XF 2.4 XenForo 2.4 status and what's new under the hood?

Where are we?​

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TL;DR: We're working hard to release XenForo 2.4 ASAP, but it's taking longer than expected due to scope changes and strategic decisions to wait for certain upstream developments that will benefit the long-term roadmap. Here's an analogy to explain why:

Software development is like planning a cross-country expedition with multiple destinations.

When you set out for version 2.4, you're not just driving to the next town over. You're charting a course through unknown territory with several strategic stops planned along the way - each representing a major milestone or feature release.

But the challenge is the landscape keeps changing along the journey.
  • New roads open up (better technologies emerge)
  • Bridges get washed out (dependencies break or become obsolete)
  • You discover scenic routes that would benefit all future travellers (opportunities for architectural improvements)
  • Weather conditions shift (market demands or user needs evolve)
  • Your vehicle needs unexpected maintenance (technical debt must be addressed)
You can't just focus on reaching the immediate next stop. You must consider how each decision affects the entire journey ahead. Taking a shortcut to reach 2.4 faster might leave you stranded when trying to reach 3.0, 4.0 or even 5.0.

This is why scope changes occur: experienced developers are constantly recalibrating the route based on new information, ensuring the expedition can successfully reach not just the next destination, but all the strategic waypoints that follow.

The delays aren't detours, rather they're course corrections that keep the long-term journey viable.

To be slightly less cryptic, these are some of the specific challenges we have faced along the way:

A new Tiptap version is coming​

When we announced that Tiptap is coming to XenForo 2.4 it was 95% complete, and we then took a bit of a pause to work on other projects, which we have talked about since and will be discussing in this thread. Since then, Tiptap have announced Tiptap V3 which is currently in beta. Given how core the editor is to the forum experience, it makes a lot of sense to ship XenForo 2.4 with Tiptap V3 rather than Tiptap V2 as originally planned. While the changes involved are not too extensive, we also don't want to ship 2.4 with a dependency that is still in beta and subject to change. While we are not planning to wait for Tiptap V3 to be stable, necessarily, we do at least want to give it a little bit more time so we have a higher degree of confidence that we're shipping a stable editing experience.

We started talking about a rewrite (again)​

While this is not currently the direction we've decided to go in, it's responsible for us to at least consider all routes available to us to help us reach our destination.

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After nearly 8 years since the release of XenForo 2.0, many of the technologies we use are showing their age, many of the decisions we made have started to slow us down more than we would like, and as a framework, XenForo becomes a less productive framework to work with. The solution to this problem can be to start from scratch, but we have ultimately decided that this is not something we need to do at this stage.

Instead, over the next few versions, including 2.4, we will be attempting to make iterative architectural changes to the framework so that we all have greater tools at our disposal to improve both the developer and user experience, particularly focusing on the implementation of developer tools and features that have become commonplace in other frameworks, such as Laravel.

Some of our best features are simply not finished​

There are one or two features that we see requested consistently from customers in our community forums and feedback channels, and we're excited to confirm they are coming in 2.4! However, it serves no one well if we release such highly-anticipated features before they are ready and before they have the usual level of quality, polish, and extensibility you would expect from a XenForo release. We'd rather take the extra time to get them right than rush them out and disappoint users with a subpar implementation that requires immediate patches or lacks the flexibility for customisation. We'll be sharing exciting details about what these features are and how they work in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

We can't keep up!​

I just counted and there are about 15 features that have been merged or are pending to be merged into XF 2.4 that we haven't announced yet. Some of these are smaller and aren't worthy of a dedicated HYS of their own (so they'll probably be rolled into a "miscellaneous" HYS or two), and some of these are going to be mentioned below, but while we have been "cooking" (as the kids say these days) it has meant that things like code reviews, and writing HYS posts hasn't been easy to balance. There is also potentially more stuff coming from generous contributions from esteemed developers such as @Xon and @digitalpoint, assuming we have time to implement (otherwise they will wait for... a future version).


With all of that now being said, while 2.4 is taking longer than we wanted, we have been busy and we are very much nearing the end of development.

And, while disappointing (to all of us) it is important to maintain perspective. XenForo 2.2 was released in September 2020. XenForo 2.3 was released nearly four years later. XenForo 2.4 is not 3 more years away.

But, you clicked this to find out what's new, right? So let's go.
 
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Jimsef said:
I was just surprised there are so few.

And to address the point of code quality, with software like this it is usually not the forum code that is the issue, it’s something like a bug discovered in the wysiwyg editor version, so a new version comes out, meaning XF would have a security releases to consume that (that’s just one example).
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In regard to security concerns, vulnerabilities in Xenforo and its dependencies usually get reported elsewhere not just here so the low count is generally a testament to the quality of coding.
 
alfaNova said:
We have waited decades after the last version. They should release 3.0 after investing a significant amount of development effort in this period.
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Decades? Even 2.0 was less than a decade ago given my board is 11 years old and went live on 1.3.(forget). Let's drop the hyperbole, okay? Or are you being sarcastic here?
 
