Add-on XenReviews [CrowdFund]

[Lawrence]

Why do I get the feeling that everyone in this thread, up to this post, wants Daniel to fail? This isn't a life or death situation. You invested some money, so what?

What this thread has become is an eye-opener.

To the self-proclaimed hero of forums, after reading your posts here, I for one, would have nothing to do with you in any business. Life happens, it's a fact. What an unforgiving person you are.

As for the TAZ Three: Wow, you three really like ganging up on people. Bully much? I hope none of you are professionals... oh wait, at least one of you are, and in a position of trust at that. Where is the understanding, that yeah, life happens, family comes first, et el? All this unqualified BS for a measly three thousand bucks.

I'd rather have goods I invested in arrive late, than never. But, that is just me.

@Daniel Hood is one of the best, respected, and likeable coders on this forum, and you four dragged him into the mud, put goodness knows how much stress on him and his young family, for nothing more than less than a month's salary for most. What despicable people you four are.

I read a thread on TAZ about the worst thing about XenForo. Here is my response: it's not permissions, or any such thing. It's this unforgiving, bullying, self-serving community.

 

[Chris D]

I read a thread on TAZ about the worst thing about XenForo. Here is my response: it's not permissions, or any such thing. It's this unforgiving, bullying, self-serving community.

While I somewhat agree with most of your post, I do take issue with this point.

This is a very unfair assertion that is offensive to a community which I firmly believe, for the most part, is almost the polar opposite of what you said.

It is perhaps true of certain individuals but frankly they exist everywhere. For everyone else the generalisation is unfair and uncalled for.

To everyone else who has seemingly lost faith in Daniel, this is somewhat expected, but he made a clear commitment and there's time left on the clock. Cut the negativity and give him a fighting chance to follow through with that commitment and we'll review where we are next week.

 

[wang]

Why do I get the feeling that everyone in this thread, up to this post, wants Daniel to fail? This isn't a life or death situation. You invested some money, so what?

What this thread has become is an eye-opener.

To the self-proclaimed hero of forums, after reading your posts here, I for one, would have nothing to do with you in any business. Life happens, it's a fact. What an unforgiving person you are.

As for the TAZ Three: Wow, you three really like ganging up on people. Bully much? I hope none of you are professionals... oh wait, at least one of you are, and in a position of trust at that. Where is the understanding, that yeah, life happens, family comes first, et el? All this unqualified BS for a measly three thousand bucks.

I'd rather have goods I invested in arrive late, than never. But, that is just me.

@Daniel Hood is one of the best, respected, and likeable coders on this forum, and you four dragged him into the mud, put goodness knows how much stress on him and his young family, for nothing more than less than a month's salary for most. What despicable people you four are.

I read a thread on TAZ about the worst thing about XenForo. Here is my response: it's not permissions, or any such thing. It's this unforgiving, bullying, self-serving community.

I have no horse on this race myself, but I did take issue with some of the things that you said.

Who are you sir to judge others, and what is more, to call them names? It is my understanding from reading some of the posts in this thread that people have given money to a coder to crowd fund an add on. And they did not get what was promissed to them. Now, three thousand bucks can be a measly thing for you, but for others, it can be a lot of money. Not to mention that it is a principle involved.

No one has dragged said coder into mudd from what I have seen. People are merely asking for either their money back, or to get the add on that was promissed to them. And there is nothing wrong with that. It is within their right to do so. With regard to stress, said coder has no one to blame, but himself. He promissed again in this thread that he would post regaulary update and he did not keep that promisse either. I can understand why that did not sit well with some users.

I also read in another thread here, that he had taken another big project to work on, when he had not finished this one for which he already took the money. That is not right either.

So please do not pass judgement, or insult others who are doing nothing wrong at all, but merely asking for what is their right.

 

[The Sandman]

Why do I get the feeling that everyone in this thread, up to this post, wants Daniel to fail? This isn't a life or death situation. You invested some money, so what?

