Mods hosted on xenforo.com - Free or Paid ?

[Dean]

Unfortunately, if you allow paid add listings there will be a much greater incentive for coders to charge for their creations. I think you would see the mod community move farther and farther towards the 'paid' end of the spectrum. While this would be alright if everything produced was top-notch, I highly doubt the mods would be of a higher quality than their free counterparts.

On our forum, the advertising cost is significant, and the market takes care of the balance of free vs paid. People choose the free solutions, unless they have a significant reason to buy the paid solution. And that results in higher quality paid solutions.

If the advertising was inexpensive, that would create the problems you suggest. On our forum it generates significant income, although I wish it was more.

It was just an idea, in case no one had mentioned it. I see no paid advertising on vb or ips.

 

[Chris M]

Why clutter the site up with adverts?

*shudders*

Allow the discussion of Paid Mods but don't allow them to be released here.

 

[Markos]

Unlike some other sites, I am sort of hoping that "lite" mods won't be permitted, as they're only made for advertising reasons. I don't find that within the spirit of the community.

I don't agree with this post.

 

[---MAD---]

The way xF will deal with mods and developers will be very interesting because if they get this right it can attract a lot of potential customers. Look at the iphone for example. The main reason the product is so popular is due to how popular its app store is and how much it has to offer. Every other company now is (trying) to replicate its success.

 

[jonsidneyb]

I have a feeling that two mods I would want would almost have to be a paid mod. If mods like this are not mentioned here what I will need help on is finding who is making or is capable and willing to make these mods.

I am going to be paid mod dependent.

 

[Markos]

Pros to allow a premium marketplace in Xenforo: more promotion to paid scripts, more incentive to coders to create better products, more inventive for the customers to buy Xenforo!

Cons: In IPB, we see that very basic mods like post thank you hack, advert in topic etc....with the same features of the free equivalent mod in vb, are paid...ok 10$/15$ it's not a high price, but it's annoying to see...paid addons are to be professional and "premium"...i hope to not see (if the staff decides to allow paid scripts here) the same chose in Xenforo

A small fee for advertising it's addons in the marketplace can be a solution...to allow only "serious" coders to do that.

 

[RobS]

I would like to see both here. While free mods are always good, I like the incentives to developers that paid modifications bring.

In my experience, paid modifications usually tend to be more complex, more fully featured and more regularly updated. Things like Sphinx integration have really fallen by the wayside in vBulletin 3, while there is apparently (so I'm told) a very good paid version.

Even if it's just a regularly updated list of paid modifications available (a brief description and link), without self promotion and/or mindless chatter, I think it would work wonders for xF adoption - remember, people are coming from more established forums where there are solutions for nearly everything.

The easier it is for people to match their current features to what is available here or find a new feature, paid or free, the better.

 

[Brendon Meynell]

Unlike some other sites, I am sort of hoping that "lite" mods won't be permitted, as they're only made for advertising reasons. I don't find that within the spirit of the community.

OMG - do you know how many times I have gone through "other sites" and reported every "lite" version that I have seen that lists this giant list of features and then as you start getting excited about what it has most of them aren't included and you have to go elsewhere to pay $50+ just to get features (and some of them are basic that you would think should be included) it is one of my pet peeves.

If the modifications on this site started to bring in all of that "lite" version I would drop it in a heart beat.

 

[Jafo]

I am wondering how many people in this thread who are so anti-paid mods actually write any mods of their own? It sure sounds to me like many have absolutely no idea how much time coding a mod can take. I probably spent well over 100 hours on my Wordpress bridge alone for zero compensation. I would love to give away my code all day long but then who feeds the kids? There are a lot of mods I released free (in fact, all of them) that I would LOVE to spend more time really developing but there is absolutely no reward in it.

As for donations, out of all the mods I have, I think I received maybe 10 contributions over the years none of them over $20 USD as I recall. The honor system may work fine for selling vegetables in your front yard, but it fails miserably online. Will you get a lot of mods if they are all free? Sure, but you will get QUALITY mods if commercial products have a place to be seen.

 

[Been Told]

I am wondering how many people in this thread who are so anti-paid mods actually write any mods of their own? It sure sounds to me like many have absolutely no idea how much time coding a mod can take.

