Max Fridman
Well-known member
This should be in the core...
Not to go off-topic, but this is the off-topic area (dependence on 3rd party to do basic stuff)
- Thread starter TPerry
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This should be in the core...
Mendalla
Well-known member
Maybe if XF were to add a lot of these features to core, it would be time for a tiered license. I can buy "XF Standard" (basically Xenforo core as we know it today) at the current rate, those needing the additional features upgrade to "XF Pro" or whatever. Because I don't pay for any add-ons and don't find we are missing anything we need so would not be happy if adding a slew of these to base pushed my costs up significantly. If I was going to use them, fine. But I am not convinced I would if I am not seeing the need to pay for them now. At least I would be able to evaluate if the additional cost was going to give us value and decide not to pay it if I did not find that value.
(This assumes something like this is actually feasible in a system like Xenforo, which I am not sure of. It certainly has been done with conventional software packages.)
(This assumes something like this is actually feasible in a system like Xenforo, which I am not sure of. It certainly has been done with conventional software packages.)
And is a good example of the kind of feature I would not use. I don't even do paid upgrades. Our statement of purpose specifically states that we are to keep the community free to all without tiers of membership based on ability to pay. The main reason we went to Xenforo rather than open source was the fact that it was a commercially-supported package at a reasonable price with the add-on ecosystem as an additional value-add.
If you’re not missing anything you don’t have to upgrade…
Sometimes people don't know what they are missing until it's presented and they have time to adapt.
"People don't know what they want until you show it to them"
Mendalla
Well-known member
That only works if they keep doing security and stability updates (ie. x.x.y) for the last version before the big increase. With my IT background, I am loathe to use software that isn't getting security and stability updates. And if they do that, then we are effectively at what I describe, a "Standard" vs. "Pro" tiered license.
Suzanne O
Well-known member
with my own forums i make sure they get upgraded once the new version is out. i found out the hard way with one of my forums that you can get security breaches.
Ricsca
Well-known member
XENFORO LIMITED filing history - Find and update company information - GOV.UK
XENFORO LIMITED - Free company information from Companies House including registered office address, filing history, accounts, annual return, officers, charges, business activityfind-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk
I don't know how to read English financial statements...
in 2022 they had a profit of 138,070 dollars?
Suzanne O
Well-known member
That's not much to be totally fair.
I can imagine (only guessing here) that the staff here have other sources of income as well.
But really getting back to the paid registration it would be ideal for everyone because you are making them pay a small fee that goes to your maintenence of your board.
Imagine setting a flat rate of $5 and it went to the maintenance of the board. You'd make a profit all the time.
Wildcat Media
Well-known member
You're sort of leaning in my direction in how I feel about all of this. Yes, I do use addons for my sites but honestly, what really matters to me and the members is the conversation. I am working on a redo of a major forum right now and the more I look at the addons I've installed, the more I realize that I'm just installing some of them because I like the features. Not the members. They are just happy to say their piece and go on their way. Keep in mind that some of the younger members also use Reddit (which is a
show, especially its user interface and constant technical problems) or older members also use the dumbed-down interface on Farcebook. A lot of the features listed above I would have absolutely no interest in or use for, like groups (whatever those are), paid subscriptions, etc. I've even installed features thinking members would like them, and nobody used them. So similar to what you say, why should I pay more for features I'll never use? And I can say that of the majority of suggestions and individual lists here listing features they want, well, I have zero interest in probably 95% of them. If not a tiered license offering, I would be more willing to see an entire suite of official paid addons, like XFES, XFMG, etc. My main issue is support. I already had a major theme developer completely derail my last site project after pulling the rug out from under us by killing all their addons, to the point where I decided to wash my hands of the entire fiasco and dump their theme (which I spent months working on) before they decided to do the same with their themes. In XF1, too, developers abandoning addons was an epidemic.
