The Sandman
Well-known member
We've just published a new interview with Jake Bunce.
How would you describe the ideal forum software, and which currently available forum software comes closest to it?
Considering my criticism of feature creep, I am very impressed with XenForo. There is great attention being paid to the core product. And the addition of new features is secondary to the overall user experience. XenForo is a solid forum product as opposed to a forum + lots of features.
I am impressed with the innovations XenForo has made to some standard forum features. The "like" system is effective and simple. Personal conversations make a ton of sense. And the expanded use of avatars in conjunction with the profile system really helps to personalize the forum experience. The result is a superior user experience which is something many forums neglect.
XenForo is a pleasure to work with from a development perspective. I have recently begun porting my addons from vBulletin to XenForo as part of my own conversion. I have found the addon system to be powerful and easy to use once you are familiar with the MVC structure of the code. The template syntax greatly simplifies the code by moving some of the programming into the templates.