XenForo Demo Question

[xIsabel38]

I have hired a Development team to create some Add-ons for XenForo. The team has previous experience with vBulletin and most other forum software. However, they need the development environment to be able to look through XenForo files and determine how best to create Add-ons because they do not own a license.

Obviously, giving them a copy of the software would break TOS so instead, I was wondering if they could use the XenForo Demo system to actually create an Add-on? How in-depth does the Demo go in terms of letting you manipulate the templates and install Add-ons?

 

[JulianD]

You can create basic things like template edits but if they want to really extend the XenForo classes and have a real business logic on your addons, they will need the full product, I'm afraid.

 

[xIsabel38]

Ah crap.

 

[JulianD]

You would have to ask the business guys here on XenForo but I think you can create a test board on your server and give them access to it. Don't take my word for granted, though. Use it to ask to the appropriate person to see if you can work that way.

 

[xIsabel38]

You can create a test board, I already have one. But I use it a lot for testing purposes and I really can't have them editing Templates and stuff on me. If I could set up a second Testing forum as a "Development Forum", that might be doable but you can only have 2 installations. This would make me have 3. 1 Real, 1 Test, 1 Development. That's against XF TOS. I'll figure something out.

 

[Moshe1010]

You can give them access to your dev website. If they only need to look through the code, that would be enough since they aren't editing any files - just looking through.
They can also use it locally, on their computer. I don't think using it locally breaks TOS.
Anyway, 2 testing areas are overkill.

 

[Paul B]

They can also use it locally, on their computer. I don't think using it locally breaks TOS.

The software can't be given to a third party.

 

[aiman.h.kallaf]

i had the same problem of yours , the guys at www.prochatrooms.com/ needed a test environment
they need a ftp account and access to my forum , this is was their solution which is not ok , no way they experiment on my live site.
i gave them http://xenforo.com/community and told them they can ask about any technical information they need here , and i'm still waiting

 

[Moshe1010]

The software can't be given to a third party.

What prevents 3-party to access her FTP and download all her testing files to their computers and do whatever they want with it?

 

[Paul B]

The license holder would be responsible in that case.

 

[Moshe1010]

The license holder would be responsible in that case.

Is their any reason why XenForo doesn't give license serial numbers and that way controls software installations like vBulletin does? Currently, all packages that are downloaded from the customer area are the same - without any indications who've downloaded them. Token validation isn't the same, since I can still install my software on 500 computers. Sure, there will always be nulled softwares, but wouldn't it be logical to make it harder to steal/copy?

 

[oman]

There is an indication on the package which could help the developers look up who downloaded it. Example:

xenforo_1.2.0_07AF6204637_upgrade (example only)

I assume that would identify the number of the license, so not all packages downloaded are the same. I also assume there is some sort of in file hidden verification used by the developers.