I never understood why we have to pay for branding free option either. We pay for the product dearly. It's not free. So please no free ads on our backs. I hope XenForo at least won't charge a ridiculous amount as vBulletin or IPB do.
Branding Free (split from 'Version number?')
- Thread starter MilesDB
- Start date
Caliburn
Well-known member
I was being realistic with what I said in that post, Kyrgyz. I thought it was a fair price area worth some consideration.
TrixieTang
Well-known member
Double to triple what other software charges for the exact same option isn't something that I'd consider fair.
Dragapult
Well-known member
I think XenForo should follow this... Offer a branding-free option later on down the road, after the long-term survival of both the company and the software has been proven.
Waddy
Active member
I think some kind of system to track sales from your forum would be a good idea, if only for interest value, but I would definitely support it offering some kind of reward.
EQnoble
Well-known member
I think the branding link itself should be a referrer id of sorts tied to the license holder... as only licensed owners could get the referral credit as they will need a non nulled script. And if this is the way it goes their sales referrals could be stored here just like a user referral.
But think about it this way...leaving the branding on the page says, hi I love my community and spent money to furnish it. I'm not against rewarding people who help sell this product it's just, we as the end users should worry about the features included, not the price for now. I would have to assume that at least 85% of the patrons here are coming from vB and are chasing the brains behind it because we have seen what they did before and we should trust the business decisions to them the same way we trust their products and let them figure out the bottom line. We as a community of people need to make suggestions for functionality so we can have a final product before they can decide how much work they did and what they need for proper compensation. Plain and simple if you want to pay for branding free when and if its available, do so. But since it is still in development we should try and come to a consensus of what features and options are crucial to the actual functionality of the board not some little advert that honestly does nothing to end-user but proves that you don't try to take credit for the framework your site is built on and that you have no problem saying... yeah thats the guy over there, you want to talk to him. I just don't think this is an important "feature" at this point or one worth mentioning until it's closer to release as like I said, the creators are still building so how can we price a job that hasn't a final plan set in stone.
But think about it this way...leaving the branding on the page says, hi I love my community and spent money to furnish it. I'm not against rewarding people who help sell this product it's just, we as the end users should worry about the features included, not the price for now. I would have to assume that at least 85% of the patrons here are coming from vB and are chasing the brains behind it because we have seen what they did before and we should trust the business decisions to them the same way we trust their products and let them figure out the bottom line. We as a community of people need to make suggestions for functionality so we can have a final product before they can decide how much work they did and what they need for proper compensation. Plain and simple if you want to pay for branding free when and if its available, do so. But since it is still in development we should try and come to a consensus of what features and options are crucial to the actual functionality of the board not some little advert that honestly does nothing to end-user but proves that you don't try to take credit for the framework your site is built on and that you have no problem saying... yeah thats the guy over there, you want to talk to him. I just don't think this is an important "feature" at this point or one worth mentioning until it's closer to release as like I said, the creators are still building so how can we price a job that hasn't a final plan set in stone.
Brandon_R
Guest
Agreed, we need to ensure the longevity of the product.
Peggy
Well-known member
Thre will be a few of us offering installation services for those who feel that they need it.
Kuma
Active member
You would be fully surpised a the amount of work it takes to acomplish those sorts of things for the people who order them. The people who order a Professional Install for any software tend to fall into two categories: people who have no clue, and people who cannot be bothered.
The first kind is going to make you earn the money.
The second kind has money to throw away and does not care. These can be as complicated as the first group, but not nearly as often.
Erik
Well-known member
Don't know about the branding-free option (would never buy it myself), but it would be interesting to make the attribution link in the footer a referral link and somehow credit the forum owner for sales gained by following the link from his forum. Honestly, even something like $20 per referral would be amazing, and it would convince many to not purchase the branding-free option. 
Been Told
Well-known member
There's an easy way to get around that. I always convert those copyright remarks and such into images and post them as such. I link them up to the provider's website if that is required (in vBulletin it is) and that's it.
That makes my forum imune to "powered by XXX" searches and stuff like that, while still helping promote the product and keeping all required notices.
What I absolutely hope is that no version number will be displayed anywhere in the HTML source code, let alone in the forum's footer.
Been Told
Well-known member
I think that is insane. vBulletin's policy in regards to brandingfree was OK. Not sure how it is now, haven't checked in a while.
Branding-free options should be relative to how many sales XenForo Ltd. have made due to the branding in your footer. If your site has referred a lot of potential customers to XenForo and they purchased XenForo, branding free pricing should be lowered, IMO anyway.
This way XenForo still gets advertising.
This way XenForo still gets advertising.
I don't see the logic or morality of denying credit and copyright to the developers of software. I wouldn't remove the author of a book so my visitors couldn't see it.
I can understand it if the text line is large, brightly coloured, or in the header. But it's not.
When I check out software I look for the dev name if I want to investigate it further towards buying it. That's a HUGE chunk of value to the developers.
There are certain specialised commercial needs that might desire removal. That's fine, they're commercial, so they must pay for removing the benefit to XF. I can't see cause for complaint. At least the option is there to remove it.
I can understand it if the text line is large, brightly coloured, or in the header. But it's not.
When I check out software I look for the dev name if I want to investigate it further towards buying it. That's a HUGE chunk of value to the developers.
There are certain specialised commercial needs that might desire removal. That's fine, they're commercial, so they must pay for removing the benefit to XF. I can't see cause for complaint. At least the option is there to remove it.
Been Told
Well-known member
Nobody is taking away the copyright by removing the branding line at the bottom of the pages. It's branding, not copyright. And for some (in my experience not so few) companies script branding is not something they like or want.
To me it's also a design question. I like to have as few lines as possible in the forum footer. But I usually don't go so far as to get the branding-free option. The price usually isn't worth it and I just convert the text to images. I only bought the branding-free option for one of my vBulletin forums.
Some people also don't like the fact that people can get to their forum by running a search like "powered by Xyz Inc". That is how many script kiddies and spammers look for forums to attack with their crap.
It's not security by obscurity. If there are security holes, an attacker can abuse them. But a lot of the time script kiddies just do that for the heck of it. They don't want to attack YOUR forum. You just fall into the net that they cast.
Not displaying branding information is one way to stay out of that net. Not always, but a lot of the time. I'm sure there are other ways, like looking for filenames exclusive to a certain forum script.
Still, it's enough for me to convert text-branding to images.
Correct, which is why it's ok to charge for branding-free.