24 Hours after purchase

Marc

Well-known member
So its now 24 hours since I purchased and installed xenForo, so gonna give my honest feedback to you guys as someone who has used/is using vbulletin, invision, smf and aspplayground.

Pros

  1. Its very very fast. In fact to be honest as someone who uses both PHP based and .NET based products I would say this is the first to come close to aspplayground with regards to speed which is a massive masive step forward in php based forums.
  2. Love the thought that has gone into the user experience from the front end right down to the admin panel. Its a genuine pleasure to use and play about with.
  3. I believe it is forward thinking. Something I have only really seen invision do of late. The world is moving more and more into social networking and this has a very social feel to it. A familiarity with other apps like facebook that users will really appreciate.
  4. Style design. I absolutly love the thought that has gone into the customisation of skins, colours etc. A massive leap forward from any piece of forum software on the net today I feel.
  5. Very very quick to change anything as a user, from avatars to signatures, being offline etc. Something I really really feel you have got right.
  6. Pages - Wow is this missed in forum software as a default. You hit the nail on the head with this one :)
Cons
  1. I personally dont like the "Default" items within the permissions. Maybe this is simply because its something Im not accustom to, however I always feel safer as an administrator to be able to visually see what I am setting up rather than having to remember what the defaults are.
  2. The antispam functionality I think is too much out of the box. Although I appreciate what you guys have tried to do with it, I feel it would put off good posters who can posts very very quickly at times. However all said and done these can be amended.
  3. There is a slight delay on clicking the editors to when your cursor appears. Only something simple, however something Ive noticed.

Overall opinions?

I think you got it right guys. I get a real feeling of being back on a piece of software I enjoyed for a change, which is something I have not quite had for a while. I do think you would do well to go down the route of creating more applications to stand along side this such as galleries and the likes as has been done over at IPB. Just a personal opinion, however I appreciate all your time and efforts will be going into getting the forums just as you want them and fighting the corner against the childish people over at Internet Brands (or whatever they were taken over by again). Some fantastic work and I for one am glad your here. I'm not a massive poster ordinarily on the main forums such as this, however Ive been around for plenty of years now and its been a long long time since I've felt this good about a piece of software to use on my sites. If this is what a young piece of software is like, Im not supprised in the slightest that certain others are getting a little nervous.

Congrats Kier & Mike
 
Nice review, one of your things there is a big one of mine, I really hope that in the final release on the ACP there is some easy way to see what those defaults are...unless I missed something.
 
The default is always "off". Default reflects the fact that you haven't specified a value for it. It was originally "unset" (or not set), but that gives the impression that something SHOULD be set, when in reality that's not true. "Deny" should be used sparingly, as it can never be overridden.
 
The default is always "off". Default reflects the fact that you haven't specified a value for it. It was originally "unset" (or not set), but that gives the impression that something SHOULD be set, when in reality that's not true. "Deny" should be used sparingly, as it can never be overridden.

I would never have guessed that was what Default did. Unset would have been a better choice imo
 
The default is always "off". Default reflects the fact that you haven't specified a value for it. It was originally "unset" (or not set), but that gives the impression that something SHOULD be set, when in reality that's not true. "Deny" should be used sparingly, as it can never be overridden.
thanx your post helped a lot
maybe u should change the phrase...
 
Great review! I agree with you on the permission thing (baffled me at first). Once I got used to it I've found it a very powerful system, but I agree that a phrase change is needed (or at least a note specifying default means off/no, allow means yes, and deny means never.
 
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