Decisions decisions....

Paul

Well-known member
Ok, so now is dilemma time....hate times like this :(

So, i'm currently running, proudly, an xF forum with just over 150 users (and growing by approx 10-20 a day). Brand new :) No sponsors, non-commercial etc etc.

However, i have the need to incorporate a few things to this to make the forum work that way it "needs" to work. However all of these things are implemented in some way or another in <wretch> vB.

These are:

Requirements -
Gallery
Downloads
NNTP interface (crosspost to and from both usenet Newsgroups and Yahoo groups and the forum)
Ebay/Auction/Shop abilities

All these are available in vB (unfortunately), but not currently in xF, and i have a chance to possibly increase my userbase in a big way by having these available asap.

So - I have a tough decision to make. Do i stick it out with xF, not have these features and delay things until these are available (i accept that i'll probably have to get the NNTP interface specially coded, however i cant find anyone wanting to do it!) and put a large chunk of potential users off of moving at this time, or do I drag it all into vB, run with it, and wait for xF to mature.

I REALLY want to stick with it as i love my xF, however unfortunately for me some of the key features are taking just too long to appear, with (understandably) lots of promises of mods, however these moving out and out (just because everyone's too busy!!).

Obviously i'm happy to pay for these mods, however any payment comes out of my pocket with no return, so i have to weigh up the costs etc Vs a licence upgrade on vB ( i only have 3.x currently) and the ability to be able to eat ;)

Would value some feedback from you guys as to your thoughts on this :)

Paul
 
what about having Paid Subscriptions for Member's? Give them extra benefits and a Private forum, this way you get the extra funds to pay someone to produce add-ons for you?
however any payment comes out of my pocket
 
wait until all those features are in XF, as XF has a stable system which is one of the most important things to have.
does not make sense to move to another system with tons of features when they are buggy or not working properly.

Probably you have that many registrations because the users like your website as it currently is......? The simpler the website, the easier to use for many users.
BTW: check for fake signups (fake users) as I also had many signups each day and figured most of them were fake profiles from countries like Ghana and Nigeria.
 
BTW: check for fake signups (fake users) as I also had many signups each day and figured most of them were fake profiles from countries like Ghana and Nigeria.
mugu guyman i dey here ooooooo.............
 
That's not really a discussion for this thread so let's leave it there please.
 
NNTP interface (crosspost to and from both usenet Newsgroups and Yahoo groups and the forum)
I doubt a forum other than vBulletin will ever have this. I like the idea though. I thought it was so cool when the MOD got made for vB back in the day. I think it might be hard to find a coder that would do it as well.
If that is a must you'd have to go with vB. vB3 is pretty good still.
There are very few NNTP users now.
Certainly few few under 30.

I REALLY want to stick with it as i love my xF, however unfortunately for me some of the key features are taking just too long to appear, with (understandably) lots of promises of mods, however these moving out and out (just because everyone's too busy!!).
xenForo is very efficiently designed. xenForo needs to take a leap of faith and change the environment in which addons are created. xenForo can't and should not replicate how vBorg treated addon makers. Times have changed, expectations have changed. If xenforo allowed paid mods in the resource manager where users can pay directly through xenforo's paypal ... that would be a game changer.

Update: I read about how you are having trouble finding NNTP addon coders ... not a surprise.
 
I would recommend you stick it out with xF. We have lost a bit of our functionality when we left vB but our servers loved it. We have almost replicated everything and I will be transfering my main sites soon since I used xF for a fairly young project. I do not regret it and I do not look back.
 
I doubt a forum other than vBulletin will ever have this. I like the idea though. I thought it was so cool when the MOD got made for vB back in the day. I think it might be hard to find a coder that would do it as well.
If that is a must you'd have to go with vB. vB3 is pretty good still.
There are very few NNTP users now.
Certainly few few under 30.

Thing is, it's a pinball site, and there's a LARGE pinball community on usenet so it would be good to carry on archiving, as i have done with the last 1.6M posts since 2003. It's more a resource, so unless anyone can work out how to be able to store these....to be fair replying to these isnt too worrying a topic - read only is fine :D

Whats more important is to be able to pass message back and forwards to a Yahoo Group - a LOT of our potential users are on one of these, and it would be VERY useful to be able to pass messages back and forth, meaning that those that wanted to stay on the group could stay there, and those that wanted to be on a community type environment could also. The way the original mod worked was that it took mails that were sent to a mail account, grabbed these at cron setup intervals, and then filed them as new posts in a forum, and then when someone replied the mail would be sent to the group with a tag from the forum and obviously the info about the poster name.

Digital Doctor said:
xenForo is very efficiently designed. xenForo needs to take a leap of faith and change the environment in which addons are created. xenForo can't and should not replicate how vBorg treated addon makers. Times have changed, expectations have changed. If xenforo allowed paid mods in the resource manager where users can pay directly through xenforo's paypal ... that would be a game changer.

Update: I read about how you are having trouble finding NNTP addon coders ... not a surprise.

I am actually surprised, since the same NNTP access method could be used, it would just be a case of changing the .php to xF .php :) If you knew the two then i cant see it being difficult (in my "non-technical" way :) )

Paul
 
In fact in follow up to the above, forget the NNTP stuff, all i need in that respect is someone who can convert an e-mail in an inbox into a post, and any replies send as an e-mail to a preset destination with a username tagged :D
 
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