XenForo 2.0 Discussion

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RobinHood said:
Yeah, lets not add any new features because the product is perfect and to do so would be bloat :rolleyes:

What do you want out of XF2 if you don't want new features?


I think some of the new features in IPS look great, particularly clubs. There are some great tools to help better foster and build community, particularly local community.

It's actually quite refreshing to see some cool stock features coming from a competitor. Competition is great.

I can't wait to see what XF are able to do to complete and start ramping up the release of their own new features once they've finished all the behind the scenes legwork on XF2. Bring it on :D
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's a bit like having a board of directors and shareholders to answer to - a software has to be continually developed and improved on to stay relevant and increase profits or it will eventually lose out to the competition. It might even be that bloat is inevitable in the long run, but hopefully that will be many years off for XF. I imagine that will be mitigated over the next several years by more official addon development.

And I really like those Clubs too!
 
RobinHood said:
What do you want out of XF2 if you don't want new features?
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1. Sustainability and stability in an environment that is all too rapidly changing. In a world like ours it takes a lot of running to stay in one place (home).

2. Development of the parts of the software that are underdeveloped.

The most powerful feature of the software is it's operator. No software can provide that.
 
Tracy Perry said:
But... and this is a BIG BUT... you did NOT see those features in 4.0 of IPS.
Click to expand...

I'm aware of that, I'm also aware that IPS seems to have lots of other issues that XF doesn't.

I do try to be considerate of the fact that it must be incredibly tough for the XF team to be working for so long and hard on parts of the software that the vast majority of us will never see or fully understand and appreciate.

I know none of those IPS features are going to be in 2.0, they xf team have been pretty clear about what will or won't be at this point. And I'm not even expecting any of the IPS features listed to be in XF 2.X.

What I am hoping for, is that once 2.0 is out and they've done all the back end groundwork they want to do, the XF team can get into some kind of rhythm again for improving existing features and adding new ones on some sort of consistent basis.

There's been quite a few black holes in the XF timeline where it's felt like things have been stagnant for one reason or another.

It's encouraging to read how excited some of the developers are about XF2 on the demo forum.

It's encouraging they now have 50% more dev power now Chris is on the team.

It's also good to see some great ideas coming from a competitor and actually shipping right now. It benefits no one to only have dying competition like vb. Otherwise where's the extra pressure to make the product even better?

Hopefully the XF team and the 3rd party XF devs can take inspiration from the best of these new features and let it influence the direction they take to make the XF ecosystem even better and push forward the forum industry as a whole.
 
Tracy Perry said:
But... and this is a BIG BUT... you did NOT see those features in 4.0 of IPS. It's been a long road (and about 2 1/2 years) to get there. So, having the expectation of them being in XF 2.0 is a tad premature considering it's a major rewrite.
Click to expand...

I think a lot of it comes down to XF2 being announced almost 3 years ago. That said, I think it'd be a terrible idea if they tried to add in all of these extra major features on 2.0.0, just look how that went for IPS with the 4.0 release
 
mauzao9 said:
There's also another layer here that shows me how the software needs to catch up to how people "expect to use it".

I swear the more time that passes, the more frequently I get asked by people how to create a thread on the forum, quite a bunch of people that aren't used to forums so I get this idea of what are the frequent struggles for new people to find a forum welcoming and friendly to get used to.

Then after quite the feedback, this small-big feature to create a thread from the homepage appears on xF 2.0.
Click to expand...
What if we add a "Quick reply" to actual topic list (view forum) pages that is a fast way to create new topics (threads)? Making the "here's where you type stuff" area super obvious could encourage participation.
 
Jake B. said:
I think a lot of it comes down to XF2 being announced almost 3 years ago. That said, I think it'd be a terrible idea if they tried to add in all of these extra major features on 2.0.0, just look how that went for IPS with the 4.0 release
Click to expand...
Yeah, the early announcement was probably a bad mis-step for it. They should have already had started the core coding before announcing it. It has led to some higher expectations than what they were wanting to do.
 
