Invision community Vs Xenforo

[Opus X]

invision has their alpha site online to to preview.

Invision Community 5

it does not look like all the stuff is available yet though.

 

[Deleted member 184953]

Incredible! It looks like a... forum.

 

[Opus X]

it does not like tor that well.
i wanted to see what the new editor is like.
i have not used it yet but it looks nice.
was told it was had some nice features if you use images.
from looking it has some neat features for user display options built in also.
looks like they are trying to give users some nice choices for how they want to see the site.
have you looked at it as a member or are you just making comments?

 

[RobinHood]

I don’t like how they make it so hard to find a basic what’s new page with all recent threads listed without all the other activity fluff.

 

[Deleted member 184953]

have you looked at it as a member or are you just making comments?

As a visitor and it looks like a forum.

 

[Opus X]

As a visitor and it looks like a forum.

try it as a member and to compare.
and of course it looks like a forum.
that is what the core is.
what is it supposed to look like?

 

[Opus X]

I don’t like how they make it so hard to find a basic what’s new page with all recent threads listed without all the other activity fluff.

i like the activity streams.
looks like you can also personalize them.

 

[RobinHood]

That's great, but as a new user I can't be arsed to configure all that. I want to click a button and see all the latest content.

The default activity feed (once you eventually find it) includes all sorts of nonsense like Jimbo like a picture of a cat and Fred changed his avatar. I couldn't care less about Jimbo or Fred's meta activity on the site, I'd like to see the current active topics and actual content.

 

[Ricsca]

I really like the articles section which finally looks like a wp blog, a structure that most people are now used to.

 

[Deleted member 184953]

what is it supposed to look like?

I must have connected at the wrong time but immediately the layout is totally different from what I saw this morning, now it looks a little more like something new...

 

[Forsaken]

i like the activity streams.
looks like you can also personalize them.
View attachment 308134

I was working with someone to do a similar add-on to this 2 years ago (ripped the idea from a CMS that I cannot remember currently), and the sites that used the early version saw almost no adoption of the feature. It was for the network of sites I had helped with running, and have since taken management over.

The add-on wasn't just for activity streams, but more about content curation and optimizing what users see based on their interests and preferences.

I think at the end of the day, we saw 5% adoption over a year, and decided that investing more into it was not entirely worth the effort at the time. This was after making a huge announcement and explaining the feature, making the feature very visible and obvious and rolling it out to multiple sites with high activity and a more technical member base.

I have played around with revisiting it and expanding it to be more than just curation, to also include cross-site recommendations and tying it into a newsletter or similar, however we would likely re-do it entirely at this point.

 

[Deleted member 184953]

It's not a revolution but we have to admit that it looks good, we're no longer on the forum of the 2000s... Besides, and, mea culpa, it looks more like a community tool than a forum. XF 3 better surprise us otherwise I'll sell my house to pay for a Invision Cloud plan...

 

[RobinHood]

Looks a lot better on desktop now that I look at it again.
I like the sidebar menu, much more scalable.
Side menu should maybe be collapsible on desktop?
The share this post button is so obviously broken, even in Alpha, that seems a bit odd.
I don't like how the postbit is the same colour as the rest of the message. I much prefer some distinction of areas, like how XF2 does it.
It's weird that the menu switches to the right side of the screen on mobile or narrow window width.
I like the thumbnail view of the gallery where aspect ratio is retained.
I don't like that there's no lightbox though to browse through the photos.
The big new topic button is good, but it should be content agnostic and ask you if you want to start a new topic, calendar event, post photo etc.
Also it doesn't seem very scalable, it should really have a searchable box to filter node results.
Not enough contrast in the colouring in certain places too, although very good in other places.
Button sizing seems a bit odd, the reply to this topic button is mahoosive compared to everything else.
It's weird having a start new topic button below the OP of the thread.
I like how the profile banners expand on click, that's nicely done, although the collapsed version is a bit thin, although a lightbox would probably still be fine as it doesn't shift the content on the page.
It's silly that the activity feed entries for gallery items don't have associated thumbnails.

Overall, meh. Still needs a lot of polish and some usability improvements IMO.

 

[RobinHood]

Font sizing in the search is pretty bad too. The entered search term is massive, yet the drop down filters are tiny.
You also can't select more than one content type to search for at a time, which seems like a silly arbitrary limitation.
I think that entire UX could be improved.

Edit: Font sizing in general in relation to various sections is odd too. Especially in thread view. the title is about double the normal content font size. It just feels a bit comically oversized and out of proportion.

 

[Ricsca]

let me get this straight, when I say that XF has been stuck for years you always attack me and say I'm a troll because in reality it's fine the way it is and now that you've seen a beta of invision 5 which is basically still the same as 4 except for the fact that it has a new graphic design and a structure more suited to 2024, are you all getting excited?

 

[Deleted member 184953]

i will try the XF ignore feature now.

 

[Opus X]

yes the user interface has some glaring issues where things do not flow together.
i think that is why they posted it.
looks like they are already getting suggestions on what needs to be fixed?
i would have expected them to be further along with the consistency in looks though.
it does look promising.

 

[Opus X]

i like the way they handle when the menu over flows.
instead of giving an arrow to scroll they place in a more drop down.

this seems a lot more user friendly than a little arrow you can overlook.

 

[AjayJunkies]

I must have connected at the wrong time but immediately the layout is totally different from what I saw this morning, now it looks a little more like something new...

There's supposed to two themes available: one is default of the classic view of forums, and the other with a sidebar menu and a more modern forum layout.

 

[AjayJunkies]

I was working with someone to do a similar add-on to this 2 years ago (ripped the idea from a CMS that I cannot remember currently), and the sites that used the early version saw almost no adoption of the feature. It was for the network of sites I had helped with running, and have since taken management over.

The add-on wasn't just for activity streams, but more about content curation and optimizing what users see based on their interests and preferences.

I think at the end of the day, we saw 5% adoption over a year, and decided that investing more into it was not entirely worth the effort at the time. This was after making a huge announcement and explaining the feature, making the feature very visible and obvious and rolling it out to multiple sites with high activity and a more technical member base.

I have played around with revisiting it and expanding it to be more than just curation, to also include cross-site recommendations and tying it into a newsletter or similar, however we would likely re-do it entirely at this point.

That's interesting! You were probably ahead of your time.

What I think is challenging is that users don't want to configure their optimization (certainly not at the level of detail that some platforms might provide). We've become so accustomed to optimized and personalized content.