What differences should I be aware of XenForo/vB4

grc

grc

Member
Alright, I'm on track to make the move in the next few weeks. Our online community is smallish and established. We've been on vB for several years. From a user's standpoint, what are the selling points? What differences are there that might cause a problem for some?

From an administration standpoint, the same questions: selling points and differences that we should at least be aware of?

Thanks in advance for any helpful replies.
 
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You must appreciate though that what is important for one forum (owner) isn't so for another.
So asking forum owners to tell you what they miss won't necessarily give you all the information you need to make an informed decision.

Granted you will get a general impression but there may be very specific functionality which you can't do without which no-one will mention.
It could be something simple like limiting signatures to a certain number of lines or no images or something more fundamental such as setting guest thread title viewing permissions on a specific forum.
 
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Brogan said:
You must appreciate though that what is important for one forum (owner) isn't so for another.
So asking forum owners to tell you what they miss won't necessarily give you all the information you need to make an informed decision.

Granted you will get a general impression but there may be very specific functionality which you can't do without which no-one will mention.
It could be something simple like limiting signatures to a certain number of lines or no images or something more fundamental such as setting guest thread title viewing permissions on a specific forum.
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I do appreciate that. However, I hope you appreciate the fact that it's helpful to hear from people familiar with both platforms. Also, it's not an issue of wanting people to decide for me. Rather, it's an attempt to gather information to add to the mix of information I'm gathering in preparation for a likely move.

Also, it's somewhat helpful on a couple of levels to simply be involved in this conversation using this software.

I'm not hard nosed about it though, if you'd rather I not pursue this particular line, I'll abandon it.
 
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grc said:
I'm not hard nosed about it though, if you'd rather I not pursue this particular line, I'll abandon it.
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Not at all, you're free to post as you wish :)

I just don't want you to overlook something which you require for your own forum simply because no-one mentions it.
 
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grc said:
Also, if I end up spending a huge amount of time figuring out work-a-rounds for features I didn't realize were missing, I'll have a much greater investment in time than the initial price.
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Sure. But if that is a concern, you probably shouldn't invest time in a beta version at all. You can run vB until this thing is released as stable.
when I started the thread I did ask a fairly specific question and whether or not $140 is a lot of money wasn't included in it.
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Sorry, you said it was "real money." I live in America, and when we say "real money," it is a euphemism for a significant amount of money. I forget that people from other (that's funny, I just typed lesser, and had to backspace) countries hang around here. I do apologize.

Peggy said:
if you have that kind of money to spend on dinner with a friend, wouldja mind throwing some in the direction of this single mom??
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I tried throwing money at single mothers like Liv Tyler and Kate Hudson, and frankly, they didn't seem very grateful. That kind of soured me on the whole "single moms" thing.

But if it's any consolation, I do sometimes feel guilty sipping a $14 martini. But only for a few seconds, then the gin makes the guilt disappear. Which is exactly what gin is for, as far as I can tell.
 
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There's no ignore user, no infraction. Thread prefixes, tags, albums, cms or blogs. There's no horizontal postbit (user avatar's above post). PM are called Private conversations where you can invite multiple people. There's no reputation system, instead we have the much better "likes" and trophy system which imho works better.

HOWEVER, most of the things i mentioned are mostly unnecessary and XF puts all focus on user interaction and posting and it is in my opinion the best forum software in the market right now.
 
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I know folks will tell me the "Like" button is the same as "Thanks" but it's one of my concerns. Most of our users think "Thanks" is built into vB. Going a step farther, I've hacked it and added "Laughing" and "Praying" mods too. The "Praying" mod is only available on a forum for prayer requests and praises. It gets a great deal of use. As you can guess, "Praying" is a better response to "My grandma died" than "Like"!

The Laughing specifically says "The following users laughed with...." so it can't be used for "laughing at." It gets a lot of use. "Like" would work there, but sometimes "Laughing" is a lot more appropriate.

I can see that "Thanks" and "Like" are pretty much interchangeable.

When I told the guy who pays the bills that I'm thinking about changing forum software, his primary response was, "Anything you think is best, but let's be sure we keep the 'Thanks' mod."

With the existence of "Like" already in place, I doubt anyone will port the, now unsupported anyway, "Thanks" mod, and even if they did, I don't know that I'd be able to hack my way back to the "Laughing" and "Praying" versions of it as I'm not a coder.

This is one issue of which I'm well aware that needs to be sorted out, even as this thread is helping me identify things I hadn't thought about.
 
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You could always just change the phrase "Like" to "Thanks", and any associated phrases obviously.

Those are changed very simply in the ACP without touching the files/code.
 
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grc said:
I know folks will tell me the "Like" button is the same as "Thanks" but it's one of my concerns. Most of our users think "Thanks" is built into vB. Going a step farther, I've hacked it and added "Laughing" and "Praying" mods too. The "Praying" mod is only available on a forum for prayer requests and praises. It gets a great deal of use. As you can guess, "Praying" is a better response to "My grandma died" than "Like"!
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kier made it very clear that he has no intention of changing this. ive already gone round and round about there being no option to 'manage' buttons. in fact, threads complaining about it tend to get locked. there is some fear that people might elect to have a 'dislike' button on their board or whatnot.

i recall there being discussion about somebody thinking they would import vb 'thanks' to 'like'... maybe someone can recall if it ever actually happened?
 
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Brogan said:
You could always just change the phrase "Like" to "Thanks", and any associated phrases obviously.

Those are changed very simply in the ACP without touching the files/code.
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Thanks....errr....I like this. :) I know it can be done, although, as I said, I think "like" is pretty much the same as "thanks" in the forum format. It's the other things that are somewhat in play for me.
 
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dieketzer said:
kier made it very clear that he has no intention of changing this. ive already gone round and round about there being no option to 'manage' buttons. in fact, threads complaining about it tend to get locked. there is some fear that people might elect to have a 'dislike' button on their board or whatnot.

i recall there being discussion about somebody thinking they would import vb 'thanks' to 'like'... maybe someone can recall if it ever actually happened?
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I saw discussion on importing Thanks to Like somewhere on the forum. That would be cool.

If you can import them and if you can change the phrase from "Like" to "Thanks" it appears that would be a done deal. My "Praying" and "Laughing" capability remains a concern.

It's kind of funny that, because I had a "Thanks" mod that I could figure out how to duplicate it as "Praying" and "Laughing." However, since "Like" is built into the software I have the idea that it would be beyond me to do the same with this software.

It's just another little thing in play for me as I look to making the move.
 
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Jonathan Diaz said:
Is there a importer for Vbulletin to Xenforo available?
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http://xenforo.com/community/threads/pre-sales-faq.4951/

Q: Which importers are currently available?

At the time of writing (7 December 2010) there are the following importers available:
  • There is a vBulletin 3.7/8 importer built in to the software, available in the ACP.
  • A vBulletin 4.0/4.1 importer is available as an add-on here.
  • An SMF 2 importer is currently being developed, available here.
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