Digital Doctor
Well-known member
It's kinda nuts how many people are gone.
The silence is deafening and concerning...
- Thread starter bzcomputers
- Start date
smallwheels
Well-known member
I'don't think and feel "everything is ok" - how do you come to that conclusion? Rather the opposite. But I've seen and been in situations like that often enough that I see the structural reasons that possibly lead to a situation like that. This makes me more relaxed as I see that what is happening is somewhat common (and even unavoidable to a degree), may I like it or not. And I also have seen the outcome of situations like that which is typically positive longterm - yet won't be the cozy world of the past that you demand. I prefer to deal with those patterns and reasons rather than with the surface perception only and prefer to deal with the reality rather than blindly demanding something completely unrealistic and dreaming about a past that has long gone by (and probably is more shiny in memory than it was back then in reality as well). Yelling has barely ever solved a problem and ignoring the reality and living in the past has neither. To no repeat myself endlessly here's a post from a while ago about exactly this topic:
No doubt XF has a lot of room to improve in many areas. But for one it is still an excellent product that has not and will not stop working (so a lot has been achieved by the team) and secondly it is not on me to decide what they do but on them. So why should I make my life miserable? I can barely take influence and surely the probability of taking any influence at all is higher through constructive comments, objective facts, some empathy and hinting to small steps than trough yelling, daydreaming and loudly demanding the impossible in ignorance of the reality and the own position. At least that's what life tought me. I cannot decide what the XF does and neither do I want to. I am a customer. I can be demanding, supportive, helpful or annoying (and sometimes all of that at the same time) but I cannot make decisions for XF. I have to accept whatever they decide for their company and product and if I don't like what they decide and how they act and at some point think I can't live with that (or don't want to) I have the freedom to walk away and find a software that suits me better. It is that easy.
dunowat
Active member
What are your alternatives? I haven’t found anything quite like XenForo for the price. You might want to start planning a migration or another replacement strategy
I think the hyperbole is what's discouraging. There's still staff and also another business model with the cloud offering. I think the issue is that you keep talking like this and expect them to do more because of it. I think the other issue is also the fact that this thread is how many pages long with you and a handful of others posting the same thing over and over again.
I don't know if that's your main site, but what improvements are you looking for that will help boost your community? My point is rather than spending time here, it's better to build your community. I took a look at your link and it has 840 members. I'd be asking myself how do i get to 1000. Do you really need another update to get to 1k members?
I think as long as we get better releases and if their plan is what they say they're trying to modernize the underlying framework, yet keep the price the way it is with the same stability, would be worth the wait. There's a lot of things in 2.x that could stand to benefit. They obviously benefit from developers and developers benefit from a strong extendible platform. If they are taking a longer term view and working towards that, which I hope based on what they say because of the quality of the software, i think it's a good thing. They're leveraging the benefits of the latest versions of PHP and working and communicating with high profile developers. As long as they continue to take a standards based approach. Those guys will continue to make $. I also hope they can help shape the software.
While I understand your concern, the software is plenty good for 10k members. I wish there was more flexibility with the format so that we could keep up with the times and have a threaded post option but i do like the forums too. I personally think there's always going to be room for niche forums for long form content for strong niche communities. In the meantime, while we wait, I'm thinking of how to run the software better and get used to all of the many configurations as the community continues to grow and how to continually grow it. When the release does come out, it's going to be important to have a feedback loop for the devs for any issues.
My goal is just to stay positive and supportive and hope that they are planning for another version. If it becomes more extendible I'd love to create my own addons with a new framework with modern standards. The base they provide is very solid and if you know how to extend it, it's very powerful as is. If they make it easier, I think more devs will return once communities come back to fashion. I just wish we could have more variety with the "look" of the site.
Wing
Well-known member
Tbh, I dont know yet. Which is why I still am holding onto hope for the next 5 years. The thought of switching platforms after all the passion and enthusiasm with Xenforo makes me sick to think about, if that time ever came. Too much custom work done. The site listed in my signature is a very close-knit flight simulation hobby group. Its private but has daily activity with the select users on our Roster for flight operations and planning.
Ricsca
Well-known member
If they released stupid updates every month (or even every 15 days), many admins would constantly renew their licenses and with that money alone they could pay more than a developer working on Xenforo Core.
If there are no updates, admins aren't motivated to renew (even if they're simple updates), and this is a huge financial loss that only hurts the Xenforo project.
Iltore, a software that's always updated and with more and more options, also helps forums keep up with the times. If a forum has interesting options for users (beyond the content, of course), users will return to visit and participate more often. It's in Xenforo's best interest that forums remain interesting in 2026.
If there are no updates, admins aren't motivated to renew (even if they're simple updates), and this is a huge financial loss that only hurts the Xenforo project.
Iltore, a software that's always updated and with more and more options, also helps forums keep up with the times. If a forum has interesting options for users (beyond the content, of course), users will return to visit and participate more often. It's in Xenforo's best interest that forums remain interesting in 2026.
smallwheels
Well-known member
Sure. On the other hand that is the case as well if a forum has nothing else to offer than good, high quality content and a decent community culture. There are literally hundreds examples for this. W/o that a forum won't find visitors and struggle with longterm survival, no matter what fancy features it may have. A XF based forum that currently struggles does not do so b/c of a lack of features in XF and won't become a visitor magnet once 2.4 or 3.0 will be released or if XF build in fancy features. Forums are about content.
