What is UI.X 2 Pro?
I haven't said much about what UI.X 2 Pro will be, and there are some things that may change about it. But I think its time I mention the core concept of why I think a Pro version is ideal.
UI.X Pro is the ideal forum experience, specifically for forums looking to increase revenue, community interaction, and offer high quality user experience (which I think we all should be striving for). In a nutshell, the ideology is that there is an ideal way to have your forum setup. And offering every bell and whistle, modification, customization, etc. may not always be correct. UI.X 2 Pro should be something you choose, and we'll offer reasons for this, if you want the best experience possible. Some may say this is subjective, I would argue that in my experience there are certainly shades of gray but more or less there are things that work better, and this is the cumulation of those concepts. Note that we state the product as the 'ideal forum experience', not just 'ideal XenForo experience'. My way of saying XenForo is the best platform for running a forum, so this is a 'jetpack' for the platform focusing on more specific goals as listed above.
What is the difference between UI.X 2 and UI.X 2 Pro? How much will Pro cost?
UI.X 2 will be based around the default style for placement/features and not enable a lot of more advanced features by default, as we did with UI.X 1. This will help us live up to the name of UI.X being a framework for XenForo, and make less decisions for you. We add features, clean up code, simplify, extend, offer support, add helpers and settings, and the like. Sure its a huge project, but it won't be as huge as UI.X 1. We listened when people said they wanted something simpler and that UI.X was hard to update. Well the reason for this was because of its shear size. UI.X 1 was actually extremely clean and optimized.
For the amount of features we added, it was hardly any larger than the next competitor product, and if you removed some features other products may not have offered, it was actually smaller and more optimized. It had to be, its running on many large forums and needed the performance of a clean, small theme out of the box. So while this was possible in UI.X 1, out of the box you would have had to turn off settings. So think of UI.X 2 as feature parity with UI.X 1, but with some features turned off and a much more slim product provided out of the gate.
UI.X 2 Pro will be all add-ons, features, settings, etc. with a very specific theme. The reason for this is that specific themes perform better than others, they offer higher registration rates, higher posting rates, in general more engagement from the community, higher returns in advertising revenue, etc. so why ever go with a theme that is not optimized for all these factors. UI.X 2, the theme, will be packaged in the same export as UI.X 2. Meaning it won't cost you any extra to get the theme. But UI.X 2 will support some features that will be in other add-ons. We're breaking out some of the big UI.X features into separate add-ons that will work in the default style, such as node grid, node icons, collapsible sticky/nodes/postbits, AD Styler, post pagination, and more.
And while most of these add-ons will come for free with any UI.X 2 license, there are some add-ons that won't such as our advanced Trending add-on which uses statistical analysis (over just comparing post/view/like counts), our Reactions add-on (think Facebook's new like system, or post ratings), the advanced multi-tag system that we'd argue may be a better experience than nodes, and a few others. We're going to bundle everything we have data to prove is the most ideal forum experience into one product, include installation and a bit of customization, and a single price point. That price is yet to be determined, but it'll likely be somewhere around $299 - $399.
If I get most of these add-ons for free, can I not setup UI.X 2 Pro myself?
Actually, save for a few features, you theoretically can buy some of the add-ons separately that aren't in the normal UI.X bundle. If you know what you are doing, you can save yourself a bit of money by doing it yourself. But part of the reason you would by UI.X 2 Pro is if you want an expert (or a team of experts, shameless plug to team Audentio!) to be responsible for setting everything up for you. We ask the questions we need, but otherwise we set everything up to get you running. So there is a service associated with the cost more than just the add-ons we use. And we may partner with other add-on developers that offer tools we feel are ideal to have. We'll also set up your node styling, logo, color palette, footer, global UI components, etc. for you and give it a quick test to make sure its production ready and gorgeous.
So in summary, you will be able to piece together UI.X 2 Pro yourself, this is intended as we know there are people out there more hands on who may want to have more control or disagree with some of the things we've said. We plan to offer the core UI.X 2 Pro theme for free in the same UI.X 2 bundle, many of the add-ons we're packaging in will come with UI.X 2 already, and we'll have help documentation, videos, and articles to explain why doing certain things one way over another is better. Only purchase UI.X 2 Pro if you prefer to have our team consult with you.
Let me know if anyone has questions or concerns!
