XF 2.4 general discussion, feedback, complaints, random off topic posts, etc.

[smallwheels]

This is all assuming though that this load can actually be taken by the XF devs.

I did not assume anything. And I did not request anything. All I did is give a statement, after assessing the situation and coming to the conclusion that this "responsibility" you praised goes way beyond of what it is in some other solftware (forum software or not) that have i.e. quality assurance for extensions. Today, when buying or downloading an add on I have absolutely no clue what I may get: Will it work or not? Is it well coded or terribly coded? Will I get support? Will it die within weeks or be devloped further for years? Will it work well with other add ons? Will it open a security hole? Is it - in the worst case - even harmful by intention? I have in most cases also no clue who I am dealing with, who is the person behind that add on. I he a gambler or a serious person? What country does he come from? What background and quality level does he have? This is the case even for most paid add ons. It is to be honest a huge gamble and a huge risk. I doubt that many of the people that use add ons have the ability to do a code review and of those who can even less will do one before installing or at all.

As a consequence I think the responsibility that site admins have today with XF and especially with add ons is more than many can realistically handle. It is in practice rather a bet than responsible behaviour. And apart from gambling they have realistically no alternative but to stay away from add ons almost completely (maybe apart from the ones from some well known devs with a long track record and a good reputation and visibly high quality standards like i.e. XON).

A sad truth but still a truth.

It assumes they have both the funds and the time to address even just half of what these major add-on developers do.

Again: It assumes nothing. In the current situation the add on market is in wider parts worse than many open source projects and their infrastructure because most add ons are typically developed by a single person and probably barely ever anyone else looks at the code (despite, not being compiled) it is easily possible in theory.

It is in fact a major issue: If a software relies as heavily on 3rd party extensions as XenForo does and uses the existing ecosystem of extensions for marketing and to justify, not to develop those features themselves and neither supporting when it comes to trouble then - given the user base and the level of technical expertise of it (which is widespread between absolute noob to (more rarely) fully loaded expert in web development)- it would be a sign of professional attitude trying to ensure a level of quality checks for those extensions, whatever those may be and however that may be possible. They are the only ones that could do it and it would also be the most effective way, centralized vs. everyone has to it himself.

And we haven't even talked about feature creep here yet.

We have, seems you missed that part of the discussion a bit further up the thread.

Those are the only two major things XF is missing.

You seem to set your personal opinion as an absolute truth. I rather think different people may have different needs and a different opinion than you. I have.

 

[Arantor]

If a software relies as heavily on 3rd party extensions as XenForo does and uses the existing ecosystem of extensions for marketing and to justify, not to develop those features themselves and neither supporting when it comes to trouble then

Worse than that: what happens when those third party developers leave? ThemeHouse, Ozzy, doesn’t matter why they’re moving on, just they’re moving on. (Yes I know PainBaker is taking over. What happens if PainBaker moves on, or $deity forbid, something happens to them?)

It’s one thing for first party to cease trading - we’d all be in trouble in that situation but we’d figure it out. But if the ecosystem is so reliant on third party, we have to assess the long term survival of those third parties and in particular contingency plans.

Remember, in dev land we talk about a bus factor. Too many communities have a bus factor of one for key components of their setup.

 

[smallwheels]

Remember, in dev land we talk about a bus factor.

Exactly. The truck/bus factor with XenForo add ons is very high and we've seen it often enough coming to life. My consequence is that I have developed an add on strategy;

• if an add on has no direct interaction with or effect for my forum users but rather lives silently in the background, making my life easier as site admin and mod I may place a bet, event if I am not sure if it will be contiue to work longterm. I will however not make core processes depening from it. In this category fall most of the admin add ons and also things like the thread reply banner.
• if an add on is a relevant extention or functionality for the users or the core structure or functionality of the forum I must make sure as good as possible that it works flawlessly for them and will continue to be developed further. And still have a plan what I do if one day it stops working. Ability to export data in one way or another is a crtieria. In this category are i.e. an event manager or a wiki but also Xon's multi prefix.
• if an add on has direct interaction with my users but a somewhat unclear future I may still install it but only for a optional feature and I will be transparent that it may be gone some day. Clearly, no core or even relevant functionality shoud depend from such an add on. In this category fall i.e. a user map or prefix filters.
• I do completely stay away from things like payment add ons or alike - everything that has the potential for a horrible scenario.

Still I feel uncomfortable with the in the meantime high number of add ons that I use - it is a big burdon and gamble. I've not bought into a couple of add ons that would be benefcial to avoid further complexity. To reduce the complexity and the risk tied to this as well as to the truck factor I would love if more functionalities, that are currently done via an add on would go into core.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Worse than that: what happens when those third party developers leave?

I will be slightly sad for a while but will get over it. I have not staked the whole forum's existence and ability to function on addons.

 

[Arnox]

If a software relies as heavily on 3rd party extensions as XenForo does

Does it? Does it really? Just because there's a ton of add-ons for XF doesn't necessarily mean that it needs them. Do you need a third-party add-on for, say...

Security? No. Now there are one or two security niggles I could probably think of, but that's about it.

