XF 2.3 ?

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I find that our visitors keep coming back because of the content, not for features. I'm excited for 2.3 but it won't make a single bit of difference to just about all of our members, regardless of forum--they didn't join us years (or decades) ago because we had the newest, shiniest forum software. So I don't worry about it that much. Do they like some of the new features? Sure! But they've done without.

Curious? Heck yeah. 😁 I always like to see what the XF developers are up to. But my forums won't die because none of them have 2.3 either.

YMMV. 🤷‍♂️
Corresponds nicely with my experience. The last time I think people really got pumped for a new feature was when reactions replaced the simple Like we used to have. Some people had suggested it based on social media experience. But the last major upgrade, I did a series of posts publicizing new features and most of them just sailed by without comment. We are using article forums but that is largely because of me pushing the idea.
 
Logic 101: Strawman argument.

Who said that people are coming back for forum features? Nobody. Yet you present it like somebody said it and then you rebuttal it by saying they are coming for the content, and not for the features...

Content does not come from heaven. Someone needs to create it. So, if we ask for features, we don't ask them because I want my users to have feature xyz, I ask them because mainly I want them. As an admin I have the control over my site and I need options in enabling content.

So I need tools for
  • content creation
  • content delivery (visual aspects)
  • content management
  • content administration
  • content crawling
  • content uploading
  • content optimization

Content is such a generic word that people use it as a magic phrase. "You need content!" -"Duh, really?" And how does my software assist me in doing that? How does it assist my users?

Let's take Instagram from example. Instagram as a platform offers a place where people can upload photos and be socially connected to each other. As a user on that site, do I need to worry about filesizes? Not really, it is taken care by the platform itself.

Now, when a user lands on our forums, do they worry about filesizes? Yeah, on some sites they do, but let's say they don't. But who does?

Correct, the site owner. As the site owner I have to worry about disk space. ANY site owner has to worry about it, no exception.

So, what do I expect? Yes, that my software I am using assists me for this problem.

Like what? It should optimize the uploaded stuff, so it saves me disk space. It should cache the stuff, so loading pages are fast. It should prevent the site from leaking the IP when attachments are viewed. In addition the mobile aspects need to be optimized, too.

This is what I do expect. A normal user will not understand the benefits, but I do. And having fast pages will benefit me in my SEO ranking, will give the user a good user experience without him realizing it, will help me financially.

This is just 1 example for content optimization. There are tons of things to improve alone in this department.

Personally, I don't want another "users can upload banners now, or now they can color their usernames". MySpace era is over.

I want content focused improvements. As a forum platform we must offer something what all other websites can't offer. Why do I bother with a forum software instead of going to Wordpress for example? All articles, images, etc. I can upload there and have comments enabled. This is the question you need to ask yourself. What makes the difference here? What IS our difference?

And in that regard we are lacking. Any website these days offers a comment section. For example a newspaper has its own content (news articles) and the by-product of that content is the discussion in the comment section.

Now, as a forum, we have the discussion section, but we need the content attached to the discussions so there is something to discuss about. So the threads should be a by-product of the main content and not the main content itself, since it is not self-sufficient anymore. Nobody comes to your site to rant about a game, they rant about it on the official site of that game, or on Discord, or on Twitch, or on YT, or on reddit. So, we need to offer something else, something more, give them a reason to come to us. A "discussion place" is not good anymore, not for 15 years now (exceptions are exceptions, established sites don't count, big sites don't count).

So, fine if you don't think you need improvements. But I do.
 
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Image, video and pdf optimizations. It can save any site owner a ton of money and space. Especially since mobile phones have good cameras and enough space these days, which means the average image dimension is very big, which means each image is at least 3-4mb big (and bigger). So when they upload it, it should automatically be optimized by the forum software itself. It adds up quickly. I think image/video/pdf uploads are by far the most common type of attachments uploaded so having them optimized to save disk space and bandwidth is a given, no? Especially since images are embedded most of the time, which means having them optimized means quicker loaded pages by default.

Wikipedia tools for example.
All forums have a niche, some broader some more special. And in our niches we can build a knowledge database. News articles can't offer that, Discord can't offer that, Youtube can't offer that, no other site can offer specialized categorized information for that niche. You can rant about games on other platforms, but if you want to look up information, you need to visit a Wiki.