Tracy Perry said:
Yeah, the early announcement was probably a bad mis-step for it. They should have already had started the core coding before announcing it. It has led to some higher expectations than what they were wanting to do.
Click to expand...
When you shift development to a new product the development of the old will necessarily slow down, also the focus of what things you will add to the old one and which not. So telling their customers that they were already working on the new product wasn't wrong.
 
RobinHood said:
I'm aware of that, I'm also aware that IPS seems to have lots of other issues that XF doesn't.

I do try to be considerate of the fact that it must be incredibly tough for the XF team to be working for so long and hard on parts of the software that the vast majority of us will never see or fully understand and appreciate.

I know none of those IPS features are going to be in 2.0, they xf team have been pretty clear about what will or won't be at this point. And I'm not even expecting any of the IPS features listed to be in XF 2.X.

What I am hoping for, is that once 2.0 is out and they've done all the back end groundwork they want to do, the XF team can get into some kind of rhythm again for improving existing features and adding new ones on some sort of consistent basis.

There's been quite a few black holes in the XF timeline where it's felt like things have been stagnant for one reason or another.

It's encouraging to read how excited some of the developers are about XF2 on the demo forum.

It's encouraging they now have 50% more dev power now Chris is on the team.

It's also good to see some great ideas coming from a competitor and actually shipping right now. It benefits no one to only have dying competition like vb. Otherwise where's the extra pressure to make the product even better?

Hopefully the XF team and the 3rd party XF devs can take inspiration from the best of these new features and let it influence the direction they take to make the XF ecosystem even better and push forward the forum industry as a whole.
Click to expand...

I am confident that what xf2 is on the demo site is basically what it will be feature wise. extras now are the GUI web interface to plugins, themes and installer/upgrade and importer.

Don't expect anything surprising beyond this point, i've tried asking around but all i got in the last 3 months was that this is basically it, .. nothing planned.

Fingers crossed 2.1 will jump on this, and quick.
And then 2.2 again and 2.3 again!

It's 2018 by the time we upgrade our sites to 2.0, if we do so (can't really see a lot of benefits over 1.5 at this point to be honest)
and investing money in a modern forum solution that helps build a community, keep those users, and improve user engagement .. giving it a respectable place within other "user interactive communities" like social networks, etc .. .. sigh, even while i am typing this, i already know it's not going to happen.
 
Chris D said:
We did...
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It's just surprising that in 2010 it took a certain period of time after kier/mike left to build a whole product from the ground up (and that is while dealing with a lawsuit), but it has already taken years to get version 2 into a developer beta. But I know, .. ppl always hate me for my blunt opinions .. i am just thinking about myself and the sites i help admin and run .. we want to move forward and build communities, not feel stagnated on old feature sets from 2010 and paying people hundreds of dollars for custom dev work and plugins to just get something creative done with thread's media or the way a forum list is displayed. And i guess i am just a tad bitter, because it's been the same with ipb, vb, and xenforo, when you ask for features, that instead of feeling suggestions we push forward are embraced that they get push back first ..

Let's rewrite the core engine first, then maybe in two years we get new features .. and then wait another year for those features to be complete ..

I will stop rambling, i know it's not welcome here.. It's only our sites we put real money in..
 
I don't mind feedback being blunt, as long as you don't mind me being similarly so.

Such a comparison is extremely short sighted and partly inaccurate.
  1. Development started in 2009, not 2010.
  2. The lawsuit kicked in about 18 months after development started, and by the time it reared its head, the software was just approaching Beta 1 so was practically finished.
  3. XenForo 1.0.0 was released just under two years after development began.
  4. That means it took two years to develop XenForo 1.0.0 vs the coming up to three years to develop XenForo 2.0.0.
So, how has it taken longer for three developers to develop XenForo 2.0.0 vs. the two developers it took to develop XenForo 1.0.0? Most people can appreciate and understand...

Quite simply, in 2009-2010, Mike and Kier were developing XenForo 1.0.0, whereas Mike, Kier and I are rewriting/developing:
While we're doing that monumental task, we're also supporting and maintaining all of the above. We're also fielding and spending time that should be spent developing answering questions such as this.

In the middle of the three years we're talking about, Mike and I took pretty much 4-6 months off developing XenForo 2.0.0 so we could release XenForo 1.5.0. Amongst all of this, we're still answering tickets, support questions on the forum, writing documentation for things and doing our best to keep people informed of where we are.