Wing
Well-known member
Even though forums are about content, there is always room to grow. As much as I hate Discord, that platform has shown a new innovative organization of discussions. Now imagine if Forums took some of that, but kept it inside a Forum structure and format... heck, its 2026, imagine if we had VOIP built into our Forum communities. There's just alot out there these days that can be developed and assist with modernization of the user experience. Even basic userbase management features of some of the new-age platforms would go a LONG way inside our Forum formats.
smallwheels
Well-known member
Absolutely. That is the reason why I prefer a smaller seller if the rest is equal (and sometimes even if it's not): you'll typically get better, more individual and more personal customer service instead of standard replies and processes. Still bigger investments in products (aka development efforts and product conception and design) are typically easier to handle by a bigger seller, simply because he has more customers that share the cost in the end.
That is a very valuable and honest response and I am thankful for it. When I joined the forums a couple of years ago the attitude and wording of the moderatrors/XF supporters her on the forums was what irritated me the most. It seemed generally rude and often inadequate, esepcially for staff in a company support forum. The more as - at that time - the forum and basically all it's members seemed quite supportive and friedly to me (which has changed over the last year to a degree). These irritations kept popping up regularly but the thread you refer to was an absolute lowlight in that regard. I haven't seen worse in this forum and am still baffled about that behavior. Especially in a situation like the current one where the company basically overpromised and underdelivered and a lot of people are rightfully annoyed about that. To me this behavior including the fact that it was not one but two staff members/moderators made me turn away from XenForo so drastic that I was resconsidering my future plans with it and thinking about alternatives. If I was a perspective buyer this would clearly and without any doubt have made me go for a different seller/solution on the market. I've barely ever seen anything as unprofessional as that (and I have seen a lot).
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webbouk
Well-known member
Yenxji
Well-known member
No one is asking for internal secrets. But come on, that XenForo bug reports have 750 sitting there with no replies, and releases disappearing for years? That matters when you have built your business on XenForo. Just give us a quarterly update so we know you are still working on it
frm
Well-known member
Looks like they took this feedback constructively. They've apparently done some housekeeping and have marked one of my reports as "third party" since this post.
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/quote-bug-quote-escapes-quote.185139/
I agree, the same few who have nothing better to do.
Exactly. These threads are getting exhausting to see appear one after another. It'd be great if they just merged all into one thread and/or implement thread/node ignoring (something I've taken upon myself to do).
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smallwheels
Well-known member
A couple of people have done, repeatedly and pretty loudly, in this thread as well as in others/earlier ones around similar topics. Plus some were not shy to wildly claim made up things about internals or to create FUD from nothing, claiming this would be their right, the more as they were not told all those internals.
However: The topic of this thread is outdated: Communication has happened back at the beginning of December already, bugs were fixed to a massive amount, 2.3.8 preview with a huge amount of fixes has been released on Friday. The perceived structural deficits in communication have been named and no doubt been recognized by XF. From today's point of view one could state:
- they could have relased a patch for the image-upside-down problem in 2.3.7 in July more prominently
- they could have released another maintenance release at some point between July and today, so publishing the fixed bugs earlier in a somewhat smaller. maintenance release
- they could have been more transparent earlier about what's the state of things and what was/is holding them back in regards of 2.3.8 and 2.4
- they could have taken care of the huge amount of open bugs earlier and more visibly
Basically all of that is now either done, outdated or kind of visibly in the works. And it has been explained what the root causes of the silence and the delays, that both annoyed a lot of people and created massive negativity, were.
The big elephant in the room behind all that is communication. With better and more timely communication most of the outrage over the last months that is visible in this and other threads could possibly have been avoided for the most part, even if the messages would have been about delays. While there are no doubt many areas of possible improvements this is the biggie - and I hope XF change something about that in the future, possibly fostered by some process improvements to make communication and staff visibility rather a regular, institutionalized routine than a irregular, occasional demanding task outside the daily routine.
There are however a couple of people that probably will always be unhappy and there is not much which can be done about their unhappiness by anyone other then themselves as it seems to be rather either an emotional thing than rational. Like: Wishing and unrealistically expecting to travel back in time 15 years (based on a romanticized memory of the time back then and the ignorance that the world has moved on) or expectations that go way over the top in terms of how transparent or how cuddly the XF team aught to be or a misinterpretation of their role as customers (in opposite to shareholders or owners of the company) or ignorance of reality in terms of what XF at it's staff size can realistically deliver or what they want to deliver with their product and what is ruled out anyway strategically.
Partly this can no doubt be addressed by better communication and expectation management, too (i.e. a statement about what is the core vision and identity for the product for next couple of years could help) but in the end it is up to themselves to get their feet back to the ground. But we see i.e. that with the 2.3.8 preview the negativity and destructiveness have stopped for the moment all of a sudden (and before that lowered with the statement of Dec 5th).