As an example when Elden Ring came out (game of the year 2022), for weeks I used a Wiki to look up missions and where items are. I could watch for hours some youtube videos and find out the answer to my question, or just quickly use the wiki of that game. As a forum we could offer that (for any niche), if we had the tools.


Categorization and organization. It is such a broad term and not easy to explain since it varies from niche to niche. But I believe what forums make special is the power of categorizing things.

For example Twitter or Facebook, those are live timelines. You post, and you forget about it. Nobody goes to Twitter and checks out your tweets from 3 weeks ago. That is old news. They are there for the recent thing. And all old tweets are forgotten and buried, nobody cares and moves on each day.

YT specializes obviously in video and Instagram in images. We can't compete with them. We can offer video and image uploads, but we can't beat them at their own game. Too big for us.

Now reddit should be the rolemodel but actually reddit also lacks a lot of things. They do content delivery well and their subreddits make it special. But they also lack categorization. Organizing things on there is like hell. So funny, they are allowed to only have 2 stickies, so making announcements is very hard. Their sidebar and prefixes is the only way in categorizing things.

Now, we with our node structure, prefixes, custom fields have the power of organizing things. But we need more focus in that. Content filtering is missing for example. Content searching is underdeveloped. We could offer organized and categorized structures for the reader where the threads and posts are the attached discussions to those organized/categorized structures.

The Media Gallery and the RM are attempts of such organized structures, just completely left for dead for 10 years now (2013/2014) and not well integrated to threads. It must not be its own entity outside of the thread system, it must be integrated into threads. And within the thread/node entities it must be filterable, searchable, categorizable. And I think a Wiki system is needed. So, keyword linking, table of contents, etc.

Then there are other tools which can be implemented but are not necessarily forum-specific. For example maps, dynamic tables, graphs are good ways for content creation tools. Right now we only have the editor, so we can only write. Plus polls, we can use polls. But we can't create tables, maps or graphs.
As an example look at this forum, where they have their own custom methods of creating graphs on their own articles. It is embedded and dynamic. Imagine being able to do that in our posts.

1676943946902.png



Nobody denies that "content is king", right? So, we need assisting tools to create and organize content. I think XF's core (plus some addons) are good enough for moderating the content. Probably the best thing what XF offers. No other platform provides such moderation tools. The permission system is rock solid, it can still be further extended though (control over the attachments is lacking as an example). So, I don't need another "2FA" tool or another "cookie consent" tools. Those are good to have, surely, but they provide 0 assist for the content. They are just a utility for site access.

Hope I explained what I meant.
 
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Corresponds nicely with my experience. The last time I think people really got pumped for a new feature was when reactions replaced the simple Like we used to have. Some people had suggested it based on social media experience. But the last major upgrade, I did a series of posts publicizing new features and most of them just sailed by without comment. We are using article forums but that is largely because of me pushing the idea.
That is how it is with us also--I doubt our less tech savvy users even noticed any changes when we've upgraded. They will always notice styling changes, of course. I still get requests to do a holiday theme (with falling snow... 🤦‍♂️...like I used to do 20 years ago).

Some of the features I use myself have been helpful (I'm doing entire series of articles now, and the layout is so much nicer for the content I'm creating), yet on the user end, I doubt if anyone even noticed the difference. There are other features that made my life as an admin easier but again, I did fine without them five years ago--it was just a little more work at times. If anything, visitors appreciate better site performance, based on improved server configurations and utilizing Cloudflare, more than added bells and whistles. I do use a fair number of addons for features I need, mainly things that I never expect to be in XF core.

Still looking forward to 2.3 though! It never fails. We get a handful of suggestions we've made, and a handful of surprises. All good!
 
I hate how everyone keeps posting comments like this, or "but what extra things do you need" or "my site is fine as it is"

What happened to innovation?

Most people here are just forum admins, they don't know what the next big thing will be, but that doesn't mean xF should just stay as it is.

We don't know what future thing we really need until it exists, but once it exists, if we don't have it we're behind the curve.

So we want to see new things that we didn't know we wanted. As software developers and hopefully innovators, that's what the xf teams job is, not ours.

Everyone was happy with a tap tap phone before someone figured touch screen was a good idea, dvd was great until streaming etc etc....

