XenForo vs. IPB/IPS What's your honest opinion?

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Tigratrus

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I'll preface this by saying that Susan and I have been actively evaluating new platforms for about a year. We've been developing/extending our community solution (currently vB 3.8 + WP/Joomla! and PHPMyDirectory) for about 5-6 years. Our community is how we make a living. It pays our mortgage and all our bills, so it's both a business AND a labor of love.

I've tried very hard to give an honest comparison of the two systems based on our experience. Susan and I would very much appreciate hearing what others think from *their* experience and perspective.

Obviously vB 4 is not even vaguely in the running. This isn't an emotional decision it's based on hard cold facts about the platform, it's resource consumption, it's likely future, and how freaking impossible it is to work with if you want to modify/extend it.

Our take, based on working with both systems for about a month, popping for a "Hosted Community" with the full IPS Suite loaded on it (if you get the "Plus 40" for $29.99/month and pay $5/month more you can get the entire package including IP.Content and IP.Nexus) is:

IPS:

Benefits of IPS:
  1. IPS is a very mature system with a LOT of capability. The development pace is rapid, and they have come a long way from a year or two ago. The have importers, and seem to provide excellent service on tickets, the forum based help is spotty, but as long as tickets work that's fine with me.
  2. IP.Nexus is a real gem, seriously impressive what you can do with an integrated ecommerce solution, next version has ala cart ad sales, even the ability to use as the front end for hosting reselling. Awesome stuff.
  3. The mobile skin and built in iphone app are definite benefits.
  4. The IP.Content article system being able to promote from forum topic to an article and fully integrate the comments and topic replies is a major plus.
  5. They have a great search system that is fully integrated across the whole system (except for only searching a single IP.Content database at a time) as well as excellent support for Sphinx.
  6. Their gallery is getting a major upgrade, though it lacks meaningful integration with the rest of the system. It's very nice, and works well with the mobile skin/app.
Downsides to IPS:
  1. The 3rd part dev community is very VERY thin. The core products change so frequently, and break skins/mods with incredible rapidity. The end of last year IPS was releasing a major upgrade to one of their apps EVERY WEEK! That has driven a tremendous # of the Mod and skin developers away from the IPS platform simply because they can't afford to be updating everything they do so often. There are currently a LOT more mods for XF already built, than there are 3rd party mods that work with the current version of IPS.
  2. The IPS platform (while it makes vB 4 look like stone tablets and chisels) is somewhat dated, and despite all it's technical capability, feels clunky to me personally. There are a lot of inconsistencies between apps, and the CSS is really hard to work with.
  3. The promise of IP.Content is largely unfulfilled as it's very awkward to deal with. The documentation is quite lacking, and it's flat out hard to work with.
In short: If you like the stock IPS system out of the box you will probably love IPS and it's what you should go with, it's a great product. But if you want to extend it in any significant ways to meet your communities specific needs, you are likely to be fighting an uphill battle and a rough time finding someone to help you with the development, and a rougher time maintaining your customizations. Same for styling, if you don't like the stock skin or a fairly simple variation based on the stock skin, you CAN find some custom skin devs, but they are expensive and maintenance will be a major problem with every app release requiring significant work to maintain the skin multiple times a year. IPS has some very technically capable solutions. IMO They need a better UI designer (little inconsistencies like things not being exactly aligned and the CSS being hard to work with).

XF:

Benefits of XF:

  1. XF is FUN. Seems shallow, but using XenForo is a very engaging experience. The #1 goal for a forum (IMO) is to reward people for their efforts. They need to feel appreciated by their peers, they need a sense of affirmation. XF does that better than any system out there, hands down. In my opinion, this is a crucial thing, hard to achieve and absolutely priceless for a community builder.
  2. The community. The XF 3rd party dev community is bursting with energy and people getting mods built. XF is built from the ground up to be modification and styling friendly, that that's a benefit that will draw the modification community in droves..
  3. As XF has been built from the ground up with a fully modern design with a single, well architected CSS styling plan in place, it's very easy to customize the look/feel of the forum. The ability to put virtually ALL your styling changes in a single extra.css file means that XF upgrades have very VERY little impact on custom styles.
  4. Once you get below the surface of the ACP and look at the templating system, you quickly find just HOW powerful the system is. It's designed so that you can take any part of the system and extend it (both templates AND code) without modifying (hacking) the original. Again, that will make it a lot easier for mod developers to maintain their mods ad XF upgrades.
  5. XF is built as a platform like IPS. Kier and Mike have said from the beginning that they will will building a CMS, Gallery etc. Based on the best of breed nature of the Forum component, I have a high confidence level that those components will also be innovative and best of class. Looking at how fast their development cycle is, and how fast they built the whole platform AND the Forum component on top of that platform, I'm willing to bet that other parts of the platform will be available much faster than many people think.
  6. The SEO is superb out of the box, the fully semantic markup is the best we've seen.
Downsides to XF:

  1. It's new. As it's not *quite* gold release (though I feel sure that it will be very shortly:)), a lot of Devs are waiting until they have final code in their hands before putting out their mods.
  2. There is a degree on uncertainty regarding the future of XF based on the legal disputes with IB. Personally, after reading the pertinent documents, I think IB is clearly gaming the legal system in an attempt to bleed XF dry before they really get rolling. I think they will fail, but it's a legitimate concern that must be considered as a person who has a BUSINESS building and running a community (as you and Susan and myself do).
  3. XF as a platform is nowhere *near* as comprehensive in functionality as IPS, nor do they have the corporate resources that Invision Power Systems has.
  4. Migrating a complex community to XF is currently going to be a somewhat complex, phased process. To start the process requires a level of faith in the platform and it's future development that many will be uncomfortable with.
Conclusion:

After working with our IPS installation for a couple weeks, getting a feel for what's involved in making it what we want for our community, we came back to take another good hard look at XF. Honestly, I wish it was an easier decision, IPS is a GOOD system, with a ton of capability (esp IP.Nexus if you are selling ads and or any memberships or tangible/digital goods).

In two days we made more progress in XF than we had in 1-2 weeks in IPS. If *we* can do things that much faster, a real developer will be able to give us *far* more bang for our buck, IMO.

At the end of the evaluation we asked ourselves 2 questions:

  1. Would you regret going with the other platform later?
    1. If we went with IPS: Yes. We'd always wonder how much better the community would have grown on XF.
    2. If we went with XF: We'd miss the capability of IP.Nexus most. But we built more with XF pages in 1 day than we did with IP.Content in a week.
  2. Which do you think will encourage community participation more?
    1. XF. Hands down. IPS relies too much on blocks to "integrate" things. Likes/Alerts system >> Rep.
As a final reality check we chatted with a developer that's a good friend of ours that both runs his own vB forum and is looking to move. He said that he's looking at XF, and is very excited by the platform. He's never looked at IPS though so that's not a comparison, just an opinion on the XF side.


What it comes down to is both are good systems. VERY good systems. Both make vB 4 look like stone tablets and chisels. But we've been doing this for 5-6 years now, and we've learned that a modern system, built right from the start is a better fit for us. We never... NEVER seem to be able to use an out of the box system, we always push the envelope. For us, that makes IPS less of a good fit than XF.

What about others looking at the same choice? What have you found?
 
not 304 confirmed bugs 4 releases after the first gold. they are at 3.1.4 now
you can of course have a different opinion.
That's the life of software - you will never get rid of all the bugs the more complex your script gets, and IPB is quite a machine.

Not to mention that when you factor in the amount of browsers, browser versions, PHP/MySQL (and other database management systems) versions and settings, different settings an administrator can pick, usergroup permissions, JavaScript vs no JS environments, resolutions... do you see where I'm going with this? IPB, and for that matter XenForo and vB, will never be bug-free and trying to determine quality by how many open bug reports they have is a bit silly. With IPB's plugins and other products, I'd imagine there'd be some collisions as well once in a while or some odd hiccup if 2 or more collide you have to look at.

As it stands, if you lump them together and make it simpler, you're really looking at 126 reports that are style related, 156 that are general bugs, and you can lump the other two into "misc" for a total of 14. Taking it a step further, have you sorted them by versions and looked? They're not bugs just from 3.1.x, but also 3.0.x that are both being fixed and applied to 3.2.x as they have time to work on it.

vBulletin 3.6 went all the way to 3.6.10 - are you saying they should've nabbed all the bugs in less than 3 maintenance releases? I imagine that was quite a lot of bugs too, for a commercial script. ;)
 
i never said they must fix all, read again what i wrote in case you didn't in the first place
i just said 304 confirmed bugs after 4 releases is quite unacceptable for a commercial software.
in case you didn't know here is another information for you, 3.1.4 was released almost 3 months ago.
http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/325679-ipboard-314-released/
if even after these arguments you are still going to say its a normal situation i won't argue with you anymore because whatever i or anybody else will say, you won't change your mind :)
 
James ... honestly ... the best solution would be for XF and IPB to merge ... and

stop competing against each other and become a united force to compete against Facebook before its too late. :)
 
James ... honestly ... the best solution would be for XF and IPB to merge ... and

stop competing against each other and become a united force to compete against Facebook before its too late. :)

No. It's fine as it is. You will never be able to compete against Facebook because both are different entities. Facebook is one and forums are many. More or less, I wouldn't like forums turn to Facebook. By all honesty Facebook as very less knowledgeable resources while forums as many since decades.

