Any news about Xenforo 3.0, can we expect modern forum?

qnkov

qnkov

New member
Hello. For half a year, I have been looking for a modern forum system to start an anime/manga site with various features. For example, a video system for watching movies/episodes, a way to add manga/anime as pages with information about them, topics with posters, etc. I saw that all of this is possible with Invision Community.

I waited to see version 5, but it turned out that the self-hosted platform is extremely expensive and has functionality limits. They also changed the way we acquire add-ons, significantly restricting options, and almost no themes exist for their latest version.

On the other hand, XenForo seems like a better alternative in terms of user base and price, but the forum and themes, in general, look like they’re from the early 2000s. I understand that some may find this nostalgic, but it looks incredibly outdated and is not visually appealing.

That’s why I’m wondering what exactly to expect with version 3.0. Can we anticipate a modern interface similar to Invision Community? I really don't want to go to invision as they may drop self-hosted in next version, as they aim for big comapanies, not common users now.
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
Wildcat Media said:
So older users don't mean crap to the Internet anymore?

Nice. Really nice. 🙄 Good way to spew more hatred in these divisive times.

I've been working in web forums since 1997. Was with Compuserve several years prior, some of that time as a sysop. Don't tell me what works and what doesn't.

Got news for all of you. We still get younger users on our forums and you know what? They have no problems whatsoever figuring it out. None. There is nothing dated about the functionality. If it looks old, put a new frickin' skin on it and be done with it.

It's the clueless dolts from social media who can't use a forum. And no forum wants that level of stupidity visiting their community...the ones who can only write in acronyms and end every sentence with "lol" instead of punctuation they learned in effing grade school, and ask questions without doing the most rudimentary of searches. They are the ones who need the crutches of algorithms to push content around so they actually notice it, as they have the attention span of a flea with ADHD.

I'm done with this pointless conversation.
Click to expand...
I'm with you.

I enjoyed a lot of the communities I encountered on platforms like mono.org (because they were on the fringe, and you had to know how to use Telnet to get on them in the first place - you couldn't just use a web browser, or even SSH, back then.) Lots of really interesting real-time online discussions were had on there in the mid-1990s, when the rest of the internet was more focused on creating yet another site on Geocities.

MSN Messenger (anyone here remember that?!) appeared about 3-4 years later. Quality of online discussion nosedived.

Making it as easy as social media is a huge trap: You do not want those users. I don't care if they're more "modern". By attracting the dross out there that cannot use anything more complicated (and isn't interested in learning how to form and use complete sentences, or even write in prose), you make your life as an admin far more complicated than it needs to be - and you devalue your own community immeasurably.

Forums today are like the Telnet/phone BBSes I used in the 1990s, and they're a useful social filter. Long may they continue. I also have ADHD, BTW. Doesn't mean you can't deal with it. But slicing up content attention into salami-sized pieces for such users is like supplying beer at an AA function meeting. People should be encouraged to grow in consciousness, rather than be encouraged to regress to the bare minimum.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
As seems to be common now-a-days, the discussion seems to be seen as black or white, left or right, social media or forum, old or new...

IMHO, you're missing the point but I guess we have taken this thread well outside of what the OP stated (when is 3.0 coming out)... sorry.

I too was with Compuserv and remember the Usenet days and bulletin boards. I started my first forum in the late 1990s on phpbb. Grew it, sold it and started another one on Xenforo. I do appreciate the strengths/benefits of forum architecture for content. It was needed and relevant back then and it still is today.

That being said, I know that everything must continue to move forward in business. I do appreciate asking the questions:
  • How can we improve on the benefits of forum content architecture?
  • What can we learn from social media that would help us improve the benefits of forum content architecture?
I don't know about you guys, but one sore point for forums is that it's very hard to find great threads that have been buried over time. I'd love a way for the system to bring those gems up to the surface and make them easy for new users to find. Discovery is a big deal, even for forum diehards.