Hell I was running on vb3.8 until a year ago and thought it was fine. It's only after migrating to xf that I realized how woefully inadequate it was!
 
Image, video and pdf optimizations. It can save any site owner a ton of money and space. Especially since mobile phones have good cameras and enough space these days, which means the average image dimension is very big, which means each image is at least 3-4mb big (and bigger). So when they upload it, it should automatically be optimized by the forum software itself. It adds up quickly. I think image/video/pdf uploads are by far the most common type of attachments uploaded so having them optimized to save disk space is, bandwidth is a given, no? Especially since images are embedded most of the time, which means having them optimized means quicker loaded pages by default.


Wikipedia tools for example.
All forums have a niche, some broader some more special. And in our niches we can build a knowledge database. News articles can't offer that, Discord can't offer that, Youtube can't offer that, no other site can offer specialized categorized information for that niche. You can rant about games on other platforms, but if you want to look up information, you need to visit a Wiki.

As an example when Elden Ring came out (game of the year 2022), for weeks I used a Wiki to look up missions and where items are. I could watch for hours some youtube videos and find out the answer to my question, or just quickly use the wiki of that game. As a forum we could offer that (for any niche), if we had the tools.



Categorization and organization. It is such a broad term and not easy to explain since it varies from niche to niche. But I believe what forums make special is the power of categorizing things.

For example Twitter or Facebook, those are live timelines. You post, and you forget about it. Nobody goes to Twitter and checks out your tweets from 3 weeks ago. That is old news. They are there for the recent thing. And all old tweets are forgotten and buried, nobody cares and moves on each day.

YT specializes obviously in video and Instagram in images. We can't compete with them. We can offer video and image uploads, but we can't beat them at their own game. Too big for us.

Now reddit should be the rolemodel but actually reddit also lacks a lot of things. They do content delivery well and their subreddits make it special. But they also lack categorization. Organizing things on there is like hell. So funny, they are allowed to only have 2 stickies, so making announcements is very hard. Their sidebar and prefixes is the only way in categorizing things.

Now, we with our node structure, prefixes, custom fields have the power of organizing things. But we need more focus in that. Content filtering is missing for example. Content searching is underdeveloped. We could offer organized and categorized structures for the reader where the threads and posts are the attached discussions to those organized/categorized structures.

The Media Gallery and the RM are attempts of such organized structures, just completely left for dead for 10 years now (2013/2014) and not well integrated to threads. It must not be its own entity outside of the thread system, it must be integrated into threads. And within the thread/node entities it must be filterable, searchable, categorizable. And I think a Wiki system is needed. So, keyword linking, table of contents, etc.

Then there are other tools which can be implemented but are not necessarily forum-specific. For example maps, dynamic tables, graphs are good ways for content creation tools. Right now we only have the editor, so we can only write. Plus polls, we can use polls. But we can't create tables, maps or graphs.
As an example look at this forum, where they have their own custom methods of creating graphs on their own articles. It is embedded and dynamic. Imagine being able to do that in our posts.

View attachment 281833


Nobody denies that "content is king", right? So, we need assisting tools to create and organize content. I think XF's core (plus some addons) are good enough for moderating the content. Probably the best thing what XF offers. No other platform provides such moderation tools. The permission system is rock solid, it can still be further extended though (control over the attachments is lacking as an example). So, I don't need another "2FA" tool or another "cookie consent" tools. Those are good to have, surely, but they provide 0 assist for the content. They are just a utility for site access.

Hope I explained what I meant.
All this for $160 ?
 
Looks like there are 2 types of admins here:
  • Those who are happy with what they have.
  • And those who are want some kind of innovation

I might be wrong, but those who are happy with what they have, most likely are from older generation (correct me if I'm wrong).

What most admins don't see, is the younger generation are not really interested in forums, unless is a gaming forum. They will land on your forum, read a bit , and probably will say, that is better to go on YouTube since they don't like to read 10 pages in 1 thread, to find their answer (That's the truth).

If your forum is well based with focused niche, example law or something like that, you still have a chance.

Now about content.

I would not argue that content is the key, yes it is. But what most admin here don't realise, is that for every forum the content is different, means needs are different too.