What this thread has become is an eye-opener.

To the self-proclaimed hero of forums, after reading your posts here, I for one, would have nothing to do with you in any business. Life happens, it's a fact. What an unforgiving person you are.

As for the TAZ Three: Wow, you three really like ganging up on people. Bully much? I hope none of you are professionals... oh wait, at least one of you are, and in a position of trust at that. Where is the understanding, that yeah, life happens, family comes first, et el? All this unqualified BS for a measly three thousand bucks.

I'd rather have goods I invested in arrive late, than never. But, that is just me.

@Daniel Hood is one of the best, respected, and likeable coders on this forum, and you four dragged him into the mud, put goodness knows how much stress on him and his young family, for nothing more than less than a month's salary for most. What despicable people you four are.

I read a thread on TAZ about the worst thing about XenForo. Here is my response: it's not permissions, or any such thing. It's this unforgiving, bullying, self-serving community.

Perhaps if you had lent your expertise and support to this situation a year or two ago you might have been of some assistance.

Nobody wants/wanted Daniel to fail - those of us who invested money and especially those like Alfa who invested a lot of money, time, and effort fully expected this project to be successful and beneficial to everyone involved as well as the XenForo community as a whole.

I'm not at all sure what you think "TAZ" has to do with this. TAZ doesn't have expectations or opinions - our individual members do and they are apt to express those feelings both here and on TAZ. You can agree or disagree with these individuals, but they are certainly as entitled to their opinions as you are, and arguably more so if they're involved in the XenReviews project. A spectator's view is often different from a participant's after all.

 

[Lawrence]

Perhaps if you had lent your expertise and support to this situation a year or two ago you might have been of some assistance.

Honestly, I never heard of XenReviews last year, or if I did it never stood out enough for me to recall.

I only mentioned TAZ because it seems to me in this thread, when one member pushes, the other two immediately joins in, either by consistently liking what one posted, and/or by posting replies that back each other up. And this is the reason I took notice of XenReviews, not that long ago.

Anyway, I had thought of offering to help Daniel out, last week, but as I stated life happens and I found out I won't be around much, if at all, until the middle of next week, so that would not have been fair to him or anyone else.

Request an extension to the deadline, and when I'm back I'll help him out anyway he likes. If there is no extension, then what would be the point of helping out that late into the ball game? Of course, I am only making an assumption here, and I would like nothing better than to have him make the deadline on his own.

 

[The Sandman]

I would like nothing better than to have him make the deadline on his own.

And I would like nothing better than to have closure on this matter, one way or the other. It's dragged on for far too long. My preference would be for a stable version 1.0 to be released by the middle of May deadline but a refund would be acceptable to me as well. I personally don't think any other outcome would be acceptable.

 

[Daniel Hood]

Some things in my life have changed. There's no reason for this discussion to go any farther. I'm not finishing XenReviews, the classifieds system, or continuing development on my add-ons here. I'll still be refunding the people that crowd funded XenReviews along with Stuart for the few milestones that were completed on the the Classifieds system.

I sincerely apologize for ignoring literally every person that has contacted me in the past two weeks, it's not the type of person I've ever been but I needed some time away to clear my head and reevaluate my future.

XenForo (both the company and community) has been great to me even throughout this XenReviews mess. However, I've been essentially working two full time jobs for the past two years and it's taken a toll on me, my family, and my real job. I got in over my head, not in terms of skill level or anything but simply having a business that consumes that much time without the resources to cover it. The thing is that my XenForo 'career' started with a crappy chat add-on that I built because I was bored in the hospital room while my wife was sleeping off and on through laboring the birth of our son. Then I moved onto small few dollar add-ons that just made a little bit of money which was cool and all. It just kept growing and while the pay was nice, it's gotten to a point where I need to choose between growing XenMods or advancing in my career. Therefore, I'm taking a position that requires me to work exclusively and give up freelancing. I hope you guys understand although I expect a select few of you will not.

