Xenforo Review by Forum-Software.org

[Digital Doctor]

Post-by-Email that works well enough to consider it a serious migration from Yahoo Groups.

Wow. I forgot. That's why I wanted Post by email ... migrating a Yahoo Group !
Excellent point.

Are Yahoo groups still going OK ? I don't seem to get Google hits on Yahoo groups anymore. Hmmmm.

It is true the diehard Yahoo groupers are hard to get away from their email.

I'm not sure the Yahoo Group ==> Forum market is that large.

 

[digitalpoint]

I don't even use email to email, why in the hell would I want to use it to post a thread?

 

[Alpha1]

As Feldon said: there are loads of email list groups. As forums are not jumping in, facebook is now eating yahoo and similar newsgroups by providing a more modern experience to these groups. Forums could have been providing that experience but the opportunity is already passing.

I have contact with various groups that refuse to come on a forum, as they do everything by email. However, if their email list is also accessible through forum then that would offer a lot of benefits and new functionality for them.

 

[DRE]

When I made the thread, the user reviews was at 5/5 stars. Couple hours later it is now at 4/5 stars.

Looks like Xenforo has some haters. I even see people hating in the comments.

 

[Digital Doctor]

A good example of a Yahoo Group that won't die is the PaperPort group.
http://tech.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/paperport/
The people who know the most about PaperPort live there.
They answer people's questions tirelessly.
Year after year.
Being able to forward the PaperPort group emails to a forum would be great.

 

[ManOnDaMoon]

The real advantage of groups may be the ability of any participant to keep his own backup of the discussion safe on his hard drive. With forum software, the conservation of contents is left in the hands of us admins, with sometime poor results and sites dying from lack of backup after a crash.

I personally have a backup of my school's newsgroups. They have been deleted since then.

Sorry for being off topic.

 

[sonnb]

The only one feature of email-to-social that I see in Facebook is: Update your status (upload photo/video/normal status). I think this is also enough for XF.

For posting to some nodes, existing threads... there is no solid security method is able to handle this task.

 

[Rodrigo Farcas]

To my knowledge, no current forum software solutions have this, for several reasons, some of which I'll list here:

1) Authentication. It's all too easy to fake an email authentication token and have spam posted to the forum

2) Use of features. What's the point in spending money on a forum solution that's had loads of work on rich user experience, user interface and interactive features when you delegate all of that experience to an email client?

3) Advertising. Lots of forums make money by running AdSense or a similar ad scheme on their pages. With email interaction, there is no need to visit the forum at all, resulting in zero advertising revenue.

4) Choice of medium. Forums are web-based. There is an email-based medium, and it's called listserv (or various other email-based communication methods). If you really want an email-based solution, why opt for a forum?

I think this can only be useful to allow users to "reply" to conversations directly by replying the email they receive as notification.
I get dozens of users replying to my contact email because they don't understand that PM/Conversations should be replied inside the Forum.

 

[feldon30]

When I made the thread, the user reviews was at 5/5 stars. Couple hours later it is now at 4/5 stars.

Looks like Xenforo has some haters. I even see people hating in the comments.

When the answer to the question "Does this software have a development future?" is unclear, there is good reason to downvote.
Also, while I bought a license to XenForo on day 1 to support Kier, I never realized how many core features the product is missing. We're really running into problems on a forum rollout I've been helping with. Very basic stuff is missing, and the complexity of writing plugins for XenForo makes it a challenge to add this functionality.

 

[ManOnDaMoon]

When the answer to the question "Does this software have a development future?" is unclear, there is good reason to downvote.
Also, while I bought a license to XenForo on day 1 to support Kier, I never realized how many core features the product is missing. We're really running into problems on a forum rollout I've been helping with. Very basic stuff is missing, and the complexity of writing plugins for XenForo makes it a challenge to add this functionality.

I can't see how XF architecture does complexify addon creation. What functionality are you missing exactly?

 

[DRE]

When the answer to the question "Does this software have a development future?" is unclear, there is good reason to downvote.
Also, while I bought a license to XenForo on day 1 to support Kier, I never realized how many core features the product is missing. We're really running into problems on a forum rollout I've been helping with. Very basic stuff is missing, and the complexity of writing plugins for XenForo makes it a challenge to add this functionality.

So you down-voted Xenforo because you have a hard time creating addons?

 

[Chris D]

the complexity of writing plugins for XenForo

A bad workman always blames his tools... XenForo is awesome for writing add-ons.

There's a couple of extra steps but they're by no means "complex". Most things can be worked out by inspecting other add-ons or existing XF code.

I think it's a dream to develop for.

 

[DRE]

Even though there's stuff missing and people like feldon30 have a hard time adjusting to Xenforo, it is still IMO, the best forum software on the market.

 

[ManOnDaMoon]

Let's wait to know which functionality is causing issues to feldon30. It may be very specific and I'm curious to know, although if really specific I can't see why it should be core.

 

[DRE]

Let's wait to know which functionality is causing issues to feldon30. It may be very specific and I'm curious to know, although if really specific I can't see why it should be core.

I don't disagree with his post. I just think that him saying addons are hard to create gives people a wrong idea. I ran into issues when I converted over from vBulletin 4. I've written a list of things I need and have been going down the list, either making the addon myself, asking or paying other addon developers to make it. If creating addons weren't so easy for some developers, then I'd really have something to complain about, but it's not.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Here's forum software that has less features than Xenforo and will never be fast enough to run itself let alone addons ! And it currently has almost no addons. I'm not going to wish vB5 on you because I'm a Feldon fan. P.S. Feldon: no b1tching about Xenforo until February 2013. After that, have at her.

 

[Jeffin]

I think this can only be useful to allow users to "reply" to conversations directly by replying the email they receive as notification.
I get dozens of users replying to my contact email because they don't understand that PM/Conversations should be replied inside the Forum.

Same here. I have some users who reply via email. I have to send them and email saying they need to log in to reply. I support reply by email instead of post by email. But then it needs to be secure. I don't think it is an absolutely necessary feature now but I would be really happy to see it implemented one day..

 

[Grover]

Do any forums have this? I have seen this requested many times over the years for both vB and XF. IMO it's not a forum feature. Replying by email is more of a list serve idea. Plus implementing such a feature requires a dedicated server since it involves interaction with the mail server.

It's indeed no forum software, but the very userfriendly Posterous (https://posterous.com/) let's you post your blogentries by emailing.

As shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VHXCL0OsiM and here (with the guy mentioning his benefits of emailing): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7izxlO3cSw).

Posterous has been acquired by Twitter this year.

 

[karll]

I dunno if post/reply per email is something that ought to be high on the priority list for core features. Personally I'd be happy to see it just as an add-on. But I do think it's a use-case that could help many luddite users embrace the new millennium, so to speak.

 

[Jungalist81]

http://xenforo.com/community/resources/add-on-installer.960/
Should be core IMHO. Not necessarily my implementation, but a XenForo written core feature and that's as a bare minimum. They should also consider an RM API that will allow you to browse and download from your own Admin panel.

I used to use Joomla! CMS and when installing any kind of plugin, all you need to do is set directory of the zipped file and it will install it! Simple and easy.