XF 2.3 ?

[rogerl]

Regardless I'm not going anywhere. I have indispensable third party add-ons and completely custom and unique features on my site. XF is where I planted my flag.

Personally I love the product and I'm looking forward to the new version. I just sometimes feel like a kid who keeps getting told Christmas got delayed.

We have never been been tied to anything or bogged down with add-ons.

The history for us started with heavily modified WWWBoard, then phpBB then Vbulletin and currently Xenforo I have also flirted with SMF on smaller sites.

We are always evaluating things and looking to see what creates the best user (and admin) experience but obviously want to minimise disruption to our members. The point being that I never want to change forum software, but always will do if there are significant benefits in doing so.

 

[Grant]

The history for us started with heavily modified WWWBoard, then phpBB then Vbulletin and currently Xenforo I have also flirted with SMF on smaller sites.

We are always evaluating things and looking to see what creates the best user (and admin) experience but obviously want to minimise disruption to our members. The point being that I never want to change forum software, but always will do if there are significant benefits in doing so.

I think I’m in a similar boat to you. (Including starting with WWWboard!) and the part I have bolded is basically how I feel but couldn’t word it as succinctly as this

 

[koraldon]

Not familiar with the Vbulletin story, but I migrated to XF from phpBB after the very slow release schedule for phpBB.
Definitely feeling the same is occurring with XF right now...

 

[snoopy5]

I understand that people would love to have every 2 months new features, but in my case there are not many features I am still missing and none of the alternatives do have them.

I would love to see better/individual site mailing/ mass mailing options for example, because this can earn me money. My users do not pay me for features I would love to see for my ego to make it "nicer".

I do not need a duplication of Wordpress. I do not need fancy plugins, which make a forum only big and heavy. I want to have a very good and reliable forum software. The users do not care if it looks a little bit different when you use Wordpress. No user will leave because of this. Same with other features.

There is nothing that is so urgent missing, that I cannot be successful with Xenforo and I do think this is the most important decision criteria.

 

[Frode789]

Lol none is talking about new features every two months as a requirement. But there is a middle road between that and every third year..

 

[snoopy5]

Lol none is talking about new features every two months as a requirement. But there is a middle road between that and every third year..

Then switch the software. In all honesty. XF will not change in the speed they introduce features and the way how they communicate. Remember the very long phase with the lawsuit against vbulletin. Communication was a desaster. Get used to it or run away. Same with progress in XFMG and XFRM. Vote with your money if you think you can not afford to wait.

I do not think that XF will ever even try to compete with official plugins to IPB or others. XF does not care. I do not say that I find this good. But I am realistic and learned to read the lines. If you need these features, stop dreaming and switch.

 

[Suzanne O]

Then switch the software. In all honesty. XF will not change in the speed they introduce features and the way how they communicate. Remember the very long phase with the lawsuit against vbulletin. Communication was a desaster. Get used to it or run away. Same with progress in XFMG and XFRM. Vote with your money if you think you can not afford to wait.

I do not think that XF will ever even try to compete with official plugins to IPB or others. XF does not care. I do not say that I find this good. But I am realistic and learned to read the lines. If you need these features, stop dreaming and switch.

IPB sucked for ages. It's still a restrictive forum to use today.
But looking at the coding the xf guys use which is php, maybe that's where we should be looking at all the phpbb and code you need.
So it's somewhat better to either learn how to code php so you can implement things quicker.

 

[TPerry]

If you need these features, stop dreaming and switch.

The problem with that attitude is that at least one competitor is only promising to keep their standalone script valid for their version 5.x release.... and if you prefer self hosting, moving to it (even though it offers MANY more features than XF does currently) could be rather problematic and turn into expensive if being forced to the SaaS solution they are pushing hard.
I think the point is.... coming up on 3 years and no major release is problematic... you reference the lawsuit years... yep, but guess what, there was a reason for that (said lawsuit). Last I checked, XF hasn't been dealing with a similar lawsuit for the past 3 years.

But looking at the coding the xf guys use which is php, maybe that's where we should be looking at all the phpbb and code you need.

Errrr... you know the same philosophy applies to XF, correct? In fact, there are site owners that have done exactly this currently with XF.

IPB sucked for ages. It's still a restrictive forum to use today.

IPB hasn't been around for "ages". Invision Community/IPS is a very decent package, and in many ways offers much more than XF does. Their Pages application is fantastic and something that would be useful with XF (I currently use a lot of XenAddon's add-ons to do similar to what I was doing with Pages on another site).

 

[zappaDPJ]

Not familiar with the Vbulletin story

In short it's the sad story of how the most popular forum product by far sunk without trace because of a change of owner and a lamentably poor decision making process that followed.

Invision Community/IPS is a very decent package, and in many ways offers much more than XF does.

I agree, the cloud version in particular has some really promising new tools and applications in development. I think it fair to say Invision are moving towards attracting a more professionally orientated customer base in recent times.

 

[Suzanne O]

IPB is a load of garbage that is a total rip off.

 

[TPerry]

IPB is a load of garbage that is a total rip off.

Considering that IPB is several years (probably near a decade) old and compares decently with XF 1.x of the same era it wasn’t bad. When was the last time you administered an IPS/Invision Community site? Mine was with IPS 4.3. Some of the biggest differences that I found was I prefer XF’s group permission process and the fact you don’t require a 1st party add-on for promotions. For most hobbyist sites it’s probably overkill, but I’ve got way more invested financially with my XF site than I would with IPS and using Pages. Granted, of the 3rd party add-ons that I could emulate in IPS, the dedicated XF add-ons are better, but a lot of that had to do with my lack of IPS coding knowledge.
Fit the tool for the job required.

