8 things wrong with the XF2 mobile experience

[Mike Edge]

User experience has definitely increased since the initial beta launch.

I hope there is some better UI when it comes to mobile registration / signup.

View attachment 156253

Very simple to mod on your own. Here is our sign up form..

 

[RobinHood]

push notifications cost money. That's why there are multiple paid addons for it, then TT which is a horribly coded nightmare

Which, combined with the mobile usage stats posted earlier, it's time for a long overdue well supported first party mobile app that we can subscribe to and trust our data with.

 

[surfsup]

I agree, the simplicity should be just like Facebook via posting / replies but then everything else just like Xenforo. They have made improvements......I am actually really happy that our company started a FB Group, we have the largest group in our niche industry and its integrated within our forum, you gotta stay ahead of times cause otherwise your forum will just be an old resource. Xenforo needs to make JUST a few more changes and it should be golden for anyone to communicate without having to navigate so much.

 

[Martok]

Which, combined with the mobile usage stats posted earlier, it's time for a long overdue well supported first party mobile app that we can subscribe to and trust our data with.

Out of interest, do you, or indeed anyone else, know anything about the mobile apps for vBulletin? How well do they work? Do they only work with core software or with any add-ons? Are there push notifications for these? Also, do any of the other forum software makers have mobile apps?

 

[Kintaro]

Your point is....? I have and do, it's very basic and mostly useless. Sorry, I've had the debate about FB search functionality. It's there, but it suuuucks

IMHO it's better than before... they are improving it.

push notifications cost money

onesignal.com

we have the largest group in our niche industry and its integrated within our forum

how how how?!?!

 

[Alpha1]

we have the largest group in our niche industry and its integrated within our forum, you gotta stay ahead of times cause otherwise your forum will just be an old resource.

Your integrated facebook forums look very nice: https://www.truckmountforums.com/threads/i-cleaned-this-tile-and-grout-with-viper-venom.110288/
How do you fetch the Facebook group content and post or embed it to your forum? Do forum posts get posted to the facebook group as well?

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

onesignal.com

How do they pay for it? This is great...need development, now!

we have the largest group in our niche industry and its integrated within our forum

how how how?!?!

Whoa I missed this one. I was actually just about to post an addon request thread.

We are very much interested in this!! We have paid club membership and if we were able to synch the paid members with Facebook groups (for removal of people whose membership expired, or if possible, even adding them if they join and had a linked FB account in XF, or removing them if they were under discipline, etc...HUGE headache saver)

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

onesignal.com

For clarification: All I really want is the ability to have notifications pushed out from my forum to user devices as they choose. I don't need a native app or 3rd party app etc. All I want is a push notification that, when tapped, opens the subject of the notifications (convo, new thread, message, like, etc) in a mobile browser window.

IMO complexity and customization of the individual forum makes an app a PITA. Responsive design makes XF forums very much mobile friendly. All - literally, the only thing - that I need is the ability to push out a notice. Pushover does it nicely but there is a monthly limit for the host forum and the app costs the end user money out of their pocket so that's not going to be popular.

Push notifications. That's it. Simple and straight forward. Nothing else. Just push notifications. Is there a reason why this cannot be made to happen?

 

[TPerry]

How do they pay for it? This is great...need development, now!

Odds are like most of the services that did this... start out free, get you pulled in and then convert over to a paid subscription format for any more than a small use pattern on down the line.
And honestly, it's not really a big deal if it was a "paid" process linkage, as this would be no different than using some of the off-load SMTP services that are supported in other scripts (IPS with built in SparkPost and SendGrid as an example).

 

[Kintaro]

How do they pay for it?

For the "free version" they collect info about subscribers, the paid version... well is paid.

This is great...need development, now!

https://theadminzone.com/resources/...h-notifications-now-with-simple-install.1069/

 

[thumped]

For the "free version" they collect info about subscribers, the paid version... well is paid.

from a mailout this week:

OneSignal is proud to announce that we’ve just raised a $7M Series A round. As we are the most widely used push notification delivery platform on the internet (sending over a billion messages a day), we raised this round to grow the team and build an even better product for you.

As a OneSignal client, this means three things. First, you can rely on us to be around for a very long time. Second, we’ll have more staff to offer even better support and documentation. And third, we'll be able to add tons of new features and capabilities to the dashboard, SDK, and API.

Most importantly, OneSignal emphatically remains a free product at all usage levels - we have no plans or intent to charge for our service, and will support clients of any size.

Emphasis is theirs.

https://theadminzone.com/resources/...h-notifications-now-with-simple-install.1069/

that's what i use and it does the job.

 

[Ningen]

Yea its free but it sells subscriber info to meet the costs.

 

[thumped]

Welcome to the internet.

 

[ibrian]

So you are agreeing that the XF2 mobile experience has been built for the audience of XF.com/community and not for the vast majority whom are the audience of XF.com customer sites?

I've raised the concern before that XF needs to consider ways to be more like a social media website, for precisely this reason.

I've been running forums since MSN Communities, YaBBSE, vb2 and vb3. I have a Big Board in the XF feature's section. But I'm still waiting to be able to give a more personalised user experience as standard.

I have administered forums for more than a decade, and never received so many emails with almost the same question:
How to post on your site?

Sorry to say this, but - me too.

Forums are not social media websites.

Social media sites *are* forums. They're simply personalised.

 

[JamesBrown]

Push notifications. That's it. Simple and straight forward. Nothing else. Just push notifications. Is there a reason why this cannot be made to happen?

That then add the ability also to upload video from a phone to a post and I'd be well happy

 

[Case]

Sorry if this has been covered. Someone on our forum recently made a suggestion that I'd not seen before (I imagine it's already been discussed somewhere). The ability to record audio instead of typing a post. They compared it to a voice message in WhatsApp etc. Seemed like a decent idea that I'd never considered before. So a 'post' could simply be a media player. Probably not as practical on desktop but could work well on mobile.

 

[Uni]

as of demand by almost every forum admin,to keep up with user's experience, forum softwares should have some inbuilt system to instantly Capture/Record whats onscreen as Screenshot /GIF/Video to tackle user issues with forum.

1. This will help admin/mods to tackle user's How to - do this & that.
2. Easily get notified by users what's gone wrong with forum at their end - unexpected errors,browser issues etc.
3. Troubleshooting, making Suggestions, Demos/ Walkthroughs will be smooth.
4. Nobody needs to rely on external sites & hosts for prntscrn and all.

I guess it will be a first as no other online platform offers such a built-in tool, in my knowledge. Their will be more forum takers for this very function,as many just have forums fir feedback & troubleshoot.
At the end of the day,everybody will just love it

 

[RobParker]

Windows, mac, iOS (and presumably android) all have built in and easy to use screenshotting tools.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

@Uni that is a great idea. Creating a screenshot gif is much less intensive than video, I too would absolutely love to see this, from an admin perspective, that is definitely a valuable tool. For the admin side, there are tools out there one can use. But on the user side, that is where it would be most useful..."this is what I am seeing"

@RobParker he is talking about creating animated GIF screenshots. Not the same as the windows snipping tool

@JamesBrown someone actually did make this happen, direct-to-YouTube uploader, but I'm working with someone else on making a different/better version potentially. Being able to upload video direct to the server....there's a reason why not many outside of FB and YT have done this - server space and bandwidth. For the average forum, uploading video is just not feasible. (I'm not saying you don't know this...)