I'd rather have the core of XF be stable and secure, vs. focusing on too many features and letting the basics slip. XF2 was also designed with developers in mind, and even my mostly burned-out brain cells can make sense of a lot of it to where I can cobble together my own addons for private use. And again, the members in a couple of the forums I manage used to post on ancient versions of vBulletin 2 or in one case, posted on a text-based wwwboard clone (WebBBS) back in 1997 and trust me, as long as they can post and share things, they are happy, and the conversation is as good as it's ever been. That would not change even if I added every third party XF addon to the mix. The features they use almost exclusively are core features of XF, right out of the box. And since we skew older, adding more things they'll never use will only confuse them more.
TPerry
Well-known member
That's "profit".... salary typically comes out before the company profits are determined... as salaries are an overhead item.
Max Taxable
Well-known member
"Controllables"
Max Fridman
Well-known member
Having the paid subscription system further expanded should not be a problem for Xenforo.
Xenforo is a platform, which already has an integrated user subscription system. Should it be improved by default without depending on external developers? Yes.
Considering how ALL online platforms go:
- Substack (paid subscriptions)
- Twitter (paid subscriptions)
- Instagram (paid subscriptions)
- Reddit (paid subscriptions)
It's a choice not to use subscriptions, but it's not like we can block the development of an entire ecosystem because for a miope choice has to depend on third-party developers. For me it is a RISK to have such an important addon to maintain, because it jeopardises my business. I would therefore prefer it to be managed by the platform that I PAY for annually, to reduce my risk.
Some of you who comment in this forum are completely lacking the ability to understand that for some of us running forums is not a Sunday hobby. We do not run platforms that die within 1 year. We have decades of work on our shoulders. And in many cases more experience than those who write thousands of comments on this official forum and have now become minor celebrities.
You should be grateful that some of us still decide to waste time writing to improve this platform. Also because part of the profit that is made, is invested in the platform itself, because I don't just pay Xenforo, I also pay other developers to make me custom addons, I pay to sponsor improvements to addons I use and so on.
So if we all decided to run sites like Sunday projects you would have to migrate to another platform other than Xenforo, because it would probably die.
We are the 1% that creates 90% of the value. And I'm sick of reading certain 'I wouldn't use' speeches. But what do I care? If I wasted my time writing it, I have my reasons, it's not like I'd ask for something totally useless to be added, which will be ignored anyway and I'll have to PAY a third-party developer to do it.
Because perhaps implementing the Apple model and integrating functionality into the base system is too complex for Xenforo. By now I am convincing myself that this is the case. Fear not the price of the Xenforo licence will remain low, it will not rise. Everyone fears this possibility because 'if the platform gets bigger', they will rightly demand more.
It will not become bigger, because it has now been decided that those who produce more value must pay more money and put all the risk on their shoulders. Why it has been decided this way escapes me. Maybe they think the future is IGN, Tom's Hardware, Ars Technica and the "Sunday sites".
And not everyone in between. Who in my opinion generate more value. But I don't have the data in hand to verify that. But surely that many developers have abandoned the platform is an indicator.
This concludes my participation in this discussion, which ALWAYS deals with the same topics. And then it ALWAYS goes on to discuss the fear of Xenforo's licence fee increase.
Let's wait for Xenforo 2.3 hopefully before I kick the bucket.
P.S: I specify, I have nothing against Mendalla, I used his post as an example, to try to better argue my position. I have no desire to insult anyone or offend those who use their sites as a hobby.
But you must also put yourself in everyone else's shoes when you write.
Ricsca
Well-known member
@Max Fridman l'utente @Mendalla he writes and speaks as if his forum were the most important in the world and therefore only he knows what is needed and what is not needed by all forum administrators.
Then you go to see his online forum from 2014 and you find that he has 415 registered users...
What can an admin who has made 415 members in almost 10 years know about the needs of administrators who manage large forums?
Then you go to see his online forum from 2014 and you find that he has 415 registered users...
What can an admin who has made 415 members in almost 10 years know about the needs of administrators who manage large forums?
