What Do You Want Out Of This Product?

Kier said:
I'd like to say that we're not in a big hurry to make a bullet-point sort of list of the features that we offer, because our list is always going to be shorter than that of the established systems.
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Which to my mind is a selling point!
Kier said:
Don't compare us on our feature count, judge us on how your site visitors would react if they were able to post using this system
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Which at the moment, judging by the people I have shown this site to, is overwhelmingly positive, verging on ecstatic.

I've told my members this software is where we're going. It is everything we "are", and more. Just like AVForums have done. And if it's good enough for them (I use the same host as them), it's good enough for us.
 
Kier said:
Don't compare us on our feature count, judge us on how your site visitors would react if they were able to post using this system
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Yeah, I think a lot of people are missing the point here. "What about CMS, what about Blogs, what about IMing..." who cares? Aren't all those things really just a way of getting people interested in your forum? If you can cut to the chase with a forum system that people love to use, and will use a lot, why even bother with all the other bloat?

For example, someone wanted to be able to see how many people were viewing a thread. Is that really the statistic that matters? How many times have you seen a thread on a board with 2 posts and 896 views ... and wondered why so many people were viewing but almost nobody was posting? Here you've got software that addresses the issue of, "how do you get people to post" and you're worried about CMS and Blogs and who's viewing a thread.

Somebody built a better mousetrap - you don't need your old cheese-and-a-spring approach anymore.
 
anotheralias said:
Yeah, I think a lot of people are missing the point here. "What about CMS, what about Blogs, what about IMing..." who cares? Aren't all those things really just a way of getting people interested in your forum? If you can cut to the chase with a forum system that people love to use, and will use a lot, why even bother with all the other bloat?

For example, someone wanted to be able to see how many people were viewing a thread. Is that really the statistic that matters? How many times have you seen a thread on a board with 2 posts and 896 views ... and wondered why so many people were viewing but almost nobody was posting? Here you've got software that addresses the issue of, "how do you get people to post" and you're worried about CMS and Blogs and who's viewing a thread.

Somebody built a better mousetrap - you don't need your old cheese-and-a-spring approach anymore.
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Took the words right out of my mind. Just because other forums has those features doesn't mean it's the "standard". I love the way the devs here thinks and most of the users :D
 
anotheralias said:
Yeah, I think a lot of people are missing the point here. "What about CMS, what about Blogs, what about IMing..." who cares?
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Well, actually I do very much. My vB3.8 powered platform already has the integrated Blogs in production. Obviously, I do not want to lose that functionality and content if we decide to go for XenForo. Actually, if XenForo will not provide this in the future, we even will have to stick with vBulletin. Maybe in 2011 Internet Brands will have learned from everything and is able to improve the product on such a level that we are able to use it on our production environment. Although there's is still much to wish for, I do see some improvements lately over at vBulletin.com and who knows what the future will bring.

Having said that, I am very enthusiastic about XenForo and I only want the best fitting solution for my projects. So, that might even be vBulletin 4.2 or higher (if they fix the horrendous vB 4 Search that is, amongst many other things), only time will tell. In 2011 however, I need to make a decision for both my 9-year old (vb 3.8 powered) platform and a new project. It is just a matter of your site needs... for you a CMS, Blogs and IMing might not be what you are looking for, but for my site these assets are essential to grow further. So I only want to invest in software that provides that.
 
I think most people here understand user experience and reliability of operation so it would actually be the opposite of esoteric lol.

Esoteric: understandable by only a small group of people.
 
Starting a feature set from scratch is a great advantage. It allows for a "freshness" that the established forum softwares can't match. It allows for innovation out the ying yang and new approaches to standard features.

I want to see this opportunity taken full advantage of. This means I don't want anything I can even imagine, I want to be totally surprised at every turn.............
 
Grover said:
Well, actually I do very much. My vB3.8 powered platform already has the integrated Blogs in production. Obviously, I do not want to lose that functionality and content if we decide to go for XenForo. Actually, if XenForo will not provide this in the future, we even will have to stick with vBulletin. Maybe in 2011 Internet Brands will have learned from everything and is able to improve the product on such a level that we are able to use it on our production environment. Although there's is still much to wish for, I do see some improvements lately over at vBulletin.com and who knows what the future will bring.

