Some tough questions for the XF Team

[Reeve of Shinra]

Hey guys, first off congratulations once again on your latest endeavor. It looks great for an alpha and its creating quite a buzz.

Underneath the buzz of it all, a few people expressed some concerns and as I'm somewhat curious about the response myself I thought I would take the liberty of asking.

A lot of core team members that worked on vbulletin in the past appear to be involved with xenForo now. Obviously that is a strength given the fact you work well together and have tremendous experience in this area but Jelsoft way prior to the IB days was not a perfect company. How do you see yourselves avoiding the mistakes they made?

More to the point, and not to sound rude but sometimes candid works best:

1. What can Kier do now that he couldn't do when he was product manager of vbulletin?

2. Jelsoft always had issues communicating with their customers about upcoming changes (even prior to IB getting involved) and at times it was like pulling teeth to get yes and no types of answers. On the flip side, I think IPB has done an outstanding job of keeping their customers in the loop with their developments without necessarily giving away crucial info to competitors.What are your thoughts about this (if any) and where does XF plan to be in this scale of things?

3. I'm going to beat an old horse... the CMS ... vb customers have wanted one for over 10 years and half ***ed or not, they only got on last year.

I'm sure there are NDA's in place and you probably can't speak towards the specifics of why it took 10 years to accomplish. I'm equally sure that there are probably technological reasons for the delay. It even sounds like XF is being built with this kind of expansion in mind. My question is -- under your guidance, how will we avoid a situation where we are left hanging 10 years for a highly demanded product that never materializes? Will the communication be clear enough that if someone asks for product z tomorrow, you could say 'yes its in the works for later this year' or 'no, we don't plan on doing it this year'.

Thank you,

- John

 

[Dark_Hunter]

Well I'm sure people will use xF, I know I will.

 

[anotheralias]

That's what I'm saying! I mean, I'm already plotting how to go about getting my favorite boards to switch to it, and if they don't, and someone should happen to start a board on the same topic but with this software, I'm jumping ship.

 

[HydraulicJack]

I see a lot of people here lobbying for XF Team to just let WordPress handle CMS.

My question for you who are familiar with Wordpress is: Who owns the copyright to the CONTENT posted using WP? In my sitch, I must retain copyrights of the posted content. Thanks in advance. --HJ

 

[anotheralias]

Apparently there's Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org and this may not apply to whatever one you're talking about but... here it is anyway.

(Ohhhh, love the link popup thingy!)

 

[HydraulicJack]

Thanks! Yeah looks like WordPress is more of a blog (which of course is also needed) than a CMS, am I missing something in that regard?
If the answer is Yes, would you please post a link showing CMS implementation? Thanks!

 

[Andy.N]

I use Wordpess as CMS on my site (link in signature)

 

[anotheralias]

(To Hydraulic Jack) I'm not the one to answer that, but if you Google copyright law and whatever you're thinking of using, you can probably find an answer regarding copyright/ownership of what you post on it.

 

[HydraulicJack]

Thanks! anotheralias and Andy N.

Andy, your home page in the referenced link looks convincingly CMS to me!
So... the end product is convincing, but what did you have to do to the Forum software for it to "promote" content to articles such as you have on display?

Is it as easy as clicking a promote-to-article button or ???

Is there a link that describes the process, using the software that you are using?

I basically have already been waiting nearly a year for CMS, based on the blather pumped out of Jelsoft as it gave itself up to be eaten by IB.

I am quite disinclined to wait another year that maybe Kier and Mike may decide to turn at least some of their attention (i.e. what some call multitasking) to getting the Blog and CMS built and in place. Otherwise from my POV, and with great regret, XenForo becomes just another, albeit the jazziest and snazziest, also-ran. It really galls me to have to cobble together three entirely different systems (with their idiosyncracies and patching necessary at upgrade to keep everything glued together), as being the only solution being offered by anyone credible or competent for at least the next 6 months to a year. That just seems to be absurd with a whole planet full of programmers and designers!