To clear up a few things;

• My home was not purchased with money from XenReviews. I actually got a loan for more than the selling price so I didn't even pay out closing costs.
• Everyone that crowd funded the add-on, will be receiving a refund for their contributions. I never had any intentions of doing this up until about a week ago. I never had any attentions of leaving the contributors of this add-on hanging. Invoices can be sent to mrdhood@gmail.com via PayPal. I'll pay them in small segments as the funds are available. Note that I am posting this a couple weeks before my deadline.
• I am not seeking out or offering my add-ons to any other developers, however I will hear out people that are interested in taking them under the condition that the existing license holders get to receive support until their license expires. I do not want any money in exchange, just knowing that they'll get support (and allowing Liam to continue working on them in his free time would be a nice bonus -- he's a good kid and I don't want to leave him hanging either).

 

[Slavik]

Daniel has stated the situation as it is and what will be happening next. Whilst we are aware people will be disappointed at the result, keep the conversation constructive and keep anything personal out of it.

 

[Ozzy47]

Therefore, I'm taking a position that requires me to work exclusively and give up freelancing. I hope you guys understand although I expect a select few of you will not.

Hopefully everything works out for you, and I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

 

[Dad.]

This is bs. Daniel, you are an asset to the community, I understand your decision was probably a difficult choice, I wish you all the best. But this is a sad day for XenForo.

 

[Robust]

@Daniel Hood I perhaps changed my opinion a lot on this thing throughout but now it seems like one of the only people that got screwed out of this thing is you - in a loss financially, time wise and put under a lot of stress. It's a shame you want to leave XenForo, but if it's due to this XenReviews mess I'd highly reconsider changing your decision. TBH, I don't think (assuming I have the skill level to do this project) I could finish this off either. When something burdens me too much personally, I can't get anywhere with it.

My advice is to reconsider it if it's related to the outcome of this thing. If it's just stress and time, then I wish you all the best. Good luck in your future endeavours.

 

[Mike Edge]

Good luck to you @Daniel Hood, I wish you the best for your future. I won't be requesting my refund as for me it was never about the money, it was always about the product. In fact with that, when do you plan to completely plan to close up shop as I still need to purchase a copy of your Tags Essentials before you do, I been putting it on the back burner..

 

[tajhay]

Goodbye Daniel.

 

[Lisa]

Sad day I love your addons and we've always had a really good relationship. Good luck with everything @Daniel Hood

 

[Daniel Hood]

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate your comments. I'll still check in from time to time.

While I know the timing of everything gives the impression that this is because of XenReviews, it's not entirely. This was a pretty inevitable thing. It's definitely hard to do but the timing of it all is just coincidental. As I've told you guys previously, I used to work 10+ hours over time. As the only developer at my company that is quite a bit of time. About a year ago is when XenMods started having a lot more custom jobs and about 6 months ago I started working hardly any overtime. I haven't logged a single hour (of overtime) due to XenMods/XenReviews so far in 2016 and there's just a ton of things building up. My employer (coincidently at the same time XenReviews is maxing out as far as pressure goes) started to pressure me a little to start working more. After talking out my entire situation, my long term goals, etc (I did mention that during my absence I did a lot of thinking and reflecting right?) we reached an arrangement where both sides should be happy. Whether XenReviews was in this situation or not, I would have had to accept this deal. It's not so much about the money as it is about the stability. XenForo sales are good sometimes but there's definitely cycles where it's up and down, there's a bit more comfort knowing every month will be the same for me along with knowing that I can take a weekend off or take a vacation and not come back to a support nightmare. For example, in the past two weeks of not doing support or checking in on here, I've had 2 payment disputes. It's super stressful to be the only person responsible for support and development of add-ons that run on hundreds of sites. Please, for the sake of other developers, keep in mind how much effort goes into being readily available at wide ranges of hours.

