Question before buying XenForo

D

dutchfox13

Member
Hi there,

I'm looking for a forumsoftware and after looking at vBulletin and Woltlab, suddenly XenForo showed up in Google.

The forum i wish to start is a football forum. So to discus about football with other fans.

1. I'd like to know why Xenforo is the best options. I looked at the demo and i was quite positieve. But that's of course not the only criterea.
2. The forum must be in Dutch. Is there a good dutch translation available?
3. XenForo works with plugins as far as i've seen. Do i ned tons of plugins or is the basis enough? Our ommunity is about 50K fans and important for me is a social interaction. For example people can like or dislike a comment. Of course video's and pictures are important.
4. Is it smart to buy the offered Installation service, media gallery, resourse manager and enhanced search? Please let me know why yes or no.
5. If i need supporter, how good is the support if needed.

I hope you guys can help me out.

Kind regards!
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
Thanks for considering XenForo.
  1. We maintain a big focus on quality and security plus we've just invested over three years on re-writing XenForo from the ground up to develop XenForo 2.0. We've got plenty of stuff planned for the future and we're not planning on going away any time soon :)
  2. There's a Dutch translation here: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/dutch-translation-nederlandse-vertaling.5816/ Plus you will be able to translate it yourself or extend/improve this translation using the built in tools.
  3. We have likes built in, and add-ons can provide a richer Facebook-style reaction system. Pictures can be attached to posts and videos can be uploaded to our Media Gallery add-on. YouTube videos and many other media types can be embedded automatically just by posting a link to them in the post.
  4. If you've ever installed a forum software before, you're unlikely to need the installation service. The process should be fairly similar. Upload the files and go to the install system and follow the instructions etc. Media Gallery and Resource Manager are certainly optional and can be purchased at any time in the future if you're unsure. Enhanced Search is useful as it can perform quicker and better searches, though it likely requires a VPS to be able to install "Elastic Search" the pre-requisite search platform it runs on.
  5. Support is good, if I may say so myself :) Myself and the other developers are often active on the forum, along with our great moderators who respond to questions on here. Purchasing a license gets you ticket support while the license is active too, with the responses there being generally very quick.
Please let us know if you have any more questions :)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Chris D said:
Thanks for considering XenForo.
  1. We maintain a big focus on quality and security plus we've just invested over three years on re-writing XenForo from the ground up to develop XenForo 2.0. We've got plenty of stuff planned for the future and we're not planning on going away any time soon :)
  2. There's a Dutch translation here: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/dutch-translation-nederlandse-vertaling.5816/ Plus you will be able to translate it yourself or extend/improve this translation using the built in tools.
  3. We have likes built in, and add-ons can provide a richer Facebook-style reaction system. Pictures can be attached to posts and videos can be uploaded to our Media Gallery add-on. YouTube videos and many other media types can be embedded automatically just by posting a link to them in the post.
  4. If you've ever installed a forum software before, you're unlikely to need the installation service. The process should be fairly similar. Upload the files and go to the install system and follow the instructions etc. Media Gallery and Resource Manager are certainly optional and can be purchased at any time in the future if you're unsure. Enhanced Search is useful as it can perform quicker and better searches, though it likely requires a VPS to be able to install "Elastic Search" the pre-requisite search platform it runs on.
  5. Support is good, if I may say so myself :) Myself and the other developers are often active on the forum, along with our great moderators who respond to questions on here. Purchasing a license gets you ticket support while the license is active too, with the responses there being generally very quick.
Please let us know if you have any more questions :)
Click to expand...

Thx for the quick reply.

Can you tell me a bit more why i should pick XenForo above vBuletin and Woltlab? The biggest differences.

Thanks
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
vBulletin is pretty awful, in terms of features, support and performance. It's not been good since the v3 (v4 was poor and we migrated to XF rather than upgrade to v4). By all accounts, v5 is even worse.

This is a pretty useful summary of the sector:
https://tools.digitalpoint.com/cookie-search

XenForo is now the market leader in terms of installations and the vast majority of migrations are from VB to XF (everybody jumping ship).

If you look at the installed versions of VB, a third of them are STILL on v3.8. That's almost 10 years old! Only a tiny percent have upgraded to VB5.

