Why is xenForo better than vBulletin?

Eric Guttormson

New member
Don't get me wrong... I am longing for a replacement of vBulletin, especially after the entire v4 debacle (which I refuse to pay for). I am a "old-school" vBulletin webmaster with 3 very large and established vBulletin communities.

And while I am excited to find xenForo, what's the sales pitch?

What will make xenForo a better option than vBulletin?

Thanks in advance for your time.
 
I am forced to purchase VBSuite for one reason only and one reason only, I have a previous license, and a vbseo license. On top of this, I do not have a CMS solution that powers a forum Natively.

I bought a Forum classic version because I have a second vbseo license.

But I also bought 3 licenses. xenForo is the closest thing to a seamless merge between a social site, and a forum.

Cutting edge is the word for this thread. Cutting EDGE!
 
Don't get me wrong... I am longing for a replacement of vBulletin, especially after the entire v4 debacle (which I refuse to pay for). I am a "old-school" vBulletin webmaster with 3 very large and established vBulletin communities.

And while I am excited to find xenForo, what's the sales pitch?

What will make xenForo a better option than vBulletin?

Thanks in advance for your time.
The main reason is the approach to the development: everything that has been done with XF is forward-thinking, and built with extensibility and stability in mind, which is something that hasn't been done with vB4.

The prime reason I decided to change was trust in the developers and business manager; that is something worth way more then $100 to me.
 
At this point it not really saying one or the other is better, try using it for your self, and making your on choice as to which you prefer to use, or don't use. At this point it is basically like trying to compare an apple with an orange, both systems have sweet features, however I haven't found any negatives in this. It keeps going and going, and going... ;)
 
I'm using it now, and from an Admin point of view, it's fantastic. No problems whatsoever here. Currently importing VB3 data :)
 
Don't get me wrong... I am longing for a replacement of vBulletin, especially after the entire v4 debacle (which I refuse to pay for). I am a "old-school" vBulletin webmaster with 3 very large and established vBulletin communities.

And while I am excited to find xenForo, what's the sales pitch?

What will make xenForo a better option than vBulletin?

Thanks in advance for your time.
Have you seen...?
 
One of the main reasons? Its modern. May sound like a stupid reason, but from a coding/implementation perspective its very important.

The code is fully object orientated, vB4 is basically vb3's old code but moved into a bunch of classes. If you take a look at the vb3 source vs vb4 source you'll see what I mean. The point of XenForo is to provide a sleek new way of doing it. The modern way.
 
Don't get me wrong... I am longing for a replacement of vBulletin, especially after the entire v4 debacle (which I refuse to pay for). I am a "old-school" vBulletin webmaster with 3 very large and established vBulletin communities.

And while I am excited to find xenForo, what's the sales pitch?

What will make xenForo a better option than vBulletin?

Thanks in advance for your time.

http://xenforo.com/license-agreement/

This is all most forum owners need to look at to make a final decision, then look at the abomination license agreement and terms (buy new license with every version) over at Internet Brand's vBulletin software product.
 
What will make xenForo a better option than vBulletin?
Personally, I'm looking at the product from a developer perspective. The most attractive feature is the speed you can develop new things using the Xen "platform". Next, is the code fluidity, similar to the logic used in other solid frameworks out there (i.e. Kohana). That should allow to any experienced developer to create a panoply of elegant products, written efficiently, in no time. The logic used into software also reassures me XenForo is a product who will have customer requested features added fast to the development list. I think this is very important for a new product that needs to expand quickly, in order to satisfy the increasing number of clients.
 
I'll tell you why I like XenForo, it's completely different from any other forum script out there; xF is built to grow with the internet and the mobile world which in turn will attract sharp minded script, mod and skin developers.
 
I would say price and speed is XF's strengths. I find it faster and in terms of pricing affordable.

Also, I think we know the devs here care more about the product. This isn't about shareholders pushing devs to kick start something to make some quick $$. This is about a team, that has no real pressure to get a quick buck. This is about a quality product, and I think the devs know the only way they can beat other competitors is through a quality product and affordable price.

So far they beat IPB and vB easily in all those categories. As for the software.. give it time. This is 1.0! We still have a long way to go.

Remember vB when it was 1.0 and 2.0. Well I do and when it hit 3.0 and 3.5 it was a major overhaul. So I expect the same for XF when we reach 2.0 and 3.0.

But for a basic forum XF is doing a great job.
 
I'll answer as an enduser - I love posting on it. After a few days of posting on here, it was a chore to use the vB on my own board. Things I love:
  • no page-reload. You can post without leaving the conversation.
  • the post form is just sitting there all ready to go, no scrolling down or clicking on 'quick reply,' just post
  • if someone quotes you, you get an alert
  • thanks to the Like system, which is a billion times better than the Reputation system, you find out (and in a fun way) that more people are actually reading your posts than you'd ever have guessed
  • it's so fast! lightning fast!
  • it's so easy to use! I haven't had to ask a single question about how to post (and I am looking forward to not having to answer a bunch of questions about how to post too but that's not an enduser issue)
I'm already up to 500-something posts on here and I started on July 30. I've never racked up that many posts that fast on any other board that wasn't my own, and on my own probably half of them were "how to post" and so forth.
 
Don't get me wrong... I am longing for a replacement of vBulletin, especially after the entire v4 debacle (which I refuse to pay for). I am a "old-school" vBulletin webmaster with 3 very large and established vBulletin communities.

And while I am excited to find xenForo, what's the sales pitch?

What will make xenForo a better option than vBulletin?

Thanks in advance for your time.
If you do a side-by-side comparison of features, then vBulletin will win.

However, if you ask the question "How easy is it to style and customize vBulletin?" and "How easy is it to write Plugins, CMS, Blog, etc. for vBulletin?" the answer to both is "extremely difficult".

XenForo is designed from the ground up as an MVC application. This means that instead of Plugin authors being limited by which parts of the code have the right 'hooks' or being exposed in the correct way, XenForo is fully extendible. At every point in the code, it is possible for a Plugin to change or replace functionality of XenForo without breaking the rest of the forum. In vBulletin, a lot of functionality people wanted could not be written as a Plugin because it required too much 'core' functionality to be changed.

In XenForo, I can change core functionality with a Plugin, so as a result, all of those features which have been bolted onto the vBulletin core over the last 8 years can be done as Plugins. Also, XenForo has built-in support for content types. The forum is just one content type, and Pages are already another type. This will allow people to add all sorts of content directly into XenForo without it feeling like an ugly hack or bolted-on feature.

And the Style system is just a revelation compared to vBulletin 4 which is almost impossible to style. Most of the professional style companies that built and sold styles for vBulletin 3.x have withdrawn from the vBulletin 4.x market because of the difficulty and poor customization support.

bottom line:
If you are just looking at features, and want to run a 'stock' forum, then vBulletin may be a better choice for you. But if you want a forum that encourages customization, and will quickly have a huge community of Add-on development, then XenForo is the place to be.
 
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