The future of forums (vs social media)

Yes, agreed. Pages are of very little use as is. The only use case I found was to create a widget page. But out of the box I see no point. Hopefully XF2 will bring a better implementation.
 
It starts with what is the end goal for your forum?

Is it a hobby? Is it to make money?

If it is to make money it could be only part of your business. The same as communicating. People use the phone, email, text, FB etc depending upon who they want to communicate and what they want to communicate about.

If you sell fishing equipment and talk about fishing in your forum that is great but it is only one part of the puzzle. A blog, a facebook group, an email list and so on are also very important.

If your forum is your only way of reaching your customer it may be time to start branching out more.
 
I have (very roughly) 100 xenforo pages which I use for articles, works pretty well and is by far the main driver of traffic to my site. The features are pretty light, though. Things like pagination would be nice.
 
In my opinion, the day that the forums will have an app as easy to use as facebook's one they will begin to grow again... tapatalk is good but the facebook app is still better... and very easy to use. Overall when you have to upload pics. Maybe would be a good idea to make a "facebook app clon" for xenforo....
 
In my opinion, the day that the forums will have an app as easy to use as facebook's one they will begin to grow again... tapatalk is good but the facebook app is still better... and very easy to use. Overall when you have to upload pics. Maybe would be a good idea to make a "facebook app clon" for xenforo....

Agreed.
 
Maybe would be a good idea to make a "facebook app clon" for xenforo
Which Xenforo? The one I have installed on my recumbent site? The one that I have installed on my motorcycle site? The one you have installed on your site?
An app would be fine for bare-bones access, but any features/functions from 3rd party add-ons would most likely be non-existent in them. Basically what you would have is an app very similar to tapatalk that was only able to be used on XenForo sites and not multiple sites using various scripts.
 
Which Xenforo? The one I have installed on my recumbent site? The one that I have installed on my motorcycle site? The one you have installed on your site?
An app would be fine for bare-bones access, but any features/functions from 3rd party add-ons would most likely be non-existent in them. Basically what you would have is an app very similar to tapatalk that was only able to be used on XenForo sites and not multiple sites using various scripts.
Exactly.
 
Others already wrote this but in the end of the day forums are forums and social media is social media. When I registered here back in 2010 I thought Xenforo is just fancy (like Apple) and nothing else. Because forums are for more serious discusions than social media sites. Especially if it is not a chit chat forum but has some main topics. My vBulletin 4 publishing suite was a feature-rich platform and honestly in 2010, I did prefer vB. Today I think that xF is the standard and it's fancy style is actually required because other forum softwares look very outdated.

I think MyBB is trying to simplify itself to adapt to the "new trends":
https://blog.mybb.com/2015/09/27/2-0-dev-post-6/

And this is a perfect place for meaningless discussions. Building a community is much harder nowadays than it was a few years ago. But I personally don't think that we should move forward in this simplifying direction.

There are some fancy new softwares which are expensive:
https://forum.manjaro.org/
I dislike this style. I started with phpbb in 2007, then I moved to MyBB in 2008 then to SMF and then to vB. I love forums and I don't think that we should replace their structure.
 
Okay, so after looking at this thread a number of times on different days, it seems that what people really want in a "forum" and in the evolution of forums is not really a forum, but is really more like...

Joomla (or Drupal for the really really motivated and ready for trouble)

Plus a forum with the "not forum" CMS. Presumably XenForo or another. (Can you do that - can you add XF to Joomla the way I've seen another forum with it?)

People are saying XF by itself is just a forum, though it seems there are some good added options for it beyond "just a forum." WordPress may be good for what it is, but it is still not nearly at the level of a "community" or CMS as Joomla is. And Drupal is a huge uphill climb, tougher than Joomla, you really have to be ready for climbing a mountain in winter, and probably not really necessary for most things when Joomla would do well.

Sound right?
 
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Hello,

My name is Maxime Beneteau, I'm studying Interaction design at L'école de Design in Nantes, France. I'm currently working on my end-of-studies project focusing on how people create, consult, search and share meaningful conversations on the Web. I'm currently working on 3 concepts, and one of them focus on "the future of web forums". I bumped on this thread yesterday and found out very interesting questions and ideas, and I would love to discuss about those issues in a deeper way.

Ideally, I would love to share with you design of interfaces, prototypes I'm working on and get feedbacks from you.

I'm also currently looking for a tutor, don't worry you won't have to do anything, only give me feedbacks on my work through the next 2 months.

If this is something that may interest you, don't hesitate to contact me at : bemaxdesign@gmail.com

If you're wondering what I do as a designer, you can check my portfolio: maximebeneteau.com

Have a great a day,
 
I'll throw in my .02 to this social media discussion vs forum discussion.

One key thing to remember with social media is it's controlled by a few players. They all have an agenda of what they want their masses to see and discuss. Having run a 2nd Amendment forum for the past 11 years I can tell you first hand that if the "Social Media Players" do not like your content they will control and suppress it. The right to own firearms in the United States is a constitutionally protected right. Yet everyone of the "Social Media Players" despise it and often control the message and content.

While my forum will never compete with Facebook, Twitter, Google, Instragram, etc, it has a very profound effect on the 2nd Amendment message in New England. It won't be suppressed or controlled by any of the "Social Media Players".
 
The solution to this is what I call "Network of social forums". What does it consist of?. Maintain the essence of a forum, but adding ease in its use, applying a gamification system and an environment that influences to collaborate and interact with the community. How will we do it?. You need to read my suggestions to understand:
  1. "Home" and Share - XenForo: https://xenforo.com/community/threads/home-and-share-xenforo.124033/#post-1118978
  2. Gamification System - XenForo:https://xenforo.com/community/threa...-growth-of-the-community.121099/#post-1118904
  3. Level Systems in XenForo: https://xenforo.com/community/threads/level-systems-in-xenforo.123788/#post-1117512
Although I consider it necessary that the option of adding an image and / or video in the comments of the state publications in XenForo, would be great.

Greetings all, Reinhard :D
 
I'll throw in my .02 to this social media discussion vs forum discussion.

One key thing to remember with social media is it's controlled by a few players. They all have an agenda of what they want their masses to see and discuss. Having run a 2nd Amendment forum for the past 11 years I can tell you first hand that if the "Social Media Players" do not like your content they will control and suppress it. The right to own firearms in the United States is a constitutionally protected right. Yet everyone of the "Social Media Players" despise it and often control the message and content.

While my forum will never compete with Facebook, Twitter, Google, Instragram, etc, it has a very profound effect on the 2nd Amendment message in New England. It won't be suppressed or controlled by any of the "Social Media Players".
That's a good point and I don't doubt that's true. However, I'm curious why you are posting here if your forum is in VB and not XF (I saw it). Are you thinking of moving to XF, or do you have any other forum in XF?
 
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