Never heard of Stripe before. Also, on
https://xenforo.com/purchase/checkout-cart?cart_id=, it only has an option to pay by paypal.
As Chris D said, contact them and they'll reply pretty quickly and enable Stripe payments for the card. If Paypal are blocking the card, you'll also have issues buying any add-ons and styles/themes, unless that company/author provides other payment methods.
It's possible that the card was rejected because Paypal have blacklisted him (or it's a business credit card).
What don't like about XenForo 2? Everything. I hate it!
Be more specific, because if it's the look you hate, you can style Xenforo to look COMPLETELY different from this forum if you really want. It's hugely flexible.
This forum for example is on a bog standard Xenforo installation, unstyled and straight out of the box. The demo they provide is the same.
Some examples of very different Xenforo looks:
IGN Boards is your #1 site for gaming forums.
www.ignboards.com
AFL Australian Rules Football forum, footy news and Aussie rules community. Live game chat. Plus Cricket, NFL, Tennis, and more.
www.bigfooty.com
A popular forum celebrating geek culture and creativity. Home to all genres of original and fan fiction, plus lively nerd discussions about everything.
forums.spacebattles.com
It's a video game message board on the internet
www.neogaf.com
I've seen XenForo styled anywhere from old school VB, to phpBB look, to modern and stylish.
To give you an idea of just how flexible things are:
a) With a single chat addon there are about 650 individual style choices.
b) With my test forums I have over 35 A4 pages of notes, just for the styling options.
My advice there: Start looking at styles from places like
www.pixelexit.com,
www.dohthemes.com, and
www.themehouse.com. They will show you what's truly possible and open your eyes to just how you can change the look of Xenforo completely. One or two setttings can drastically change a forums look.
I'm running a test board at the moment (not publically accessible) with a modified style, and the look is completely different to what the original style is.
Forum choice: There really are only 2 I narrowed it down to when looking for feature sets: Xenforo and InvisionCommunity. I went with Xenforo because IC is way more expensive, and less flexible in key areas. Just remember the key thing about forums: It's not about YOU, it's about your guests.
If you like an old school design and your guests want something modern, they'll go elsewhere (making the forum pointless). That's where you can create multiple styles in Xenforo and allow people to change between them (other forum software will only allow a single theme).
I'd suggest know your audience and target market, and build your forum around that.
Making the choice: If you want assurance before you purchase, post up links to some forums you like, and some you'd like to have yours looking similar too. People can tell you possibly either what themes they are using, or how you can get that same look with Xenforo.
