Question About XenForo for a Small Community Website ?

[Birmingham SEO Studio]

Hi,

I’m considering using XenForo to build a small but growing community website and wanted to ask a few pre-sales questions before making a decision.


My main goal is to have a forum that is fast, secure, and easy to manage, with room to grow over time. I’m particularly interested in how XenForo performs with SEO, how easy it is to customize the design, and whether it’s suitable for someone who is not a full-time developer.


I’d also like to know how flexible XenForo is when it comes to adding add-ons later and handling regular updates without issues.


Any advice or insights from the XenForo team or experienced users would be greatly appreciated.


Thank you for your time!

 

[Mr Lucky]

how easy it is to customize the design, and whether it’s suitable for someone who is not a full-time developer.

If you start simple and gradually learn as you go along it’s fine. I’ve learned a lot from posting here.

I’m particularly interested in how XenForo performs with SEO

It’s fine, but there are some addons that can help, eg, with meta titles / descriptions.

Meta tags

Apr 11, 2019

Allows adding a descriptive title and description meta tag.

• AndyB
• Add-ons [2.x]

SEO doesn’t usually happen without some curating: most SEO is down to content but you can choose which forums or threads get noindex which is a useful relatively recent improvement.

If I started again I’d use xenForo

 

[smallwheels]

My main goal is to have a forum that is fast, secure, and easy to manage, with room to grow over time.

That is probably what everybody wants and expects who plans to start a forum (hard to imagine that someone would want the opposite). With XF you can consider this a given.

I’m particularly interested in how XenForo performs with SEO,

Pretty well in my experience. As you seem to be a SEO studio yourself you probably know about the generic topics and limitations around SEO.

how easy it is to customize the design,

Easy and there are many 3rd party designs available as well.

and whether it’s suitable for someone who is not a full-time developer.

Probably most forums owners are not a developer. So sure, works fine. Still some understanding of internet technologies ist helpful (though technically not necessary) - as with all server software you can shoot yourself in the foot if you do not know what you are doing, though it is in my eyes somewhat harder to shoot yourself in the foot with XF than with other server software.

I’d also like to know how flexible XenForo is when it comes to adding add-ons later

There are hundreds of add ons available and they are very easy to install. Just check the add on section of this forum.

and handling regular updates without issues.

Regular updates usually run flawlessly w/o issues, however, you may run into trouble with add ons you are using if they are not updated accordingly when necessary. Vastly depends from the developer of the add on if updates are availably quickly (or at all).

Any advice or insights from the XenForo team or experienced users would be greatly appreciated.

I'm wondering a bit if your questions are authentic as your request is so generic, polished and high level that you could easily have answered them yourself by only spending a couple of minutes reading here in the forums or the XF manual. So somewhat unsure if I just made a fool of myself by answering them. Which also leads to the advice: If you really want to start over with XF (or any other forum software) and have no experience you will face some issues initially, caused by lack of knowledge and experience with the concepts and the interface, not by the software itself. To deal with them you have to learn and for learning you have to read - the forum here is an excellent starting point. W/o the willingness to do so it probably won't work (or at least not well).

 

[Davyc]

Use the free demo to get an insight to the backend workings - this is where everything you want to adjust is to be found. Adding add-ons, adding pre-made themes, setting permissions and various other settings that allow you to tweak the forum to your needs. This is the best route to go so you can get an understanding of how things work, and how easy it can be to make changes.

Create a XenForo demo

xenforo.com

 

[Grump1!]

Hope you have a fat wallet too.

 

[Ricsca]

If your community is growing and you think it can write in a forum, today xenfpro is the only stable forum and at a still acceptable price

 

[Grump1!]

If your community is growing and you think it can write in a forum, today xenfpro is the only stable forum and at a still acceptable price

What do you call an acceptable price?

 

[Ricsca]

The alternative is the inVisioncommunity which costs €499 plus €199 per year.
practically madness…

 

[Grump1!]

The alternative is the inVisioncommunity which costs €499 plus €199 per year.
practically madness…

There are free ones though not so good looking.

 

[Ricsca]

Forget about free forums, they're stuck 20 years ago...

 

[Faust]

I’m particularly interested in how XenForo performs with SEO

You cannot have SEO without valuable content.

how easy it is to customize the design, and whether it’s suitable for someone who is not a full-time developer.

Check @Pixel Exit and @ThemeHouse developers when comes to choose a good theme. These are the only 2 I recommend as I had good experience with them, customer service at the TOP. There are some which I would avoid.

I’d also like to know how flexible XenForo is when it comes to adding add-ons later and handling regular updates without issues.

Less addons = less pain. Keep it simple. if you need some, get from well known developers.

 

[Rene_V]

My main goal is to have a forum that is fast, secure, and easy to manage, with room to grow over time.

XenForo is the right choice for your goal. It has all the above aforementioned qualities imo.

I’d also like to know how flexible XenForo is when it comes to adding add-ons later and handling regular updates without issues.

Installing add ons is very easy. All you have to do is go to the add ons area inside your admin panel and click the Install/upgrade from archive link. Then upload the add on 's zip package from your download location and that's about it. Regarding the upgrade process, XenForo has a one-click upgrade system that you can perform from your forum 's admin panel. You can also upgrade your forum the old fashion way a.k.a. as manually. Here you can read more on the subject.

Upgrading XenForo | Manual | XenForo

End-user documentation for XenForo

xenforo.com