Burning Board?

Yes but that can be fixed. I'm looking for something a little more my tech speed than XF. I love XF design wise and appearance but I think it's geared more for folks with more code experience. And I need to be able to hand my forum over to my family here pretty quick.
 
Never used BB myself.

The tech boundary is going to be the same for most forum applications. When it comes to advanced styling or custom features, code is required.
 
I love XF design wise and appearance but I think it's geared more for folks with more code experience.
I disagree :(

With Style Properties, it makes it infinitely easier to style a site without code. And as Jake says, every forum platform style is built around HTML and CSS so advanced styling is in the same language regardless of what forum platform you're using.

I remember once seeing the forum you were working on.... going back a fair few months now. And it was shaping up really nicely so I'm surprised to see you're seemingly struggling with it.

Don't forget, if you're stuck then you have the expertise of everyone here. Don't be afraid to ask for help. And even then, don't be afraid to keep asking for help, or clarity. You'll get there in the end.

And anyway, what happens if you ditch XF and you have the same difficulties with another platform? You've wasted money on a license, you've wasted time and effort on XF which you're going to throw away. Stick with it, ask for help, and stop being so hard on yourself. I've seen your posts slating your own ability. You're really unfair on yourself sometimes!

Again, when I saw your site all those months ago, I thought it was nearly ready. Your comment was that "It looks like crap compared to everyone elses". It really didn't!
 
Burning Board has been dead to me since the 2.x series :(.

The new version is extremely bloated, and just not nice to work with. And unless things have changed a lot, English-speaking users tend to get the cold shoulder (There was a lot of fragmentation back in the 2.x days as well).
 
I used it way back when it was version 1.2, finally just upgraded a site that was on 2.0 last week.

For me it worked great, only problem as a non German speaker i found it hard to get mods, addons, etc.. There was a wbbmods site years ago that was reasonably active, but eventually the majority of people moved to vBulletin. If you speak/read German there are lots of people providing support.
 
Thank you everyone for your responses. I just installed the lite version and so far I'm really liking it. Much easier for me to use and can install mods and styles from from the ACP-which is a major plus for a goofball like me. Also like the smiley system!!! I threw it up in an inline on website. Of course, it's just basic, no design and the light version. It appears that they just put out a major upgrade which I tested and looks ok. http://www.gailsault.com/page1.html
 
I disagree :(

With Style Properties, it makes it infinitely easier to sty...

Thank you Chris.. What a sweet and kind post. I really appreciate it. I'm super limited on my graphic design experience and can't spend any more money on a forum like a did with VB. Thousands in hosting, tech support, design and so forth. I look at everyone elses forums and they look great, mine not so much. To me, it looks stupid and like an amateur did it-and that is exactly what is happening.

But to be honest, it gets a little embarrassing coming here and asking for help all the time. I deleted my XF site because of the multiple of tech problems with it that I can't fix without paying someone or coming here and trying to figure out the problem. For instance, xenporta really screwed a few things up and when I tried to uninstall it there were many errors. For the life of me, I cannot upload mods to server. I don't know what it is but I have a total block with this. It looks like I'm doing it correctly but rarely do any mods I upload work-which of course is my fault I know.

I have major timeline to finish this forum and the website so I can hand it over to family/trustees, thus I need to get all this forum business done and implemented.

The tech support in this forum has been wonderful of course but I'm just really frustrated. I'm limited with my ability in more ways than one.
 
As I remember your xF install, it was very nice and definitely unique. There was nothing wrong with the style you were using, it set you apart and was unique to your site, which is much better than going with a stock style and minor customizations..

But you gotta do what you have to do, and if you think BB is better for you than xF, you should go for it... As for asking for help, there is nothing wrong with that, I know there are some people here that enjoys helping, and no one is judging you by the amount of questions you ask. But I also know the value of feeling independent, so I guess there is a fine line to walk..
 
I know there are some people here that enjoys helping, and no one is judging you by the amount of questions you ask.
I definitely come under this list. Judging by how dedicated people like Jake Bunce are, I'm pretty sure he is on the list too along with many others.