If you ever get the opportunity, install XenForo 1.0.0 some time and compare it side by side to XenForo 1.5.13. XenForo 1.0.0 was a XenForo that only had a fraction of the support commitments, a fraction of the functionality, a fraction (basically none) additional products to support. No responsive design. In fact, if you look through the Have You Seen forum from pages 1-4 you will see all of these familiar looking features that we're using extensively now that probably weren't even conceived in that initial 2 year development period. And when you're developing a product from scratch you have basically no customer expectations to meet, there's room to take an iterative approach to things and there's just basically no barriers in front of you.

We've held our hands up to the fact that the announcement was perhaps a bit early, and in an ideal world we'd definitely like to be further forward now than we are. But when you actually think about the absolute mammoth task that we've had in front of us, 3 years is really no time at all.
 
I think the concern is that it'll be another 1 (maybe 2?) years until the code is stable, all the addons have been updated to XF2, etc. Will the codebase being developed now (which will then be 5 years old) still be ok or will the whole process need to start again?

Basically is this a one-off overhaul or are you always chasing your own tail trying to keep "modern" without time to actually work on new features.
 
It will only be released once we feel it is stable, and that certainly won't be 1-2 years away. Add-on developers and style designers are already working on 2.0 versions (which is why we've had the developer preview to start with...) and it's going to ultimately be within their interests to turn that around as soon as possible.

When we release it, the code base will be brand new and as modern and up to date as it possibly can be. It won't have already aged three years as soon as it is released.

To a certain extent, the very reason we're doing what we're doing now is so we don't have to do this again. Of course technology, methodology, experience and developer skill improves over time but what we have, which has so far been ratified by a majority of the feedback we've received from developers, is a strong and stable platform which will expedite first and third party development for many years to come.
 
Chris D said:
I don't mind feedback being blunt, as long as you don't mind me being similarly so.

Such a comparison is extremely short sighted and partly inaccurate.
  1. Development started in 2009, not 2010.
  2. The lawsuit kicked in about 18 months after development started, and by the time it reared its head, the software was just approaching Beta 1 so was practically finished.
  3. XenForo 1.0.0 was released just under two years after development began.
  4. That means it took two years to develop XenForo 1.0.0 vs the coming up to three years to develop XenForo 2.0.0.
So, how has it taken longer for three developers to develop XenForo 2.0.0 vs. the two developers it took to develop XenForo 1.0.0? Most people can appreciate and understand...

Quite simply, in 2009-2010, Mike and Kier were developing XenForo 1.0.0, whereas Mike, Kier and I are rewriting/developing:
While we're doing that monumental task, we're also supporting and maintaining all of the above. We're also fielding and spending time that should be spent developing answering questions such as this.

In the middle of the three years we're talking about, Mike and I took pretty much 4-6 months off developing XenForo 2.0.0 so we could release XenForo 1.5.0. Amongst all of this, we're still answering tickets, support questions on the forum, writing documentation for things and doing our best to keep people informed of where we are.

If you ever get the opportunity, install XenForo 1.0.0 some time and compare it side by side to XenForo 1.5.13. XenForo 1.0.0 was a XenForo that only had a fraction of the support commitments, a fraction of the functionality, a fraction (basically none) additional products to support. No responsive design. In fact, if you look through the Have You Seen forum from pages 1-4 you will see all of these familiar looking features that we're using extensively now that probably weren't even conceived in that initial 2 year development period. And when you're developing a product from scratch you have basically no customer expectations to meet, there's room to take an iterative approach to things and there's just basically no barriers in front of you.

