Areas where XenForo fails

[mauzao9]

I can remember this debate about pure forums and social networking exploding on VB back on the 3.7 upgrade.

First the issue is a range of needs - some admins need a "pure forum" others need a bit of SN others need a lot.
That in no way makes SN "fluff."

Discussion is not just about making statements, laying out logic, giving references and sources.
Academic do that but not many of us operate like that outside formal debate situations like academic journals.
Also even academics are affected by personal relationships around the content they write.

Examples of how SN supports and enhances forum content.

As someone not at all expert in code I want to ask a question I know the coders around here will find terribly basic.
I could easily feel intimidated and not ask. That would mean i don't get5 the CONTENT I need - nor do other members benefit who might need it.
But here, because I have a (fairly) good Conversation system, I have talked with several coders individually. I know they do not despise me. So I risk it, and ask.
The result is fantastic. I got a long careful guide from a coder. More than I expected.
But if I could not see this guy and others popping up - recognisable with their avatars - with a little info to personalise who they are where they are ... if I could not have some private Conversations ... I would not feel brave enough to ask ... and learn ... and benefit others with eliciting that magnificent support answer.

Round the other way there are users who are a lot less experienced than I am in running a business. I have contacted them or they contact me, and I have given them advice privately. I also help coders with the user interface issues.
We talk sometimes via Conversation ... I recognise their avatars ... their personal information helps me understand them a bit ... I am more likely to read their posts carefully because they are more real to me ...

I enjoy it when I find an Alert connected with any of these contacts - those I help or those that help me.
This ALL motivates me to return here far more than if it was just a kind of encyclopaedia to look up information content. Actually if it was just that I'd often be doing web searches instead, looking at other info sites.

What makes this forum sticky for me is the combination of high quality data and people interaction.The two together are irresistible - many naughty late hours as a result and an XF widower husband at night - but boy do I contribute content!

Content is not like a dictionary definition or encyclopaedia article - it issues from PEOPLE with all their complexity of relationship. Hence Likes being soi helpful.

Now some admins/ communities are not really communities of people. They are marketplaces or pure exchanges of data.
Fair enough. But the majority of people relate to each other AS PEOPLE and THAT generates content.

Yes I do agree. A forum got the content, it's the main point, but without any social things, people easy get bored, they wan't to have good contents and have interaction as you said, in our it's like an demand for that because most of users was SN addicteds, then we need to make our forum better for them than the SN they use, for they can in our forum, find good contents and be social with other members.

That's awesome but I can't understand why people want that classic and boring kind of forum.

I must say, 80% of our users (far I know), DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE THE FORUM, they just know the basic, post, create topics, etc... I did an studie by email and I can say this: Every 1000 registed users in our forum, 400 didn't logged again, of that 400, about 90% didn't because the forum was too complicated to use for them.
I hate when xenforo doesn't think in the people who never used foruns before, and make it even more complex!

 

[mauzao9]

A think to think about. Many of us want different things. Like I have said before if I get bloat I want to bloat it on my terms, not bloat it with things I will not use. Theads and alerts are social enough for my forum, threads is what makes my forum and my members can be social in there. I feel much has to do with the nature of individual forums.

I want the best basic forum software possible then almost everything else to be à la carte.

I already said thousands of times, make xenforo flexible it's make something new and have an option to enable/disable it, this way everybody is happy.

 

[jonsidneyb]

That's awesome but I can't understand why people want that classic and boring kind of forum.

I don't think XenForo is boring at all. It had threads and those threads can be filled with information. I know there is demand for a great many thing by different people. There are things I want that I know others will not wish to have. I don't want to burden other forum owners with the things that only some of want and at the same time I don't want to be burdened but things I don't want to use.

 

[mauzao9]

I don't think XenForo is boring at all. It had threads and those threads can be filled with information. I know there is demand for a great many thing by different people. There are things I want that I know others will not wish to have. I don't want to burden other forum owners with the things that only some of want and at the same time I don't want to be burdened but things I don't want to use.

I am talking at the end user.

Of course it depends of the type of users that use the forum, some like it classic and complex, usualy people with more serious themes. About us, in gaming/virtual worlds theme, people like to have fun in the forum and more things to do than only create/read topics and post, then when they go to forum and read some threads, they close the window because they get bored, that's why I incist in this.

 

[jonsidneyb]

I am talking at the end user.

Of course it depends of the type of users that use the forum, some like it classic and complex, usualy people with more serious themes. About us, in gaming/virtual worlds theme, people like to have fun in the forum and more things to do than only create/read topics and post, then when they go to forum and read some threads, they close the window because they get bored, that's why I incist in this.

Can't all that be done as add-ons?