Having said that, I am very enthusiastic about XenForo and I only want the best fitting solution for my projects. So, that might even be vBulletin 4.2 or higher (if they fix the horrendous vB 4 Search that is, amongst many other things), only time will tell. In 2011 however, I need to make a decision for both my 9-year old (vb 3.8 powered) platform and a new project. It is just a matter of your site needs... for you a CMS, Blogs and IMing might not be what you are looking for, but for my site these assets are essential to grow further. So I only want to invest in software that provides that.
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Don't worry you won't lose them. They will arrive when they are ready, we just have to wait :) Do you really want a repeat of what happened with vBulletin four pushing out premature features? Sure you see the devs implementing design suggestions on the fly but i wouldn't expect to see a blog and cms implemented next month or the next 6 months for that matter. I would much rather see it done right, even if it means holding out a few moments longer.
 
Grover said:
Well, actually I do very much. My vB3.8 powered platform already has the integrated Blogs in production. Obviously, I do not want to lose that functionality and content if we decide to go for XenForo.
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Are people really using them that much? Just curious - not intended to be any kind of a snippy comment at all.
 
Brandon_R said:
I think most people here understand user experience and reliability of operation so it would actually be the opposite of esoteric lol.

Esoteric: understandable by only a small group of people.
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I think that small group is largely gathered here, hence why I can talk about it.
 
anotheralias said:
Are people really using them that much? Just curious - not intended to be any kind of a snippy comment at all.
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I don't take it as a snippy comment, no worries. You have a good point, because the answer is: 'no', unfortunately :(. One of the reasons is that the integrated blogs in vB 3.8 are almost invisible. People are not even aware there are Blogs present, because you have to manually go to the menu bar to click an option to see them! There is no real indication anywhere that new Blogs are being posted. We can not use the Notices system for it as a workaround, for example. The 'integrated' Blogs are not integrated at all, actually. Can not be found by clicking 'What's New' amongst others things...

Further, one of the biggest criticisms I had on vB3.8 was the bad styling of the Blog product. I had problems understanding why the forum product had such an excellent style, whereas the style of the Blogs was simply not suited for Blogs actually. This is one area that Internet Brand's vB4.0 improved very well. So, for my users the vB3.8 Blogs are not inviting and useful enough to be used frequently. This is one of the reasons why I was looking forward to a much improved vBulletin 3.9 or 4.0 on this subject. Since vB4.0 now does have a much improved Blog style, it becomes more interesting to look at that product when it finally becomes stable and hopefully at that time offers a much improved Search for all content.

I always envisioned this: when a member posts a new Blog, it has to be made aware to all members/visitors. Appearing in 'What's new' would already do wonders. But... what about integrating it into Alerts (vB doesn't have it yet...) or somehow into the Notices system? That would make them really visible. Or in some kind of elegant popup in the bottom right corner, just like Windows Live Messenger gives you an alert. Plenty of ideas. The only thing that vB4 offers now is visibility in the sidebar. It's a start. But just not good enough! Still, vB4 is an much needed improvement over vB3.8 on this matter and at this point in time XenForo (understandably) does not offer it at all.
 
Grover said:
I always envisioned this: when a member posts a new Blog, it has to be made aware to all members/visitors. Appearing in 'What's new' would already do wonders.
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I take your point, but speaking strictly as an end user here - I'd still ignore them. I'm on a board to interact with people, not read about someone's trip to Sumatra or whatever. I bought the vB blog system for 3.8 (shortly before it was made obsolete) because I was thinking like an Admin instead of an end-user. Or in other words: do I actually ever click on anyone's blog? No. So why did I assume anyone else would? I have no idea. Because seriously, they could put the 'new blog entries' on a scrolling blinking marquee with dancing cartoon characters and a musical fanfare, and I still wouldn't be interested.

Because uh.... people are interested in themselves, mostly. That's just the way it goes. :D "Who responded to my post? Who likes me? Who agrees with me and who doesn't? Who feels the same way about this?"

Anyway, I already wrote off the blog as a lost cause - one of those things that just looked good on paper. But hey - maybe you'll crack the code and make it work, and I'll be happy to eat my words. :)
 
anotheralias said:
I take your point, but speaking strictly as an end user here - I'd still ignore them. I'm on a board to interact with people, not read about someone's trip to Sumatra or whatever.
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Doesn't it depend on what the blog is about? The invisionpower company blog gets much interest because people are interested in those things.

?
 
Brandon_R said:
It takes an intelligent person to build something complex; it takes a genius to build something simple
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No... Not something simple. Something that's intuitive enough to make using it simple. A somewhat fine, but important, distinction. :)
 
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