 

[Tigratrus]

Well... It's a question of using best of breed tools, or using all-in-0ne tools.

In my personal experience, the Best of Breed tends to be, well best.

The systems that try to be all things to all users end up diluting their core business and losing out to systems that focus on what they do best.

That said, I do believe that the forum side can encompass a lot more than it has in the past, esp Gallery/file upload management, but CMS is a totally different ball of wax. The only, and I mean ONLY thing that I like about a forum based CMS is the idea of promoting a forum thread to an article. Other than that, building a CMS from scratch is a huge, uphill, and likely thankless task as the comparisons to other, unfairly more mature CMS systems is likely to be invidious.

Yes, integrating is more work. But it's just a bit absurd to think that a startup is going to compete successfully in an established market, in a product they (based widely known experience) don't have really deep personal experience in. My money is on focusing on your core business, and providing world beating integrations. XF + WP and/or J! >>> than vB with their 1/2 assed POS CMS or even IPS's sorta/kinda CMS.

:: tosses two shiny coins in hat ::

 

[anotheralias]

The systems that try to be all things to all users end up diluting their core business and losing out to systems that focus on what they do best.

That is so true. And it doesn't just apply to software - I think it's true for a whole lot of things. TV shows, art, political candidates, appliances ... I don't need my toaster to do ten different jobs badly - I just need it to do one job really well.

 

[HydraulicJack]

Well... It's a question of using best of breed tools, or using all-in-0ne tools.

In my personal experience, the Best of Breed tends to be, well best.

Yes I totally agree! So then all I need is:

1. ... For XenForo to get finished with Alpha and zip on thru beta (when truly ready of course), and go production-ready,
2. ... For somebody to write a bridge or whatever it's called to link XF to WP and/or J AND provide a smooth seamless migration path for the forum-, blog-, and yes... soon (reluctantly but resignedly) CMS... content from vB 4.x.whatever so that I'll be able to port all of the data over to the correct receptacles with link rewriting that doesn't break any of my many SE-indexed links

...I just can't afford to sit around by the phone waitin' and hopin' for the next year or whatever.

The systems that try to be all things to all users end up diluting their core business and losing out to systems that focus on what they do best.

If you're actually talking about ALL things to ALL people then I agree, but I'm just talking about THREE functions for those sites that would logically need these three functions (forum, blog, CMS-or-its-next-evolutionary-step).

That said, I do believe that the forum side can encompass a lot more than it has in the past, esp Gallery/file upload management, but CMS is a totally different ball of wax. The only, and I mean ONLY thing that i like about a forum based CMS is the idea of promoting a forum thread to an article.

Well yeah... that's "all" I want CMS for too.

But that is way-non-trivial in my situation... A lot of the really old content (going back 15 years) remains completely relevant for the newest newbie and needs to be readily accessible in a format that my user base - many of whom are non-techie - is most comfortable with, and that's reading articles in a magazine format - CMS in effect. Non-trivial. Mission Critical. Time is of the Essence.

So far, nobody seems to be able to get this done in a competent manner that's accessible to content providers who do not yet have the scale to fund their own IT team to write it all up and maintain it in custom code (and who'd want that nightmare anyway!).

Other than that, building a CMS from scratch is a huge, uphill, and likely thankless task as the comparisons to other, unfairly more mature CMS systems is likely to be invidious.

Frankly, I doubt it. Startups are nearly ALWAYS - or at least quite often enough - facing those kinds of odds. But the rewards are correspondingly great for those who step in and truly innovate then communicate that news to their target market efficiently and effectively.

Yes, integrating is more work. But it's just a bit absurd to think that a startup is going to compete successfully in an established market, in a product they (based widely known experience) don't have really deep personal experience in.

Likewise, I'm not sure that's canon law esp in hi-tech and software or again, there'd be no more dragon-slayer success stories.

My money is on focusing on your core business, and providing world beating integrations.

