Extremely Frustrated

Marc

Well-known member
OK first of all I know there's nothing much anyone can do about it at present, however wanted to voice a frustration that I think many others will be going through as well.

As far as I'm concerned xenForo is blowing the competition out of the water completly with regards to performance and the way you are going about things. I have seen things happen on here that I have asked for over and over at other forums, the latest one being the video from Kier with the eclipse intgration. Something simple to most I know, however to some of us its like golddust and a starting point. These things other companies seem to forget.

I currently use invision. Now Im not gonna start an invision bashing thread as I dont like others doing it, however I feel unlike a year or so ago, they are also starting to lose the plot. So its time for me to move.

Now my frustration. My community is based on huskies. The lifelifes of my forum are based around forum chat, event management and photographic content. Therefore these three things Im gonna really struggle to get over to xenForo I really really want to do so. I am a sql developer that codes a fair amount of windows forms applications. I have never done any web programming and to be honest the thought of it at the moment is overwhelming (although I have just started a PHP college course as until I get the basics I get bored with books as they start talkin about what a variable is etc and it bores the hell out of me, so I need to be forced to sit and listen).

I have been trying unsuccessfully to convert IPB over to xenForo. I simply dont have the knowledge to do it consistantly enough to trust trying to get mine over, so I will have to wait for an official converter. However even after that I will be forced to wait for someone to get a solution to move over my albums to a third party gallery over here (once there is one available) that successfully connects everything back to its users.


You can imagine its driving me nuts!!!!! LOL


Anyways ... Moan over. :)
 
There is always solution for any problem.
How important is your community/website to you (and your business)?

There are chance that what you need for your community will never see an addon. What to do?
Hire some talented coders to code it for you.

I paid close to $1,000 here already for 3,4 mods that I need for my site. Some of these mods will be made by some coders or available by XF at some point. Who knows but I want to be control of the future of my site, not dependent on anyone else.

And from my experience, everything I asked was done beyond my expectation.

If your event management, photo contents are essential, put up a paid mod request and put $$$ on the pricetag.

I can understand if you don't have money to afford that. But it is what it is. If you NEED something, pay for it.
 
Completely agree ..... However to be honest the reason I am learning PHP at present is because as a developer its pretty frustrating. I know the concept of how I would move everything, just not how to do it LOL ... If that makes sence.

I do understand I could pay someone to do this, and yes money would be an issue at present. However as you said, it is what it is. Doesnt stop me bein frustrated LOL
 
Marc, you need to join the Xenforo 'geek party' man !!!

geek_party.jpg
 
Marc, I'm in the same boat, I even have 26 years experience as a developer and I know many languages (Assembler, C, C++, C#, Gupta, Pascal, Occam, ....) but I simply don't have the time to learn PHP to become a good PHP developer.
But I will start a PC, maybe I can help you with the conversion...
 
I can relate to a degree.. I own a Doberman board and it was rocking under vB3.. i fell for the underhanded tactics of the new owners (IB) and bought into the vB4 pre sale and all the hype.. And upgraded? to vB4 the day it was declared stable.. My forum went from a huge success to nothing in a matter of days.. I spent almost every waking hour fixing broken core applications.. It was all i could do to add features and purchase plugins to stay in the game.. I felt i was trapped as i had the suite with blogs and the CMS.. And a handful of other premium plugins to earn revenue.. Not only did my forum start to feel like it had cancer, but the cost of running vB4 went through the roof, (maintenance and server fees) When i stumbled on XF it was a a no brainer to move when the time was right.. i was also waiting for a cpl plugins to become available.. specifically a Joomla bridge and a gallery.. (either of which or available to this day) But circumstances made it imperative that i get off of vB asap...

To say i was stressed would have been a huge understatement.. But after a full year on vB4 i had to do something as things were getting worse and worse every week.. I lost interest in the forum and hated logging in every day because i knew id have an inbox full of new problems and or complaints.. So the day finally came it decided to install a test site and invited my members of two different communities to register and play around test stuff out and run XF through its paces.. Within the first couple days, My moderators were begging me to move over to XF a cpl days after that so where the members that took the time to test XF.. So i went ahead and migrated a smaller Canine forum to see how it would go... Besides the permission issue it was smooth as silk.. members loved it and almost instantly registrations started improving and all this was without a single redirect..

Finally a month later i did the unthinkable and left a few thousand dollars behind and took the plunge in my primary forum.. I had a popular arcade, Albums where loaded to the core with thousands of pictures.. vBseo, a link directory, a chat room, a CMS, and a premium donations plugin.. All i could think about was what are my members going to do or say without these plugins???

So i finally made a thread saying we were moving for better or worse and listed what we wouldnt have anymore.. told my members to save their albums if they wanted to keep the pictures safe.. and finally just did it.. two months later i have yet to recieve a single complaint and my forum is back on track already picking up right where i left off. as a matter of fact my analytics are now better then they have ever been in three years.. Im happier then ive been in a year and best of all i now have the time to be an active contributing member of my own site rather then a full time tech guy..

