Dev community - vB vs. Xenforo

Mr.Rick

Mr.Rick

Active member
I have been thinking about dumping all these vb4 sites I have acquired mostly in part because I am starting to feel as though the dev community is dying on vB.

If there was a good revert script I would certainly dump vB4 for vB3, but since there isn't I am entertaining the idea of a move to Xenforo.

Thoughts on the availability of developers?

vb3 or Xenforo?
 
Mr.Rick said:
I have been thinking about dumping all these vb4 sites I have acquired mostly in part because I am starting to feel as though the dev community is dying on vB.

If there was a good revert script I would certainly dump vB4 for vB3, but since there isn't I am entertaining the idea of a move to Xenforo.

Thoughts on the availability of developers?

vb3 or Xenforo?
Click to expand...

The software and environment that makes you happy and is most suitable for your site.
 
Mr.Rick said:
I have been thinking about dumping all these vb4 sites I have acquired mostly in part because I am starting to feel as though the dev community is dying on vB.

If there was a good revert script I would certainly dump vB4 for vB3, but since there isn't I am entertaining the idea of a move to Xenforo.

Thoughts on the availability of developers?

vb3 or Xenforo?
Click to expand...
VB and IPB have more active developers than XF.
 
Mr.Rick said:
I have been thinking about dumping all these vb4 sites I have acquired mostly in part because I am starting to feel as though the dev community is dying on vB.

If there was a good revert script I would certainly dump vB4 for vB3, but since there isn't I am entertaining the idea of a move to Xenforo.

Thoughts on the availability of developers?

vb3 or Xenforo?
Click to expand...
XenForo's will make for a very good switch. You'll first notice that XenForo uses fewer resources than either vBulletin or IPB. Indeed even their system requirements are less.

There is a wide collection of free and paid modification, templates, skins, add-ons, and other 3rd party products available. And development is actively on going. :)

Porting over from vBulletin is very easy and can be done from vBulletin 3 and 4 without issue.
 
I think the OP is talking about vBorg vs. the Addon community here.
Anyway ...

The future is Xenforo.
Unfortunately, Xenforo is not progressing as it could, mostly because of the toll the lawsuit is having on the devs and consequently everyone.
vB4 is a catastrophic failure, no help there.
Considering how terrible vB4 is .... is there any justification to be interested in vB5 ? Nope.
And do you really want software made by a faceless Mega Corporation that can't hire good developers ? I suspect they'll continue their "Profit >> Customer satisfaction" ways.
IPB is OK, but seems to suffer from bugs more than it should. I'd probably try it if XF development was not going to continue restart.
An even more important question is ... what forum software is going to innovate and reinvent communities to buck the trend of facebook and twitter almost entirely taking over ? vB ? No.
The future is Xenforo.
 
I can live with vb3, i cannot however deal with vb4. Perhaps I am stuck in my vb3 ways and can't adapt to vb4, I cant say for certain what my issue is.

Do I care IB owns vBulletin, not at all. I have no interest in vB4 or vB5. I wish someone had a revert script, I would buy that.

My experience with XF is none.

Thanks for the input.
 
Digital Doctor said:
The latest IPB directly copied Xenforo's amazing Alerts. Kudos for stealing adding that. If you can't innovate, at least regurgitate.
Click to expand...

Xenforo invented notifications and alerts?

As for being a resource hog, I feel this is an unfair statement to make. Are people complaining about IPB being a resource hog? Yes, they are. However, have any of you actually considered it may very well be in part due to IPB's success as a forum solution? How many of those comments come from someone with zilch experience, running IPB off of a shared hosting account?

Rootzwiki seems to be running just fine on IPB :

3556 users are online (in the past 15 minutes)

1997 members, 1556 guests, 3 anonymous users

Lets see if anyone could get a comment on how much they like or dislike IPB.
 
whyweprotest said:
Is it now? Would like to hear first hand experience since that's where I'm likely going to.
Click to expand...
Converted from vB3 to XF around 1 month ago. Traffic tanked hard - for 1 day:)


All metrics are up: Member activity, engagement, likes, conversations all up. Guest traffic from search engines up. Revenue up ~5x from what it was a month ago.
All urls were 301 redirected, vBSEO links are 301 redirected and a big thing for me was that I also pulled all my old static html pages (pre forum) into the XF Pages system, Enhanced the Pages with the help of ragtek and now have one tidy package of everything under XF.