 

[mauzao9]

Can't all that be done as add-ons?

Well yes, but who?
Far I know that would get really expensive for hire someone to do that.

But by other side, an Wall like Facebook for the status would be easy, the status are there, like/comment system too, an programmer just need to find an way to create an page with them.
But I wonder we can only see the status from people we followed, this way follow system would make more sense too, just like Twitter... Then people when they read all they want in forum can go have a chatty time

 

[Morgain]

... can't be generalized because every niche is different.
The argument that forums are for end-users is completely true, however if you cater to every demand of your end-user your site will have no real focus as every user will want something different.

BUT AGAIN, every single forum is diferent ... .

In planning for a product to be used by many it is impossible to design for every individual. So yes it is true that chasing end-users demands would never end - and would often be contradictory as they often want completely opposite things!
Similarly each forum is different. If it was a 100% duplicate that would be weird!

But talking of individuality can be unhelpful. We don't service individuals we service GROUPS.
These groups have to be identified in bundles by their needs and behaviour.
- groups which never post or hardly ever
- groups who post frequently
- groups who are rude
- groups who are interested in X
- groups who are interested in Y
- groups who want long serious content
- groups who want short fun content
- groups who love buttons and nerdy tricks
- groups who hate buttons and nerdy tricks - need it simple

Hence usergroups and permissions - and different forum installs.
The blunt fact is that if someone doesn't more or less fit one of our groups that we service on our own board then they belong elsewhere. (But if we get a cluster of similar 'misfits' we might make a new service for them.)

I'm just saying that talk of "we're all individuals" can be a bit compulsive, a bit over the top.
We also live and operate in groups which can be measured as profiles, and serviced. This doesn't remove individuality because there are so many groups we belong to that the sum of all one person's groups IS very individual.

that's why I said, we can have social options, and we can have option to enable/disable that.

XFactly!

 

[Forsaken]

I am talking at the end user.

Of course it depends of the type of users that use the forum, some like it classic and complex, usualy people with more serious themes. About us, in gaming/virtual worlds theme, people like to have fun in the forum and more things to do than only create/read topics and post, then when they go to forum and read some threads, they close the window because they get bored, that's why I incist in this.

That is a case of low quality content, or not enough content. I've run game forums, game development forums, and PvP brag sites, and none of them have had that issue as we made sure to have good content (relevant to our subject).

Social networking features will not solve any problems for your community if your users aren't interested in staying active.

 

[mauzao9]

That is a case of low quality content, or not enough content. I've run game forums, game development forums, and PvP brag sites, and none of them have had that issue as we made sure to have good content (relevant to our subject).

Social networking features will not solve any problems for your community if your users aren't interested in staying active.

Not about content, we got some people and staffs that create awesome things in topics, the problem is the type of users we have. They are from 9 to 30 in age, since there is alot of young people, they are hard to put reading something, soo we already did that with nice and interesting contents (with the feeder from nice sites with credits help alot), like, in this forum is usualy see big posts, in our, if someone posts something big, only one or other will read.

That's our kind of users, soo if there is only things for read on forum, they get easyly bored. Then we aready using alot of tools, like events, game events, fun topics and things to do in forum. But our possibilities when it's about coding something are really low, our foruns are growing, but people ask us things that we agree but we can't do, then we are using "backup plans" for fix what's missing for people still happy with the site.

 

[mauzao9]

In planning for a product to be used by many it is impossible to design for every individual. So yes it is true that chasing end-users demands would never end - and would often be contradictory as they often want completely opposite things!
Similarly each forum is different. If it was a 100% duplicate that would be weird!

But talking of individuality can be unhelpful. We don't service individuals we service GROUPS.
These groups have to be identified in bundles by their needs and behaviour.
- groups which never post or hardly ever
- groups who post frequently
- groups who are rude
- groups who are interested in X
- groups who are interested in Y
- groups who want long serious content
- groups who want short fun content
- groups who love buttons and nerdy tricks
- groups who hate buttons and nerdy tricks - need it simple

Hence usergroups and permissions - and different forum installs.
The blunt fact is that if someone doesn't more or less fit one of our groups that we service on our own board then they belong elsewhere. (But if we get a cluster of similar 'misfits' we might make a new service for them.)

I'm just saying that talk of "we're all individuals" can be a bit compulsive, a bit over the top.
We also live and operate in groups which can be measured as profiles, and serviced. This doesn't remove individuality because there are so many groups we belong to that the sum of all one person's groups IS very individual.



XFactly!

