Random thread about the state of XenForo

Every now and then I hit that Show Ignored Content and I am quickly reminded why I shouldn't do that.

I don't have a problem with the current feature set for the most part. Considering the age of the development time put into xenForo I think its pretty much on target.

There are problems I still see with how things come together with xenForo that I hope will be addressed.

Profiles are anemic with repetitive information listed.
Status updates are pretty much useless as they are now. Hidden and not easy to find without directly going into the profile of a user at some point.
The style system needs work. Its a bit complicated now for most people. Things are spread out everywhere and there isn't much documentation at all without having to search through the entire forum. This sort of applies to developers of add-ons as well.
 
I never used my vb4 license. Was one if those that preferred vb3, but feeling too much anxiety to wait for IB to get it together.

I'm all for as many add-ons as we can get, but much has changed. Who has the same needs as they did when vb3 was new?
 
I just wish there was a road map of where they'd like to take Xenforo and also for us who started as small forums and went viral within their niche, I'd love to see more integration with ecommerce, classifieds but most of all more unified logins across multiple xenforo forums kinda like how ThemeForest is done, 1 login and visit all sister sites without ever having to re-login.
 
DRE said:
If you can agree with at least one in this list, you're okay in my book. :cool:
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Okay, but only one.
IMO, the Nav Manager is the only one of those options that should be in the core. The rest are add-on candidates, but are superfluous to the degree that they shouldn't necessarily be in the core to prevent code bloat. After all, if XF keeps adding core features, release after release year after year....it will eventually be in the same shape as other forum packages, with a trail of legacy versions to support.

XF can be different. Keep it lean, keep it focused, keep it extensible.

What might be interesting is to have a set of 'official' Xenforo add-ons that address some commonly requested features, but that still aren't core candidates.
 
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Build an amazing core that is easy for developers to extend, and the problems with solve themselves. Like magic.

Seriously. Everybody wins.
  • Developers can make money servicing the clients here, and perhaps with commercial add-ons.
  • Admins actually get service (it seems there is high demand), and a much wider selection of features.
  • XenForo gets to focus on what it does best, and gives it a chance to continue to innovate, rather than worry about building the 10000 requests that people have. (you guys won't all agree anyway).
It's harder and more important to say no to this stuff than it is to add features to keep all of the customers. If you are evaluating on features alone, you'll be beat eventually. But that software may not be around and in good health for long if that is its only hook. (Like that other forum software we don't talk about around here)

Just another biased opinion.
 
I like having a second installation to play with new plugins see what they do and how I can use them if at all.. I suppose by some standards I have a large list of installed addons but most of those are various demographic and statistical plugins.. I think forum members have evolved with the popularity of Facebook.. Once upon a time gimmicks such as an arcade and chat room were huge hits but now Facebook does all that and more.. I don't think I could utilize an arcade to entice registrations today as I could 7 - 8 years ago. And the chat room that was responsible for building and then destroying (another story) my forum never seen a single visitor when trying to create another community a few years later.. The formula for forum success is in flux and I'm grateful a couple of visionaries are at the XenForo helm.. I love the experience they bring to the table and it's important to understand that for the most part they already created a forum package that was as top heavy as they come and are well aware of what worked and what didn't.. I only wish the third party developers where more abundant.. Not because I need more random plugins but because I need one important plugin that nobody but me has a use for, making hiring a developer a real chore.. Apparently a paycheck is no longer the only things devs want from their work they seem to only want to take on jobs that they not only get payed to create but also has resale potential.. It's becoming quite frustrating..

Disclaimer I'm speaking in general terms and am not calling out anyone specific..
 
Brogan said:
It's not as if you've got a huge site with thousands of members online simultaneously, so any half decent server would have been able to cope with your vB 4 installation.
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Anyone who doesn't run a forum over 250k posts, has no idea really just how resource intensive they can be on a server. It is at this point you start to work out the future costs. As I've posted here previously, VB was seriously server intensive on my setup compared to the same setup (similar user options) using XF. Xenforo hands down kicks the crap out of VB and IPS, both of which I've used personally, from a server resource viewpoint.

