What brought you to XenForo?

[adwade]

As a prospective XenForo buyer, I'm wondering how other folks ended up using XenForo? While I have not (yet) ended up here, I have spend a considerable amount of time over the last week researching the software's out-of-the-box capabilities, as well as which MODs can add what features.

So that said, what brought me towards XenForo was a thread I read called: Rethinking the "discussion board:" AboveTopSecret.com on TheAdminZone.(in part, quoted below) I've never really seen anythink like the ATS website and he never mentions XenForo anywhere in his post. However, some of the things he spoke of got me to thinking about how communications have evolved over the past few decades.(i.e. BBS, Internet Forums, Social Media, Instant Messaging, etc.)

My biggest gripe with typical discussion board formats is what passes for a "home" page -- usually a simple list of topical forums, sometimes with a description, and an indication of how many posts and threads are contained within. For a new visitor, this is horrible. And even worse, some forums restrict viewing helpful pages like "recent" or "new" posts to logged-in members. And approaching tragic, some don't even allow guests to see content.

We started creating top-level "summary" pages of the important topics from each forum, aggregate pages of the most-important topics from all forums, and a new site home that had more of a "news web site" feel that showed the best of everything. Literally, as soon as those pages appeared, overall traffic increased dramatically.

Late last year, we started to look deep into our analytics and how users interact with the site, and noticed there could be areas for improvement as we began considering our fourth redesign project...

That got me to searching around, for something else besides what I had been using.(i.e. vB3) In searching for "new forum software," Google led me to Wikipedia's Comparison of Internet forum software. And right there, below vBulletin, was something called XenForo. When I looked at the Features Table, only six of the packages listed were full-featured (i.e. all columns Yes) so that made it fairly easy to concentrate on those.

I remembered back when vBulletin was bought by IB, that some of the coders had left, and later there was some sort of a lawsuit. After reading more about it on the Wikipedia XenForo page, the next two statements caught my eye: XenForo has several SEO features built in. Its popularity is growing, according to feedback from various community forums and weblogs.

As soon as I saw XenForo could import a vB3 board, it passed the first hurtle and I've been reading an awful lot about XenForo's capabilities…both the advantages and disadvantages of the software. As a newcommer to XenForo, some of the more informative & revealing things I have read were:

Guide to Install XenForo Forum Software
Installing XenForo
Ok I did it, My first XF conversion
Xenforo, the Good and the Bad
I said Good bye to XenForo
Irritants of XenForo
Am I the only one that doesn't like XenForo?
How can XenForo Improve?
​

I realize much of the info is dated, but (to me) it was still ALL informative. The Online Manual and the DEMO were both very helpful in answering a lot of my questions, as the general XenForo Community has been in helping me to understand some things about the software.

And that's how I ended up here on the XenForo Forum as a prospective client.

So once again, How did you end up using XenForo?(i.e. What led you over to it?)

 

[imthebest]

vBulletin 3.x was the key of my success as a webmaster. Since vBulletin 4.x didn't have anything new and vBulletin 5 was bs, the logical path was to move to XenForo, specially knowing that it has been developed by former vBulletin 3.x coders.

I heard about XenForo at vbulletin.com/vbulletin.org and TAZ.

 

[adwade]

...logical path was to move to XenForo, specially knowing that it has been developed by former vBulletin 3.x coders.

That is probably the prime reason I am so interested in XenForo, knowing that there are capable (i.e. proven) coders behind the scenes building the next 'big' (i.e. successful) thing. I too have run vB3 for a decade and have been impressed with it's adaptability and rock-solid stability. That said, the coders previous track-record is one thing that really draws me towards thisXenForo Forum software.

 

[Puntocom]

I was running vB 4.x and getting dissapointed in August 2010. Then I found XenForo, the site looked fine and since it was developed by K&M I knew it was a safe move.

I was right. I run XenForo since its first Beta and I never had a problem with it.

 

[James]

I jumped over here when I read a thread on vBcom about the new forum software by ex-vB devs.

Out of curiosity I read that Wikipedia article and it states threaded as yes; this isn't technically true as it doesn't support threaded view out-of-the-box. I think an addon exists though.

 

[Lawrence]

This guy -> @Dean
Seriously, I never heard of XenForo until Dean sent me a link and asked: What do you think?

 

[empire]

A couple of years ago I looked into moving our vb4 forum. I was hoping there'd be a clear mainstream choice that most vb boards were using. We're a pretty large forum (6.5 million posts) and I didn't want to experiment or take chances. At that time, there didn't seem to be a clear winner.

A few months back, a much larger forum I'm on (macrumors.com) switched from vb to xenforo, and I thought, 'if they can do it, so can we.' I looked into the options again and XenForo had emerged as a mature, stable platform. I did look into other options too, but I liked that XenForo seemed somewhat familiar from our experience with vb.

I found a lot of the same threads as adwade, and I found the critical ones just as helpful as the praise. I looked at forums that had converted and read the questions and feedback from their members. I went through several of the free XenForo demos before making the purchase. We tested it on our development site and decided it would work for us. We'll be making the switch next month.

 

[Deriel]

vB5

 

[adwade]

vB5

Now that's certainly a mouthful, well said!

 

[Glenn Kilpatrick]

SMF was non responsive theme and no updates on how long it would take them to move into this century.. I had no option.

 

[RichardKYA]

Less than a year ago I just stumbled upon it, read some stuff and things and thought, yep, that will do.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

The owner of www.3reef.com told me about Xenforo at a national reefkeeping convention 2 years ago this weekend.

 

[rafass]

 

[EQnoble]

The owner of www.3reef.com told me about Xenforo at a national reefkeeping convention 2 years ago this weekend.

So is it safe to assume you heard it on the bubble tip?

<pulls hat down, exits room>

 

[joroom]

VB support and management. The failure of VB is what led me to switch to Xenforo and i do not regret it one bit.

 

[Lisa]

, How did you end up using XenForo

Kier tweeted a link, I followed it, registered and bought it the day of release and converted my site at the time to the beta

 

[Snog]

In a nutshell, when the lead developer of vB5 told me the number of database queries don't matter I knew it was time to move to somthing else. Haven't looked back since I switched.

 

[Brad Padgett]

Thanks for the share. I ended up on Xenforo and started on vb 5.1.8

I had a member here do a migration as I had decided since my website is a gaming website, Xenforo more fits the role.

 

[Rob]

The desire to restore some sanity

 

[KC Riley]

IPS Suite that would break and explode with every minor update. Security patches would break the site.