And, don't forget, the purchase of your license is what entitles you to this free and community support. When it's something you've technically paid for, you shouldn't ever feel like you can't use it :)

I hope you have your XF stuff backed up. I think you should reinstate it, and take us all up on our offer of helping you out. If you'd rather ask questions in private, feel free to ask me. And I'm sure others will volunteer the same.

From what I saw, and from what MagnusB has just said, the design was good. So, as I say, don't be so hard on yourself :P

Now - add-on installing.

You inspired me (along with many others) to create this: http://xenforo.com/community/resources/add-on-installer.960/

This is an automatic add-on installer. For most add-ons (not all, yet) all you'd need to do is go to your Admin CP, and browse for the add-on zip file and click install. The installer would then automatically place everything in the correct directory and install the add-on for you.

It really takes the pain out of installing add-ons.

The only reason it doesn't work on all add-ons is because - as I'm sure you've noticed - some developers do things differently. So some add-ons will have different instructions, some will have different folders and different locations for the XML files. I can completely understand why it could be confusing so the other part of my mission is to try and unify the add-on developers towards a set standard and documented instructions which will be identical for all add-ons.

If you went down the route of starting with XF again, I'd be more than happy to help you install my installer. Then you'd be able to install most add-ons yourself without worrying.
 
I think the independence part is pretty important for her project though, so BB might be better suited, I don't know.

BTW Gail, if you do have some spare time, I definitely recommend signing up at www.codeacadamy.com, and go through their HTML and CSS courses. I have not used them, but some of their other courses are pretty good. I get by with a pretty good understanding of html and CSS (or I am good at using Firebug). I also have some coding experience from my education though (mostly variants of FORTRAN though).
 
Yes but that can be fixed. I'm looking for something a little more my tech speed than XF. I love XF design wise and appearance but I think it's geared more for folks with more code experience. And I need to be able to hand my forum over to my family here pretty quick.

I'll stick my neck out here but XF has the best styling/template system from all software (forums). I'd really encourage you to take a few days and get your head around understanding css. You'll be quite amazed how much changes you can make with just doing css changes (to the point those that modified styles doing html & css) don't have that much of a unique style than those that did soley css changes.

Me personally after using the xf styling system I couldn't go back to using other forum styling system, i refuse to because xenforo did it beautifully. Forget the style properties for the time being visit some css sites, look at the css snippets people have submitted here and take some time to understand what css/classes changes what and as stated before source inspectors and understanding how to check what classes control what will be your best friend only then revert back to SP when and if you understand what your wanting/aiming to accomplish.

I'm mentioning the whole style thing because of your previous postings and I'm assuming you are frustrated with the styling system which is why i mentioned everything previously in this post. Learning basic css really is and should be a priority if anyone person wants to get their hands dirty in the way of making changes. ;)

If I'm mistaken in assuming your still have trouble with styling xf then ignore.
 
It has good loading speeds but it wouldn't be something I would use. Unless I missed it, it needs a demo version.

Speaking of other forum software, what happened to phpBB? Wasn't the next version supposed to be released a couple of years ago?
 
Yes but that can be fixed. I'm looking for something a little more my tech speed than XF. I love XF design wise and appearance but I think it's geared more for folks with more code experience. And I need to be able to hand my forum over to my family here pretty quick.
Now would be a good time to remind you of my signature.

If you're looking to respectfully bow out of operating your own community, but still want to give your members a home, while still maintaining ownership of your software for possible later use ..... Please think about it.
 
BB hasn't ever innovated, I've only seen them copy features, often with worse implementations compared to the competition. That is a huge turn off to me personally.
 

Thanks for this link. I quite like the look of this, though to my eyes it looks a bit old fashioned. All those folder icons and also all the repeating posts icons (which have been removed in modern packages to be replaced with member avatars) distract from the actual content IMO. That's what I liked about Xenforo (and now IPB) - the removal of clutter and focus on content.

Personally I found Xenforo very easy to skin and then to customise either with plugins or my own tweaks. But as with all these things, it's what you find easier that's the best package for you. Your productivity and enthusiasm can only increase if you feel comfortable and often it's a very subjective and personal choice when it comes to forum packages.
 
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