Or should I stick to vBulletin (v5)?
I may be skirting the rules about not talking poorly about competitor software with this post, but in my opinion the only reason why you would ever consider vB5 would be if you are not interested in running 3rd party modifications or 3rd party themes. If you look at the modification section on vBulletin.org, you'll see the 3rd party scene for vB5 is entirely dead.
(If this breaks the rules, moderators feel free to just cut this part out
)
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Speaking as a developer, XenForo 2 is hands down the most enjoyable forum software to develop for I have ever looked at. Compared to other software I've looked at, it's incredibly easy to implement advanced functionality. Search engine integration, reaction system (likes, dislikes, etc), warning system ("Infractions" in vB), etc... All things that would, comparatively speaking, take a
lot of work on other platforms.
Even something as basic as checking permissions is made incredibly easy to maintain, meaning if there's ever a bug with my permission checking, like a "can the user view this content" not reading a certain option or something, I only have to fix it in
one location.
The 3rd party add-on scene for XenForo is also very healthy, so if you find yourself needing something beyond what the core & official add-ons can do, chances are someone else has already done it and you won't have to shell out thousands to have it custom built. The XF Core developers are also very mindful of the needs of 3rd party developers, never have I felt like XF intentionally rooster blocks me from doing anything I've needed to do. The few times I've come across minor parts of the software that's set up in a sub-optimal way, the issues have always been addressed promptly.
Speaking as someone who helps run a large forum (1 million posts), the users absolutely loved the change from vB4. Many long-time members that had not been seen on the site for years returned and started posting again because of how modern and fresh it looked.
As far as I'm concerned, no other platform can hold a candle to XenForo. Any time we get someone asking us "is X addon coming to vB5, we're thinking of upgrading" I always strongly recommend them looking into XenForo 2 if they want a more modern forum software than vB3/vB4.
