what is needed for a successful lauch

MilesDB

Well-known member
We all know XenForo is a very modern forum software but what needs to be done to give XenForo a good start in the forum world?

1. It has to be affordable to attract as many customers and converts from vB and IPB as possible. I would suggest to price it below $130 as a grand opening deal just to beef up customer base.

2. Team XenForo needs to have several languages packs ready before its first release. I would suggest Spanish, German, French, Arabic and Chinese. This can be done in less than a week if professional interpreters are hired.

3. XenForo needs to foster a modding community.

These are just few things that came to my mind.
 
I think most of us might be interested in at least an outline of the business plan. Marketing, sales, pricing, license model, support, if other sites run by independent forum owners will perform beta/pre-release testing, etc. When the time is right, I am sure they will let us know.

From our perspective, forum software with the same basic functionality as vb3.8, with some color changes would be all we need to switch over.
 
We all know XenForo is a very modern forum software but what needs to be done to give XenForo a good start in the forum world?

1. It has to be affordable to attract as many customers and converts from vB and IPB as possible. I would suggest to price it below $130 as a grand opening deal just to beef up customer base.

2. Team XenForo needs to have several languages packs ready before its first release. I would suggest Spanish, German, French, Arabic and Chinese. This can be done in less than a week if professional interpreters are hired.

3. XenForo needs to foster a modding community.

These are just few things that came to my mind.

1 - A competitive price means it will be around what they think it is worth, what customers think it is worth, while creating a healthy competition with top3 in the market. Personally I think they can ask $49, or $249, and kill competition. Because if it is worth it, you'll pay.

2 - I disagree. While having "everything" prior to release, and while it is a sales point. You can only do so much. Together with the translation service, crowd sourcing the phrases into alternative languages I believe will result in many language packs before and after launch.

3 - I want to believe that from observing posts made that xf team is embracing the community, and that the site here will actually be the place for others to contribute and download customizations.
4. Slightly widen the breadth of forum-related features so that it is a more viable option to convert forums to (from more mature solutions).

5. Don't force the launch. Start with an alpha; listen to customer feedback. Rinse and repeat. If you spend 2 or 3 months in alpha/beta while responding to customer suggestions during that time, the product will improve quite a bit.

4 - I would say yes, by default, but I want to be strong here and say no. Stick to what you have now and finish it. Complete a feature, complete it well, tweak it and optimize it, beta test it and release it. Why? Because I believe if xf is a stable core that is dynamic and flexible enough that rapid releases from 1.0.0 on will broaden the feature set rather quickly. While bigger code changes are developed for branch-version updates.

5 - The only reason it is open here at the moment is because it was very hard to keep quiet. I am sure they don't mind, and I am sure they wanted to keep it to a closer group. But don't forget it is the first complete build, the first alpha, and that there's room for many more of them. I know Mike, I know Kier, well, I like to believe that, and my experience with them is: Don't release it if it isn't good enough. And they want to do right and release it when it is ready. They want it out, and they want you to buy it, but they want to do right by the community. And I believe it's already showing.

I agree, don't rush it. I have no problem waiting for a Christmas sale.

I honestly don't think what they have now is good enough for a launch. It's great and all, but a bit feature lacking if people will be paying prices that are competitive with IPB and vB lol.

But yeah, honestly most of those things were probably already planned to happen before a release. #5 is most important imo, don't rush it.

Shame to read that you believe it's not what you expect out of a 'forum' software. Please extrapolate? I'd like to know what you want that it currently doesn't include (yet).

Definitely no rushing. Just take your time and get it the way you want it.

I agree. Do it, but do it well.

about #2: why not Italian? :(

He couldn't list every language :D But I have a feeling you will work on Italian, so it will be there too :D

A good plugin system. I think without that, we would never convert.

It is already quite dynamic, and a lot can be done via the <xf:stuff> in templates. You can also still customize the source code.
In order to make the plugin system work, it is important the we users write out (with some detail/examples) that what we expect and require of a plugin system. Feedback is important in steering it into a direction that makes it comfortable and functional for everybody who needs a plugin system.

It is for posts like this that I wish they would have added a "Dislike" feature.

The negative about any feature with a negative side to it, is that it will be abused more than the positive. In my opinion I want to believe that the baseline is what users type, and if it is worth noticing, that someone can say .. like .. it. And that if it isn't good enough, it will just be ignored. Anything that goes under the baseline, say spam, can simply be reported by the community with a reason, and the mods can review/handle it. But with positive features such as reputation, voting up, recommendations, following, watching, liking, etc, one can stand out a bit more, and create a positive social connection with those from the thread. This is good for the overall mood in the thread and community. And does not result in groups of people jumping on someone who did "1" thing wrong and getting 15 people to mass negative rep, while perhaps 1 was deserved. A negative option in a positive feature can lead indirectly to grouping and bullying and ruin the mood on a board.
 
2. Team XenForo needs to have several languages packs ready before its first release. I would suggest Spanish, German, French, Arabic and Chinese. This can be done in less than a week if professional interpreters are hired.

Yes, this is very important. I most definitely will not use a community created translation. This happened before over at vBulletin and the quality of the community-produced language pack was really very bad. A company in the Netherlands who uses vBulletin for it's bussiness sites decided to hire a professional translator and thanks to that we now have an excellent professional vB3.8 Dutch language pack. I already pointed this company to xenForo, but since they are actually upgrading to vB4 (I hold my breath), we won't see a xenForo translation from them I guess very soon, if ever.

If more Dutch persons/companies are buying xenForo in the future I am willing to contribute financially to a professional translation of this package. (If I am going to use xenForo myself that is... I need a integrated Blog and CMS solution to be able to do that).
 
The negative about any feature with a negative side to it, is that it will be abused more than the positive. In my opinion I want to believe that the baseline is what users type, and if it is worth noticing, that someone can say .. like .. it. And that if it isn't good enough, it will just be ignored. Anything that goes under the baseline, say spam, can simply be reported by the community with a reason, and the mods can review/handle it. But with positive features such as reputation, voting up, recommendations, following, watching, liking, etc, one can stand out a bit more, and create a positive social connection with those from the thread. This is good for the overall mood in the thread and community. And does not result in groups of people jumping on someone who did "1" thing wrong and getting 15 people to mass negative rep, while perhaps 1 was deserved. A negative option in a positive feature can lead indirectly to grouping and bullying and ruin the mood on a board.

Exactly!
 
Yes, this is very important. I most definitely will not use a community created translation. This happened before over at vBulletin and the quality of the community-produced language pack was really very bad.
That what puzzles me. With so many non-English boards, vBulletin doesn't have in-house professionally translated language packs. It makes a perfect business sense to have them available on an official level. And it's not that expensive to have English language pack translated. I am afraid XenForo is taking the same road.
 
That what puzzles me. With so many non-English boards, vBulletin doesn't have in-house professionally translated language packs. It makes a perfect business sense to have them available on an official level. And it's not that expensive to have English language pack translated. I am afraid XenForo is taking the same road.

I have suggested this more the once to vBulletin in the past and I also could not understand it. But maybe I look at this subject matter too simple and don't realize the cons of a process like that. Actually, I don't know any forum-software that provides different professional language packs in-house.

But look here:
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/phrase-system-translation.249/page-2#post-6729

Our organization definitely will need a professional translation for xenForo.
 
Top Bottom