That's basically all I'm asking for, and I'd rather not have to wait yet another year for it, although I know that I may have to, and that I prolly AM going to have to man-up and use the vB suite until at least a truly decent bridge appears such as: XF + WP and/or J/or Drupal.

Thanks for your comments, Tigratrus!

 

[feldon30]

Looking to this product makes me imagine how unique and awesome the CMS, Blog, Gallery are gonna be.

• IPB CMS - compromise
• vB4 CMS - HUGE compromise
• IPB Blog - compromise
• vB4 Blog - compromise
• IPB Gallery - compromise
• vB4 Gallery - non-existent

You really want to pay $300 to build a website on that?

• XenForo + best-in-class Blog + best-in-class CMS = win
• Wordpress has 1,000+ plugins and 5,000+ themes and is on its 3rd generation.
• Joomla or Drupal are both great choices for CMS.

I guess if Kier wants to do a CMS or Blog, it will happen, but I don't see it as a high priority.

 

[feldon30]

Thanks! Yeah looks like WordPress is more of a blog (which of course is also needed) than a CMS, am I missing something in that regard?

Yep. 95% of websites out there could be built in Wordpress without losing anything. The Blog is just a shrinking part of Wordpress. It has full support for Pages, and it's trivially easy to add a Contact Us form, Calendar, Surveys, sidebars, etc.

When I am talking to someone about doing a website, my first recommendation, unless they can give me a good reason not to (deep web structure, or dynamic loading of content) is Wordpress.

 

[chousho]

I would much rather have Kier and Mike focus on the quality of the forums to create the best and most stable product they can, rather than taking on too many tasks.
Even if they come out and the RC is as good as gold (har har), I think it would be a good idea to let them focus on the forum software. Dealing with 2 separate softwares at the same time is a bit of a chore, and a good way to let either one or the other (or both) suffer. It would be better to allow them to find a small team they could bring in that would be able to help for any additional releases.

 

[bookmark]

I suggest Xenforo takes at least 3 years to build the forum which is the foundation of the framework.The more time we devote to the framework,the more substantial development we will have.

Xenforo shouldn't be aggressive.

 

[darkon]

If you want to survive as a company you have to be aggressive in some way. Nobody buys software because of the "nice behaviour" of the staff.
You have to have something that will make users switch from whatever they are using to your product, and you have to promote this.

To be honest, a bridge to any other freeware CMS/Gallery/Blog etc. won´t be a reason to most of the people to buy a bulletin-software. That way is ok for freeware BBs and as plugins/mods/whatevertheywillbecalled.
I´m sick of having multiple backends for one site, thats just not professional and i won´t invest much money for such a product.

A simple portal, to promote selected threads, informations etc. in a "not to techylooking"-way would be a good start.That´s one of the best features in vB4, that you can turn a posting into a blog-entry or an article for the cms (if the cms and blogs themselfes wouldn´t be so badly designed that would be close to perfection for most). It makes sense, the text (maybe including uploaded pictures), the author etc. are allready in the database, so you won´t have to let a script convert and copy them for another product. And the pages-feature is allready there to, just waiting to be used.
From that point thirdparty developers can enhance this portal to full CMS

Same goes for a small gallery. The basic features are allready there (upload, thumbnailcreation, usergroup-settings etc.) too.

 

[principia]

@darkon
i agree. Basics are allready here. It may take not so much work to enhance this features.

 

[HydraulicJack]

I agree with darkon and principia... Thing is, xenforo is still too young to pull all that together... And I'm p'o'd that I might be stuck with vB for another two or three years or whatever (if IB even still owns it by then!) until xenforo matures enough to maybe add blog and CMS. I'm bummed because the XF forum software is lookin' HOT!

 

[Marcus]

Wordpress will be a competitor for forums, soon.

I'd not integrate xf with wordpress - as wordpress already competes with forumsoftware. Wordpress has a forum solution.

 

[Floris]

BuddyPress will be more a competitor to forums, than Wordpress on its own is. They target a difference audience.