User engagement is also a big deal. I don't mean somehow causing them to develop an unhealthy obsession with my forum. I mean by delighting them enough so that they come back even when they aren't specifically looking to find anything but rather simply because they feel like part of the community. And you know how it feels when "everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came..."

Trying to improve forum content architecture, discovery, engagement doesn't mean taking on all the bad parts of social media.

Can't we find a good middle ground???
 
Upvote 2 Downvote
ArtG said:
very hard to find great threads that have been buried over time. I'd love a way for the system to bring those gems up to the surface and make them easy for new users to find.
Click to expand...
You can manually do it by selecting 100 threads that you think are worthy and then reply to the thread every 9 months.

Another idea would be to select the threads that apply going forward and then just have a way the threads end up in a featured threads type area.

Another idea might be to have a "5 years ago today ... this was popular" ... Reddit does this.
 
Upvote -2 Downvote
ArtG said:
I don't know about you guys, but one sore point for forums is that it's very hard to find great threads that have been buried over time. I'd love a way for the system to bring those gems up to the surface and make them easy for new users to find. Discovery is a big deal, even for forum diehards.
Click to expand...
I agree. Enduring content is one of the main strengths forums have over other forms of social media. I firmly believe AI is the key to making older content relevant. Predictive search, similar threads and as @Alpha1 has already suggested, current trends would all benefit from AI integration.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
The only thing you guys can define as modern is white themes with fisher price buttons, designed for someone with zero attention span.

I have 400,000 members who would burn that crap to the ground. Your ideas of "modern" are terrible.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
DragonByte Tech said:
Can you give an example of what “modern” looks like to you? I don’t want to prejudice and dismiss what you’re saying, but this quoted part makes me think you weren’t actually involved in forums back in the early 2000s.

I fail to see how requiring images to do gradients and using low-resolution images to create pill-shaped buttons, or abusing tables to orient content (e.g. vBulletin 3.0) is in any way, shape or form comparable to the current XenForo theme.

I haven’t heard of anyone needing to “slice a layout” for XenForo either.

Also, the XenForo theme is mobile friendly. In fairness mobile browsing wasn’t super popular back then, but it still speaks to the difference in theming.

So again I ask; can you please share what your idea of a modern forum software looks like?
Click to expand...
sniper756 said:
It is strongly recommended to add an algorithm module and set up a “Discovery” tab at the top. Upon entering this tab, it should display all the topics of interest to the user based on the calculations derived from their browsing data.
Click to expand...
@DragonByte Tech
 
Upvote -2 Downvote
D.O.A. said:
The only thing you guys can define as modern is white themes with fisher price buttons, designed for someone with zero attention span.

I have 400,000 members who would burn that crap to the ground. Your ideas of "modern" are terrible.
Click to expand...
Hard to find a loyal userbase like that now a days - what is the link to your board?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
ArtG said:
I don't know about you guys, but one sore point for forums is that it's very hard to find great threads that have been buried over time. I'd love a way for the system to bring those gems up to the surface and make them easy for new users to find. Discovery is a big deal, even for forum diehards.
Click to expand...
Have you utilized any Search Forums? You can use them as a quasi-database. For example, you may have a running contest on your forum, the threads are all spread out, and users like reading the old contest threads. You can find them all with the title and/or prefix, author, etc. and call them info a SF. You can use it as a forum, sub-forum, or hide it from the node tree and create a tab called Contests. Search Forums are actually a great tool with many uses. Search for what you think needs to be discovered and display it. By date, for older threads, popularity, etc.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
ArtG said:
I'd love a way for the system to bring those gems up to the surface and make them easy for new users to find.
Click to expand...
PS. If they are gems you could feature them and then call them into a Search Forum node called Featured using this setting:
1745526453923.webp
You could also call threads with a high reply count and name the forum Megathreads or Popular Threads, etc. The threads will still exist in the original location. You could also put them in a widget.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
Back
Top Bottom