When will xenforo get a refreshed design?

[eveneme]

Hello, I'm thinking about buying a license, but the appearance of the xenoforo forum leaves much to be desired ... it just looks old. Are there any plans to refresh the look according to the latest UI/UX standards?

 

[MarenLBC]

I've been using forums since 2001 so i know how they work, and so do most people my age. But show a forum to someone who is 20 and watch their reaction. The UI is dated. Young people today want something simpler and more intuitive, especially on mobile.

Those who think design from the 1990s is still relevant can continue to live in denial, but the decline in the number of forum installs in the last 10 years speaks much louder than I ever could.

Younger users are becoming accustom to an algorithm determining their interests and then spoon feeding them the content via a feed. There are people of age that only remember that type of social interaction and never had to select a category or anything.

 

[TPerry]

I've been using forums since 2001 so i know how they work, and so do most people my age. But show a forum to someone who is 20 and watch their reaction. The UI is dated. Young people today want something simpler and more intuitive, especially on mobile.

Those who think design from the 1990s is still relevant can continue to live in denial, but the decline in the number of forum installs in the last 10 years speaks much louder than I ever could.

Have done so... and they were able to figure it out fairly quickly... in fact, my 32 year old son (very active on a few Corvette forums and Tacoma ones) and 29 year daughter were able to figure out how several years ago. I guess your position is that the youth today are too stupid to figure it out and need pictures and automation for them?

And, for your benefit... I'll simply repeat the point I made earlier... the younger generations today are a group of consumers. The product generators are few and far between with them. That has NOTHING to do with the format, but with a societal shift from one to the other.

I guess we need to figure out new ways of performing astrophotography/astronomy... those devices have been around for centuries... but for some reason very little of the youth of today actively look up at the stars and wonder what they are and want to learn more about them. Or maybe it could be because it takes work, something they don't really want to have to invest in? It's easier to look it up on the interwebz and see photos and video created by others.

 

[AndrewSimm]

The decline in forums is due to the convenience other options have. Instead of joining a bunch of forums I can use Reddit and Facebook to conduct conversations with groups that share the same passions as I do. I know someone is going to respond with how horrible Reddit and Facebook are but the fact is their user base is large so clearly they are preferred products.

The problem with major changes to forum software is that you can expect to lose a certain percentage of users that don't want the change and you have to bank on gaining new users.

 

[JamesBrown]

But show a forum to someone who is 20 and watch their reaction. The UI is dated. Young people today want something simpler and more intuitive, especially on mobile.

If the forum is about a topic they are interested in, they will join it and join in. They might not even know they are on a "Forum" But they will join. Just make it interesting enough to them.

 

[Nicolas FR]

This logic has its limits, with equivalent content the younger generations will move towards more modern interfaces, more to their tastes and the forums in the current state of things are not necessarily part of it.

 

[webbouk]

Forums are for discussions, social media platforms (FB, SnapChat, Twitter, etc) are for soundbites and that's the difference, the younger end of the market aren't up for lengthy topics and discussions, they are more than happy just posting short soundbites, lols, gifs and emoticons, to garner reactions.

If you want a forum platform to be able to compete with such you would need a method of being able to reply quickly to the comment the user is reading/looking at.
A 'write a reply box' at the end of the page will not do, the user will need to be able to 'comment' immediately below the post they're reading

 

[Nicolas FR]

A 'write a reply box' at the end of the page will not do, the user will need to be able to 'comment' immediately below the post they're reading

Yes, but then it's no longer a discussion thread... which calls into question the very essence of forums, a linear discussion organized not a hodgepodge of reactions and onomatopoeia.

It is a mistake to want to look like social networks, anyway the forums will never stand up to these behemoths.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Young people today want something simpler and more intuitive, especially on mobile.

Mobiles have presented problems for forums, but I think xenForo has responded (pun intended) well.

One of the biggest changes that has helped has been including the post thread button outside of individual forums.

Granted there is a further step of choosing the forum category, but honestly if people are unable to accept how useful it is to have their posts categorised and usefully archived for others then those are not the members I would care much about.

But people misuse the word intuitive. Often they use it to mean familiar. It should mean obvious to use for any newbie (maybe with or without preconceptions).

So people used to some social media will miss how intuitive is because their minds are closed off while expecting the same old system they had.

And vice versa for people used to forums. I remember a little while ago I decided to try Facebook, and had to ask my wife how to post something.

Developers sometimes have problems being able to view from a newcomer perspective because they already know what things do.

The first time I saw a hamburger menu I had no idea it was a menu, I just saw three lines and wondered why the site had no navigation.

 

[Arantor]

a linear discussion organized not a hodgepodge of reactions and onomatopoeia.

The oldest forums were not linear but threaded in that exact fashion, though, where you could always reply to a reply explicitly. Things moved linear because it was easier to follow. I'm not sure how Facebook managed to push back on it, to be honest.

It's also interesting watching Discourse and Quora (amongst others) attempt to work with the 'reply to a reply' because inevitably people are confused. The number of times I've seen people go 'I meant to reply to x' or 'you commented on a comment, did you mean to reply to x'

 

[Paul B]

Threaded discussions are like trying to hold a conversation with 20 people simultaneously.

It takes way longer to read and understand each separate discussion than it does if it were linear.

Don't get me started on infinite scroll ...

 

[Arantor]

I actually find the opposite, it's like trying to hold 20 simultaneous conversations, each in their own little silo, and very often it seems like you end up with rabbit-holes as side discussions that just two or three people descend into and the rest of the conversation dies off.

 

[Mendalla]

It's also interesting watching Discourse and Quora (amongst others) attempt to work with the 'reply to a reply' because inevitably people are confused. The number of times I've seen people go 'I meant to reply to x' or 'you commented on a comment, did you mean to reply to x'

Circle, too. Took me a while to get used to that style when I joined a site on that platform. Still not my preferred.

Basically, someone posts in a space (= forum in XF), then others comment on the post, and then you can reply to a comment. But when you reply to another reply, then it is more like a linear forum.

So it's:

Post

Comment​

Reply​

Reply (which could be a reply to the comment or to an earlier reply)​

Comment​

Reply​

Reply​

Seems over-complex to me coming from a traditional linear forum background (I have been on forums for something like 20 years now). However, it's a fan site for my current favorite singer so I am inclined to put up with its quirks. Would never use the platform for a site myself, though.