Lawsuit, slow development etc. whatever. Ain't skeered.

Moving to XF was the best thing that we ever did for our community.
Well, free stuff Friday's were pretty successful too ;)
 
whyweprotest said:
Is it now? Would like to hear first hand experience since that's where I'm likely going to.
Click to expand...
I have a license. If you want to switch to a company that implements features that should have been present from the start of the previous release, software that has far too much bloat, bug filled editors that have been broken since implementation and if you like old web technology then IPB is the way to go. ;)
 
IPB (Invision Power Board) uses more resources and requires more resources than even vBulletin. Even the basic load of the software with no add-ons or other modifications, uses more resources than vBulletin and XenForo, combined.

Most of their modification are paid (majority). So I open you keep an open wallet if you want to do anything beyond the stock install.

And finally, their company from my own experience and opinion is completely lacking ethics and morals.
 
whyweprotest is entitled to his opinion, as are we.

You might be taking the jump from XF to IPB but for every person that does that there's at least one waiting to do the opposite.

The discussion is pointless, really.

I think Shelley said it the best in her post.

And my little note to the OP:

Ask the same question on the boards of IPB, SMF, PHPBB, vBulletin and the conversation will be identical.

Best advice is Shelley's. Basically, use the demo versions of each software, read the documentation, visit the support forums. Make your own decision it will then always be the right one.
 
melbo said:
Converted from vB3 to XF around 1 month ago. Traffic tanked hard - for 1 day:)


All metrics are up: Member activity, engagement, likes, conversations all up. Guest traffic from search engines up. Revenue up ~5x from what it was a month ago.
All urls were 301 redirected, vBSEO links are 301 redirected and a big thing for me was that I also pulled all my old static html pages (pre forum) into the XF Pages system, Enhanced the Pages with the help of ragtek and now how one tidy package of everything under XF.

Lawsuit, slow development etc. whatever. Ain't skeered.

Moving to XF was the best thing that we ever did for our community.
Well, free stuff Friday's were pretty successful too ;)
Click to expand...
That's nice to hear, eventho it has little to do with IPB.

Pereira said:
I have a license. If you want to switch to a company that implements features that should have been present from the start of the previous release, software that has far too much bloat, bug filled editors that have been broken since implementation and if you like old web technology then IPB is the way to go. ;)
Click to expand...
I could say the same about XF, where is the industry standard mobile support? Oh, have to pay a third party for that to be developed since it's not in the core unlike with VB and IPB. Where is XF's merge post into thread moderation tool? StopForumSpam support? What about ipv6? These are all things that have been talked about up to two years ago. I rather go with a company that implements features a little later than hoped for than not at all. IPB's release cycle is solid, can't say the same about XF.

Adam Howard said:
IPB (Invision Power Board) uses more resources and requires more resources than even vBulletin. Even the basic load of the software with no add-ons or other modifications, uses more resources than vBulletin and XenForo, combined.

Most of their modification are paid (majority). So I open you keep an open wallet if you want to do anything beyond the stock install.

And finally, their company from my own experience and opinion is completely lacking ethics and morals.
Click to expand...
Most of the XF addons used by myself are paid for, the only reason a move to IPB is not yet happening is that some of these addons need to be ported to IPB meaning both a loss of the initial purchase and requires some significant development time, which equates to more expenses.

That's not something I can pin on IPB tho, it's hardly IPB's fault that XF declines into being an orphaned product. If anything it's my own fault for buying into XF, lesson learned and I can't wait till it's over and done with.
 
Chris Deeming said:
.

Best advice is Shelley's. Basically, use the demo versions of each software, read the documentation, visit the support forums. Make your own decision it will then always be the right one.
Click to expand...

Yaeh, try and visit the different forums for some weeks. Is there a friendy community, etc. Also look at the offtopic/chit forums (I am not kidding) It teels something about the interest of people going to site and have some friendly time with the community, do people actually voluntarily go to the forum and spend some time?

I remember the old vbulletin days when there was often interesting things in chit chat, when the community was active.
Now look at this https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forumdisplay.php/6-Chit-Chat
 

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