However: Even the negative comments do inherit something positive: They show how emotionally engaged the customers are with the product XF offers. XF is not a product that does not matter and that they would be willing to exchange quickly (apart from that it would often mean a lot of work to do so) - there seems to be a intensive emotional stickyness to the software with many, for many years. Which ist an amazing achievement for a company - and also explains the somewhat harsh and irrational reactions of some to a degree: It a relationship and lack of commuication is like being ignored in a love affair for some, as it seems. Which then leads to escalating destructive behavior with some, just as it is possible in real life relations between humans.
Overall I hope that we all (or at least most of us) have learned our lesson: Non-communication is a form of communication, too (and rarely has a positive outcome) and thus should better be avoided as it leads to insecurity, rumors and escalation of negativity. It can be avoided easily be making communication part of the regular daily routine and company processes. Constant negativity, unrealistic expectations and spreading FUD on the other hand are not constructive or helpful feedback and do not change anything to the better but create a negative and destructive culture in the community that no one should have an interest in creating.
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ES Dev Team
Well-known member
I'm just happy that it seems like they've got the ball rolling again and have been communicating with people lately. 
frm
Well-known member
Obviously, the silence isn't deafening or concerning, to me at least, especially with the last week.
It's a theory. But perhaps XenForo undertook something too ambitious at the time for the limited resources that they had, and perhaps devoted some more production away from development for Cloud: Patching 2.3 and ensuring those bugs don't appear in both 2.4 and 3.0.
I'm just wondering if they patch something on 2.3, that they also have to spend 2x more time to make sure it's also fixed in 2.4 and 3.0.
It seems like they're trying to push as many repairs in 2.3 as possible with the delayed release of 2.3.8 that'll make it, perhaps, the last version (less security updates) as, from what I believe, only the current release is then supported (which will eliminate 2.3 and put 2.4 and 3.0 at the forefront).
Once they have finalized 2.3, 2.4 is going to be the main focus, along with 3. That should put them on track again, not the promised track, but one that most would find agreeable.
By having essentially 3 versions in the pipeline, they might've temporarily shot themselves in the foot, and after 2.4's release, development won't be as cumbersome of a task as they can remove 2.3 from their plate.
Really unsure if this theory is correct or how they're managing 3 simultaneous updates, but patching one (2.4) while building another (3) shouldn't have them spread so thin.
I briefly looked into software branches, and it seems for the main part, or what I understood, a patch to 2.3 could seamlessly be deployed in both 2.4 and 3; though, I suspect they would still need to debug, and honestly didn't understand a process like that much myself.
It's not a topic I've seen brought up: XF working on 2.3, 2.4, and 3 at the same time. I'm just wondering once they clear all the 2.3 bugs and release 2.4, which will be the new maintained version, that it might speed up the process a bit.
If I'm correct here, a "development for dummies" explaining this process, and admitting to the fault of spreading so thin, even though at one time they perhaps believed it could be done, whilst not providing deadlines might've made all the difference — one post that didn't beat around the bush and give excuses on deadlines as development methodology could be explained at the lowest level of understanding without giving away too much competitive information.
Plus holidays (November – January, prior to that could've been some UK holidays I don't follow) and typical earned time off not factored in.
It's a theory. But perhaps XenForo undertook something too ambitious at the time for the limited resources that they had, and perhaps devoted some more production away from development for Cloud: Patching 2.3 and ensuring those bugs don't appear in both 2.4 and 3.0.
I'm just wondering if they patch something on 2.3, that they also have to spend 2x more time to make sure it's also fixed in 2.4 and 3.0.
It seems like they're trying to push as many repairs in 2.3 as possible with the delayed release of 2.3.8 that'll make it, perhaps, the last version (less security updates) as, from what I believe, only the current release is then supported (which will eliminate 2.3 and put 2.4 and 3.0 at the forefront).
Once they have finalized 2.3, 2.4 is going to be the main focus, along with 3. That should put them on track again, not the promised track, but one that most would find agreeable.
By having essentially 3 versions in the pipeline, they might've temporarily shot themselves in the foot, and after 2.4's release, development won't be as cumbersome of a task as they can remove 2.3 from their plate.
Really unsure if this theory is correct or how they're managing 3 simultaneous updates, but patching one (2.4) while building another (3) shouldn't have them spread so thin.
I briefly looked into software branches, and it seems for the main part, or what I understood, a patch to 2.3 could seamlessly be deployed in both 2.4 and 3; though, I suspect they would still need to debug, and honestly didn't understand a process like that much myself.
It's not a topic I've seen brought up: XF working on 2.3, 2.4, and 3 at the same time. I'm just wondering once they clear all the 2.3 bugs and release 2.4, which will be the new maintained version, that it might speed up the process a bit.
If I'm correct here, a "development for dummies" explaining this process, and admitting to the fault of spreading so thin, even though at one time they perhaps believed it could be done, whilst not providing deadlines might've made all the difference — one post that didn't beat around the bush and give excuses on deadlines as development methodology could be explained at the lowest level of understanding without giving away too much competitive information.
Plus holidays (November – January, prior to that could've been some UK holidays I don't follow) and typical earned time off not factored in.
