Considering to move

[Lautaro Angelico]

Hey guys,

I am considering to move to XenForo since I heard a lot of people say it's a very good forum software and something that got my attention is that it's developed by ex-employees of Jelsoft co. I've been a vbulletin customer since vB3.6.x, and now I have the latest vB version. Back then before they released vB4 i feel like the script and devs was way better (imo) ..

Some things I would like to hear from other customers is the resources usage compared to vbulletin.
I have a forum with over 1.1 million posts and 50k users and it's running fine with vB so far.

One of the main reasons I've never moved out of vB it's because of the huge amount of plugins that it has (at vbulletin.org), I'd love to know if XenForo has a similar addon/plugin system and if there are coders providing free/paid mods.

And lastly, I like how the vbulletin themes look, I currently using themes from completevb.com. Is there any website that offers templates similar to completevb ?

Thanks !

 

[Corey]

Hey guys,One of the main reasons I've never moved out of vB it's because of the huge amount of plugins that it has (at vbulletin.org), I'd love to know if XenForo has a similar addon/plugin system and if there are coders providing free/paid mods.

Checkout http://xenforo.com/community/resources/ and http://xenforo.com/community/forums/custom-service-development-requests.69/.

 

[Ghan_04]

I have also been playing around with moving a large site to Xenforo (I already help run a small one) that also has well over 1 million posts. I have a test setup here: http://test.thehelper.net
Please pay no attention to the style mess, but feel free to check out how it handles a lot of posts.

 

[Morgain]

I'm only a small sized forum admin (by choice) but I was VB for years, and I am fairly familiar with quite a few XF issues.
There are very large boards here.
First example I can think of is digitalpoint
I suggest you track him here as a start. He's friendly and helpful.

I've also seen resource analysis that makes an approximate comparison between XF and VB3 at its best.
Anthony Parsons has some good stuff on that though I don't think he's a colossal board, just a biggish one.

Yes there are lots of addons here. Many of the best developers from VB moved over here and yet more are drawn here because XF is designed specifically to be friendly to addon developers. Addons are closely integrated with the community right here; they are not pushed in to a separate community. The results are excellent in terms of support as the moderators here know almost as much about available addons as they do about the core. You don't just get cut off with "it's your addon's fault." Or "you need an addon for that."
Moderators here will actively mention useful addons to help you and help you further on with integrating them.

The addon developers speak well of XF. I'm no coder just a tweaker but they are obviously happy. I get the impression a clean start with cutting edge up to date systems has really paid off. Addons are not bolting on to a framework which has been patched and patched and loaded with ext6ra lumps. I see conversations about it being sleek and clean to work on.
The code probably resembles my experience of the admincp which is very comfortable and quick. There's no tunnelling down hierarchies to find what you need.

However the sheer range of addons here is not yet as good as VB when it was at its best in the good old days. That's because XF has been out for only a bit over a year. In that time an impressive number of addons have appeared but as noted we're not quite yet up to VB3.x standards. Comparing with current VB I'd say myself we're better off here because so much over there is dead stuff no longer supported and there's not the speed of innovation any more.

On styling XF is a dream. Much of the theme work is openly there for you to twiddle as much as you like. Many of us don't use theme packages because the admincp provides us with such powerful and fairly easy interfaces to do what we want for ourselves. Ive really enjoyed that.
A lot of XF boards use a pretty similar look to the standard XF format simply because it's very pleasant and not everyone is mad on designing an innovative look! But plenty of admins do design exciting themes, and there are some specialist designers too who do it for others.
I've seen a few admins deliberately create a "VB look" or another forum "look" in order to ease the transition for their members. So you could do that.

My advice would be to get an XF licence and play with it. I found it an awful lot easier to learn than I did VB or e107 or another big one I tried whose name I forget. XF is not expensive and a licence will get you access to the inner forums where you can talk direct to the coders, and see the addon situation for yourself.

But I'm sure there'll be more help for you by tomorrow morning with more technical knowledge than I can offer. The support here is very fast - often on smaller things the response is there in minutes from the big guys.

 

[Lautaro Angelico]

Thanks for the replies !

Something I forgot to ask, I ise vbseo. If I move does it mean that I will have broken links from search engine results ?

But I'm sure there'll be more help for you by tomorrow morning with more technical knowledge than I can offer. The support here is very fast - often on smaller things the response is there in minutes from the big guys.

Good to know the main devs are around here, you don't see that everywhere.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Something I forgot to ask, I ise vbseo. If I move does it mean that I will have broken links from search engine results ?

Use the VBSEO redirects addon.
xF SEO > vBSEO SEO anyway.
If Search Engine success is your goal you should switch ASAP.

 

[Morgain]

I should have included this thread here:

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/anyone-with-a-very-large-community-using-xenforo.12452/

 

[Morgain]

and this one!

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/the-big-forum-list.26352/