The moral of this story????? No regrets and frankly im much happier and so are my members. so far the only thing they really miss is their chat room..
 
I can relate to a degree.. I own a Doberman board and it was rocking under vB3.. i fell for the underhanded tactics of the new owners (IB) and bought into the vB4 pre sale and all the hype.. And upgraded? to vB4 the day it was declared stable.. My forum went from a huge success to nothing in a matter of days.. I spent almost every waking hour fixing broken core applications.. It was all i could do to add features and purchase plugins to stay in the game.. I felt i was trapped as i had the suite with blogs and the CMS.. And a handful of other premium plugins to earn revenue.. Not only did my forum start to feel like it had cancer, but the cost of running vB4 went through the roof, (maintenance and server fees) When i stumbled on XF it was a a no brainer to move when the time was right.. i was also waiting for a cpl plugins to become available.. specifically a Joomla bridge and a gallery.. (either of which or available to this day) But circumstances made it imperative that i get off of vB asap...

To say i was stressed would have been a huge understatement.. But after a full year on vB4 i had to do something as things were getting worse and worse every week.. I lost interest in the forum and hated logging in every day because i knew id have an inbox full of new problems and or complaints.. So the day finally came it decided to install a test site and invited my members of two different communities to register and play around test stuff out and run XF through its paces.. Within the first couple days, My moderators were begging me to move over to XF a cpl days after that so where the members that took the time to test XF.. So i went ahead and migrated a smaller Canine forum to see how it would go... Besides the permission issue it was smooth as silk.. members loved it and almost instantly registrations started improving and all this was without a single redirect..

Finally a month later i did the unthinkable and left a few thousand dollars behind and took the plunge in my primary forum.. I had a popular arcade, Albums where loaded to the core with thousands of pictures.. vBseo, a link directory, a chat room, a CMS, and a premium donations plugin.. All i could think about was what are my members going to do or say without these plugins???

So i finally made a thread saying we were moving for better or worse and listed what we wouldnt have anymore.. told my members to save their albums if they wanted to keep the pictures safe.. and finally just did it.. two months later i have yet to recieve a single complaint and my forum is back on track already picking up right where i left off. as a matter of fact my analytics are now better then they have ever been in three years.. Im happier then ive been in a year and best of all i now have the time to be an active contributing member of my own site rather then a full time tech guy..

The moral of this story????? No regrets and frankly im much happier and so are my members. so far the only thing they really miss is their chat room..

Wish I had this option I really do, however my forum is as much gallery orientated as it is forum orientated at the moment. Its not so much a "would my members be ok with it" as knowing they would definately not do. I am studying hard at the moment to learn php as there is no way I am not moving over to XF. It is going to happen one way or another.

Nice to see someone else with a specific canine breed forum btw :) Should swap some ideas sometime lol
 
Marc if you hunt around the forums there's someone mooting a gallery who was asking for input.

Good luck with the migration from IPB :)
 
We're forming a small network. See the affiliate banners in the footer. ;)
I even have a webmasters forum specifically for canine forum admins. ;) unfortunately its closed atm because i had to use one of my XF licenses on another forum, so right now its hidden behind a htaccess file .. when i get a new license i can just reopen it as its already installed and loaded.
 
I even have a webmasters forum specifically for canine forum admins. ;) unfortunately its closed atm because i had to use one of my XF licenses on another forum, so right now its hidden behind a htaccess file .. when i get a new license i can just reopen it as its already installed and loaded.
THAT is a great idea. It will probably always be a smaller forum because I don't think there are thousands of pet forums out there, but that's ok.
It'll be a good one!


maybe i should start up my long-considered shar pei forum :)
Sure, why not! Shar pei's are a pretty popular breed.
 
Sure, why not! Shar pei's are a pretty popular breed.
they also have a few issues that are pretty regularly encountered by new pei owners, such as fsf/swollen hock (familial shar-pei fever), entropion requiring eye tacking, food allergies, behavioural problems, etc. new owners end up with a lot of questions!
in reality, unless one is prepared to take dog-ownership quite seriously, the shar-pei is not a suggested breed. they have a high rate of abandonment because people arent prepared for the vet bills or the aggressive disposition. its a pretty sad situation, but unfortunately most people dont do any research before getting a dog :(
 
they also have a few issues that are pretty regularly encountered by new pei owners, such as fsf/swollen hock (familial shar-pei fever), entropion requiring eye tacking, food allergies, behavioural problems, etc. new owners end up with a lot of questions!
in reality, unless one is prepared to take dog-ownership quite seriously, the shar-pei is not a suggested breed. they have a high rate of abandonment because people arent prepared for the vet bills or the aggressive disposition. its a pretty sad situation, but unfortunately most people dont do any research before getting a dog :(
No they don't. JRT's aren't for everyone either.
 
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