Implemented...ish Making the case for a XF native app

Ludachris

Well-known member
I know XF is forum software, and I understand that forums are fundamentally different than social media. I know that Tapatalk is a viable option for many forum owners. I've tried it but it wasn't the right solution for my site, mainly because it doesn't work with various plugins that website owners tend to use to try and set themselves apart from their competition and make their forums more sticky and cool (among a few other deal breakers). I understand that an app is costly to develop and that it's difficult to come up with something that will make the masses happy.

With of all that said, here's the case I'm making for an XF native forum app:

If your forum members take photos using their phones, where are they more likely to share those photos these days? The road blocks and extra steps it takes to open a browser on the phone, navigate to your forum, click around and find the right place to post the photo in the forum, and then use the upload feature to click around and locate the photo on the phone takes WAY more time than clicking the Share button after you take that photo and selecting FB or Instagram. And when you have a lot of the people in that forum as friends on your social network, why go through the extra hassle of also sharing that content in a forum?

Social media networks have given the user the ability to make their own networks that they used to depend on forums to access. I don't think this will kill forums, but it will certainly start taking away from a big part of what used to make forums sticky. For some communities - take the car enthusiast communities for example - those photos signify what a member is working on at the moment with their car, and that is an extremely important community-building element that is starting to drop off in forums these days because it's FAR EASIER to share that content on social media via mobile, especially with the upward trend in mobile device usage for interaction. This is not a problem that is/will be exclusive to the automotive community.

I've been talking with members of my site for several months about this, getting their feedback and taking notes. The consistent message coming back is that the forum will always be a great place for finding technical information, but that FB is becoming more preferred for engaging and networking with other car enthusiasts because of how simple it is to use, especially on a mobile device. The problem is, being a technical resource ONLY is not going to keep a forum community thriving.

Over 65% of my traffic views the site on a mobile device these days. I'm using a mobile friendly theme without Tapatalk (for various reasons). And though the site is easy enough to use on a mobile device, I would LOVE to have an app that is native to XF that was build in a way that it coule be extended by some of the talented plugin developers we have in this community (like @Bob who built Showcase and other cool content-centered plugins). If I install an app it has to encompass all areas of the site where I collect content - when that user clicks Share after they take a photo I need to be able to give them quick and easy options to share that content in my forum somewhere so that they don't just share it on FB or IG instead.

The simplicity and ease of sharing content from mobile is becoming more and more expected from the average user. And the traditional way the user has to go about posting in a forum is falling behind in terms of modern day usability. I'm not advocating forums be more like social media. I'm advocating exploring ways to make forums as easy to use as social media on mobile device and doing it in a way that it's extendable - so that plugin developers can tie their plugins into standardized locations.

I'd pay an upfront license fee and a monthly fee for that and I know quite a few other forum owners who run their forum as a business and rely on advertising revenue would invest in this as well. I'd think it's worth exploring and I imagine the XF decision makers probably already have, and probably keep revisiting as mobile usage continues to increase. As someone who didn't used to be too concerned about social media being a competitor a few years back I now see why it's very possible that forums could be used less and less for sharing content and networking among people with similar interests - which could turn forums into obsolete, searchable newsgroups.

We need to keep people engaged and make it extremely easy to have new, quality content posted on our sites. I've always felt XF was forward thinking in the forum space, which is why I moved over from vB last year. I'm hoping the XF devs will seriously consider revolutionizing the way members post content on forums using mobile devices, I like most everything else they've done with the script so far.
 
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Yeah I know of it, it's a great idea. Just feels like these things take far too long to come to fruition. If you think about it, and you sort of start counting it from when smartphone popularity kicked off, we've had push notifications now for over 10 years. We shouldn't be sitting here in 2018 wondering when people like Apple (who pretty much popularised the concept in the first place) are going to start following the standards that everyone else does. I love Apple products, but honestly I'm starting to feel like they're comparable to Microsoft back in the day in terms of knocking out proprietary software that either follows their own standards or takes forever to follow the same standards everyone is.

Heck, even Microsoft Edge on Android has push notifications and if not already, Edge on Windows won't be far behind. Doesn't make sense to me :D

/rant over.
 
An app would obviously be great, but many challenges would prevent a lot of websites from using it. I've created add-ons on my site to display articles, sports schedules, recruit rankings, and etc. All of these features would be unavailable on a typical app.
 
Apple have started blocking electron apps in the app store making it even more difficult for devs to create decent cross platform solutions.


While browsers like Chrome and Opera are available in the App Store, they must use Apple’s Safari browser behind the scenes to render web pages, rather than their own. That means Apple has a monopoly on how iPhone and iPad users access the web.

Apple’s subtle, anti-competitive practices don’t look terrible in isolation, but together they form a clear strategy: Make it so painful to build with web-based technology on Apple platforms that developers won’t bother.
 
Apple have started blocking electron apps in the app store making it even more difficult for devs to create decent cross platform solutions.

But we can not sit there and do nothing, just because Apple does stupid things. Life goes on. There are enough non-Apple users out there, so focus on them. Not everybody wants to have an iPhone and the more apps are available for android and not for apple, the more likely Apple users will switch.

Xenforo is at a decision pathway and has to think about what will keep them in busines in 5 years from now. The competition is not sleeping. A native app will be for many Forum-admins a "game changer".

