishes for got added it probably would be. Thankfully thats not going to happen.

Brogan said:
A first point release is to do with the underlying code/framework, not necessarily features.
Click to expand...

Right but you don't usually see a first point release of software with the same feature set as the last release of the previous. As awesome as better, faster, stronger is usually you want to see improved functionality as well. A rewritten feature to me is the same as a new feature, an advertising department would spin it that way anyways.

I see Xenforo as something that was held back twice. Its something that should have started in 2008 but reality is what it is. It is steadily maturing into a product that all forum administrators can consider and will grow to stand toe to toe with IPB under most of the same target demographics. When we first evaluated Xenforo we had to pass but 1.2 was perfect and 1.3 was even better.

Personally most of the things "missing" are not needed by a small gaming community for example. I only hear whining from the crowds that need serious around the clock moderating teams. Which is important and I would rather see the product grow to fill their needs than see an unecessary second point release as this thread seems to call for.
 
I have been following up with Zend Framework for a while ... and I must say. It is looking uglier and uglier and uglier as time goes by. The addition of namespaces made it look more clunky (to say that it would not support all of PHP versions). If the decision to go with a Framework was taken today, I feel that Zend would not be the highest on the list anymore. Someone might differ. It has good stuff, like abstraction on the Zip capabilities, Socket connections and DB, but the routing and controller got really ugly, code wise at least, I am sure there are several good reasons for it.

Reminds me of the dojo javascript framework several years ago .. until it go overengineered and ugly
Then YUI came by and was easy to use, until it got namespaced, sandboxed and ugly
Today we are using jQuery. That one seems to have kept with the times, deprecating old stuff as necessary and refusing to add boilerplate (e.g. rolling jQuery-UI into core, for the sake of it).

Now... let's talk about the DB. This is one of XenForo weak points. The DataWriters are interesting but they are getting far from modern. There are several now mature ORM solutions that can be used to abstract the data access layer, while working with objects instead of writing more and more queries. Now .. talk about a massive rewrite. If XenForo decided to adopt Doctrine that would for sure break a lot of plugins and touch almost every single class. But I would argue it would make it (for real) multi-database, putting a foot into people like have their MSSql and their Oracle's and their Postgress. It could also get simpler since the ORM would hopefully abstract all the logic for data access. Performance optimization would become a pain. A compromise is just rolling everything into PDO which is progress over Mysqli at the cost of some servers not supporting it, but at least we get prepared statements and named parameters in the query.

...

Let's talk about abstraction of some other components. They did good work with abstracting the authentication methods and providing different types of password validation, but integrating XenForo with anything else (PHPFox, Wordpress, etc) is still painful. And a drastic architecture change would definitely belong in a point release.

UI wise, I don't believe it looks aged. With the responsive layout it kept with the times. Actually, other forums are copying XenForo, so they did something incredible there. The responsiveness of the forum is here. Would be nice to have our own official forum app (as in ForumRunner / Tapatalk) but I feel that is completely outside of the developer's domain and would argue is not a really good use of their time. What is true, though, is that mobile is the future, so investing a little more in understanding how people are consuming the information from the mobile devices and interacting might be a good bet.

....

Feature wise, there is no need for a point release. They can easily start rolling up new features in a 0.x point releases the way they have been doing so far :)

...

XenForo is just now getting momentum. The add-on ecosystem and styles ecosystem is growing, slowly, and the migrations from other forum solutions to XenForo are ramping up. It might be a better investment to get importers for every single platform, make the installation and usage a breeze and invest into making XenForo the default solution.

A point release has the problem that it will set back this momentum for a lot, once announced, people shy away from developing add-ons because they might be irrelevant or deprecated quickly. Then everything breaks and developers may or may not be fast to update them depending on the changes ...

And unless there is drastic landscape change in the technology world. What for?
 
A 2.0 thread that hasn't been locked up? :eek:

K while I'm here (Before Lock)

I don't care which version, 1.3, 1.5, 2.0, xf5 whatever gimme this!

Advanced Navigation Menu Manager (Most Requested Feature on Xenforo.com) Exists in vBulletin 4 as Core
Latest Post First as an Option (exists as an addon) Exists in vBulletin 4 as Core
Messages and Threads Per Page as Preference (exists as an addon) Exists in vBulletin 4 as Core
Search Custom User Fields (exists as buggy or limited in scope addons) Exists in vBulletin 4 as Core
Similar Threads (exists as an addon) Exists in vBulletin 4 as Core
Pingbacks and Trackbacks Exists in vBulletin 4 Blogs as Core
Profile Page Customization Exists in vBulletin 4 as Core
Casino best use for virtual currency on a message board
Points Market System Second best use for virtual currency on a message board.
 
DRE said:
A 2.0 thread that hasn't been locked up? :eek:

K while I'm here (Before Lock)

I don't care which version, 1.3, 1.5, 2.0, xf5 whatever gimme this!

Advanced Navigation Menu Manager (Most Requested Feature on Xenforo.com) Exists in vBulletin 4 as Core
Latest Post First as an Option (exists as an addon) Exists in vBulletin 4 as Core
Messages and Threads Per Page as Preference (exists as an addon) Exists in vBulletin 4 as Core
Search Custom User Fields (exists as buggy or limited in scope addons) Exists in vBulletin 4 as Core
Similar Threads (exists as an addon) Exists in vBulletin 4 as Core
Pingbacks and Trackbacks Exists in vBulletin 4 Blogs as Core
Profile Page Customization Exists in vBulletin 4 as Core
Casino best use for virtual currency on a message board
Points Market System Second best use for virtual currency on a message board.
Click to expand...

