I first considered Tapatalk way back when we looked at getting an app for AVForums on vB3. However, I decided to go for Forumrunner because it was supported by our search engine addon SearchLight (which uses Sphinx) we had to use with vB3. The SearchLight developer had looked at the Tapatalk code and warned me that it copied chunks of vB code and was a mess and that he would never support it.
Things were relatively smooth with Forumrunner but I never used the app myself, so I was unfamiliar with it generally.
Forumrunner support had originally been good from its developer Rob who even wrote a couple of addons for us (e.g. iTrader rating display).
Forumrunner lacked some features which I hoped would be added, but after it was sold to Internet Brands, support dropped off a cliff, they refused to update the addons we had purchased and my confidence in the future of Forumrunner ended.
So I switched to the Tapatalk BYO because of some good feedback and an assurance that it worked with vB and Xenforo. I also felt confident that Tapatalk was stable having been around for so long.
After swapping to Tapatalk, the feedback from the community was wholly negative. They didn't like the change from Forumrunner. My impression at the time was that the app was not popular.
So when I migrated from vB to Xenforo in October, I decided to drop the app in favour of the responsive design.
I was amazed at the number of complaints we then received from the community that the app had been removed. Particularly because I had previously only ever had negative feedback.
So I begrudgingly brought it back. I wish I had stuck to plan 'A' and left the app off because then there were more complaints because of the various and continuous problems with Tapatalk. Very disappointed how unstable Tapatalk is.
We do have an issue at the moment with our editorial which does not have a responsive design. We're working on that, but until it's implemented, the home page and editorial sections do not work well on small screens.
The forums, however, do use the responsive design although it could do with some optimising to reduce font sizes and padding/margin sizes to get more on to the smaller pages and I'm in the middle of testing that now.
So I had been keeping Tapatalk with a plan to consider removing it when our editorial goes responsive.
However, after we got thousands of server errors last week following the installation of the new version of the addon, I had to suspend Tapatalk pending a fix. Disabling the addon, however, did not stop the errors, so I had to uninstall it completely.
With help from chaps here, I then learned that uninstalling Tapatalk removed some core templates which led to messed up alerts. This I am very unimpressed with, and reinforces my perception that Tapatalk is 'cowboy code'.
Lastly I discussed the situation with our regular coder who (unsolicited) commented that he'd looked at the Tapatalk code and thought it was a mess.
Given all the other disadvantages with Tapatalk BYO not supporting our addons which include
- anti-spam features
- the ability to create classifieds
- our editorial
and also not supporting Windows or Blackberry phones, I'm inclined at the moment not to bring it back.
I thought they were just lurkers and won't even post.