In general, I don't have any hard feelings towards any of you (maybe with an exception or two -- you know, posting pics of my house/family and implying negative things or speaking hypotheticals about pimping my wife out will do that -- yeah, I see your threads on your massive 5 users forums). It's really just time to move on. I need to get to work on things that'll have long term impact, for example it's likely in a year or so you guys will have much memory of me, I need to make progress in things that will reap benefits even in times of inactivity.

This wasn't an easy decision to make but it's one I had to make. Committing to a freelance free life and not being responsible for all these different sites running my software is better for me in every aspect of my life. I was very stressed, I couldn't give my family my full attention when I was home and trying to play with my kids or anything because I would get emails and want to keep my response time good, etc...

I will miss it and most of you. I'll still be around. My boss has allowed the possibility of future projects (non-freelancing and has to be approved by him before hand) so you guys may see some projects from me in the future either by offering integration with XenForo or just showing you guys. These won't be for a while as there are a lot of high priority jobs we need done at work.

You're all welcome to follow me on Twitter, I actually followed a few people from here a couple weeks ago.

 

[markku]

This is a sad day indeed. Along with @Chris D, @AndyB and a few others, @Daniel Hood ranks at the top of my favorite developers list.

Daniel leaves a massive hole behind him. I don't know what will happen to the XenMods add-ons. We use several.

It saddened me reading this thread and seeing at times how little compassion you received from some people. I understand the frustration the contributors were in but I still felt you were pushed to a corner a little too much.

I wish you all the best in your future endeavors. Thank you for being a stand up guy and always prompt and kind.

Take care Daniel.

 

[Stuart Wright]

Daniel, I totally respect your decision and wish you the best of luck.
I myself have had a few career changes (computer programmer -> drummer -> computer programmer -> self employed running AVForums) and while running the M2N business (which owns AVForums) we have had to make some difficult decisions which have involved breaking significantly bad news to people. It's unpleasant but necessary.
Sometimes you have to re-evaluate your life and make drastic choices but at the end of the day you have to put yourself, your career and your family first.

I have to say something generally about coding within a community like this. The market value of addons for Xenforo is pitifully low. Everyone expects to pay $15 for addons which have costs (in the real world) of $$$ thousands to develop.
This is probably because there are amateur coders who put an addon together for their own forum and then release it free or for very little $$ to the community and people get used to paying next to nothing for addons.

Professional coders/designers must struggle to make a decent living from it.
Also the Xenforo community is very demanding and if you have a lot of addons released, then there is more potential for incompatibilities with other addons, demands for more features and a hell of a lot of work to do checking the addons work every time the boys update the core software.
It's not surprising that addon developers decide to stop breaking their backs for sod all money and move on.
As a result good coders like @Jon W (formerly Waindigo) and Daniel are going to find themselves drawn away from Xenforo because they have skills which pay real money. @Syndol 2.0 is another example I can think of. I'm sure the regulars can think of many others.

If there is any lesson to be learned by the wider community, I think it is to value good coders and support developers when they charge more $$$ for their addons. The way I see it, the more money a coder is making, the more motivated they are to continue supporting and developing addons.

 

[nassella]

While I understand your decision and it sounds like the right one this is disappointing from our end. We put quite a bit of work into XenReviews - trying to make it work on our website- and now it's disappearing...I guess it shows that it's difficult to trust in the work of independent contractors on big plugins on this.

I paid for the add-on; I don't know if that puts me in the crowdfund category or not - but since the add on is going away I assume that means I'll be paid back?

 

[Daniel Hood]

Unfortunately no. The only people getting refunded are the ones that made a payment via pozible. There's only 14 people in that group. I can't refund everyone, honestly refunding these 14 is difficult. Majority of the existing licenses weren't even sold by me.

 

[nassella]

I didn't view this like a startup that might not work out. Once licenses started being sold I viewed it as a done deal - I guess that was the wrong way to approach it. I guess we all learned lessons here on the wild world of the internet (lol).

Hopefully Xenforo will be able to continue to grow and add on makers will be able to bring in enough bucks to keep them in business.