More Developer Collaboration

[DRE]

My goal was and still is to create themes for vbulletin and xenforo that look nearly the same color scheme, gradient and css wise with little to no template edits needed to assist people moving to and from both vBulletin and Xenforo. That was my original goal when I started adding resources here but I got totally sidetracked and started creating non-theme resources. I got so sidetracked that I started learning how to create addons. The developer I mainly collaborate with is @BirdOPrey5 because I can release both software's themes on his site.

That's what I consider a 1st Party collaboration. As far as collaborating with other developers a lot of that was usually paying for the development of and testing of new addons which I now rarely do cause I got real busy in real life but I still find time to grace you all with brilliant suggestions that drive some of you nuts.

 

[digitalpoint]

For developers, it simplifies the selling channel. Using myself as an example, I had to extend the RM to accept PayPal payments, and pretty much build my own cart. I know @Daniel Hood did the same for XenMods, and who knows who else has needed to do that. This is distracting. Instead of developing my add-ons, I am now developing the means to sell them. All of that ideally should be provided by the MarketPlace. I would definitely use @digitalpoint 's if it were more popular

It's at *least* as popular as the Resource Manager here simply by default if you do it right.

For example, take my Ad Positioning add-on and look at the downloads per version...

http://xenforo.com/community/resources/digital-point-ad-positioning.232/history

https://marketplace.digitalpoint.com/digital-point-ad-positioning.989/item#itemVersions

Take into account the 3 newest versions because some things changed with how things were set up since the old versions. I end up getting about 20% more downloads (and in turn sales) of my stuff vs. if it was exclusively here... simply because XenForo allows you to send the user to a URL to get something. So I end up with all the users who found something on xenforo.com, as well as another ~20% who are coming in via Google search or just Digital Point users who didn't find it on xenforo.com.

Plus mine is geared more towards selling stuff as a developer myself... handles payments, licensing, license renewals, brand-free licenses (including APIs to handle the brand-free removal automatically for the end-user, etc.), handles affiliate programs/payments if you opt into it, and for free stuff it can still take any variable payment amount as a "Tip Jar".

 

[TBDragon]

On top of that, the focus does not seem to be helping developers create add-ons (should it be? that sounds like a serious business decision). We have gotten many useful features along the way, though. But in the form of tutorials, documentation, guidance and tools, each developer is on his/her own.

yes iam with u in this point

i take longer time to understand the basic things to make simple editing for some files

while if i do it as separate thing will be done in 1 or 2h
even learning a framework like laravel or when i learn php at first i didnt take that much as i learn how to make and addon in XF

hope we got some tools that help every1 who want to make his own addon and with time its help him to get a bigger idea and look about XF and how its work and how u can make changing and adding features that make ur forum looking good and also help other to have the same

 

[Rigel Kentaurus]

It's at *least* as popular as the Resource Manager here simply by default if you do it right.

For example, take my Ad Positioning add-on and look at the downloads per version...

http://xenforo.com/community/resources/digital-point-ad-positioning.232/history

https://marketplace.digitalpoint.com/digital-point-ad-positioning.989/item#itemVersions

Take into account the 3 newest versions because some things changed with how things were set up since the old versions. I end up getting about 20% more downloads (and in turn sales) of my stuff vs. if it was exclusively here... simply because XenForo allows you to send the user to a URL to get something. So I end up with all the users who found something on xenforo.com, as well as another ~20% who are coming in via Google search or just Digital Point users who didn't find it on xenforo.com.

Plus mine is geared more towards selling stuff as a developer myself... handles payments, licensing, license renewals, brand-free licenses (including APIs to handle the brand-free removal automatically for the end-user, etc.), handles affiliate programs/payments if you opt into it, and for free stuff it can still take any variable payment amount as a "Tip Jar".

At this point I do not believe I would get more customers by using the DP marketplace than what would I get by just using the RM here, after all, the person first needs to have a XF license, so looking at the integrated RM is the first instinct, rather than a 3rd party website for the add-on shopping experience.

What I meant by popularity is that not many 3rd party devs actually publish there, actually I only see Daniel's
https://marketplace.digitalpoint.com/xenforo.12/category, and yours of course, which are awesome but that is your own product

Maybe Daniel can chime in with some stats about how many sales he has done through that channel

I considered at some point using it just to simplify the delivery of updates, though, which is one of my still biggest annoyances.

 

[digitalpoint]

Well like I said, even if you *only* had the people coming from this site, you still end up with all of them since XF works in a way that let's you send people to an external URL... That's all I was saying. The bulk of the sales for my XF stuff originates from here.

Either way, if you are selling stuff, you need to send the user from here to *somewhere* to make a payment.

 

[s.molinari]

I am not really a mind reader, and the XenForo owners are not the talkative type about their vision and their plans for the future, so I can only infer from what I see ....

The framework part, if it was a second thought, was executed in a pretty neat way. It wasn't built from the very beginning (were that the case, template hooks would have been there from the first release, and template substitutions would have been there too). But that said, they managed to come with a set of abstraction patterns that enables the software to be extended pretty good. Between being able to extend any class, and modify any template, a lot of things can be achieved. Add-On classes are naturally separated from the main code, so that is a win. And it is completely non-invasive.

I'd say, being Mike and Kier are devs themselves, it was a logical step for them to execute the integration of a framework in a pretty neat way. It saved them time and effort for sure.

Yet, I don't feel like it was in their mind "let's create an awesome platform", but rather "let's create a killer forum software", and of course the competition enabled add-ons, so it was just natural to have them in XF. Creating a platform is a way different business. Today, we don't have "modules". By convention, developers create a folder inside library that naturally namespaces the add-on, but that is hardly a module, and JS and CSS are still separated. There is no quick way to add or remove an add-on without hunting down through ftp all the uploaded files.

On top of that, the focus does not seem to be helping developers create add-ons (should it be? that sounds like a serious business decision). We have gotten many useful features along the way, though. But in the form of tutorials, documentation, guidance and tools, each developer is on his/her own.

And thus, with the logic you just noted, is the request for "more" of a developer collaboration with XF fitting at all? Although, standardization is a must, even if add-ons aren't in the equation, but tooling? Hmmm...

One can certainly ask for it, but being XF is an application first, it can't really be demanded and for sure, the suggestion or request ends up as a lower priority on some list.

You are right about a platform being a totally different business than making an application. And to be honest, I really believe in this day and age, it is exactly the "app first/ platform second" paradigm that needs to change to pull online communities to the next level. The foundation needs to be a platform first. Then there needs to be applications built on top of that foundation. Any application. A forum is just one kind of application and with this model, any application could be created by any developer and all applications will harmonize with each other using the "foundation" of the platform.

I hope for XF that they haven't driven down too much of a possibly dead ended road with their "application first/ platform second" (age old) paradigm. I'd really like to see them pull more devs into the mix, not to make add-ons, but to make full blown applications. It might even accelerate their business, if they take such a change properly into account.

Scott