Performance? XF already scales extremely well. There used to be an issue of large numbers of images not being lazy-loaded, but that's been fixed for a while now.

Stability? XF is usually very damn stable. (Especially 2.1.x now I think about it.) Of course there's bugs. Utterly unavoidable. Especially with software of this size and scope. No showstoppers though.

Basic forum features? XenForo has everything for that and so much more.

Ease of use? Unless you're doing incredibly deep forum customizations, XF is very damn easy to use.

So what, then, is the problem? How does XF depend so heavily, as you say, on third-party add-ons?

Hell, SMF was mentioned here. My forum used to happily run on that for years. We probably still could if we really wanted to. (Speaking of SMF, I also miss how every add-on was free, but it's a trade-off I guess.)

 

[Mendalla]

I could dump all my add-ons tomorrow and run my site just on base. There's really only one that I would miss and I know how to deal with that. However, they do simplify some things so I have them. But XF is hardly dependent on them.

 

[smallwheels]

Does it? Does it really? Just because there's a ton of add-ons for XF doesn't necessarily mean that it needs them. Do you need a third-party add-on for, say...
(...)
So what, then, is the problem? How does XF depend so heavily, as you say, on third-party add-ons?

You are late to the party. All the points you mention have been mentioned and discussed over the course of the last pages already, so no need for question marks or to restart from scratch. At least not w/o reading what's already been written and referring to it.

 

[Paul B]

As the saying goes, you can't please any of the admins any of the time.

 

[Arnox]

You are late to the party. All the points you mention have been mentioned and discussed over the course of the last pages already, so no need for question marks or to restart from scratch. At least not w/o reading what's already been written and referring to it.

Ok, but there's over 20 pages of previous dialogue, so could you please have mercy on me and just give a very short summary? lol

 

[smallwheels]

I could dump all my add-ons tomorrow and run my site just on base. There's really only one that I would miss and I know how to deal with that. However, they do simplify some things so I have them. But XF is hardly dependent on them.

Well, I guess that depends from what you do with your site. If - as an experiment - all add ons including Media Gallery and Resource Manger, all translations an all 3rd party styles and all connectors were gone tomorrow XF would no doubt still work as a forum software and it would work properly. But you were at the state were forum communities were around 2010. Life as an admin would be pretty miserable at times, many sites would simply no longer able to work along their concept as they did before and almost all would look the same. Sure, my site would work. But it would be way less fun for the users, way less community, way less attractive for users and way more cumbersome work for me.

And as there is competeition out there the interesting question is: How many would stick with XF and how many would switch to something different? Either to the more feature loaden commercial competition or to the free FOSS solutions (that offer less funcionality thay XF with it's add ons today but would in that respect be more or less at par or even better in our scenario). And how many new customers would still go for XenForo?

I can't answer the question but I am relatively sure that the absence of the whole add on eco system would to massive harm to the userbase.

 

[smallwheels]

Ok, but there's over 20 pages of previous dialogue, so could you please have mercy on me and just give a very short summary? lol

So I shall read AND rewrite the last 20 pages for you because you are too lazy to read them? Nice try, but no. I guess for the current topic possibly reading the last four to five pages should be sufficient.

 

[Mr Lucky]

If a software relies as heavily on 3rd party extensions as XenForo does

Does it? Does it really? Just because there's a ton of add-ons for XF doesn't necessarily mean that it needs them.

I agree. I have two forums with more or less no addons and one with about 30. But with that one I’m careful to not actually rely on the addons

all translations an all 3rd party styles and all connectors were gone tomorrow XF would no doubt still work as a forum software and it would work properly. But you were at the state were forum communities were around 2010.

I’d have fewer things to fiddle with, but I doubt any members would care provided they can post and reply. They would probably be happy with quite a bit of stuff they didn’t have in 2010.

 

[Wing]

I feel like we talk complain about addons every time a new XF version is posted.

 

[Arantor]

I feel like we talk complain about addons every time a new XF version is posted.

Yes, because many forums do rely on them, and this produces a blocking effect on updates.

To the above posters who don’t have many plugins: great, good for you, but the rest of us have more in-depth needs. In particular many of us do have content alongside the forum, that a forum board is not a suitable presentation format for, and need some fashion to manage that. Resource Manager can kinda do that, kinda. But that too often isn’t the right vehicle either.

But that’s the thing: a good many forums need something beyond just the forum to get people to come to the door. I suspect a number of you that don’t have plugins today would appreciate having plugins you could rely on existing in the future (or as core, whichever) that would actually simplify your life if you were able to make use of them.

 

[smallwheels]

I feel like we talk complain about addons every time a new XF version is posted.

No wonder, as they bring stress, work, delays and risk with every XF update. In short: Headaches. If the faster release cycle, that often enough people demand, ever materialize this will become even more interesting.

 

[smallwheels]

As the saying goes, you can't please any of the admins any of the time.

Real admins run still on 1.7 at max b/c software that has not proven to work for 10 years cannot considered stable. And if it runs: Why upgrade then - never change a running system.