If your content is plain text, and mine are the attachment and images, needs are totally different. And you can't say to me, that new features are no need. Means, you don't need them, not me.

Those forums that are plain text based, is just a matter of time till you will realise is waste of time, and you don't get anymore registrations, reason: Because younger generation are not interested to type, read and produce, they only consume, by the time they will want to give something back, your forum might be long gone, or they will just go on YouTube and start a video channel, (reddit is an other option they will consider, as is very popular).


If you don't like reading my 2 cents, browse the XenForo community, how many new faces you can see, and how many old faces you can see ? Make a difference. And don't forget to check Forum showcase, how many of these good ideas forums are gone? Reason is again, we as admins, can't attract younger generation. that's the fact.

Again, don't believe me, check it out. Try to offer someone answers on your forums and YouTube, and see what he/she will choose.

We can talk on this thread all day long, but you won't change the fact that your forum with best content can't attract younger generation (few exceptions).


We are less and less admins on this forums, some left, some are about to leave, and some might join, depending what XenForo can offer.

My content is different to yours, and you can't say to me that you don't need any new features, and you happy with what you have now. Needs are different. I would say @XenForo should take this into account.

As I said, younger generation are not interested to read anymore, or write, unless is on social media site and they have to post something what they had for dinner.

Facebook saw that, YouTube saw that, Instagram saw that, TikTok saw that. Sadly forums ares still stuck on their plain text.


ADDED:

Don't take this from me, check that even younger administrators with such a good niche, see nothing worthwhile right now, and development is stagnating.

 
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Looks like there are 2 types of admins here:
  • Those who are happy with what they have.
  • And those who are want some kind of innovation

There may be a few more (and without any need to categorise people by age, but maybe more by understanding and maturity)

  • Those who are aware that what they have would make them happy if certain things were fixed/improved
  • Those who want new specific new features but that aren't necessarily innovation
  • Those who want any kind of innovation purely;y because they want innovation but don't know what it is or why they want it.
 
You think a wiki is the solution?
I don't understand. Who said it would be the solution?

People keep asking what we would like to see since nobody is specific, yet here I provide imo a good example and you sarcastically question it, like if I said it would solve all of our problems. I didn't. It would take us a step further, like any improvement.

But for sure sitting around for 3 years without doing nothing won't bring us further either. Have you questioned that? Or let me question it, is doing nothing for 3 years the solution? So XF is perfect as it is, we shouldn't expect any improvements anymore? Is that what you are saying?

I believe we are in the age of "content creators". People sit around and just swipe left and right to see the next short or to see the next image. They can't be bothered with creating content themselves, they are just absorbing.
Now our content is text based and it is hard to compete against them. So, since we can't offer what those platforms can offer, we should focus on what we have to work with. So improving our text based environments.

Actually long ago I proposed a "XF Hub" where all participating forums are streamed into one big place (like subreddits into the main page of reddit), that could be "the solution", I think it is innovative at least but I mean with the ongoing development pace that kind of suggestions are just silly.

So instead of "dreaming" or proposing "the solution", I try to be more firm and solid and I think focusing on content related improvements are the way to go. Again, I don't need more administrating tools, more site management tools, I need content focused tools. Making the content engaging, making it unique, making it optimized is what I want.
 
I still think we will get it on april 1 2023.
Not as a joke but for real a bit like the surprise they gave us with this green skin last year.
 
There may be a few more (and without any need to categorise people by age, but maybe more by understanding and maturity)

  • Those who are aware that what they have would make them happy if certain things were fixed/improved
  • Those who want new specific new features but that aren't necessarily innovation
  • Those who want any kind of innovation purely;y because they want innovation but don't know what it is or why they want it.
I'm one that is sitting patiently waiting for the new software to drop.
Surprisingly i would have been like you being full of hot air and commenting as such.
What's changed? My attitude.
I've gone from an impatient person to a patient person who respects what the developers are doing.
I have a feeling xenforo is about to copy vBulletin and add comments to the whole thing.
 
Actually long ago I proposed a "XF Hub" where all participating forums are streamed into one big place (like subreddits into the main page of reddit), that could be "the solution",
Oh God no. I love XF in that it's unique and with the right custom development you can make it completely proprietary and extremely useful for your niche.

I have zero interest in being on an XF hub.
 
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