If XenForo's finished, what's next?

Mouth

Mouth

Well-known member
With the lack of new version release, lack of information on development progress, purposeful intent to ignore concerns and communicate ... all while months and years ago saying XenForo would do better at just these things, it's logical to give thought to and consider what's the next step for your site and community if XenForo is finished.

What would be your next step in this scenario?
 
Mouth said:
With the lack of new version release, lack of information on development progress, purposeful intent to ignore concerns and communicate ... all while months and years ago saying XenForo would do better at just these things, it's logical to give thought to and consider what's the next step for your site and community if XenForo is finished.

What would be your next step in this scenario?
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Thats nutty...
 
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Mouth said:
With the lack of new version release, lack of information on development progress, purposeful intent to ignore concerns and communicate ... all while months and years ago saying XenForo would do better at just these things, it's logical to give thought to and consider what's the next step for your site and community if XenForo is finished.

What would be your next step in this scenario?
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Good question; that's a big if though. And when is forum software actually finished?

Many people consider VBulletin to be 'Finished" since VB4 came about, (well I do) But forums still run on it and they seem to post an update every month or so. If those updates are important, one could go there, I suppose. If they keep updating once a month, and xf does nothing, VB might catch up with XF by 2036.
 
Keep in mind Discourse is free through self hosting since its open source, so naturally that is probably the best fallback someday IF Xenforo is no longer with us.
 
I imagine IF, and that's a big if IMO, that were to happen, my sites would stay on XF for some time. Even without updates, XF is still the best option for my sites.

If I had to do something else, I have no clue what I'd do. Haven't really given that much thought.
 
I’ll play devil’s advocate for a moment.

PHP is a very fast-moving ecosystem now. Standards evolve, major versions deprecate features quickly, and frameworks across the board push for stricter typing, modern patterns, and more rigorous security by default. Maintaining a codebase the size of XenForo’s—much of which dates back over a decade—is a huge ongoing task in itself, even before adding any new features.

Yes, the communication from the XF team hasn’t been ideal. But I don’t think that means XenForo is “finished.” If anything, the silence probably reflects the reality that modernising and upgrading this massive PHP platform takes serious time and caution. The forum software market is much smaller now than it was during the vBulletin era, and the expectations for stability are higher. One bad rushed release could break thousands of communities.

We also have to remember something important:
These threads don’t help motivation.

It’s easy to complain when we haven’t heard anything, but from a developer standpoint, it’s a lot harder to work under constant speculation, doom posts, and pressure. The team is working on 2.4—Slavik confirmed it— we knew it anyway - and they’ve always said they prefer to show things when they’re confident, not when they’re halfway done.

So while frustration is understandable, it’s also worth being realistic about the complexity behind the scenes. XenForo isn’t going anywhere. It just takes time to push a mature product forward without breaking the foundations that made it successful in the first place.
 
JoshA said:
We also have to remember something important:
These threads don’t help motivation.

It’s easy to complain when we haven’t heard anything, but from a developer standpoint, it’s a lot harder to work under constant speculation, doom posts, and pressure. The team is working on 2.4—Slavik confirmed it— we knew it anyway - and they’ve always said they prefer to show things when they’re confident, not when they’re halfway done.
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I agreed with everything you said, until this part. These threads, and comments like it, are a cause of the lack of communication. In my opinion, and I could be very wrong, if we had regular communication from the XF developers, a lot of this negativity would go away. The amount of negativity that's seen in these forums over the last year, or more, only started because of the lack of communication in the first place. Communication is one of the easiest things to fix, and something they promised to do better at, so the fact that still hasn't happened is why a lot of this negativity is happening.

Don't get me wrong, there has always been negativity within these forums (this isn't the update I wanted, you're taking too long, etc), but nothing like what we've seen in recent years. The main driver in all of this recent negativity is because of the lack of simple communication.

Again, this is all simply my opinion and I could be totally off-base. As easy as it is to communicate, something we all do every day already, why not just try that and see if it works? I'd never believe that they're so busy working that they don't have at least an hour per month to spend communicating with us here. Customer service is a huge part of any business and it's very easy to get right.
 
JoshA said:
We also have to remember something important:
These threads don’t help motivation.

It’s easy to complain when we haven’t heard anything, but from a developer standpoint, it’s a lot harder to work under constant speculation, doom posts, and pressure. The team is working on 2.4—Slavik confirmed it— we knew it anyway - and they’ve always said they prefer to show things when they’re confident, not when they’re halfway done.

So while frustration is understandable, it’s also worth being realistic about the complexity behind the scenes. XenForo isn’t going anywhere. It just takes time to push a mature product forward without breaking the foundations that made it successful in the first place.
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I don't think many of us are asking for much, other than a status update now and then. Hell, just 12 status posts a year, that's once a month, saying briefly in a couple sentences the status of each future version of XenForo 2.3.8, 2.4 and 3.0 and whatever else may be out there. Probably take a single staff member 20 minutes a month to query other staff, compile the info and post it.

I can't speak for others, but if I had that I'd feel a heck of a lot more informed and confident about the future of XenForo.

The only reasons this is not currently happening, has not been happening even after they say "we'll do better", are all bad.
 
mjda said:
I agreed with everything you said, until this part. These threads, and comments like it, are a cause of the lack of communication. In my opinion, and I could be very wrong, if we had regular communication from the XF developers, a lot of this negativity would go away. The amount of negativity that's seen in these forums over the last year, or more, only started because of the lack of communication in the first place. Communication is one of the easiest things to fix, and something they promised to do better at, so the fact that still hasn't happened is why a lot of this negativity is happening.