Amateurs is who you argue with IMHO. @DRE has always been a want to be... without actual heavy forum resource usage to back their experience. The more add-ons you add, the more resources you need to run them. I only have about 660k posts at this posting on my forum, with about 20 add-ons. I used to have more, though have cut them due to server intensity. I have a dedicated sever via ServInt, and my install runs cherry. I don't expect to upgrade server further until the million / million half mark, with current add-on options available to members.

The more you add... the more your server will need provide.
 
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As a webmaster and forum admin I could give two ships about trying to impress people over post count and server load. Y'all assume too much. My site has had well over 250k posts. I don't have thousands of guests or users online but it has been and is occasionally in the hundreds. As a guest you can't see most of the sites posts cause half of it is private. I also deleted alot of threads and posts when I was cleaning up the site to make it a little more 'family safe'. My main concern at the moment is making sure it's easy to browse, post and search content.
 
DRE said:
Cause I came from a more powerful forum software, vBulletin 4.x series.
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vB4 was in no way better than XF 1.0.0 not even close. vB4 was a complete shambles at that point, not quite as bad as vB5 was when they decided that pre-alpha software was now ready to sell, but even still, it was virtually unusable on a site with serious traffic. We did a test run with one of ours. It failed big time, the software was terrible. XF in comparison worked a treat.

The vB dev team in charge of vB4 and 5 quite simply didn't (and likely still don't) have a clue what they were doing. There were so many really stupid, newbie mistakes it was unbelievable.
 
RickM said:
vB4 was in no way better than XF 1.0.0 not even close. vB4 was a complete shambles at that point, not quite as bad as vB5 was when they decided that pre-alpha software was now ready to sell, but even still, it was virtually unusable on a site with serious traffic. We did a test run with one of ours. It failed big time, the software was terrible. XF in comparison worked a treat.

The vB dev team in charge of vB4 and 5 quite simply didn't (and likely still don't) have a clue what they were doing. There were so many really stupid, newbie mistakes it was unbelievable.
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I disagree. vB4 had a lot features I needed at the time such as a CMS, a blog and a widget framework. Now it has way more, the most important new feature being a navigation manager. Xenforo 1.0 was barebones and lacked a lot of basic features that vBulletin already had. It couldn't even handle over 20 themes on shared hosting cause of some weird memory leak. Everytime you added an addon, language pack or theme it caused the whole site to be inaccessible to your users. VB 4.1 was superior in many ways, just not in speed and SEO.
 
DRE said:
I disagree. vB4 had a lot features I needed at the time such as a CMS, a blog and a widget framework. Now it has way more, the most important new feature being a navigation manager. Xenforo 1.0 was barebones and lacked a lot of basic features that vBulletin already had. It couldn't even handle over 20 themes on shared hosting cause of some weird memory leak. Everytime you added an addon, language pack or theme it caused the whole site to be inaccessible to your users. VB 4.1 was superior in many ways, just not in speed and SEO.
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Looks like we're going back around the circle.... so why not just go back to vB 4.x? If vB 4.x had everything you need then why make a commitment to XF knowing that it likely might never have the same features you believe you need?
 
Kevin said:
Looks like we're going back around the circle.... so why not just go back to vB 4.x? If vB 4.x had everything you need then why make a commitment to XF knowing that it likely might never have the same features you believe you need?
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I'm not going around in a circle. I disagreed with his post that's all.
 
DRE said:
I answered that earlier in the thread. You're only going in circles when you keep asking the same questions that you already have the answers to.
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No, you made analogies to cars and then we all went down that path because you want to see a "race car" turned into a comfy mid-size sedan that you used to drive.

The questions are simple: So why not just go back to vB 4.x? If vB 4.x had everything you need then why make a commitment to XF knowing that it likely might never have the same features you believe you need?
 

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