It's time to move from MyBB to XenForo

[deslocotoco]

Hello, my name is Peter and i run a small news website in Brazil. So, sorry about my bad english. After some study i decided that is time to move to XenForo and pay this worthy price, the competition forum software is not what i want.

I started my little enterprise 3 years ago, and in the beginning was hard and learned from my mistakes. I started as a forum (nobody there), then, moved to focus on my news channel (today i have 35k followers on my social media account), then i starting paying some attention to my Forum too, and finally i lost everything in a bad upgrade.

Now, I'm starting the Forum all over again. Just when my Forum started the creation of a critical mass (many forums don't even get here), that's was a big bump for me.

Now I'm back on the track because i believe in my project.

I had great(ish) experiences with MyBB, but is not for me anymore. I think the principal problem with opensource CM is that they require some knowledge in programming skills, MySQL, DB's, php and it's ok, it's the nature of open source programs, but I'm not a programmer. In the best case scenario I a'm a poor administrator without money to contract some people to do the hard programing job. But i have some I have some thirst for learning, i did a lot of customization with basic php and html skills, installed a lot of plugins, and i was doing great. Learning, learning, learning. Unfortunately time is money and i had to put this on the account too.

Every time that i upgraded my MyBB i faced a new problem. A incompatible theme with an error, a incompatible plugin showing error all over my settings, the constant need of support for doing some necessary things and the most of all, the lack of features. Everything that make a MyBB forum good is the need of plugins. I don't have a alert system by default, i don't have a great visual by default, i don't have "reaction post" by default, and the mobile support never existed by default too.

And by that, we assume that we need support to make things right, specially with plugins, customization and error correction.

Don't get me wrong, the community people really do a great job helping people for free, but you have to wait, test the solution, report back, test again another workaround, wait a little more, hope for the forum don't get any problem by himself, and BAM! After one month there is a new upgrade available to install again with the same insecurity that a noob always have with more modifications that you need to do.

The community is incredible, really. I always recommend MyBB for first times runners with some knowledge skills, but, like most of the users, I'm a administrator, not a programmer or a Microsoft or Linux Certified Partner. They make a great forum system for free and you just have to keep the copyright material on the foot of the website.

I changed my hosting company now, with more personalized service. They are helping me a lot too.

But, after my 3 years experience with MyBB, i decided that is time to move on.

Sorry for the contextualization, but i need to know that I'm doing the right thing in buying a XenForo license. Now i have a solid community of readers and clients and i promised a solidus Forum system. XenForo is the right choice? Worth the price? It will make easy for me?

- I checked my host company and they meet all demands for installing a XenForo. What i have to do to install? Just upload and follow the Install Wizard?
- What kind of features XenForo have? I did not find in the sale page.
- XenForo have a alert system integrated and that is great, is a must feature. Can i have some 'post reactions' too? Like, not like, heart, ****, etc?
- There is any "must have" premium addons that i have to buy right now or i can buy after my Forum grow?
- There is any integrated register feature with Twitter/Facebook? This is great for my audience (most of then are on Twitter).
- Can i have some basic customization on XenForo? Like changing some colors, using a Forum Icon for each category, for posting threads, etc?
- There is suffix option right? And i can customize then? For exemple: [SUPPORT], [CRITIC], [COMPLAIN] for each forum category?
- What kind of widgets and addons is avaiable? Any premium ones? Any must have ones?
- Is easy to set up a Google Ads banner on the footer, header and side box?
- Can i customize the top links? Like: "Return to the News Portal", "Donate", "Check This Link" and etc?
- Can i embed tweets, facebook posts and YouTube videos?
- Any more thing that i have to know before buying the license?
- Can you guys recommend me a tips/tricks post for first runners on XenForo? Helps me a lot.

Thanks guys. I hope my Forum can make some success.

 

[l3ta]

XenForo is the right choice? Worth the price? It will make easy for me?

Hi there, Peter! Welcome to the community. XF is absolutely the right choice and all those features you want are available either by default and/or through add-ons and customizations made by trusted members of this community, so you are covered

 

[sbj]

1. - I checked my host company and they meet all demands for installing a XenForo. What i have to do to install? Just upload and follow the Install Wizard?
2. - What kind of features XenForo have? I did not find in the sale page.
3. - XenForo have a alert system integrated and that is great, is a must feature. Can i have some 'post reactions' too? Like, not like, heart, ****, etc?
4. - There is any "must have" premium addons that i have to buy right now or i can buy after my Forum grow?
5. - There is any integrated register feature with Twitter/Facebook? This is great for my audience (most of then are on Twitter).
6. - Can i have some basic customization on XenForo? Like changing some colors, using a Forum Icon for each category, for posting threads, etc?
7. - There is suffix option right? And i can customize then? For exemple: [SUPPORT], [CRITIC], [COMPLAIN] for each forum category?
8. - What kind of widgets and addons is avaiable? Any premium ones? Any must have ones?
9. - Is easy to set up a Google Ads banner on the footer, header and side box?
10. - Can i customize the top links? Like: "Return to the News Portal", "Donate", "Check This Link" and etc?
11. - Can i embed tweets, facebook posts and YouTube videos?
12. - Any more thing that i have to know before buying the license?
13. - Can you guys recommend me a tips/tricks post for first runners on XenForo? Helps me a lot.