I would throw BD Widget into that list :)
 
DRE said:
A 2.0 thread that hasn't been locked up? :eek:

K while I'm here (Before Lock)

I don't care which version, 1.3, 1.5, 2.0, xf5 whatever gimme this!

Advanced Navigation Menu Manager (Most Requested Feature on Xenforo.com) Exists in vBulletin 4 as Core
Latest Post First as an Option (exists as an addon) Exists in vBulletin 4 as Core
Messages and Threads Per Page as Preference (exists as an addon) Exists in vBulletin 4 as Core
Search Custom User Fields (exists as buggy or limited in scope addons) Exists in vBulletin 4 as Core
Similar Threads (exists as an addon) Exists in vBulletin 4 as Core
Pingbacks and Trackbacks Exists in vBulletin 4 Blogs as Core
Profile Page Customization Exists in vBulletin 4 as Core
Casino best use for virtual currency on a message board
Points Market System Second best use for virtual currency on a message board.
Click to expand...
mmh, interesting. I dont need any of this.

what xf need is a widget/sidebar framework in core.
 
Ernest L. Defoe said:
@DRE I seriously doubt they will add a Casino as a core feature in xF.
Click to expand...
Let me dream dude! :LOL:

giphy.gif
 
I don't understand why everyone is rushing about the development of xF? :unsure: Just follow the flow, as simple as that. Is not that xF devs didn't update the software. I would prefer the devs to develop the software in a meaningful pace rather than rushing everything then ended up with bad quality software. It seems 1 month once such thread appears.
 
For me I would like to see 2.0 as an opportunity to move away from the current style of addon implementation into a more "app" style market with some key points.

1) Addons or styles submitted to the new "App" repository must follow a specific file / folder structure. All addons are checked by staff to ensure they meet this criteria.
  • Traditional addons still available if devs do not want to follow these criteria
  • Staff will not guarantee quality or functionality of code, just that it will install as per the directory layout provided
2) Paid addons can now be purchased via the App market, and all your installed addons will show / be linked under your XenForo account so you can more easily keep track of what you have purchased or have installed for what site etc.
  • Again, there will be no official support for 3rd party addons by XenForo, however this will make managing everything much easier / in 1 place.
3) Addons can be installed more easily. Be this from a push style implentation (the XenForo server sends the file to your board and your board installs it), or, more likely you can flag addons to be installed under your account, then, then logging into your XenForo Admin CP on your site, they will be listed there, at which point your server pulls the addons marked and installs them
  • Push obviously presents a potential security risk, so I think pull is better from this respect.
  • Addon browsing to be more easily implimented from the XenForo admin CP.
4) More aggressive 3-way style handshakes for reducing addon/style piracy. If purchases for addons can be implemented via XenForo.com we could also look to add an option to the addon purchase page set by the addon author "requires valid license". By doing this, we could enforce and monitor chargebacks directly against XenForo licenses.
  • Addon authors could also specify number of chargebacks allowed before a user is unable to buy their resources.
  • As accounts / addons would be more linked as above, more aggressive callbacks and license checking could be done aswell.
 
Rigel Kentaurus said:
XenForo is just now getting momentum.
Click to expand...

I just hope by the time XF rise to the top of the marketplace, I hope that they won't make the same as Jelsoft did by being acquired by some random company like Internet Brands. I rather have KM control XF entirely, but if they do decide to get acquired, it's better be some very reputable company.
 
Slavik said:
4) More aggressive 3-way style handshakes for reducing addon/style piracy. If purchases for addons can be implemented via XenForo.com we could also look to add an option to the addon purchase page set by the addon author "requires valid license". By doing this, we could enforce and monitor chargebacks directly against XenForo licenses.
  • Addon authors could also specify number of chargebacks allowed before a user is unable to buy their resources.
  • As accounts / addons would be more linked as above, more aggressive callbacks and license checking could be done aswell.
Click to expand...

Id actually like to see something like this. I am going over the site I am launching and I almost thought about requiring validation before registration would complete. But not only is that a little too inconvenient for some the site isn't going to all be Xenforo customers so it would have to be restricted to something like the ability to access the store or something.
 
I would like to see some more improvements in some existing features (like Usergroups, much in need of some love) than some crazy things added. We already had some good gallery and blog add-ons

Something that bothers me is that every paid add-on has his own external payment system and download forum. Maybe a centralized ResourceStore?
 
Deriel said:
Something that bothers me is that every paid add-on has his own external payment system and download forum. Maybe a centralized ResourceStore?
Click to expand...
That's because the Resource Manager currently doesn't have payment processing.
 
I would like xenforo to expand in the following directions :
  1. native widget system and turning all stock elements into widgets.
  2. native api
  3. plugin system for payment gateways
  4. more options to add new content types.
  5. URL rewriting
  6. thread tags
  7. custom fields for all content types
  8. more focus on user privacy. this has become a major concern of users after the Snowden revelations.
  9. just in time registration. it's great to get a lot of traffic but there should be a much better conversion from visitors to posters.
  10. develop the trophy system into a mature gamification system.
  11. Q&A functionality. sites like stack overflow are eating our traffic.
 
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