Invisioncommunity (IPS) is close to release its native app, maybe still in 2019:


I do not believe that Xenforo can afford to miss that train. There have been two experiments with Xenforo addons from third parties. Both stopped now (one stopped and the other one has no development for over a year and users complain all the time)

If IPS is releasing its own native app and if there will be no sign of the Xenforo team for its own native app for Xenforo with a schedule when it will be available, many Xenforo admins will switch. Especailly now as the prices are very close (200$ vs. 160$) and the renewal costs of IPS are less than the ones from XF [50$ (=2x25$) vs. 55$]. This adds up if you are running several communities.

No admin can afford that a forum in the same niche will have more traffic just because they are able to offer an APP for the smartphone.

All the problems with mass-emails etc. are gone with a native APP. This is the reason why FB, IG, Snapchat....you name it, were able to grow in that fast pace.

Ignoring this is like suicide for Xenforo.

Although this is a suggestion forum only, I do think that the Xenforo team has to address these concerns since it is directly influencing how many customers will upgrade to XF2.x from XF1.5 over the nexte 2-6 months.

At least I will look very close into this once I am able to upgrade from 1.5x to XF2.x (depends on other plugins).

Why should I invest money in a expensive XF-upgrade with no future for an app, if I can at the same time use that money to switch to IPS with a native app on the very near horizont?

Of course I spend then more money at the beginning. But just because of the cheaper renewal cost, I get this additional expense back soon.
 
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I just found this addon from truonglv as an App for Xenforo. It seems to be good, but it is expensive if you add all costs together.

So there is definitely a need for an XF-app as an official Xenforo plugin.
 
If IPS is releasing its own native app and if there will be no sign of the Xenforo team for its own native app for Xenforo with a schedule when it will be available, many Xenforo admins will switch.
I pretty much doubt so, especially as price is not a primary factor for choosing one platform (at least for me).

Monetizing a forum app is hard if not almost impossible.

So while I think an App would indeed be nice for regular users, it IMHO isn't a must-have.
 
My users keep asking for a mobile app and my moderators are desperate to get one as well.
I really wish there was a good solution, either XF team or anything else - and I'm not even trying to find the cheapest solution here.
I switched from VB, they had an app back in 2011 I believe already.
 
No admin can afford that a forum in the same niche will have more traffic just because they are able to offer an APP for the smartphone.

All the problems with mass-emails etc. are gone with a native APP. This is the reason why FB, IG, Snapchat....you name it, were able to grow in that fast pace.

Ignoring this is like suicide for Xenforo.
No, it probably isn't suicide for XF, they'll continue to sell licenses to some admins. But it could be suicide for admins whose community keeps asking for an app and you can't give your customers what they're asking for. It's so frustrating as an admin when you can't take advantage of the phone's built in capabilities when 2/3 of your visitors view the forum on phones. Again, I don't think a native app needs to replicate ALL forum features - it could just be supplemental, displaying alerts, showing a links to popular destinations on the forum, and those links can then open a browser so that the user views and interacts with the content in a browser. But making use of an app for the alerts system makes a LOT of sense from an admin's perspective.
 
I don't think a native app needs to replicate ALL forum features - it could just be supplemental, displaying alerts, showing a links to popular destinations on the forum, and those links can then open a browser so that the user views and interacts with the content in a browser.
That sounds like dreadful UX.

An app should replicate the entire forum feature set (which is impossible due to third party code) or not at all.
 
That sounds like dreadful UX.

An app should replicate the entire forum feature set (which is impossible due to third party code) or not at all.
I don't know, I've discussed this with several big board owners and they tend to like the idea. It's certainly not ideal, but as you said, it's impossible to create a native app that works with third party add-ons, and almost none of the successful forums out there are running no add-ons. I imagine if a native app was created that add-on developers would be pressured to ensure their add-ons were compatible with the app.
 
I imagine if a native app was created that add-on developers would be pressured to ensure their add-ons were compatible with the app.
That's not possible.

Only the app developer can add code for third party add-ons.
Obviously not something XF would ever do.
 
That's not possible.

Only the app developer can add code for third party add-ons.
Obviously not something XF would ever do.
Ahhh, yeah, I remember hearing that before now that you say it. That's probably why I went down the path of a supplemental/shell app idea that would utilize a browser for interacting with the content. Not ideal as you pointed out, but at this point, it at least addresses some of the needs.
 
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I just found this addon from truonglv as an App for Xenforo. It seems to be good, but it is expensive if you add all costs together.

So there is definitely a need for an XF-app as an official Xenforo plugin.
Did someone try this addon?

The future is definitely on app, most of the people use phones now. As much as I dislike this, I'm still using my phone only to call.
 
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seems like Step #1 would be more fleshed out API support from XenForo. as I understand it the current API can't support a true app. And it gets messy once you start mixing in non-official add-ons to provide more API functionality.

Hopefully with XF 2.2 it gets fleshed out more.
 
seems like Step #1 would be more fleshed out API support from XenForo. as I understand it the current API can't support a true app. And it gets messy once you start mixing in non-official add-ons to provide more API functionality.

Hopefully with XF 2.2 it gets fleshed out more.
Doesn't sound like Step #1 is even on anyone's radar.
 
I would create and offer a PWA for your users to install.

Looks like an app, can be installed and used like one but just shows your website in a dedicated browser window.
 
I would create and offer a PWA for your users to install.

Looks like an app, can be installed and used like one but just shows your website in a dedicated browser window.
Would it handle notifications like an app? How about being able to access the phone's camera as a sharing destination? Those are the two critical functions we need from an app.
 
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