Have you seen NinjaPost? What do you think of it versus Xenforo?

Deepmartini

Well-known member
Came across this interesting forum software when looking for a Wordpress integrated solution.

http://www.ninjapost.com/

Has anyone ever used this before? How does it differ from Xenforo?

What was most appealing was that the forum updates in realtime like a chat room so if others respond to a thread and you are viewing it, it will update automatically without you having to refresh the screen. Does Xenforo do this? Looks like a killer feature for social engagement.

What do you think?
 
I only did a quick look, but ti seems like the difference between onwing a home and having a timeshare in Bocca. The idea of real-time updates might be interesting, but not at the expense of farming out my code and database to someone else.

When you don't own your own database, when you can't lay hands on the code, you are at the mercy of someone else to provide the features your community wants. Your freedom to customize and use add-ons will be removed.

I would prefer to have the option to change anything I wished, to use any community mod (there are some outstanding mods here) to make my user's experience better.

Using their model, you are the client to Ninja post, but the users a "theirs", the intellectual property of the forum is theirs. A cool idea is never worth handing your community over to someone else.
 
What about adding a real-time update feature for threads? That should be an easy ajax add shouldn't it? That's what impressed me the most about Ninja. It could really impact page impressions and user engagement.
 
I can see some use for it. I currently do some event websites and like to include a chat forum. Currently use a simple guest book for conversations. The whole thing goes away after the event. Not the sort of thing I'd want to use for a permanent forum. Thanks for the link!
 
When you don't own your own database, when you can't lay hands on the code

I didn't read or research anything but the above quoted post. Sounds horrid, at least we have competition like Xenforo to make sure companies like this can't be successful beyond the less-intelligent consumer with no chance to begin with.

What about adding a real-time update feature for threads?

I want to inform you that there are people that do indeed hear what you are describing and it is accomplished pretty easily through add-ons.

I don't want this to seem as a shill so I grayed out the company name. This is what we currently have done.

  • Customizable generator to: style, implement post/thread/attachment feeds, ad tag
  • REAL-TIME
  • Feeds via plugin installed on your forum, you paste links to your content in the generator
  • Stress tested with 60,000 reddit users in one day viewing a 240 page thread of animated gifs
  • Sites tab feeds from a dynamic file of (li)$image(p)$title(z)$description
  • Network is a compilation of everyone's feeds
  • Able to support IPB, SMF, VB, Xf, Wordpress
block.webp

block1.webp
 
It appears to operate only as a Ninjapost sub-domain just like Freeforums.com. That would work OK for my use but makes it pretty limiting.

Might find a niche, need to be able to do images and videos.
 
vB had an add-on which did this a few years ago, it was actually very useful. Certainly a good option to have as it can really help improve participation.
 
What about adding a real-time update feature for threads? That should be an easy ajax add shouldn't it? That's what impressed me the most about Ninja. It could really impact page impressions and user engagement.
There once was a mod for vb3 doing similar things (I think it was called "live threads"). It worked quite nicely for low traffic forums but it turned out that it produced way too much server load for busy forums when a few dozen users followed a "live thread".
 
The only way to implement this properly is to do it with long polling, or a similar pseudo-push technology. It's already something I'm investigating, but people need to be aware that a sure way to get kicked off a shared host is to try long polling with an Apache or IIS server - long polling needs a very specific server running alongside your main webserver (on the same computer is fine) that is optimised for large numbers of relatively dormant open requests - something that Apache is not at all.
 
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