We've held our hands up to the fact that the announcement was perhaps a bit early, and in an ideal world we'd definitely like to be further forward now than we are. But when you actually think about the absolute mammoth task that we've had in front of us, 3 years is really no time at all.
Click to expand...
I appreciate it that you took the time to give some more information and your point of view based on facts and helping complete the image. While some points appear completely different to me over the last few years, or back then in 2010, .. While using the forums and talking to the staff there, and users, it just feels we're stagnating and struggling to get things the way we want them to achieve what needs to be done. The discussions made by me and others in the past here keep ending on getting push back. That's my experience, wether you are busy with ticket and other stuff or not. But don't get me wrong, I know there are new versions and over time new things have been introduced - I am not claiming nothing happened.
 
xenfans said:
It's 2018 by the time we upgrade our sites to 2.0, if we do so (can't really see a lot of benefits over 1.5 at this point to be honest)
and investing money in a modern forum solution that helps build a community, keep those users, and improve user engagement .. giving it a respectable place within other "user interactive communities" like social networks, etc .. .. sigh, even while i am typing this, i already know it's not going to happen.
Click to expand...

I've been here since day one as well and I don't see any need to assimilate with social media, do what you deem "essential" yourself and let the three developers build a balanced product that isnt vbulletin 4. I know social media is killing other forums but I personally don't suffer this fate and I don't see why xenforo needs to mimick that crap anyway and turn into a facebook API plugin just so you're not left in the dark over there somehow. If you've spent hundreds on add-ons (as I have too) then when you move to xenforo 2 that is your choice, don't even try throw that back at people here - you decided you need all that extra stuff that was never promised in the xf1 or 2 core to begin with.
 
Yes please don't build vBulletin 4, haha :) I think everybody here can at least agree on that :D

And please don't see me posting a 'negative' opinion as if I am not happy with anything. There's a lot of two thumbs up stuff going on.

And I never said by the way that anything was promised, or that I am expecting it. And the 'desires' that we wish forum products have, isn't just my own wish. I've been involved with community building and still help out daily with plenty that we have discussions about what's next and loads of it is very very similar.
 
Chris D said:
I don't mind feedback being blunt, as long as you don't mind me being similarly so.

Such a comparison is extremely short sighted and partly inaccurate.
  1. Development started in 2009, not 2010.
  2. The lawsuit kicked in about 18 months after development started, and by the time it reared its head, the software was just approaching Beta 1 so was practically finished.
  3. XenForo 1.0.0 was released just under two years after development began.
  4. That means it took two years to develop XenForo 1.0.0 vs the coming up to three years to develop XenForo 2.0.0.
So, how has it taken longer for three developers to develop XenForo 2.0.0 vs. the two developers it took to develop XenForo 1.0.0? Most people can appreciate and understand...

Quite simply, in 2009-2010, Mike and Kier were developing XenForo 1.0.0, whereas Mike, Kier and I are rewriting/developing:
While we're doing that monumental task, we're also supporting and maintaining all of the above. We're also fielding and spending time that should be spent developing answering questions such as this.

In the middle of the three years we're talking about, Mike and I took pretty much 4-6 months off developing XenForo 2.0.0 so we could release XenForo 1.5.0. Amongst all of this, we're still answering tickets, support questions on the forum, writing documentation for things and doing our best to keep people informed of where we are.

If you ever get the opportunity, install XenForo 1.0.0 some time and compare it side by side to XenForo 1.5.13. XenForo 1.0.0 was a XenForo that only had a fraction of the support commitments, a fraction of the functionality, a fraction (basically none) additional products to support. No responsive design. In fact, if you look through the Have You Seen forum from pages 1-4 you will see all of these familiar looking features that we're using extensively now that probably weren't even conceived in that initial 2 year development period. And when you're developing a product from scratch you have basically no customer expectations to meet, there's room to take an iterative approach to things and there's just basically no barriers in front of you.

We've held our hands up to the fact that the announcement was perhaps a bit early, and in an ideal world we'd definitely like to be further forward now than we are. But when you actually think about the absolute mammoth task that we've had in front of us, 3 years is really no time at all.
Click to expand...

This might be one of the best replies/explanations I have read in quite some time.

From the outside, you can really get set in the mode of "Man, what in the blue hell is taking so long"... but now, after this, I can appreciate the task that has been undertaken. I really never looked at it from this view, and I am really glad you took the time to explain as you have. I really feel like I should apologize for simply assuming you guys have been kickin' it (hehe, kidding ..... well, about the kickin' it part, but the apology could stand, again, as I never truly understood the sheer amount of work needed - I'm no coder - ha.) Puts it into perspective for me.

Anywho, look forward to seeing everything come together.
 
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