What Do You Want Out Of This Product?

[grant sarver]

I try to cater to my users "wants". I agree nobody reads blogs, but some like to write them. I'd rather they blog on my site than somewhere else. One stop shopping. I could do without it. Still need some sort of "article" section though.

I like that XenForo is taking a fresh look at things. I'm trying to quit looking at what things I want and look more at what my users want to do. They want to interact/converse, they want to read/write stories and news, they want to write about themselves, they want to post/look at pictures. The traditional answer are Forum/CMS/Blogs/Albums. Might be the time to re-think everything.

 

[Marka]

efficient template system that doesn't have a crazy learning curve. Vb4 style system killed me, maybe because I was so used to the simplicity of Drupal, Wordpress and even Vb3 series.

 

[Dream]

Tried vB's CMS and Blogs, no one used them. Same for social groups.

 

[anotheralias]

Yeah, I don't notice anyone demanding social groups.

 

[Kier]

I personally can see a great potential for social groups to enhance the forum experience when fully integrated into a bunch of other functionality that XenForo will offer, but that's a discussion for another day and a later version.

 

[Grover]

I personally can see a great potential for social groups to enhance the forum experience when fully integrated into a bunch of other functionality that XenForo will offer, but that's a discussion for another day and a later version.

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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.

?

I was going to say the exact same thing... about vBulletin.com staff blogs. Also, my site has at least the potential to make good use of integrated Blogs and -as I've said above- if it get's a much better integration then vB 3.8 does, I think there's a good chance it will work.

But everybody's wishes are different. Our platform for example does not need Social Groups at all. I can not see the use of it on our forums. Look at the Groups at vBulletin.com itself for example: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/group.php ... they never really took off, did they?

I mean, it's not like Facebook is it? Facebook works more or less the opposite and it based around 'Groups/Community Pages' and then tries to integrate some extremely simple forum functionality. Which doesn't work. Almost nobody uses the forums on Facebook...

... so I wonder: when looking at packages like vBulletin, who have a very powerful forum system where the whole platform is based on -and thus work more or less the opposite from Facebook-: do social groups actually have any chance to be alive?

 

[DaKat]

...a bunch of other functionality that XenForo will offer, but that's a discussion for another day and a later version.

Uh oh - more teasers from Kier!

 

[Anthony Parsons]

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...

I used blogs in 3.x and experienced the same lacking use. I have found since upgrading to 4.x blogs are now used more, as the content is distributed via widgets across other key areas, so people can quickly see new content, thus read and respond to it.

Full integration just can't be harped about enough IMHO... it makes a huge difference to other site products being used if the content is shown everywhere possible and put in a users face. I expect Mike and Kier to come up with some originality for pushing and pulling data across products when they get into extra product development.

 

[Brandon_R]

Tried vB's CMS and Blogs, no one used them. Same for social groups.

It all depends on good integration.

 

[Mark.B]

Yeah, I don't notice anyone demanding social groups.

That's because everyone associates them with how they were in vBulletin. I'm sure Kier won't be offended when I say that there was no integration at all for Social Groups so they just didn't work.

 

[Kier]

Putting social groups into vBulletin in any state was not my decision. The architecture simply didn't support the required level of integration.

 

[KURTZ]

Putting social groups into vBulletin in any state was not my decision. The architecture simply didn't support the required level of integration.

in fact they aren't used correctly ... simply many members don't understand this feature ...

 

[Brandon_R]

WOuld you say this architecture

Putting social groups into vBulletin in any state was not my decision. The architecture simply didn't support the required level of integration.

supports Social Groups Kier?

 

[Kier]

WOuld you say this architecture supports Social Groups Kier?

It would be a bit of a massive failure if it didn't, wouldn't it?

 

[Grover]

Putting social groups into vBulletin in any state was not my decision. The architecture simply didn't support the required level of integration.

I felt the urge to make yet another negative comment about vBulletin again (because indeed there were so many complaints about the implementation of Social Groups at the time), but let's keep it positive by saying that a lot of people will be really happy that you guys as developers now will be making the decisions. What exciting years will lie ahead of us in the forum world!

(and it becomes more and more clear to me what we have been put up with, the last couple of years at vBulletin's)

 

[jonsidneyb]

No... Not something simple. Something that's intuitive enough to make using it simple. A somewhat fine, but important, distinction.

The fear that a small business can have on to many things going on is competition can use some of it against you and spam you. . I like simple in many ways.

 

[TheLaw]

Isn't social networking basically user generated content?
I think people need to get it out of their head that social networking is just people posting random sh*t and more people collaborating about things that interest them.

No... social networking is not user generated content. They are two completely different concepts. My users post content and are interested in what is shared. They aren't interested in creating relationships and making friends as the primary use of the site.

 

[jonsidneyb]

No... social networking is not user generated content. They are two completely different concepts. My users post content and are interested in what is shared. They aren't interested in creating relationships and making friends as the primary use of the site.

Agreed. Some forums are like this, other are not. Mine fits into the same mold.

 

[erich37]

People want to communicate with each other, exchange their experience with Q&A which a forum provides. Also people want to build relationships - which is a very important factor.

I would say there are sufficient features already build into XenForo. There is no need to add any more features into XF for the First official release (Looking at it from the front-end-interface).
The more you build into it, the more complicated it gets in terms of User-Experience.

Please do not bloat it up - the only additional thing would be Social Groups, if those can be build into the XF-system logically, so that a user will be able to easily use and understand this feature.

But all the other stuff which is being requested, please add them as "Add Ons" and you will also have the ability to generate some additional income form selling those Add-Ons.

KISS
Keep It Simple & Sexy

 

[TheLaw]

Agreed. My point is that you can have some social functions but the site loses its identity as a UGC v. SN once you cater to SN. For example, Facebook is good as an SN but it is in no way a good "forum" or publishing tool. It's just a different animal. Most forums people enjoy relationships but it is secondary to the conversation. Agreed with KISS and I think so far it looks great.