I'm Really Impressed

DRE

Well-known member
After setting up my new XenForo forum www.BlackGamer.net/b a couple weeks ago, only thing keeping me switching my vbulletin 4 forum over, www.the8thlegion.com/forum.php is the absence of a casino and arcade. Also, my vb4 site has instant notifications. Is there a modification for instant notifications for Xenforo?

Here are some of the reasons that I want to switch over.

1. Wordpress integration. I integrated my vb4 site with wordpress but I couldn't find a modification that would make wordpress articles into threads so that when people comment, it will also show up on the forum. I would probably have to pay someone to do this for me but I've already spent enough time fixing lampwright's wordpress/vbulletin 3 modification just so that it could use avatars from vb4. Don't want to deal with it anymore. I am able to do threads and share avatars with wordpress and xenforo with no problems.

Example:

Wordpress: http://www.blackgamer.net/2011/09/16/the-demise-of-black-gamer/
XenForo: http://www.blackgamer.net/b/threads/the-demise-of-black-gamer.28/

2. Easy Page creation.

Kind of speaks for itself.

3. Easy Navigation of Templates

Oh Goood I hate navigating templates in vb4.

I know Xenforo has a lot of nice features but those 3 alone have impressed me the most. I have spent a huge amount of time in vbulletin 4 Templates and am still disgusted at how laborious it is to navigate at times. This is probably the number one seller for me.

The main reason I decided to try XenForo in the first place is because of vBulletin 4's update version process. Like sh!t will be broken that has no business being broken. Stuff is broke on my site right now after 4.1.4. I'm scared to upgrade anymore. When you create a new style, it doesn't let you. That was a bug they supposedly fixed for 4.1.5 Okay, well... why was that broken in the first place when it was working fine in 4.1.3? You see what I'm saying? That's just one example of some annoying sh!t I can't take anymore.

Then there's this issue about CSS Sprites. I spent a week or two trying to get that working right and it still sucked. No speed or score difference. I'm tired of my vb4 site having a score in the 80s no matter what I do. Added a CDN, added vboptimise, vbsupercharged, optimised images, still get lower 80s score. XF skinning is easy. I am pretty much done. My XF board is in the 90s and I still do not have any CSS Sprite stuff up. I am amazed. A faster site = higher SEO.

Addon's Xenforo's still missing before I can convert my vb4 site over.

Arcade (Coming soon?)
Casino
X-Box Live Leaderboards
Instant Alerts
vBookie.

^^^That's all I'll really be missing. I shouldn't even count the arcade since one is supposedly almost finished. Until then members can play Facebook games on their site with this zynga page: http://www.blackgamer.net/b/pages/zynga/

I did a speed test just now. My vb4 forum home is now getting a 88/100. URLJET upgraded their servers a couple weeks ago so I know it was their doing as I have done nothing to my site recently to increase the score after I gave up diddle-daddling with CSS Sprites.

My new XF forum is getting a 93/100. That's still high enough to warrant me crossing over, absence of add-ons I want be damned. Speed > All. You could say that if I spent more time on my vb4's site that I could get it faster than my xf site but then you would also assume I have the time, money and patience for that which I do not.

I think I'll just wait until 1.1 is here before I switch over.
 
Great post.
Thanks for your first hand account of xF / vB.

A faster site = higher SEO.

I did a speed test just now. My vb4 forum home is now getting a 87/100. URLJET upgraded their servers a couple weeks ago so I know it was their doing as I have done nothing to my site recently to increase the score after I gave up diddle-daddling with CSS Sprites.

My new XF forum is getting a 93/100. That's still high enough to warrant me crossing over, absence of add-ons I want be damned. Speed > All. You could say that if I spent more time on my vb4's site that I could get it faster than my xf site but then you would also assume I have the time, money and patience for that which I do not.

I think I'll just wait until 1.1 is here before I switch over.
:)

Do you mean that Speed is the most important thing for you .... or .... that speed is one of the most important things for good SEO ? Or both ?
 
Great post.
Thanks for your first hand account of xF / vB.

:)

Do you mean that Speed is the most important thing for you .... or .... that speed is one of the most important things for good SEO ? Or both ?
YW and yeah I love speed because my internet is dirt slow at home. I actually get way less than .35mbps dl speed. Using slow AT&T dsl because I lost my cable internet. That's another reason speed is very important to me. I can't even stream movies or watch most youtube videos on my slow ass internet. So yes, Speed > All. Sounds like a selfish reason to be concerned with speed but it's the most important one. What's the point of me running a site if it takes too long for me to load?

I created a Forum Comparison Chart for the members on my site who are also members of other boards. With this they can see how much faster or slower their boards are in comparison to mine and why I have decided to switch over to XenForo. One of the forums on that chart is a XF forum and is actually one of the slowest. Before, I had assumed that all XenForo forums were fast. That right there tells me that site speed is not always dependent on the software. Still though, because I am able to do so much in XF in so little time compared to vB4, I am TRULY impressed. I feel like I'm already done setting up my XenForo board and it's only been two weeks. I can now go out to some colleges and recruit members when I have the time.
 
Google loves speed. I'm sure you already know this, but perhaps others will find this useful.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html
Yeah I've read that article before. I had also studied some Google Adsense articles when I was researching Google Adsense Channels and learned that Google punishes sites that are too slow. You get less money. Kind of sucks. It's like they are forcing webmasters to step their game up but it's all good I like challenges.
 
You get less money.

From my understanding, google takes the whole site rendering process into account. If you have ad banners on your pages, these will slow down your page load and in the end your SEO suffers and your adsense income. If google does not make an exception there for their own services, google analytics and even the adsense banner itself slows down the page load and by itself slows down adsense income and SEO.
 
From my understanding, google takes the whole site rendering process into account. If you have ad banners on your pages, these will slow down your page load and in the end your SEO suffers and your adsense income. If google does not make an exception there for their own services, google analytics and even the adsense banner itself slows down the page load and by itself slows down adsense income and SEO.
Correct. I just realized my forum speed score would go up if I disabled google ads and my xenforo score is probably high since i have not activated any ads at all.
 
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