Member activity increase after migration to XenForo?

Vladislav Rastrusny

Active member
I would like to ask people who moved to XF from other platforms such as VB. What happened to your user activity after migration? The thing that worries me, that switching to VB4 from VB3 took about 15% of my user activity away.

I hope with a move to XF this is not the case, but I'm just curious, what happened with your users after migration?
 
I can't give you the exact kind of percentages you want since I have no statistics to look at on XF, I can only tell you that people are posting a lot more on XF than they were on the old board. And in my case, they didn't have to leave the old board - it's still there and still functional -- I started a new board with XF rather than converting the vB 3.8.5 board. So they're using XF of their own free will.
 
I'm sorry to say that after an initial burst of interest, the usage of my site had really gone down. I don't see this as a reflection of XF but as a reflection of the people who use (or used) our site. They just don't like change. I have even thought about going back to vb3 but if the site is dying after another 6 months I will maybe can the whole site.

Haven't yet implemented it on our other sites.
 
I'm sorry to say that after an initial burst of interest, the usage of my site had really gone down. I don't see this as a reflection of XF but as a reflection of the people who use (or used) our site. They just don't like change. I have even thought about going back to vb3 but if the site is dying after another 6 months I will maybe can the whole site.

Haven't yet implemented it on our other sites.
You're right. People don't like change.
It took people some getting used to moving from vB3 to vB4. Some said, what was wrong with the old version? I needed the CMS.
I took an informal survey of my current vB3 site. Mixed feelings. From stick to what works to it has potential.
We'll see what happens.

Is your site missing mods that your previous one had?
 
Mine decreased, mostly my own fault, I had to rush through the process and did not have the 301 redirects ready for about two days costing me my ranks in google (404s:() However within a couple of days I'm already result #1 for my keywords, and should be getting back up on google soon :) Incredible SEO :D
 
In my site there were about 5 messages / day, some days none, now there are 30 or 40 messages/day if not more. Surely the Top Posters addon is helping :)

All feedback has been very positive and my users are extremely happy with the change.
 
My Google Analytics showed me a big drop for about 2-3 weeks mostly because I never had any kind of redirects from vb4 site (and i still don't) but now it is picking and urls are being re-indexed. So I had a painful few days but I think it was worth all that pain. My site position on Google however never went down which is good.
 
Mine has seen an increase in activity. Most of my users like the new interface and the ease of use. They also have mentioned several times that they like the forums being the focus without all the blogs, and such that won't used.

Here is a screen shot of two different time frames from my Analytics.

xFstats.webp


Blue line is xF
Green line is IPB


Everything went up except for the new visits. This was because I didn't get the redirects from my indexed links working because the IPB importer wasn't available and I took a round about way to get it converted.

The new visitors will come back as I already see Google indexing my xF site again...

Jamie
 
Slight, compared to Jamie. This is the two weeks since switching compared with the same two weeks in October.

It certainly seems more sticky. Page views and time on site are way up and the bounce rate has decreased.

Untitled-1.webp
 
I like to look at the time on site, pageviews and pages per visit. This shows me that the members are liking, staying and using the site..

You have a slight decrease in new visits, I am guessing this is because of your redirects as well?

Jamie
 
It could be. I set up redirects a few days after the switch though, and all the thread and post views are redirecting properly. Google seems to have all the new URLs indexed already. But there is historically a lull in last few weeks in December, so this may not be the best time to compare.
 
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