Don't get me wrong, there has always been negativity within these forums (this isn't the update I wanted, you're taking too long, etc), but nothing like what we've seen in recent years. The main driver in all of this recent negativity is because of the lack of simple communication.

Again, this is all simply my opinion and I could be totally off-base. As easy as it is to communicate, something we all do every day already, why not just try that and see if it works? I'd never believe that they're so busy working that they don't have at least an hour per month to spend communicating with us here. Customer service is a huge part of any business and it's very easy to get right.
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bzcomputers said:
I don't think many of us are asking for much, other than a status update now and then. Hell, just 12 status posts a year, that's once a month, saying briefly in a couple sentences the status of each future version of XenForo 2.3.8, 2.4 and 3.0 and whatever else may be out there. Probably take a single staff member 20 minutes a month to query other staff, compile the info and post it.

I can't speak for others, but if I had that I'd feel a heck of a lot more informed and confident about the future of XenForo.

The only reasons this is not currently happening, has not been happening even after they say "we'll do better", are all bad.
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I completely get where you’re both from — honestly, I don’t disagree that communication is the root cause of a lot of the frustration. Nobody here is asking for roadmaps with exact dates or daily dev logs. Even something as simple as a small monthly “here’s where things are at” post would go a long way.

But at the same time, I think it’s worth recognising that the tone of the community has also changed in a way that probably makes the XenForo team even less likely to want to post updates. It becomes a loop:
lack of communication → frustration → harsher threads → even less motivation to communicate.

I’m not defending the silence — just pointing out that both sides contribute to the atmosphere.

From a dev perspective, when you’re working on a large, old, highly-used codebase like XF, the last thing you want is to announce something too early and have it thrown back at you if timelines slip. Modernising PHP software at this scale isn’t quick, and they’re clearly choosing stability over rushing something out, which I personally prefer.

So yeah, I absolutely agree communication could and should improve. But I also think people sometimes underestimate how much work is happening behind the scenes and how demotivating the constant doom threads can be. If we can meet in the middle a bit — more communication from XF, and a bit more patience from the community — the whole situation would probably improve for everyone.
 
JoshA said:
But at the same time, I think it’s worth recognising that the tone of the community has also changed in a way that probably makes the XenForo team even less likely to want to post updates. It becomes a loop:
lack of communication → frustration → harsher threads → even less motivation to communicate.

I’m not defending the silence — just pointing out that both sides contribute to the atmosphere.
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The point is that the lack of communication started the loop. For many years we saw the developers both develop a great product, while simultaneously engaging with the community. They set the standard that we all came to love and enjoy about XF. By suddenly stopping the engagement, the developers shouldn't be upset with the customers for showing their frustration with them changing the standards that they set, and we came to rely on. Getting back to that standard would be the single-most effective way to restore customer goodwill. The developers shouldn't look at it as submitting to a demand as much as communication from them is simply an investment into their own brand reputation and would probably help with customer retention.

JoshA said:
From a dev perspective, when you’re working on a large, old, highly-used codebase like XF, the last thing you want is to announce something too early and have it thrown back at you if timelines slip. Modernising PHP software at this scale isn’t quick, and they’re clearly choosing stability over rushing something out, which I personally prefer.
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One issue is that they did share timelines, and they didn't even come close. I'd argue that posting timelines is not a great idea unless you're absolutely certain you can meet them because if you post it, even if you say it's just a goal, the masses will try to hold you to that. I think regular, brief updates are much better, even if they don't share much detail. A simple "we're still working" is better than just dead silence.

bzcomputers said:
Probably take a single staff member 20 minutes a month to query other staff, compile the info and post it.
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Some time ago, I offered to do this for free. 🤣
 
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Mouth said:
With the lack of new version release, lack of information on development progress, purposeful intent to ignore concerns and communicate ... all while months and years ago saying XenForo would do better at just these things, it's logical to give thought to and consider what's the next step for your site and community if XenForo is finished.

What would be your next step in this scenario?
Click to expand...
Have you seen Ready Player One? The Oasis is probably what comes after forums ... and even then ... forums will still be the backbone because nothing organizes a community better. So jumping ship because we didn’t get a monthly dev diary feels a bit dramatic.
(FWIW, not attacking you ... I’ve read a ton of your posts here and appreciate your contributions.)

Look .. I get wanting communication .. Everybody likes updates ... but if “no monthly status post” is deal-breaker territory you might as well chuck your Mac, PC, iPhone, Android, Outlook, Gmail, and half the software you use daily into a ditch. None of them give you a play-by-play of what they’re coding every month either.

Not defending XF for sport here .... I’ve been a dev since the early 2000s, now I manage F500 and DoD dev teams .... and I can tell you straight: no serious software shop gives customers running commentary on dev cycles. They ship when it’s ready ... that’s the job.

And XF isn’t a 300-person shop with a PR team. Every time they post even a screenshot or teaser they get dragged into days of Q&A, speculation, doomsday threads and “BUT WHAT ABOUT XYZ???” posts ... which is not spent coding. So eventually they'll stop touching the hot stove.

Spitballing here, but if people really want real-time comms maybe XF could sell limited seats to a “Dev Community” tier ... early access builds, WIP features a spot to geek out without derailing these forums. Then that crew could help keep us customers updated.

Bottom line .... frustration is fair .. but “XF must be dead” because they’re not posting every few weeks? Nah.
The software still works, still leads its niche and usually the quietest dev teams are the ones actually getting **** done.
 
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