XenForo 2.0 Discussion

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Sheldon said:
You're kidding, right?
If not, this might be the most ridiculous sentence I have ever read here at XF.
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Not really, as there are awesome addons, there is also many awesome addons abandoned, some by complete others because the developers struggle to maintain them as they have many addons released. I got frustrated when already for 3 times, I paid addons and they end up un-supported, without being able to reach their developers for months already.
And, as said, without no real alternatives, i can say that, Donation Manager is a prime example of that.
 
mauzao9 said:
I paid addons and they end up un-supported, without being able to reach their developers for months already.
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I suggest researching who you are buying from before doing business. There is a long list of developers here who offer high quality add-ons as well as unparallelled support.

Don't label everyone due to a few bad decisions on your part. If you are looking for an add-on that isn't available, hire someone.
 
Sheldon said:
Don't label everyone due to a few bad decisions on your part.
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I have not labeled everyone due that. For the time Xenforo is out already, there is lack of those "bigger" addons, the complete applications (the usually paid addons) that can expand Xenforo to whole new levels, that one alone can't simply afford hire someone to the amounts of work required. But on the smaller things, specially Waindigo that already released hundreds of addons that they keep supporting, is amazing.
 
The xenforo addon community is quite rich in its offerings, even though there still is a high demand for quality developers. In my experience the main problem with the addon development is the lack of developer reputation and bug visibility. This results in low quality code flying under the radar and high quality coders not always being recognized. I'm sure that if developer and addon reputation would become visible this would increase overall professionalism.

I'd hope that XF2 will further expand its successful addon ecosystem by offering more extensibility and quality control tools.
 
There are no doubt good add-ons available but that doesnt mean what @mauzao9 is saying is not true. I for one cannot find an add-on which will let me sell physical goods and come with the basic features of an online store. I am sure several others also have different needs which are not being met with the existing add-ons. Also the long list of quality developers who have time is actually very short.
 
mauzao9 said:
The sad part of Xenforo is the lack of good addons / addons that use the real features of XF, there is may addons without ANY decent alternative, some of them where developers already did stop working on, if they break, it's forever, and of course, the "Copy/Pastes" of vBulletin/IPB addons on Xenforo, not making any real use of the Xenforo features itself.
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Renegade said:
Also the long list of quality developers who have time is actually very short.
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That's because, unfortunetely, time is money. We all wish we could sit around and work on XenForo 40+ hours a week but we can't. It doesn't pay well enough. Everyone wants everything for free or super cheap and it's not feasible. XenForo doesn't have a large enough marketshare yet where we can make a decent amount off our add ons to justify doing it full time. It's quite discouraging. If XenForo wasn't so friendly to work on and the community wasn't great I would have stopped a long time ago. It's my favorite software to develop for though and it does generate some extra funds but at the end of the day it pays less than minimum wage which is sad. Once there's more and more forums running XenForo, it's likely that this will change. I really hope it does.

I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels this way. @Bob B and @Chris D probably have 5,000+ hours into each of their add ons (I'm estimating conservatively and probably am way under). At minimum wage that'd be $40k, in other words they both would have had to sell 800 copies of their software to make $8/hr. As if that's not enough, we also have to deal with pirates stealing the software and redistributing it, deal with getting beat up over our prices, etc...

Then to top it off, after we operate at a chinese factory salary, we get insulted and told there's no quality add ons and that there's no reliable developers.

* @Renegade My post isn't directed towards you; you just said something true that I wanted to expand upon.
 
Martok said:
There is no lack. I have two of these add-ons from great developers with awesome support - Xen Media Gallery by @Chris D and CTA Featured Threads & Portal by @Brogan.
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I know, i use from Chris the Competitions (my favorite addon on my forums i wish he could spend more time on) and for the future maybe the Gallery, and several smaller addons.

Indeed @Renegade it was i'm trying to say, majority of the high-quality addon creators i already noticed that they are already overloaded maintaining their own addons, what else take requests to enter other bigger projects / expand their actual addons. @Daniel Hood Some times i think it would be good if this developers group together and start releasing paid addons that they can easily maintain and take onto bigger projects, without ending up with 1 developer alone taking big projects (sharing effort / time required).

Donation Manager is the one that worries me most, without alternatives (one actual integrated system on XF) i keep hoping the next Xenforo updates doesn't break it, as it is already a bit unstable. I see so many XF forums that use it, i can't imagine what will happen when/if it breaks and people will come here search around to find... no alternative.

My English may trick me on making understand that i just see the XF Modding has more potential than this for its future.
 