I am assuming you want to start with a XF2 version. You should read the manual page for XF2.
https://xenforo.com/xf2-docs/manual/

1. Yes. See: https://xenforo.com/xf2-docs/manual/install-upgrade/
2. https://xenforo.com/community/forums/have-you-seen/
3. Post reactions is not a core feature. You need to buy an addon for that, I believe there are 2 paid addons for that.
4. You can buy an addon whenever you want, you don't need to buy anything at all.
5. Yes, it is in the core, see the manual to set it up.
6. You can do basic customization by changing values in style properties in Admin control panel or use the extra.less template to change things ( you need knowledge in css), for example to set up forum icons, but there is also a free addon for that (for forum icons). You can use the demo of XF before you buy it and see what kind of things you can do. https://xenforo.com/demo/
7. Yes.
8. Hundreds of addons are available, paid and free (but mostly paid). https://xenforo.com/community/resources/categories/xenforo-2.42/ and not many widgets.
9. There are many templates for ads, you can paste your code there.
10. Yes.
11. They are embedded by default but there is also a very popular free addon for that which embedds tens of other sites.
12. Ask yourself if there is something you really want to have and see if that is possible. Most things are only possible with addons and most of them are paid. So make sure you are happy with the core, before you buy it.
13. See the manual, use the search here as everything was asked before.

 

[Vekseid]

Just finished converting my 2M post / 9M PM MyBB install over to Xenforo. Definitely worth it in my opinion.

- Any more thing that i have to know before buying the license?

Xenforo is missing a number of features that MyBB has, especially on the Administration end. It is missing a ton of the convenience features that MyBB and SMF have from an admin perspective. "What do you mean I can't click on a group to go to its configuration? Why can't I reverse the sort order?" ...

Depending on how addicted your members are to your site they may be more vocal about what is missing. I had to write my own custom addon to help bring the PM system closer to par organization wise, for example. Xenforo also has an inferior BBCode parser compared to most open-source forum packages. The previous/next thread buttons are intentionally removed, and bringing them back with similar functionality to MyBB's is non-trivial.

Some of my members are rather blunt in their dislike of the 'social media platform' aspect of Xenforo, as well.

All in all, it isn't a straight upgrade. Be aware of this.

If your members have a ton of PMs, I rewrote the MyBB importer to make conversations out of PMs.

Xenforo uses a title-per-thread system, compared to the title-per-post common to most open source offerings. IMO Xenforo is in the right here, but some of my members disagree.

Message icons are not a feature, though Xenforo has thread prefixes, which IMO are superior.

The personal notepad is not converted by the MyBB importer, and you will want to warn your members of this.

I decided not to make the converter convert these (or the other MyBB elements Xenforo doesn't import), because I found out many of my members were misusing them.

The MyBB importer does not properly import administrators. Double check these before you open up your site.

On the positive side:

- The database schema in Xenforo, while I wouldn't call it 'great', is vastly superior to MyBB's, and the software's high-usage overhead is lower. My forum's CPU usage went way down converting to Xenforo.

- While this isn't relevant to you personally, addon development is dreamy, at least in 2.x. It is damned smooth.

- MyBB's templating and styling system is fairly slick, but Xenforo's is even slicker. If you care about the appearance of your forum it is tough to go wrong with Xenforo as a base.

- Xenforo now has a proper mail queue, which IMO is essential to any massive forum. You may want to take some time to figure out what your options are here.

- The list of features Xenforo has that MyBB doesn't dwarfs the converse, of course.

- Can you guys recommend me a tips/tricks post for first runners on XenForo? Helps me a lot.

Your license grants you the right to make a 'test forum' install, assuming it is password protected via http auth such that only people with an http auth password can get it. If you have a helpful host, they can help you set this up or walk you through it if it is part of your control panel.

Take advantage of this.

- Learn the permission system first. And thoroughly. It has some gotchas, and some rather confusing notions in comparison to other forum softwares. In general, the standard practice is to leave every non-banned user as 'registered', and add permissions on top of that based on need, by group.

- If you are willing to learn a bit of css/less (and you should), take some time to learn how style inheritance works. It will save you a lot of headaches later.

- You will need to convert text size BBCode in the database. Your host can help you with what to do here. The converter doesn't handle this, really.

- Lukas W has an editor and BBCode manager, this addon is essential for MyBB converts as it allows you to bring tables over somewhat properly, along with some other BBCode entries.

- Xon has a Conversation Improvements addon[url], which also covers for some of the glaring weaknesses in Xenforo's conversations versus MyBB. It doesn't have folders or tracking, however. I might release my own addon at some point but for now it's proprietary to my own forum.

- You will want to make an 'align' BBCode as Xenforo's alignment syntax is different. In the custom editor you just use

<div align="{option}">{text}</div>

- Alternately you can convert these in the database, as above.

Note that Xenforo does not currently have the ability to handle self-closing tags, so if you want self-closed hr or clear statements you will have to figure out a way to roll your own solution there. I haven't looked to deeply into this, though another addon dev believes it to be effectively impossible.

- Xenforo doesn't have a 'print' option or css, by default. Instead you will need to create a custom style for this. I have a member working on it but they're a volunteer and I don't expect them to prioritize it over e.g. school.[/url]

 

[deslocotoco]

I want to thank you all. Your answers all truly helped me in this beginning.

I'm just going to pay the license right now (with Content Manager addon, exactly what i need it) and go strong on the next days configuring my new System.

@Vekseid - first, congratulations for your herculean task. I don't even imagine how you could managed to make this migration/conversion happens without a problem. Unfortunately i lost my entire DB just when my former Forum was gaining a critical mass, so, i have to start from the beginning.

Like i said, i love MyBB. Is a great system without a doubt. The Admin Panel was the biggest thing on MyBB and some features are so welcome.

But for a common guy like me, who understand the basics of programming, css and etc, was hard on me. I'm looking for a stable and very functional software. For now, looks like XenForo is the right choice.