 

[Forsaken]

I must admit I am getting concerned about the future of XF, espcially after Themehouse went around posting the other day they will soon be removing their add ons and getting away from Xenforo.

My site uses and relies on UI.X and from the tone of their posts the other day I don't see them upgrading Ui.X for 2.4 and that scares me. Espcially after renewing all my themes with them a few weeks ago for another year.

Having gone through this in the past with vBulletin, I have seen what happened there when developers start abandoning ship. It wasn't good.

I love Xenforo and hope it can weather through and grow.

Unless you are using the ThemeHouse subscription (and even then) most of what they offered is available elsewhere. @Russ has many styles that are similar in design or functionality, and are lighter to use and easier to work with.

As said, Ozzy is just passing on his add-ons to Painbaker (who was already maintaining many of them). The only change is that Ozzy himself is stepping away from development, and seems mostly to be for personal reasons.

 

[Kevin]

Unless you are using the ThemeHouse subscription (and even then) most of what they offered is available elsewhere.

Plus a lot of their XF stuff is on GitHub so if someone truly needs an update they could just either do it themselves or farm it out to a dev to do a private fork.

TH may be putting XF behind them but they are being good with how they've been handling it by letting others take over some add-ons and putting others on GH. Not much more can be asked of them.

GitHub - ThemeHouse-XF/directory

Contribute to ThemeHouse-XF/directory development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[Arnox]

all add ons including Media Gallery and Resource Manger

Why are we including those? Your complaints were about third-party add-on support. XF directly develops and maintains those two, so those "add-ons", for our discussion, can comfortably be considered "XF core".

But you were at the state were forum communities were around 2010. Life as an admin would be pretty miserable at times,

We used SMF in 2014. Again, never had an issue with it. And if you're complaining about add-on support now, it was definitely worse back then even though SMF technically had the most third-party support at the time of the free forum softwares. You may or may not have found the add-on you wanted, and if you did, it was another roll of the dice whether it actually worked well or not. And if it did, it was ANOTHER roll of the dice as to whether it was still maintained or not. By comparison, XF and vB 4.x (or even vB 3.x) were and are a complete breath of fresh air, even if you have to pay for a lot of the add-ons instead of getting them for free.

many sites would simply no longer able to work along their concept as they did before and almost all would look the same.

Absolutely untrue. Most forums I see don't even take advantage of HALF the core features available to them. And all the styles of my forum were custom-built entirely by me in the stock XF style editor. Maybe with a dash of CSS magic here and there as well. Admittedly, the site layout is the same across styles, but I don't see that to be an issue whatsoever either for my site or for other sites running XF.

Sure, my site would work. But it would be way less fun for the users, way less community, way less attractive for users and way more cumbersome work for me.

Really? What killer feature do your users depend on? Isn't it the COMMUNITY itself in the end that makes the forum? It is said that content is king, but I would disagree somewhat and say that while it is very important, it is still just secondary because the community is king instead. A forum, or really ANY site, lives and dies entirely by its users. End of story.

And as there is competeition out there

Like what? Discourse? MyBB? vBulletin 5.x? Invision? If XF wasn't an option, I'd literally would rather just go back to SMF.

With all that said, I don't want to **** on add-on developers here because the work they do IS super cool and nice and sometimes worthy of some serious $. But... Do we NEED any third-party add-ons? I certainly don't think so.

So I shall read AND rewrite the last 20 pages

\> "Hey could you just give a super quick summary?"
\> "I'M NOT GOING TO REWRITE THE LAST 20 PAGES OMG"

Yes, because many forums do rely on them

Like what??

Resource Manager can kinda do that, kinda. But that too often isn’t the right vehicle either.

Ok. So why not the Media Gallery? Also, I think people are being way too prissy about their content presentation here. Again, the only thing I could think of that an XF forum could do better for content presentation is allowing an image next to a thread's titles in the thread list. You can do that somewhat with Article threads now, but I'm not sure I really like how Article threads are presented in the thread list to be fair, hence why I have them currently disabled on my forum.

a good many forums need something beyond just the forum to get people to come to the door.

Yep! That's for any site at all. But barring some super specialist stuff, I can't think of any purpose that wouldn't be able to be served with XF core (which, again, includes the official add-ons).

If the faster release cycle, that often enough people demand

I'm not sure this is really something to actually be looking forward to yet... I'm a huge believer in a slow and stable release cadence. I think too much software out there is way too often playing things too fast and loose, and because of that, we're getting more bugs and regressions than ever before. I do NOT want to see that with XF.

Real admins run still on 1.7

I think you mean XF 1.5.x. Assuming so, some admins do, yes, but that also comes at the major cost of security. If your forum is small enough, you don't have to worry about this really, but once you get past a certain size, you become a more juicy target for breaches. And in any case, you just completely contradicted yourself. You're talking about how everyone is relying SO MUCH on add-ons for XF 2.x and then right after start talking about how "real admins" run XF 1.5.x, an unmaintained and incredibly feature-lacking (in comparison) piece of forum software.

 

[Arantor]

Like what??

I'd explain but you've already made your mind up that core XF is good enough. And that's great for you.