I can only speak for myself... My skills are barely enough to modify the code enough for my own setup. Releasing things to the public has never come up for me. Mainly because I've never figured out a way to add options/settings to the Admin CP in vBulletin.
And I can absolutely see where you're coming from... But the problem with paid mods is that they don't always mean quality but they usually mean less quantity.
Look at the paid modifications for IP.Board or MyBBoard... I've not looked at MyBB for a year or so, but as for IP.Board, it's horrible. The few mods that are available tend to be crap - commercial or not.
vBulletin has been number one in this area for a long, long time. Why? Because they have a sh*t-load of free mods. Sure there are commercial ones. But the free mods are the ones that really helped vBulletin get where it was before IB bought it.
I think it's perfectly acceptable, for example, to publish light versions or even evaluation versions for free. That gives people the ability to test commercial mods before buying them, while at the same time it gives developers the chance to make a little money.

You're right - customers are in no position to demand or expect free addons/mods/plugins if they themselves are unable or unwilling to contribute that themselves. But speaking realistically, lots of free mods help the software more than a few commercial ones.

 

[Jafo]

I am not against free mods.. I just think there is a place for both and those that think there isn't seem to be a bit selfish IMO..

 

[Peggy]

I am wondering how many people in this thread who are so anti-paid mods actually write any mods of their own? It sure sounds to me like many have absolutely no idea how much time coding a mod can take.

You're right. Not many people, other than coders, can possibly know how many hours is spent on coding and designing a mod/add-on.
Personally I'm not against paid mods at all. I've paid for a couple of mods, and would again if I saw one that I wanted bad enough.
But I also appreciate good, quality, free mods.

 

[Jafo]

I appreciate the good quality mods even more when they are free. And I do mean it, I wish I could just code for free all day, but until I win the lottery that I never play, I don't foresee it any time soon.

 

[ManagerJosh]

the best idea would be to get Chen (Firefly) back here to run xenforo.org

 

[Peggy]

There won't be a xenforo.org., afaik.

 

[Forsaken]

I'm not against all lite mods, I'm more against the ones that do not include functionality that should be there.

I also have no issue paying for mods, as long as they're not outrageously overpriced like many of the ones I have seen lately for vBulletin, and they supply quality support where the developer doesn't have an attitude with his customers (Something else I experienced recently with a developer).

Really though, I do hope that the developer base for XenForo is much like vBulletin, where everyone isn't expecting to gouge money out of XenForo administrators.  

 

[Dean]

Possibly:

• A subforum called "paid modifications/addons/etc"
• $___ to make a thread in that forum through paypal - images are ok to put in the threads
• No one but the person that makes the thread can add to the thread
• That thread expires in 30 days & is soft deleted

That does several things.

• No one would spend the $ to start a thread unless they were actively selling (and presumably) supporting the mod/product
• Once that person stops being active, there would no longer be threads/information about the paid mods
• The $ collected could be divided amongst the people providing free mods - formula to be determined
• Having a separate subforum would not have ads in peoples faces (although that is another possibility)
• Costing $ will "keep in check" the quantity of paid mods listed

That is the 'pay for advertising' model. It works extremely well.

?

 

[ManagerJosh]

There won't be a xenforo.org., afaik.

Who knows honestly Peggy. I think a lot of those thoughts were around during the early stages of vBulletin 2.x, but the mod community hyper-expanded and we ending up had the creation of vBulletin.org

But again, who knows what the future holds. At this point in time, I probably wouldn't dismiss the creation of it. But i can't rule it out at the same time


To me though, Chen (Firefly) is an important guy to have though

 

[David Thomas]

I paid $100 for an IPB mod. Why? It was proven, it worked well, and the support was excellent. Do I regret spending that much? Heck no!

I'm not for "all commercial" or "all free", but if you're against commercial add-ons just because you can get a lot more free mods and people running websites/forums don't have to spend that much (or any) money sounds like a cheap way out. You've already decided to spend money on hosting, a forum script, so you've already shown that you're semi-serious about this. Now you want to get cheap with it and expect all your add-ons to be free? Just so you can choose between Mediocre Reward Points and Sub-Par Rewardz System??? Free choices are much more important than quality, great logic, Einstein. Yeah, let's not encourage developers to make money to pay for the bills to continue creating the awesome scripts they make, that you expect entirely for free.

And let's not start on the honor system that is "donations". "Yeah, I loved the mod, so I'll send you $5.13 via PayPal next month!". Get real, most of you suggesting the donation system have either never had to rely on a donation system, or are trying way too hard to sound like you can sympathize with developers.


You want your forum to do well? Pay the price, yah bunch of cheap bastids.

 

[Peggy]

Who knows honestly Peggy. I think a lot of those thoughts were around during the early stages of vBulletin 2.x, but the mod community hyper-expanded and we ending up had the creation of vBulletin.org

Quite true. I suppose that would be up to Kier and Mike since they own xenforo.com, .net, .org. et al.