Part - II

11. In IPB you have to go through various screen to save your settings.
Simple day to day Example: Click on button 'Watch Topic' in IPB. It will show you below screen.

subscription.webp

In Xenforo, perfect pop up. User stay right on the screen.

12. Click on View Notifications in IPB. It will show you all notifications even if you have read those. Question is, do I need it? No I don't and it's cluster mess if you show all. Xenforo style of showing only unread notifications and having 'Show all' is perfect.

13. Lightbox. - Check the lightbox of IPB and Xenforo and tell me which you like most.

14. IPB lacks basic things sometime. Every forums/website always has Contact Us. Where is contact option in IPB? No wait, need to pay $$ to purchase the mod for it.

15. Profile pop ups - IPB implements it in the way that hardly anyone uses it. Ask any user of IPB that how many times they clicked on that small little icon? I would assume, users would say very less to none.

popup.webp

I guess by know everyone knows Xenforo profile pop ups are pretty nicely implemented.

16. Image attachment.
Xenforo gives nice option for thumbnail and full image. Also, the lightbox in image attachment is pretty outstanding imo.

17. Navigation in Xenforo is pretty nice compare to IPB. There is NO navigation links in IPB at bottom.

18. If you notice, in IP.Blogs if you want to see last comments, you have to scroll all the way down to bottom and then you can select page or do next. Really? Why not add it on top also?

navigation.webp

19. IP.Blog has been around for a while. Try to short it using 'Top 10 Rated blogs". I got this blog:
http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/2639/entry-5500-how-to-make-the-purple-skin-fluid/

Outstanding, it has no rating.

20. Look at how Xenforo show's member list vs how IPB does.

http://community.invisionpower.com/members/

http://xenforo.com/community/members/

You will notice tons of unused space in IPB. Xenforo utilizes it to show useful display nicely i.e. newest member, top posting members, etc.

IIRC, IPB removed top posters from there front page hook because it was 'resource extensive'. I am glad to see Xenforo handled it well.

Good thing about IPB is I like the skin modifications over there. Some skins are really outstanding. More or less, support from IPB staff in tickets is Ace most of the time.

I will buy the license of Xenforo once it reaches final and when IPB converters are released. No offense to IPB lovers but above is just an observation from a user/customer perspective.

I do like both softwares and I will keep using both but I wouldn't buy 4th license from IPB after I have seen Xenforo. In UI, Xenforo wins big time. - My personal opinion.
 
lets say the confirmed bugs (they are confirmed by IPB team)

not 304 confirmed bugs 4 releases after the first gold. they are at 3.1.4 now
you can of course have a different opinion.

You've done nothing but belittle IPB for just basic stuff over there, including that Google won't reindex your site after just a few days. SEO doesn't just magically give you a community, you know. There's a lot that you have to do if you want it and it just doesn't just magically come. What are you trying to accomplish?

As for IPB, I've been with them for three years. Once I discovered MyBB was really making quite the push, I decided I'd go with that over IPB, not really worth the money after that (not that it matter, cause my IPB license was used). The one big plus has always been that I never got bad customer service/support from them, unlike my encounters with vBulletin's customer service/support.

My main issue with IPB always was the inability to change things up in regards to SEO. I was easily able to add stuff like <h1> tags and such in MyBB and change a few things, but it was a bit harder with IPB.

Then, I got a xenForo license, which so far I'm happy with. The one thing I hope that we'll get is a good support team that could back it up.
 
You've done nothing but belittle IPB for just basic stuff over there, including that Google won't reindex your site after just a few days.
usually i simply ignore people who don't read my posts and blindly answer with no foundation, however i am making an exception this time and i am pointing you in the right direction in case you missed it the first time (read the third line)
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/xenforo-vs-ipb-ips-whats-your-honest-opinion.11787/#post-156956
see, i am a nice dude :)
 
my first advice to you: your forum is your business, you are paying a mortgage thanks to it, dont change it, yet.
IPB is a nice script with a LOT of makeup. when it comes to what a real forum is about it fails, big time. The UI is complicated, its not easy to use, take a look at the member control panel and you'll understand.
its SEO is very bad, after migrating to it my search engine traffic dropped by at least 60% in the first weeks and after 6 months now its still 30% below my old script traffic.
IPS team don't take criticism very well, try posting a bad thing in their forum and you will see yourself, however if you post a "IPB is awesome thread" you will get at least 3 posts from the team!

