XenForo Cloud discussion

[duderuud]

Having a 20 year domaining background I found it an odd choice for Xenforo to make and a missed opportunity for free advertising.

I would have done it something like this....

sitename.xenforoforums.com or sitename.xenforocommunity.com or sitename.xenforocloud.com (probably the best choice)

For me running under sitename.community.forum is something I would never run in a live environment.

Good thing you can easily add your own domain and the community name is then just used in the back end.

They also offer xenforo.cloud and .xenforo-hosting.com

 

[Nicolas FR]

The perfect domain name would have been .brogan.forum

 

[RobinHood]

Having a 20 year domaining background I found it an odd choice for Xenforo to make and a missed opportunity for free advertising.

I would have done it something like this....

sitename.xenforoforums.com or sitename.xenforocommunity.com or sitename.xenforocloud.com (probably the best choice)

For me running under sitename.community.forum is something I would never run in a live environment.

Good thing you can easily add your own domain and the community name is then just used in the back end.

In my experience it's the opposite that the customer will want though.

A company may offer sitename.xenforocloud.com by standard, but many users, especially business users don't want that. They have their own brand they want to build and promote. So a company will offer a 'white label' product and charge the end user extra to remove the xenforocloud aspect from it.

The fact that XF are including .community.forum out of the box, without paying extra, for every plan, is a huge value add. It's being able to add a certain degree of white label your community url out of the box while still having an incredibly valuable, readable and meaningful custom URL that reflects that it's a forum that couldn't be easily or affordably be purchased otherwise.

It's brilliant.

For anyone that cares enough, it doesn't take much to figure out if the site is running on XF or not. And eventually, once XF cloud blows up, which with the way it's progressing, that seems pretty promising, then the .community.forum URL will end up becoming synonymous with the XF brand anyway without the in your face shoving of the brand name into the url.

 

[MapleOne]

In my experience it's the opposite that the customer will want though.

A company may offer sitename.xenforocloud.com by standard, but many users, especially business users don't want that. They have their own brand they want to build and promote. So a company will offer a 'white label' product and charge the end user extra to remove the xenforocloud aspect from it.

The fact that XF are including .community.forum out of the box, without paying extra, for every plan, is a huge value add. It's being able to white label your community url out of the box while still having an incredibly valuable, readable and meaningful custom URL that reflects that it's a forum.

It's brilliant.

For anyone that cares enough, it doesn't take much to figure out if the site is running on XF or not. And eventually, once XF cloud blows up, which with the way it's progressing, that seems pretty promising, then the .community.forum URL will end up becoming synonymous with the XF brand anyway without the in your face shoving of the brand name into the url.

You make an excellent point and I agree but in the end anyone that has a brand will just hook their own domain.

I find there is still a big learning curve for consumers if they don't see a .com or similar ending.

Even more confusing for end users of the site is (sitename.community.forum) the double dot without a traditional two or three character extension.

Imagine BestBuy.community.forum they would probably get a lot of people doing this... BestBuy.community.forum.com

The new gTLD's are not bad and will probably mature in the next few years but I find consumer knowledge about them is still fairly low.

 

[beerForo]

You guys really love bikeshedding the domains lol.

 

[Nicolas FR]

If I choose XF Cloud and mysite.xenforo.cloud as domain name.
Is this registered in my name?
Does it really belong to me?
If I stop XF Cloud can I continue to use it?

 

[beerForo]

No

 

[RobinHood]

The new gTLD's are not bad and will probably mature in the next few years but I find consumer knowledge about them is still fairly low.

That is a legitimate concern, however I'm seeing pretty good adoption of them over the last few years. There's more and more businesses in London using the .London tld. Lots of tradesmen vans and high street businesses using them.

People are learning more about URL structure and how in works, and the current young generation understand it completely.

With the reach XF has it may even be a driving factor in helping older users to understand this.

I agree existing businesses will use their own URL, but this new TLD is freakin' perfect from facebook group admins looking to jump ship and take control of their communities. Looking to become the generic top level SEO friendly discussion forum for their niche. Or even just someone completely new to the game looking to start a community about anything at all.

It's just so good, honestly, I can almost see their being a rush on some of the valuable versions of this url just like a major top level TLD. There's so much promise here. And from a business perspective for XF it's brilliant. You have to stay subbed to keep the domain.

Create a large or active thriving community, that's no big deal, but the non trivial annual fee will prevent squatters from taking the good ones.

 

[Paul B]

I've been running a .community.forum site for 4 months.

It's such a perfect domain for e.g. HOAs and housing communities, which is what I'm using it for.

 

[Nicolas FR]

No

So I'm doomed to stay on the XF cloud? I can no longer transfer my forum elsewhere without losing my domain name?

 

[beerForo]

You use your own. Using theirs is like using your vanity youtube name.

 

[Paul B]

So I'm doomed to stay on the XF cloud? I can no longer transfer my forum elsewhere without losing my domain name?

How exactly would XF be able to transfer a URL to someone which is a sub-domain of the root domain which XF owns?

 

[Nicolas FR]

That's what I was thinking about right now. In fact community is the domain name and .forum is the domain.
I quickly understand if we explain for a long time! Ha ha !

 

[beerForo]

.forum is the TLD correct.

 

[beerForo]

brogan.forum is still a good idea for support tickets

 

[Jay™]

Yet. This is the next phase.

That is what I meant the other day @Chris D when I asked about some sort of control panel, at the least being able to import a site I already have.

 

[Chris D]

I see. Given it’s a managed service, the import would be too.

 

[RobParker]

Random question, can we somehow purchase one of the domains from XF without signing up to Xenforo Cloud (and forward it to our own self-hosted XF)?

It'd fit very well with our existing forum name, hence the question.

 

[Chris D]

Unfortunately not, sorry.

 

[RobParker]

Fair enough. If that ever changes, we'd certainly be interested.