 

[MarenLBC]

I understand that people would love to have every 2 months new features, but in my case there are not many features I am still missing and none of the alternatives do have them.

I would love to see better/individual site mailing/ mass mailing options for example, because this can earn me money. My users do not pay me for features I would love to see for my ego to make it "nicer".

I do not need a duplication of Wordpress. I do not need fancy plugins, which make a forum only big and heavy. I want to have a very good and reliable forum software. The users do not care if it looks a little bit different when you use Wordpress. No user will leave because of this. Same with other features.

There is nothing that is so urgent missing, that I cannot be successful with Xenforo and I do think this is the most important decision criteria.

Technology has proven you wrong time and time again. Users are fickle and will leave your platform the second there’s a viable alternative that provides them something superior to what you offer. If there was any truth to what you are saying we wouldn’t have seen the huge shift from forums to social media over the last 10 years.

Your niche may be safe but there are so many niches like gaming, entertainment, etc that will die if they don’t keep up with the latest features in online community building and management.

 

[TPerry]

we wouldn’t have seen the huge shift from forums to social media over the last 10 years.

I think one of the large parts of this factor was simply the availability of mobile apps. FB, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, YouTube and such benefitted from that.... and it was rather difficult for a forum to have a mobil app that honored all the features that the web based site did, since those former were singular sites where forum scripts were used by many more providers and few were the same in what they offered.

 

[Alpha1]

IPB is a load of garbage that is a total rip off.

Yeah well. That 'load of garbage' has monthly feature releases, live events where they talk about the direction of the product. They have features like Clubs, LMS, Live Streaming, One page for all unread content for all content types, Reputation System, Gallery improvements and lots of other nice updates. Look here for reference. Every month or year that XF lags, IPS gets more features and becomes more appealing.

I still like XF better, but I cannot agree with your description.

 

[Suzanne O]

Yeah well. That 'load of garbage' has monthly feature releases, live events where they talk about the direction of the product. They have features like Clubs, LMS, Gallery improvements and lots of other nice updates. Look here for reference. Every month or year that XF lags, IPS gets more features and becomes more appealing.

I still like XF better, but I cannot agree with your description.

For example, you move to ipb and your members hate it. You're doing a diservice to your members.
it's not all about you and where you wish to take your members. It's about your members.
You might end up with 5 members out of 3000 members.
When moving i always have back ups for example i opted for vbulletin over smf.
I'll opt for phpbb if this one goes down.
Why? Looking after my membership base.

 

[MarenLBC]

I think one of the large parts of this factor was simply the availability of mobile apps. FB, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, YouTube and such benefitted from that.... and it was rather difficult for a forum to have a mobil app that honored all the features that the web based site did, since those former were singular sites where forum scripts were used by many more providers and few were the same in what they offered.

You may be correct but it proves the point that users are fickle and will move to the better offering in most cases. Forum software developers could have made native apps but didn’t which made a lane for tapatalk.

 

[snoopy5]

Technology has proven you wrong time and time again. Users are fickle and will leave your platform the second there’s a viable alternative that provides them something superior to what you offer. If there was any truth to what you are saying we wouldn’t have seen the huge shift from forums to social media over the last 10 years.

Nope.You are comparing apples with oranges. Social Media like Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok is something different than forums.

We are only comparing here different forums among each other.

No forum will be able to offer what FB et alli can offer: billions of users on one single platform. This is why people go there.

Not because social media has a better article system or social groups within a forum or a media gallery.

Social Media can not offer anything to preserve knowledge or know-how. They live from the quantity of users who are willing to answer every day the same answer, because you have no search feature worth to use.

And SM is more for the daily "nonsense", which nobody is interested in on the next day.

These are 2 different worlds and in the aspect of content, they do not compete at all with forums.

they don’t keep up with the latest features in online community building and management.

Sometimes I have the feeling people always look for new features to avoid to look for the real reason why their forums do not grow.

I have forums which grow and forums which decline. All forums use Xenforo with the same settings and addons.

The drivers are the niche you are in, the content you or your members create, the quality of the moderators and the marketing you can do for your forums. I can clearly distinguish my good and my bad forums with these criteria.

No matter how many features I would add, without changing the mentioned criteria, my bad forums would not improve.

This is part of our job. Be honest with yourself and face the reality. Success does not come by accident or with features beyond what we have already with XF 2.2.13

There are many features I can think of I would like to have. In most cases to make my life or the life of my moderators easier, to leverage my marketing and of course to please my ego with fancy addons none of my users would stay or leave the forum.

 

[TPerry]

For example, you move to ipb and your members hate it. You're doing a diservice to your members.

Not limited to IPS/Invision Community (again, anyone converting to IPB is going to have problems, base level of PHP required being #1, and you already have to have it downloaded #2 since it's not available). You move to ANY other script and your users hate it, it's an issue. Not restricted to a specific script.

Why? Looking after my membership base.

As are others that move away from XF to other scripts. STAYING on a particular script when it doesn't offer what your users need is not the wisest choice.

 

[Alpha1]

For example, you move to ipb and your members hate it. You're doing a diservice to your members.

My members hated XenForo when we changed from vbulletin. But they learned to appreciate it and in the end were very happy. My members actually asked me to migrate to IPS because they found it much easier to use on mobile. But I declined as I dread another migration and IPS doesn't have @Bob .

 

[TPerry]

Forum software developers could have made native apps but didn’t which made a lane for tapatalk.

Once more, providing for simple forum (or even 1st party add-ons also) would not have been that difficult... the issue with forums and dedicated add-ons is the simple fact the sheer number of available add-ons that they would have to support OR restrict it to the base script and 1st party add-ons. That's where those "big social media" sites have a benefit. It's not an apples->apples comparison.