Jake70 said:
XF works perfectly fine as it is.
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i guess it depends what you are trying to do with it....for me its required major custom editor help just to use the forum functionally without needing to open multiple tabs to accomplish basic tasks etc.....

we waited and waited......once 2.3 drops then finally it can happen......years passed, then, ok finally we are there! then, well, not really because they announced 2.4 was coming and was going to be fast releasing and was going to fully replace the editor so any custom work wont make sense until 2.4....dont worry tho it will be fully released by april of 2025.......now its 7 months later its crickets and not even 2.3.8 or 2.4 early version, or any kind of update whatsoever just we are jerks if we expect anything at all um....
i mean it gets to a point and some ppl have medical issues etc and would like to even just finish a job before they die....wonder if thats going to be possible hmm.....looking at you, 2027.....or what did they say 2.4 is the quick version but what it really needs is in 3.0 which will be quick after???

just stop it already.....put the editor in and release the thing or at least explain why thats wormholing us for another year+ thats already stated to be a half done job by the time that arrives......

day story GIF
 
Here's my case again.

2.3 breaks my design which prompts a major rework, but it doesn't add any features i need.
2.4 breaks my design again, prompting a major rework, but at least it offers a number of features i need.
Thus, i'm on 2.2 and improvements on our forum are mostly frozen.

So i've been waiting about 2 years for a useful update and the vendor of this software i buy has this year gone radio silence on progress updates and is over 6 months overdue relative to what they promised and hasn't readjusted expectations.

I'm anxious because PHPBB did this to us too. They promised updates and went radio silent for years. We were patient, and being patient was a mistake. Certain promises are still up on their website 5 years later.

Many people are used to being rugpulled in this kind of situation. So the anxiety that broken promises followed by radio science is valid and shouldn't be dismissed.
 
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ES Dev Team said:
Here's my case again.

2.3 breaks my design which prompts a major rework, but it doesn't add any features i need.
2.4 breaks my design again, prompting a major rework, but at least it offers a number of features i need.
Thus, i'm on 2.2 and improvements on our forum are mostly frozen.

So i've been waiting about 2 years for a useful update and the vendor of this software i buy has gone radio silence on progress updates and is over 6 months overdue relative to what they promised.

I'm anxious because PHPBB did this to us too. They promised updates and went radio silent for years. We were patient, and being patient was a mistake. Certain promises are still up on their website 5 years later.

Many people are used to being rugpulled in these exact situations. So the anxiety that broken promises followed by radio science is valid and shouldn't be dismissed.
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As someone who works with styles every day, the upgrade from 2.2 -> 2.3 style-wise was pretty painless. Also, how will you know 2.4 will break the design? They aren't pushing the new design into 2.4 anymore, that's going into 3.0.

Most style updates took a few minutes at most. Some very complex styles took maybe 30-60 minutes at most? A "major rework" is a massive stretch.
 
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Our modifications are extensive, the way we do those modifications changes because we used non-standard methods since built in ones weren't flexible enough, and i want to minimize the work.

2.4 changes the editor which hoses many things, i'm not sure what other specifics i found that would be a problem, but i know that i'd like to reduce the work as much as possible, that's why i'm skipping 2.3 ( that and the fact that it brings nothing useful to our forum )
 
2.3 styles were an issue for us, simply because nulumia quit tho.....its concerning enough without updates once the stated path fails....but it goes back to vb3 for me then things can start to look familiar so thats concerning of course.....waiting is one thing, waiting, then waiting more, then still not able to do what you wanted is another....

vb3 was great at the time
vb4 went both fwd and backwards at the same time, but pushed out a bit early and started relying on customers alot more to help develop it. intentionally releasing buggy releases etc....
vb5 kept in the same direction and was a complete catastrophe that seems to never made it to a point of being good for anything....
vb6 who knows...who cares...


we came to xf at 2.1 which was like ok its finally ready to support migration.....
xf2.2 smoothed and welcome
xf2.3 happy enough with the improves but by the time it rolled out wondering can therapy sessions come free with a license?
then of course this now....2.4 and 3.0........i think it must sound good like were gonna do this then that.....but what is really going on it just seems like vbulletin all over again, and how ironic that would be considering developers used to work for vb...

it needs to get back to that vb3 kind of idea.......IMHO

a solid platform that works enough in itself and doesnt need the next release to fix all the half built stuff and other basics that are sorely missing.....otherwise idk whats going on really, is it yet another unexplained delay, or are we swirling....idk what the alternative is but perhaps thats part of the problem, they know we dont have anywhere else to go so who cares what its actually like to own/operate a xenforo website....
 
I'm very much not on the "XenForo desperately needs massive updates all the time and if we don't get them the software is doomed!" train that was all the rage a few weeks back in this thread—my posts definitely back this up.

That said, I do think a status update is well overdue from the team. I don't care about ETAs or timelines or whatever—don't give estimates—no one needs them. I don't even need to know about features or plans—I know sometimes things go wrong before they're actually completed and shipping them becomes impossible.

I'd just advocate for a, say, monthly paragraph-or-two-long post from the team recounting something that went well, something that went sideways, something useful, something weird, etc that happend in XenForo's development over the last month—just something to just show work is ongoing would help a lot in my opinion. It doesn't have to be exciting or really even all that substitutive—just a "here's something we did this month."
 
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Swiftman said:
I'd just advocate for a, say, monthly paragraph-or-two-long post from the team recounting something that went well, something that went sideways, something useful, something weird, etc that happend in XenForo's development over the last month—just something to just show work is ongoing would help a lot in my opinion. It doesn't have to be exciting or really even all that substitutive—just a "here's something we did this month."
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Yes, I agree with this completely. All that's needed is more communication and, I believe, a lot of this negativity would just go away. I'd also agree that the communication doesn't have to be all that substantive. I don't even care if it says "this is what we did this month". I think just a "we've hit another snag, but we assure you work continues" would suffice. That said, I do like your idea better. The last HYS, in my opinion, was a great update, even before Chris started talking about the upcoming features. Direct, honest, and reassuring.
 

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