Suzanne O
Well-known member
None of my 4 members want to be paying for the use of a forum.
I only have 4 members.
Had to get rid of another pest today.
I have a swear jar donation section which is at my discression.
I remember an old john farnham forum had asked everyone to pay $35 registration. Just to use their forum. They lost members
I only have 4 members.
Had to get rid of another pest today.
I have a swear jar donation section which is at my discression.
I remember an old john farnham forum had asked everyone to pay $35 registration. Just to use their forum. They lost members
Ricsca
Well-known member
@Aerodynamic if you don't make money with your forum, it doesn't mean that others shouldn't make money...
TPerry
Well-known member
And therein lay one of my major complaints... they seem to avoid extending basic functions further and then depend on 3rd party developers to offer features that they could (usually) easily do internally.
Errr... my site is totally a hobby and is supported by me... and I have NO issues with the position that XF should extend the "bare bones" offerings that they currently do in the base script.
And this is one more major issue that I have with the current apparent philosophy of the XenForo developers... there are suggestions out there that are easily a decade or more still "open"... no movement on them.... it's not that hard for someone with XF to simply change them to
Not Planned or Future implementation or similar... to simply let them lay out there fallow and in all appearances ignore them does a disservice to the license holders.If they give me **** I can use... I have no issues paying more money.
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TPerry
Well-known member
Why do you have an apparent fixation with stalking commenters and then "bringing up" how many "users" they have... you know, not ALL sites mandate that consumers of their data actually join? This is a continuing pattern with you. Is it supposed to show something "special" that a site has a certain number of registered members? Remember... not all sites worry about "how many members can I grab"... some are more concerned with the FREE distribution of data.
As long as content is being created and consumed... a site is successful... it's simply "ego" (apparently yours) that thinks it has to equate with a specific number of registered users. A more important "point" for the popularity of a site is the number of visits a site gets... and sorry bucko... joined members don't equate with that. Hell, I could open my site up and get crap-tons of spam registrations.. what exactly does that prove? Yep, I may gain 500 new users in a month... what do they actually bring to the table?
You know, using stuff like this as an actual criteria as to how much traffic/success your site is getting.. this is a
Yesterday day snapshot from Google analytics.Oh, and I'm hitting better than 78% engagement rate from my
Session Source/media that are specific to social media, Google and a few other sites that have shared data on them.And those engaged users are spending between 5-12 minutes on the site... and many of them never register. You see, I really don't care if they DO register... as long as they get some worth from the site.
Would it be nice for them to join and participate? Yep, but I'm a realist... I simply realize that the majority of society are consumers and a very small portion are creators.
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Max Fridman
Well-known member
There are also useful features and that's all, it was a case of talking about this one specifically, which is clearly very backward compared to what it should be. And it also costs money to maintain a forum with licences for addons and whatnot. I understand that maybe some people want to come out of their own pocket, but it is also fair to respect those who want to create a business that grows over time. Moreover, having a forum is also a cost in terms of time. Unless I have missed something in the last few years.
Some however do not even know what Paid Registrations does. It is not only used to charge immediately for using the forum. It also serves only to show the option of registering either for free but also subscribing with extra features, or registering and subscribing to support the site.
I don't personally care how many users a site has or whatever, I care about not reading the same things in every single thread in this forum.
In fact, as I specified, I have nothing against anyone who decides to run their own sites as a hobby and indeed would probably like some extra functionality and perhaps cannot afford it.
On the other hand, some sites might opt to have 5000 registered users. But if 5000 users give you 1 euro, that's 5000 euro a month. And maybe they publish dozens of posts a day compared to sites with 200,000 users but with 10 active users.
It all depends on how the site is configured.
Suzanne O
Well-known member
You don't need to make money. You need to make your forum grow. Members will walk away if registration is going to cost them money. Go into paypal and get a donate here badge and allow outsiders to donate to your forum.
Wait for 30 members to sign up before you even think of anything.
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