Have very large forum - Thinking of jumping to XF over VB5 - Have questions

Dennis Olson

Dennis Olson

Member
  • It looks like the vBulletin product is in serious trouble, and I'm thinking of jumping ship in favor of this product. I was hoping that you'd be able to give me your thoughts as to the pros and cons of the jump, as well as some insight into what's happening with the apparent decline of the vBulletin product.

    I have also heard mixed things about the xenForo product, and was hoping too that you might address some of them.

    Any insight you could provide would be most appreciated.
  • I'm actually interested in XF in terms of:

    - Featureset vs. vB4.1.x. What does XF do that vB4 did not, and, to the best of your recollection, vice versa. (Note that even though I have the CMS component of vB4, I've never used it.)

    - Ability to support large fora (mine is 33GB or so at this point)

    - Ability to support 1000+ concurrent users (depending on server capabilities of course)

    - Customizeability / add-ons (such as what is offered via vbulletin.org)

    - Import functionality from vB4 to XF.

    - Richness of settings and options in XF as compared to the AdminCP in vB4.

    - Timeliness and satisfaction overall with tech support

    - Forward growth path? How stable is this company, and how well funded? How likely is it to be in business a decade form now? (I know that's kind-of an impossible question, but I have to ask it.)

    - Mobile device compatibility and functionality. How are mobile devices supported by this product? Is there an app that iOS and Android users would have to download? What is it called? Is there an addition for the XF software that must be purchased? What is the cost if so?

    - Are there other forum software products that, in your personal opinion, have roughly the equivalent featureset to XF and vB? What are they?​
 
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rainmotorsports said:
Are they based on post count or are they actual member groups? The user banners may fill rank depending on your needs.
Click to expand...

The titles and rank images are based entirely on post count. Gotta have it. That's pretty close to a deal breaker, unfortunately.

ETA: However, the values are duplicated across multiple usergroups to maintain consistency. vB has rank by usergroup by post count.
 
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Dennis Olson said:
The titles and rank images are based entirely on post count. Gotta have it. That's pretty close to a deal breaker, unfortunately.

ETA: However, the values are duplicated across multiple usergroups to maintain consistency. vB has rank by usergroup by post count.
Click to expand...
I think it can be done by some template editing (like postbit template on vb?), however i am not sure. Maybe other member can help :)
 
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Not sure how many ranks you have but I think the user upgrade system supports by post count. I'd have to check. Can automatically move the users to a group based on criteria.

That said plugins should or can easily exist for this.
 
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No usergroup changes are done for various post count levels.

There are two staff and four user-level default titles (which can be overridden by each user in the UserCP):

Administrator
Global Moderator
Member (initial)
Contributing Member (100 posts)
Senior Member (500 posts)
Veteran Member (1000 posts)

There are 8 rank insignia:

Admin
Moderator
0-100 posts
100-500 posts
500-1000 posts
1000-5000 posts
5,000-7,500 posts
7,500-10,000 posts

(or approximately)

rank images are not tied directly to title changes, as you can see. it's not a 1:1 relationship
 
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Dennis Olson said:
Okay Azhira, I see that now, and thanks!


But that method (forums allowed for a specific prefix) seems cumbersome. I have 25+ rooms, and each room has between 15-40 individual prefixes. It would take forever to set them up that way.
Click to expand...
As you are creating them assign them at that time. There is an option tab when you are creating that let's you assign them.
 
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Dennis Olson said:
  • I'm actually interested in XF in terms of:

    - Forward growth path? How stable is this company, and how well funded? How likely is it to be in business a decade form now? (I know that's kind-of an impossible question, but I have to ask it.)​
Click to expand...
  • ​
IMHO the only downside to Xenforo is the small development team. If Kier or Mike gets sick or something else happens (hopefully not) then it has a huge effect on XenForo. Thats my only concern. Business wise it's better to have 2 really good developers who have years of experience than a bunch of monkeys at vBulletin whose only goal is to take as much money from you as they can and make every decision short term to satisfy the share holders. But I expect that there will be growth in staff at a certain time for XenForo and I choose quality.

My forums are small compared to yours (only 3 million posts) but I'm really happy with the switch I made from vBulletin to XenForo.

And with the responsive design what is standard with XenForo I have seen an increase of visitors with mobile devices. No more need to use a 3rth party app for that :) I think you will be happy after the switch, there is a small learning curve, but the software feels better when you have worked with it some more.
 
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If your blunt question is "Does XenForo have all the features of vBulletin 4?" the answer is no. Why? Because vBulletin 4.0 contains a mountain of features developed over 10 years from vB1, vB2, and vB3. No forum software will ever have all those features! But realize that by having a million buttons and options, it's as much a curse as a blessing as the software is so complex and rickety, full of legacy code, that maintaining it is a nightmare. This is why IB is having so much trouble with vB4 and vB5 and part of why it took them 2 years just to get vB4 usable and after 2 years, vB5 is still essentially an early beta.

XenForo is an excellent forum product with a solid, modern foundation which is easier to build upon and will support all manner of modifications. While it does not have 87 million features, I would say it has nearly everything people care about and what was needed most from vB4. And if there is something missing, you can get that in the form of plugins.