now to XF: its an awesome script with a very bright future (except for the IB trial thing) however as you said it is still young, it lacks converters for example. anyway starting v1.1 which according to Kier shouldn't take long to release, i wouldn't hesitate to buy it as long as there is an IPB converter.

there is another alternative but it is not very known and it is called wbb: woltlab burning board: it is a mature script, very powerful plugin system and seo. i wont list all its benefits as it is always better to try yourself, since you've been doing it for the last year, evaluation wbb wouldn't take too long. it is the real competitor to xf. its downside is: its a german script: english support is limited.
i used wbb before ipb and i regret the day i decided to change.

you might wonder why did i change? because of the misleading stuff i read about ipb, how awesome it is and because when testing it i couldnt find how much it lacks on the SEO.

finally excuse me for any spelling or grammar errors, english isn't my mother tongue nor my second language, it comes in the third place :)
please tell me what is your forum link ?
 
lets say the confirmed bugs (they are confirmed by IPB team)

not 304 confirmed bugs 4 releases after the first gold. they are at 3.1.4 now
you can of course have a different opinion.

I tell ya what. I would switch their bug stats for that of my own any day. 304/10611 = around 2% which they have investigated, just not fixed as of yet ...

========================

So my opinion on IPB versus XF? Once the legal case dissapears into oblivion and I can convert forum & gallery (once there is one) over to a XF from IPB I would be happy to lose blog, content, chat and download manager apps from IPB in order to switch over to this software. The reasons are simple. Although I think IPB is a good piece of software, it doesnt have the "application" feel to it and still feels like a website. This is being addressed somewhat with the introduction of ajax post replying and the likes in the next version, however to me they should have been there in the first place as has been the case with vbulletin for a long while now.

One very big reason for me to switch is that Kier and Mike have a good following. This means developers and designers will follow. This is without the fact that the software is good to use, easy to skin, easy to develop for etc. I have been a forum admin for a fair few years now and was using vbulletin from 2.x up to 3.8, then ditched with 4.0 once key development expertise was lost. Bare in mind I have never even used 4.0. The software is not what it was about for me, it was about the confidence in the development team to produce a good product and confidence in the company that ran it.

Fact: If this place was now running IPB and Kier and Mike had not yet started and they asked for people to buy a licence for a piece of forum software they were yet to build, I would buy one...
 
3. XF as a platform is nowhere *near* as comprehensive in functionality as IPS, nor do they have the corporate resources that Invision Power Systems has.
I would be willing to bet XenForo far exceeds what any other forums were at on the first release.

Personally, I don't think the size of the team or the corporate resources determine how good a product is going to be. (more often it can hurt more than it can help) The XenForo development foundation and team is what I am betting on and believe that this community will quickly fill the gaps in 2011. (both the XenForo core development team, as well as third party developers creating great plugins because of the flexibility of the framework) Just look around at what has already been done and we haven't even seen the first gold release.

I don't even consider the litigation a factor, it's not something that anyone can predict and it's likely to take years to complete. If I have to move to another platform if/when something happens, so be it. Meanwhile, I'll have benefited from a great product - minimal risk as far as I'm concerned. (and I'll be that much ahead if/when nothing happens)

I've been fortunate (or unfortunate in some cases) enough to have run phpBB, vBulletin, WordPress and other sites. (as well as developed some extensions for each) I haven't seriously considered IPB due to what's already been discussed. So far I have been very impressed with everything I have seen in XenForo. (from the underlying code, to design and UI decisions that were made on the front and back ends, community, etc.) Obviously only time will tell as to how the product matures and what gaps are filled. We're off to a great start and I for one plan on putting resources/effort into the XenForo product.

--Ed
 
Well shouldn't have to many. But for what XF has there I find that acceptable. They fixed most of them and that's pretty amazing. Better than vB4 staff sitting around confused on how to fix just 1 bug LOL.

Good for Kier and Mike!
"Shouldn't have too many" is incredibly subjective, though. A program could have hundreds of bugs in it at any one time, yet if only 1-2 are extremely critical, than it's not too bad. I don't think one should judge software simply by how many bugs are logged in the tracker. Rather, one should look at how many critical bugs there are or the ones that can actually affect the message board on a daily level. A bug that only affects some obscure or rarely used thing is really not a big deal, at least to me.
 
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