Daniel Hood said:
I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels this way. @Bob B and @Chris D probably have 5,000+ hours into each of their add ons (I'm estimating conservatively and probably am way under). At minimum wage that'd be $40k, in other words they both would have had to sell 800 copies of their software to make $8/hr.
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mauzao9 said:
@Daniel Hood Some times i think it would be good if this developers group together and start releasing paid addons that they can easily maintain and take onto bigger projects, without ending up with 1 developer alone taking big projects (sharing effort / time required).
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So your solution to the problem I posted is for developers to now split the same, very limited, funds? That won't help.

mauzao9 said:
My English may trick me on making understand that i just see the XF Modding has more potential than this for its future.
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I respect that English isn't your primary language so I'll spare you sarcasm. I'm not trying to turn this into a debate; I'm just attempting to explain that the small market share and everyone's unwillingness to pay a decent amount for add ons to compensate competent developers for their time is the problem.

It's basic economics: to make money we need either more money [per license] or more customers. I think the more customers are coming, I don't think prices will go up because people refuse to pay and just pirate instead (or complain). Right now though, if we make a $50 product which takes 5,000 hours to develop and 100 people buy it. We'd be operating at a $1/hr wage. In the united states, the average starting salary is at least $20/hr for a developer. So we would need 2,000 people to buy a license and not spend more than 5,000 hours on the project in order to make a comparable salary to a starting level job. I hope you get how this is a problem. It's not like we can carve up a shop, gallery, blog, etc in a days work.
 
I'm amazed how cheap most add-ons are. €50 is for a good one is just dirt cheap.

We are still busy converting to XF and I just made a deal with a developer to create a custom add-on for $750. And that add-on is not the most difficult one to build.
Custom add-ons take a lot of hours to build. And those hours needs to be paid, it's that simple.

It's just like general IT-related work. People find it quite normal to pay for work on fixing their car but don't want to pay for fixing their laptop/website/whatever. That's just stupid.
 
Brogan said:
Well said @Daniel Hood.

It never ceases to amaze me how little people expect to pay for complex add-ons and get offended when they are quoted realistic prices.
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I completely agree but part of that is because XF itself is so cheap. There are a load of addons (the ones named above for starters) that are easily worth $150+ but it'd be next to impossible to sell an addon for more than the core costs.

XF is easily "worth" thousands but it's pretty much set the upper limit at what addon authors think they can sell their code for.
 
Well the Prices of the more complex addons that are around (40-50$) it's also what i paid for the ones i got, and on my case they worth it, maintained, supported and stable software. Also as there's a "lifetime" license for updates on the ones i did get, of course it ends up cheaper. (XF itself is very cheap for what it's being offered.)

Now when it comes to requesting something, developers ask for amounts of money unreachable by a normal forum owner. Unless it's a company, or a big forum converting to XF, custom work, is really complicated to pay for.

I guess we need some sort of KickStarter for Xenforo Developers, so everybody can help to fund a developer(s) on X project, on that aspect, the monetary effort is shared around the users of this community.
 
I can understand people being cautious though.

Unfortunately us committed and dedicated developers often have to churn out products at lower prices because:
  • Some developers under value their work and sell their stuff and do custom work for next to nothing.
  • Some developers abandon projects.
  • Some developers abandon fully crowd funded projects.
  • Some developers release "Pro" products and their users have to pay someone else to fix the problems.
What people might need to do, however, is expect to pay more and be prepared to wait longer for products. Especially if it's to work with a developer who has proved themselves to be reliable and able to maintain a good level of support on their products.
 
I take the point @RobParker but the markets are completely different.

XenForo is able to set a relatively now price due to the number of licenses they sell and the renewal fee.

Third party add-ons will never approach the same volume.
 
mauzao9 said:
I guess we need some sort of KickStarter for Xenforo Developers, so everybody can help to fund a developer(s) on X project, on that aspect, the monetary effort is shared around the users of this community.
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You're about to start a huge argument. This has only worked 33.3% of the time here so far (2 epic failures and one project that's still in development).
 
@Daniel Hood ah sad to hear that didn't work.

But it confuses me on the aspect, the Addon Prices on the others forum software alternatives, have around the same, or even cheaper prices. So the question bugs me, is Xenforo harder to develop to? Or it's just the model i see being used specially at IPB, where addons prices are lower, but they come with 12 months of updates/support license?
 
mauzao9 said:
@Daniel Hood ah sad to hear that didn't work.

But it confuses me on the aspect, the Addon Prices on the others forum software alternatives, have around the same, or even cheaper prices. So the question bugs me, is Xenforo harder to develop to? Or it's just the model i see being used specially at IPB, where addons prices are lower, but they come with 12 months of updates/support license?
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Goes back to what I was saying about market share. IPB has been around for a lot longer and has more customers which means add ons have a greater possible customer base. That by no means makes IPB better, easier, or anything. Like I said before, it's economics. If I built a park in a town with 1,000 people and wanted to charge a fee to recoupe my costs and I built another park in a town with 10,000 people and wanted to charge a fee to recoupe my costs, one of 3 things would have to happen for it to generate the same amount of money:
  • Charge 10x as much
  • Get 10x as many people (% based) to come to the park in the first town -- this ones a little more confusing so i'll explain
    • If 10% of the people in town 2 come to my park, I'd need 100% at the same price point to come to my park in town 1.
  • Accept the fact that the first town is going to make me less money until there's a larger population.
 
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