People are asking you which features you use because we can recommend plugins and make sure that you have everything you need in your transition.

Also, I'm a bit puzzled why you are considering vB5 as it has less features than vB4 and is a platform in serious jeopardy at this point. It's being developed as a fat AJAX client app loaded up with thousands of lines of Javascript which is a horrible way to develop and which is why it takes 10-15 seconds to click on anything or get any page in vB5 to load. Run away!
 
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We specifically use:

- Custom titles and rank images based on post count
- Prefixes
- Threadbit "post icons"
- Thread "tags"
- Customized breadcrumbs in footer
- Forum "Quick Jump" via drop-down menus
- Users reading/have read a thread
- SOME people use the blog system (Not many though)
- Infractions/warnings with multiple predefined ones
- Private messaging
- Thread subscriptions
- Global email and/or PM to all members by usergroup
- Chatroom

If there are add-ons for this functionality, or if it's in the core product, then I'd be happy. Blogs aren't a showstopper, but that function would be a "nice to have". The chatroom component would also be a nice to have.
 
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Also, I'm a bit puzzled why you are considering vB5 as it has less features than vB4 and is a platform in serious jeopardy at this point. It's being developed as a fat AJAX client app loaded up with thousands of lines of Javascript which is a horrible way to develop and which is why it takes 10-15 seconds to click on anything or get any page in vB5 to load. Run away!

I was interested in it as the "standard upgrade path" for our existing installation. I knew nothing about the version until I started looking around prior to initiating the upgrade. What I read scared me off. Not only from the version upgrade, but from the product completely, now or in the future.
 
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Dennis Olson said:
  • It looks like the vBulletin product is in serious trouble, and I'm thinking of jumping ship in favor of this product. I was hoping that you'd be able to give me your thoughts as to the pros and cons of the jump, as well as some insight into what's happening with the apparent decline of the vBulletin product.

    I have also heard mixed things about the xenForo product, and was hoping too that you might address some of them.

    Any insight you could provide would be most appreciated.
  • I'm actually interested in XF in terms of:

    - Featureset vs. vB4.1.x. What does XF do that vB4 did not, and, to the best of your recollection, vice versa. (Note that even though I have the CMS component of vB4, I've never used it.)

    - Ability to support large fora (mine is 33GB or so at this point)

    - Ability to support 1000+ concurrent users (depending on server capabilities of course)

    - Customizeability / add-ons (such as what is offered via vbulletin.org)

    - Import functionality from vB4 to XF.

    - Richness of settings and options in XF as compared to the AdminCP in vB4.

    - Timeliness and satisfaction overall with tech support

    - Forward growth path? How stable is this company, and how well funded? How likely is it to be in business a decade form now? (I know that's kind-of an impossible question, but I have to ask it.)

    - Mobile device compatibility and functionality. How are mobile devices supported by this product? Is there an app that iOS and Android users would have to download? What is it called? Is there an addition for the XF software that must be purchased? What is the cost if so?

    - Are there other forum software products that, in your personal opinion, have roughly the equivalent featureset to XF and vB? What are they?​
Click to expand...
We installed XF this past January and haven't looked back. The community here is much more helpful, the product works as described, there is a growing pool of add-on products. It was the difference between night and day!

Jump in - the water is excellent.
 
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I would love to install this product. But before I install ANYTHING new, there has to be certain functionality to support the member community. The items in my earlier post are pretty much MUST HAVES.
 
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Before I converted my forum to xenForo I made a test conversion and played with it for a while before I made up my mind, I advise you to do the same. It's been 7 months since the move and I've been 100% pleased with xenForo.
 
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As a fellow semi large forum owner (about 3/4 of your size) I have been doing a lot of research and reading and trying to figure out a clear upgrade path from vb4 and I have had limited success. You are lucky in the fact you did not use the CMS, so you have a whole aspect I'm having to work on integrating you don't have to worry about which is good because mine has been *very* frustrating :)


For whatever its worth, some ramblings on my experiences so far are here; http://xenforo.com/community/thread...ted-a-vb4-suite-community-this-is-long.70714/


Not to say that XenForo isn't good, it certainly is and has a lot of excellent qualities. A community that is infinitely more active and accommodating than vb could ever hope to be anymore being the main one I think. You have a technical and programming background, so you've already got a 200% better chance of being successful than those of us that aren't :)
 
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Dennis,

Wanted to just add that I'm following this closely as well. I am researching moving a large vB3.x site to either vB5 or XF. It looks like my metrics are a bit larger than yours, but you're asking fantastic questions. The other alternative we've been considering is moving to Drupal.

Paul
 
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Hi @Dennis Olson , I've been considering the move to XF and like you, I have a 5.4M-post, 260k-user community that pretty much uses a lot of the stock features of vB4 and quite a few add-ons. I'd really appreciate a quick update on your findings so far. Thanks.
 
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This is just my opinion of course take as it you will.
I have been running forums for a very long time back when message boards were written in Perl.
In all those years the one thing that i have learned is this.

Forums are made for posting nothing more.

All the cms and other major addons like that are ridiculous IMO. The more garbage you add to your site the less likely you will be able to upgrade or move.
Need a CMS? Install Joomla and set your home button to it. Keep your forums for posting only, your life will be much simpler :)
 
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