Adoption rate of XenForo 2.3 after 12 weeks?

After having run forums for 20+ years, I can pretty much guarantee you that - other than in a few select cases (eg the move to responsive design / mobile-centric sites, or other technical changes forced upon us by 3rd parties or changes in 3rd party infrastructure / standards / etc), end users simply don't care about the features or the look of your site. If your site has a great community and great content, it really doesn't matter how it looks. All the bells and whistles in the world won't make a difference if you're missing community and content.

The main reason you'd want to upgrade is for your own benefit as an administrator - better quality-of-life tools and features for managing the site, the content and the users.

A new theme might look nice - but unless you're selling themes, it's meaningless without community and content.

I'm not dismissing the work being done for 3.0 as unimportant or not-valuable - but it won't make or break your community and holding off from upgrading until you're ready to do so won't be a problem.

I'm still running 1.5 on my two main sites and making more money now than I was when I first launched my biggest site nearly 10 years ago on XF 1.4. Traffic is higher, unique monthly visitors are higher, user engagement is higher, paid memberships are higher, advertising revenue is higher. Nobody is asking for new features - they just want to engage with the community.

The reason I'm still working towards upgrading to 2.x (or 3.x :rolleyes: ) is for my own benefit - developing new features to grow my business is much easier on 2.x than it is on 1.5; managing spam is much easier than it is on 1.5; integrating with other systems is much easier than it is on 1.5; etc. My users don't care.

Occasionally I get asked about a certain feature (bookmarks!) and I've promised it's coming in the "next version" - but it really isn't an issue for the vast majority of users.
 
Sim said:
After having run forums for 20+ years, I can pretty much guarantee you that - other than in a few select cases (eg the move to responsive design / mobile-centric sites, or other technical changes forced upon us by 3rd parties or changes in 3rd party infrastructure / standards / etc), end users simply don't care about the features or the look of your site. If your site has a great community and great content, it really doesn't matter how it looks. All the bells and whistles in the world won't make a difference if you're missing community and content.

The main reason you'd want to upgrade is for your own benefit as an administrator - better quality-of-life tools and features for managing the site, the content and the users.

A new theme might look nice - but unless you're selling themes, it's meaningless without community and content.

I'm not dismissing the work being done for 3.0 as unimportant or not-valuable - but it won't make or break your community and holding off from upgrading until you're ready to do so won't be a problem.

I'm still running 1.5 on my two main sites and making more money now than I was when I first launched my biggest site nearly 10 years ago on XF 1.4. Traffic is higher, unique monthly visitors are higher, user engagement is higher, paid memberships are higher, advertising revenue is higher. Nobody is asking for new features - they just want to engage with the community.

The reason I'm still working towards upgrading to 2.x (or 3.x :rolleyes: ) is for my own benefit - developing new features to grow my business is much easier on 2.x than it is on 1.5; managing spam is much easier than it is on 1.5; integrating with other systems is much easier than it is on 1.5; etc. My users don't care.

Occasionally I get asked about a certain feature (bookmarks!) and I've promised it's coming in the "next version" - but it really isn't an issue for the vast majority of users.
Click to expand...

I'll get some complaints about style or navigation changes, but generally that's minor.

Usually, functionality changes (outside of our own custom add-ons) are ignored, and the last add-on that got a lot of positive feedback was the addition of the album mirroring add-on I had made, the content badges and the event calendar.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sim
Forsaken said:
Usually, functionality changes (outside of our own custom add-ons) are ignored, and the last add-on that got a lot of positive feedback was the addition of the album mirroring add-on I had made, the content badges and the event calendar.
Click to expand...

I should qualify my previous post - I've had a lot of requests for new features / functionality on ZooChat - but specifically relating to the photo gallery and how that is managed. I think XFMG requires a lot more work to bring it up to scratch - and I suspect I'm going to need to do a lot of custom development work to make it suitable for our specific needs (but I can't/won't do anything until I can get the site on at least XF 2.x :cry: )
 
Suzanne O said:
I'm one of these people who will wait for the stable release.
Click to expand...
If you're starting a new forum, I would start it on any version just to get it going because the add ons and bug fixes will come.
Suzanne O said:
Have tried beta testing but decided there were too many bugs to work with.
Click to expand...
I started my first forum on 2.1 Beta 1 instead of 2.0.12(?) because I wanted reactions.

Everything worked fine, but the template that I wanted to use didn't catch up with reactions for a while. I ended up sticking with XF's default style, upgrading all the way through 2.1 with the RCs when they came and 3rd-level releases. Had no single problem. A few errors, that I reported and noticed in XFMG (primarily shutter speed showing 1/20 or something instead of 20 seconds as the forum had a photography layer to it).

I don't know if I'd start on 2.3 Beta 1 today with a new forum, but I probably would because the risk is very minimal with taking backups. We're past RCs for 2.3 now, but I would probably start a new forum on 2.4 B1 or RC1 if the timing is right with it to be planned out (nodes, prefixes, etc.) to be uploaded, installed, and start creating sections of the forum for basic use.

I don't rely on add ons for new forums. I have a couple that I like that do various things, but I can live without them until they're supported.

The important thing is getting the forum up with content indexed to get traffic coming in.

Just my opinion...
 
frm said:
I don't know if I'd start on 2.3 Beta 1 today with a new forum
Click to expand...

I wouldn't start on Beta 1, but by around Beta 5 or so you'd have a pretty good idea about how stable things are and whether the buggy areas are likely to affect your site.

I started my new site on 2.3.0 once it was released - but that was more to do with timing than anything, it wasn't specifically planned that way.

I'm not sure I would have gone live on a beta version - but I would definitely have been setting things up and getting the site ready for launch on beta versions, aiming to go live one the first release was out and I was confident it was stable enough for production use.
 
I think what @Chris D needs to do with any betas is make the demos beta versions. For those who just want to have a bit of fun.
It's upto them if they use that as a test site or not.
 
Sim said:
I should qualify my previous post - I've had a lot of requests for new features / functionality on ZooChat - but specifically relating to the photo gallery and how that is managed. I think XFMG requires a lot more work to bring it up to scratch - and I suspect I'm going to need to do a lot of custom development work to make it suitable for our specific needs (but I can't/won't do anything until I can get the site on at least XF 2.x :cry: )
Click to expand...
XF official add-ons are pretty unfortunate 🥹...

Media Gallery is decent, but honestly needs a lot of attention. I would love to see attention in the faster development cycle dedicated to specific add-ons (3.1 being gallery, 3.2 being resource manager etc).

Outside some users who enjoy preserving images on the site, we saw no real activity until I got the album mirroring add-on made. And I still have not found any real use for Resource Manager outside of just basic downloads or guides.
 
Sim said:
I'm not sure I would have gone live on a beta version
Click to expand...
With 1 member, and a slow grow niche forum, it was no issue. It was all about just getting the content up and getting traffic. I knew the risks, but with backups of solid content, I could either repair the database or rebuild the forum from scratch as I took notes on what was created when (node by node and thread by thread) to preserve the "id" to not confuse search engines if they came back around and the links were different. I think I reported around 5 bugs from 2.1 B1-B6, which helped RCs and ultimate releases—someone has to take the risk. :-P

I wouldn't convert a 100 member/10000 post "new forum" over to a beta though. I'd wait for a RC or initial 3rd level.

But if you stay organized and also back up, starting a new forum with just you and a few close friends on Beta 1 shouldn't be an issue, especially with no add ons. It's up to you to take that risk though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom