What do you think of XenForo?

First impressions: snappy and fresh...

I just happened to catch the thread over on VB about XenForo, I feel like I'm late to the party though! :)

Will be waiting and watching to see what comes of this software, like most everyone else.
 
First impressions: snappy and fresh...

I just happened to catch the thread over on VB about XenForo, I feel like I'm late to the party though! :)

Will be waiting and watching to see what comes of this software, like most everyone else.

Sorta late to the early party, perhaps. :P



I am loving xenforo thus far. It's simple, easy, and fun to use. Everything feels stream-lined and integrated. I feel like I switched from the 2005 edition of yahoo mail to gmail all over again..
 
XenForo is an extremely interesting development and certainly worth watching what it develops into. I think we can only really evaluate it once it has had time enough to match vbulletins feature set. But so far it seems it will be something top of the bill.

Polls should be more modern IMHO. How about adding some YUI, or tabbed results, a Pie Chart with hovering descriptions, More question types can be added, Allow multiple questions in one poll, an overview of all polls could be added, so that users can go from poll to poll.
 
I'm going to paste in my comments from my wishlist thread to save typing ;-):

Ok. First I'd like to say:

VERY excited to see this. We (and quite a few of our peers who make a living from running forums) have been openly debating and evaluating options since IB came publicly into the picture.

Now that that's out of the way I'd like to kick off the discussion of what professional forum administrators/owners would like to see:

Here's some of mine:

#1 Server optimization and scalability. Seriously. People that make a living from their sites have no qualms shelling out cash for a better product, but the hardware requirements are a BIG issue when you're talking about ongoing expenses.
#2 Image and video gallery that is actually INTEGRATED with the forums. ALL images and video that has been uploaded should categorizable, searchable and should be EASILY organized and reused by the member. Take a look at http://www.plupload.com/ for an upload system that resizes the image ON THE WORKSTATION. This is huge, as most people don't have a clue how to resize an image and get frustrated when their 5 MB image takes forever to upload.
#3 Obviously there should be an easy migration path from existing vB systems. From our particular perspective we need a way to migrate stuff that is using customized GARS templates. There also needs to be some capability to port over other existing content from galleries like Photoplog, Photopost etc. and ::shudder:: vBlog.
#4 SEO. A large percentage of existing money making vB sites use VBSEO. There needs to be some provision for either replicating VBSEO urls or providing automated redirects, or it will be financial (SERP) suicide for a site to migrate.

Developer community fostering and support is KEY. I think there is a major opportunity here for xenforo to coopt a lot of the vB dev community, but in order for that to work, there needs to be a CLEARLY outlined standard for how things will work going forward. IB burned a lot of folks, and they will want to know that they have a future with Xenforo.

'K.

I'm sure there's tons more to talk about, but that's it for me for now. Really psyched to see a possible way forward as we have been really REALLY concerned about IB and the huge conflict of interest in having a company that is essentially a competitor in the forum space developing the software that runs our site (we have had ZERO intention of ever upgrading to 4.x at this point). We've been STRONGLY inclined to stop at 3.8.X and go to custom development at that point, having an option is hugely attractive. :)

James and Susan
 
First impressions: snappy and fresh...

I just happened to catch the thread over on VB about XenForo, I feel like I'm late to the party though! :)

Will be waiting and watching to see what comes of this software, like most everyone else.

Sorta late to the early party, perhaps. :p



I am loving xenforo thus far. It's simple, easy, and fun to use. Everything feels stream-lined and integrated. I feel like I switched from the 2005 edition of yahoo mail to gmail all over again..

Oh my , that's exactly how it felt! Changing from some, yes - functional - but outdated hotmail to a modern and smexy gmail .. I also did NOT regret that convert.
 
#4 SEO. A large percentage of existing money making vB sites use VBSEO. There needs to be some provision for either replicating VBSEO urls or providing automated redirects, or it will be financial (SERP) suicide for a site to migrate.

Developer community fostering and support is KEY. I think there is a major opportunity here for xenforo to coopt a lot of the vB dev community, but in order for that to work, there needs to be a CLEARLY outlined standard for how things will work going forward. IB burned a lot of folks, and they will want to know that they have a future with Xenforo.

Very true. People will not want to migrate to XenForo if their URLs got lost. XenForo needs to support commongly used URL structures like vBulletin, vB SEO, IPB to ease the migration proccess from other platforms.
 
Decent start. However it needs some work to chalenge the big solutions. Could be a decent new grassroot solution though.


Obviously things are missing, but I am very much liking what I'm seeing.

Could you guys perhaps be a bit more constructive and explain what you mean with missing? Not trying to be rude here, just looking for arguments to better understand what people think might be missing.
 
I love the database thread marking system.

Read part of a looooonnnnggg thread, go somewhere else, then when the thread is clicked on it remembers the last post that was not displayed on the user screen.

I'll buy it for that feature alone.
 
#4 SEO. A large percentage of existing money making vB sites use VBSEO. There needs to be some provision for either replicating VBSEO urls or providing automated redirects, or it will be financial (SERP) suicide for a site to migrate.

Developer community fostering and support is KEY. I think there is a major opportunity here for xenforo to coopt a lot of the vB dev community, but in order for that to work, there needs to be a CLEARLY outlined standard for how things will work going forward. IB burned a lot of folks, and they will want to know that they have a future with Xenforo.

Very true. People will not want to migrate to XenForo if their URLs got lost. XenForo needs to support commongly used URL structures like vBulletin, vB SEO, IPB to ease the migration proccess from other platforms.

old_system -> new_xenforo url 301 rewrites or support is a matter of the right rewrite rules, or a custom script that you tell 'we come from this system', to catch urls entered. One of the problems is probably automatically recognizing where someone comes from (is this rewritten url old vbseo, or new vb4? etc).
 
Primarily what I see missing is a richtext editor. Though I am using mobile Safari as it is the only thing able to access the internet at the beach. Though I have seen richtext editors work in this browser on other sites so I know it is possible.
 
Decent start. However it needs some work to chalenge the big solutions. Could be a decent new grassroot solution though.


Obviously things are missing, but I am very much liking what I'm seeing.

Could you guys perhaps be a bit more constructive and explain what you mean with missing? Not trying to be rude here, just looking for arguments to better understand what people think might be missing.

Heh, good point. I'll start a thread with suggestions when I get a moment.
 
Very true. People will not want to migrate to XenForo if their URLs got lost. XenForo needs to support commongly used URL structures like vBulletin, vB SEO, IPB to ease the migration proccess from other platforms.

old_system -> new_xenforo url 301 rewrites or support is a matter of the right rewrite rules, or a custom script that you tell 'we come from this system', to catch urls entered. One of the problems is probably automatically recognizing where someone comes from (is this rewritten url old vbseo, or new vb4? etc).



Yeah but I'm sure some IDs are going to change and that will need a little bit more than the right rewrite rules. A custom script would be nice. I don't care if I have to leave the old database running in order to allow that the script properly redirects the old URLs.
 
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