Some Pre-Sales Questions and Concerns

[holly23]

I'm in the process of creating a rather large forum site of my own and have done a lot of research about what software to use and what would work for me. I have narrowed my options to Xenforo and MyBB. During my research, I came across these posts on another site:

http://rpg-directory.com/thread-73255.html
http://rpg-directory.com/thread-77043-post-832413.html#pid832413

I'm very interested in Xenforo, but I have a few questions:

1) Are the issues this site mentioned still issues with Xenforo? (their issues may have more to do with their hosts than Xenforo, but just checking)
2) How many forums can Xenforo create/handle? Are thousands possible?
3) Can images, attachments, etc. be uploaded and included in threads or would I have to purchase one of the Extras to my license to have that option?
4) Is it possible to filter threads by multiple prefixes?
5) Are Custom Thread Fields provided?
6) Can I include the first image in a thread as a thumbnail before the thread suject in the threads list?
7) Is Xenforo as easy as MyBB when it comes to working with the code and changing things?
8) Is it possible to have payment required from a user to use a particular thread prefix?
9) Can I implement other payment and captcha options other than what is included in Xenforo?
10) Will Xenforo get greedy like vBulletin? I remember when I first started using vBulletin their license and upgrade costs were very similar to Xenforo's now. Now look how much they are!

Any help and info would be much appreciated.

 

[Russ]

I read that post awhile back and it was very confusing. They said the only option to do certain things is via phpmyadmin directly in the database which should be common tasks(I've had to go into mine once in my life). They also mentioned they never did update the software which could of posed more problems as well.

There's plenty of big boards out there running XenForo without the performance issues they labelled.

https://xenforo.com/community/threads/the-large-xenforo-forums-list.87974/

1.) I wouldn't take those posts seriously(just a personal opinion), seems like you mentioned it was server issues not software
2.) Not entirely sure, I've seen hundreds of nodes on an installation before
3.) Attachments are part of the default xenforo system, it's a basic system and no attachments are stored inside your user area or anything like that.
4.) By default you can use one prefix per thread, there's an add-on for multiple prefixes(we use it and it works well it's by @Daniel Hood)
5.) Not by default, @Jon W has an add-on for this
6.) I think @Jon W also has an add-on for this(thread thumbnails)
7.) No experience with MyBB
8.) You technically force a prefix to only be available to a certain user group which you can set as a user group promotion via user upgrades
9.) There's a few add-ons that extend the current payment system(user upgrades) to work with other payment portals. Same goes for captchas there are a few out there currently.
10.) No one can answer this but I really doubt XenForo would take any of the negative paths vB did.

 

[TPerry]

I'm willing to bet the #1 reason they went to myBB consists of this statement:

MyBB is much more cost effective to us. It should be easier to afford than XenForo and Linode was. It means staff won't need as much money to keep the software running.

For them.. it was about money. I run both myBB and XenForo, so I'm familiar with both.
They try to couch it in "technical problems" but when you get down to it, the main issue they had was the $'s that they didn't want to expend.

Performance wise... XenForo runs circles around myBB... and to top it off, I'm not REAL fond of having the majority of my tables in myIASM.