Xenforo has twice the market share of vBulletin

One thing I will point out is that only includes the current "big 5". I am on three boards right now that aren't represented there (two on a CMS-based custom system and one on Flarum). So there must still be a small sliver of "Other" in there, but I imagine it is fairly small.

Then there's the ones who bypass forum software altogether and use something like Circle that is more like social media (as I've discussed in another thread recently), even if they are still basically running a forum in the end.
 
Its interesting to see that over 20% of XF sites are still on XF1 and that seems to have flattened. (no decrease since august)
 
Last edited:
The new location gets the latest and greatest data/formulas.
Many thanks, I had a lot of problems finding the old ones - its great that you have directly linked to the new ones here.
This is vital info for anyone trying to explain why XF are doing well and are a sustainable platform (to colleagues / clients).
I was surprised to download their accounts and see they still have just three employees. Great that they are keeping costs down.
Clearly the legal case settlement in 2012 was absolutely key to their success.

We have done great things with the Media Gallery add-on, it now hosts over 13,000 old car photos - one category for each of the 2000 cars in our club's history.
Recently we found an excellent add-on developer who is doing a brilliant job refining our Gallery Advanced Search, creating bulk copy, move and tag add-ons, simplifying XFMG category admin etc.
Onwards and upwards!
 

Attachments

Last edited:
He knows how to run it and has done a lot of work integrating it with other facets of the site. IIRC, he was also extremely unhappy with 4.x, hence his decision to stay on 3.
Stone tablets and chisels eventually reach the end of their life.
 
Forums still running legacy versions of forum software like vB 3.8 have to be running on servers that never upgrade their OS/PHP environment. Yikes.
 
Stone tablets and chisels eventually reach the end of their life.
Bad analogy, IMHO. For a simple forum, vB 3.8 works as well as anything, just carries risk due to being out of date, like this:
Forums still running legacy versions of forum software like vB 3.8 have to be running on servers that never upgrade their OS/PHP environment. Yikes.
So functional (i.e. not analogous to chisels on stone vs. writing with a pen), but with serious risks and limitations. That said, these people must be aware and mitigating somehow, would be my guess. I doubt they are all ignorant clods, even if some are. Gerald, the guy I know, generally seems pretty on-the-ball
 
Bad analogy, IMHO. For a simple forum, vB 3.8 works as well as anything, just carries risk due to being out of date, like this:
Not really... at some point the "technology" supporting it reaches and end of life... and for vb 3.8, tr pretty much has reached that unless one can invest in developers to bring it up to at least a "#2 pencil and paper tablet" level.
Pretty sure PHP 5.6 support ended in 2014... almost a decade ago. Just imaging how many security holes have been found since then.
Yes, you can find "customizations" for vBulletin to get it to 7.4.x lines... but honestly, how many vB admins do you honestly think have done so?
 
unless one can invest in developers to bring it up to at least a "#2 pencil and paper tablet" level.
Or one is capable of doing the dev oneself, as I think my guy is.

Personally, I would never do it, but I get how people might be managing. We see it even in the corporate world. People using decades old systems for as long as they have the ability to support them internally even if external support is gone. And then, of course, getting screwed when that one person who knows the system intimately leaves the company or passes away unexpectedly.
 
2018, owing to the scale of effort migrating to 2015’s PHP 7.
Yep.... my mistake, it came out in 2014 and ended in 2018 (half a decade ago).... but that is STILL 5 years out of date.
Would you be running your car with oil in it that was 5 years old?
 
Or one is capable of doing the dev oneself, as I think my guy is.
In other words... dependent upon an outside developer (which is what I said, wasn't it? ;) )
The point is... ALL things reach a shelf life and need to be replenshed/updated. vB 3.8 is WELL past that point.
 
In other words... dependent upon an outside developer (which is what I said, wasn't it? ;) )
The point is... ALL things reach a shelf life and need to be replenshed/updated. vB 3.8 is WELL past that point.
Agreed, but so are a lot of systems still in use. Unless the original developer codes in a drop-dead date, it's going to keep happening. And I would heartily oppose that for other reasons (sometimes there are legitimate reasons for keep old code running, e.g. needing it up to migrate to a replacement system).
 
Its interesting to see that over 20% of XF sites are still on XF1 and that seems to have flattened. (no decrease since august)

I'm sure the flattening has a lot to do with admins thinking there is no sense in renewing/upgrading till XF 2.3 comes out. I'm sure there will be a noticeable decrease in XF1 at that time, assuming XF 2.3 doesn't disappoint.
 
I'm sure there will be a noticeable decrease in XF1 at that time.
I doubt that. Sites that are still on XF1 vs. XF2 or vB3/vB4 vs vB5 has very little to do with them waiting for some super great feature before they pay for a year worth of upgrades. I'd say the vast majority of those sites are probably sitting on a ton of custom code that would need to be rewritten for the new version/framework (and no feature in XF 2.3 is going to solve that for them). I know firsthand because I'd love to pay for a year of upgrades and be able to click a button and all the custom code is magically rewritten for XF2. I have 2 sites that are still on XF1 because of that (one is at least XF 1.5, but the other is still on 1.4 because even getting it to 1.5 is a crazy amount of work).

There is a TON of great things XF 2.2 does when you compare it to 1.4 or 1.5. It's not an issue of "no features worth upgrading for". :)
 
Have to agree with @digitalpoint. The difference between the 1.x line and the 2.x line is night and day.
Those that are still on the 1.x line didn't base it upon improvements.... usually it was because of the add-ons/structure that they used and the incompatibility with the 2.x line.
A few sites that I know of had bespoke add-ons, and didn't want to cut loose the money to have them upgraded to the 2.x line.
 
I doubt that. Sites that are still on XF1 vs. XF2 or vB3/vB4 vs vB5 has very little to do with them waiting for some super great feature before they pay for a year worth of upgrades. I'd say the vast majority of those sites are probably sitting on a ton of custom code that would need to be rewritten for the new version/framework (and no feature in XF 2.3 is going to solve that for them). I know firsthand because I'd love to pay for a year of upgrades and be able to click a button and all the custom code is magically rewritten for XF2. I have 2 sites that are still on XF1 because of that (one is at least XF 1.5, but the other is still on 1.4 because even getting it to 1.5 is a crazy amount of work).

There is a TON of great things XF 2.2 does when you compare it to 1.4 or 1.5. It's not an issue of "no features worth upgrading for". :)

What you say is true, but I also believe there are quite a few XF1 sites interested in upgrading to XF 2.X that just aren't willing to upgrade to a 2+ year old release. I think the current approximate 9 months of a flat XF1 20% marketshare will begin to once again slowly decrease post XF 2.3 being released.
 
What you say is true, but I also believe there are quite a few XF1 sites interested in upgrading to XF 2.X that just aren't willing to upgrade to a 2+ year old release. I think the current approximate 9 months of a flat XF1 20% marketshare will begin to once again slowly decrease post XF 2.3 being released.
Well there’s not going to be anything in 2.3 that is a bigger upgrade than 1.x to 2.0 was. If people didn’t see a need to upgrade because 2.0 had nothing of interest, I don’t think that’s going to change with 2.3.

That being said, I’d pay $10,000 just for a PHP8 compatible version of 1.x so I don’t have to do it myself (was enough work getting 1.4 working properly on PHP 7.4… hah). Would love to get everything moved to 2.x, but I have to be realistic. 😀

Someday…
 
Back
Top Bottom