I think the above is fairly convincing :-)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Tracy Perry said:
Not American "football" but I'll point you to a site that is similar to what you are referring to
https://thejack.army/
Click to expand...

My advice would be to forget about the gallery and resource manager and put all the focus into the forums. I run a fairly large football site and while the gallery is a nice addon, it never really got used that much and was more of a distraction from the forums.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I think i'll just go for it. The things i've seen so far are great.

At the Swansea and Spurs forum i saw some nice features Like the Facebook sign in, countdown for the matches. These are plugins a asume?

And what is the best store to look at themes?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Chris D said:
Thanks for considering XenForo.

  1. If you've ever installed a forum software before, you're unlikely to need the installation service. The process should be fairly similar. Upload the files and go to the install system and follow the instructions etc. Media Gallery and Resource Manager are certainly optional and can be purchased at any time in the future if you're unsure. Enhanced Search is useful as it can perform quicker and better searches, though it likely requires a VPS to be able to install "Elastic Search" the pre-requisite search platform it runs on.
Please let us know if you have any more questions :)
Click to expand...

In the past i've setup MyBB. So i think i'll try it myself.

Which is the standard version of the software? XenForo 2?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
dutchfox13 said:
I think i'll just go for it. The things i've seen so far are great.

At the Swansea and Spurs forum i saw some nice features Like the Facebook sign in, countdown for the matches. These are plugins a asume?

And what is the best store to look at themes?
Click to expand...

We used XenPorta for XF1 (it's a free addon on here). For XF2, we'll likely just use the built in widget system (widgets are new as a built-in thing in XF2, for XF1 you needed an addon).

@Pixel Exit (@Steve F and @Russ) are both far the best theme developers in my opinion and a lot of their styles are easily customisable.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
We would recommend using XenForo 2.0.2 (the current stable 2.0 version) for new/import projects.

However, if you're currently using MyBB you would likely need to install XF 1.5.17 in the first instance.

Reason being that there is a MyBB importer built into XF 1.5.17 but we're a bit behind on bringing all of the importers over to XF 2.0 (they're a heck of a lot of work and testing).

But, once you've imported into XF 1.5.17, you can just upgrade to XF 2.0. The upgrade is fairly painless, the import itself will take the majority of the time and testing.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Chris D said:
We would recommend using XenForo 2.0.2 (the current stable 2.0 version) for new/import projects.

However, if you're currently using MyBB you would likely need to install XF 1.5.17 in the first instance.

Reason being that there is a MyBB importer built into XF 1.5.17 but we're a bit behind on bringing all of the importers over to XF 2.0 (they're a heck of a lot of work and testing).

But, once you've imported into XF 1.5.17, you can just upgrade to XF 2.0. The upgrade is fairly painless, the import itself will take the majority of the time and testing.
Click to expand...

No, i shut down the old forum years ago. Just want to build a new one. Thx!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Chris D said:
We would recommend using XenForo 2.0.2 (the current stable 2.0 version) for new/import projects.

However, if you're currently using MyBB you would likely need to install XF 1.5.17 in the first instance.

Reason being that there is a MyBB importer built into XF 1.5.17 but we're a bit behind on bringing all of the importers over to XF 2.0 (they're a heck of a lot of work and testing).

But, once you've imported into XF 1.5.17, you can just upgrade to XF 2.0. The upgrade is fairly painless, the import itself will take the majority of the time and testing.
Click to expand...

Just bought the license. If i download, this will automaticly be XF 2.0?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote

Similar threads

Jakkal
  • Question Question
VBulletin 5.x to Xenforo Question
Replies
5
Views
519
Suzanne O
Suzanne O
C
  • Question Question
Description with topics? Moving and sorting comments?
Replies
6
Views
483
Opus X
Opus X
michalcabala
  • Question Question
Question / help request
Replies
6
Views
224
michalcabala
michalcabala
P
  • Question Question
Migration question
Replies
5
Views
493
FTL
FTL
Merlin07
  • Question Question
[Design Question]
2
Replies
22
Views
1K
Merlin07
Merlin07
Top Bottom