About that, we are using something with the CUSTOM FIELDS, and that group options, etc.... Let's see, in one forum, there is an chat about 5 virtual worlds, in the register, there is custom field asking what game they play, after that they will see things personalized for that game users, as foruns, notices and Style.
This helps alot but it's really an complicated thing to do :X

 

[Morgain]

About that, we are using something with the CUSTOM FIELDS, and that group options, etc.... Let's see, in one forum, there is an chat about 5 virtual worlds, in the register, there is custom field asking what game they play, after that they will see things personalized for that game users, as foruns, notices and Style.
This helps alot but it's really an complicated thing to do :X

Well done. That sounds like a very powerful system.
There is something like that on a forum I joined recently - http://personalitycafe.com
I did a personality test and after that my pages all have relevant forums at the bottom.
I found it very welcoming and made me feel at home immediately.

 

[Kim]

Areas in which Xenforo Fails currently....

Adding additional Nav Links, this is currently ridiculously hard, to the point that there are several Add-on's designed to make it easier. Nuts! it should be very simple, it is the first thing almost every site is going to want to do.

Reading one of the tutorials on how to do this described as "VERY BASIC" makes even someone with years of experience, and not ignorant of code want to cry.

There are other minor quibbles I have, and of course there are things I am hoping will be added down the line, but overall, the few minor negatives are far outweighed by the overwhelming positives.

 

[Morgain]

overall, the few minor negatives are far outweighed by the overwhelming positives.

+1,000

 

[Shamil]

Just seen the global RSS: http://xenforo.com/community/forums/-/index.rss

 

[dieketzer]

i think the things that disappoint me most are:

-conversations. i have an entire page of conversations with nothing more than a pm title and my name. the filter recently added is a help, but it is not ideal. k&m should go back to the drawing board and come up with a better way to display conversations.

-recent activity. for whatever reason people that mark themselves as invisible will not have their posts/likes shown on recent activity. on my board this means 50% of the content is not displayed, making recent activity completely useless. what is the logic in showing invisible peoples activity in 'whats new' but not on recent activity? imo the expectation of the invisible ppl is that people will not see them in 'whos online' or see what they are reading. they dont expect that their actual activity will be hidden. if that were the case they would be complaining about showing up in whats new, yes? invisible should = passive things are hidden, while active things are not. remove the invisibility thing from recent activity (and ajaxify it) and it would be a solid win.

-your news feed. what is the most popular attraction on facebook and twitter is pretty much hidden away and unused on xf. it reminds me of the broken vb social groups. why this cant be expanded a bit, replace 'forumhome', and encourage people to follow each other and post status updates is a mystery to me. ive been looking at what is essentially the same forumhome since the mid 1990s. something different would be great.

-zero profile/status update integration with the outside world. id love to swap status updates with twitter, but the best i can do is tack on a tweet fetch box in a profile.

-abandoned alternate logins. while facebook login might be great for many sites, the required rl identity aspect of facebook greatly diminishes its value for others. facebook is not the be all-end all of social networking. in my case, twitter login would be about 233 times more beneficial than anything facebook-related.

-the ignore system. while its great that ignore can now ignore quotes, it wasnt unnoticed that k&m were happy to release an ignore system that didnt even include that and call it 'good enough'. id love to see the ignore system also allow one to ignore nodes and threads. id like it to also be more proactive and function as a block, blocking ignored people from posting comments on my profile and whatnot. as it is, it is as minimal as minimal can get.

-the style. more to the point, zero progress on a mobile style. mobile browsing is not a fad. trying to use the site on a mobile is not a great experience, and i dont think relying on people being familiar with tapatalk/forumrunner is ideal.

-missing 'edited by'.

-no nav manager.

imo xenforo likes to be thought of as different, but there isnt really any effort put into trying to do anything much different than we have seen in other products. xf is, from a users viewpoint, not too different from vbulletin. you make a post, look at whatsnew, make profile comments that nobody sees, look at a stale forumhome, etc.
i dont have much faith that any of the above points will ever be addressed though, which makes me somewhat sad.

 

[MarcosPreviato]

In my opinion xenforo remains the best platform for forums, it is clear that some things still need to improve, but I have seen the evolution in the last six months, I believe that within one year, xenforo is very complete!

 

[mrGTB]

Just seen the global RSS: http://xenforo.com/community/forums/-/index.rss

Are you aware that your site is throwing up a GET OUT OF HERE message?

 

[mauzao9]

Are you aware that your site is throwing up a GET OUT OF HERE message?

View attachment 21488

In https sites firefox usually alert.

 

[mrGTB]

I just clicked his signature link, funny as the signature itself doesn't include http(s). But that's we're it lead me.

 

[Blair]

He just needs to purchase and implement an SSL certificate to go with his SSL domain. Using self-signed or no SSL certificate will yield that error.