XF1 to XF2 - Looking back, how has your site fared?

[bill78]

Hope you're all well in these crazy times!

I am still on XF1.5 and will upgrade to XF2, not sure when exactly as my XF has considerable customisations.

I would like some real world experience of how your transition from XF1 -> XF2 went. Not in terms of the technical upgrade, but in terms of end results - user response and search engine coverage?

In other words did you see an increase in posts / threads / reg. users or decline. Was your inbound organic search traffic impacted?

Thanks for your input!!

 

[rdn]

Monthly statistics XF 1.5


vs 2.1

 

[bill78]

Thanks for your reply, so no impact either way then in your case.

 

[Mendalla]

We didn't see much difference related to the upgrade. Our numbers were down last year but there were clear social (ie. user-related) reasons. One heavy poster passed away, another got permabanned, a couple others got busy with life and curtailed their posting.

 

[Mr Lucky]

I can think of no reason why there would be any difference.

 

[StarArmy]

The softwares aren't that different. For me the change was hardly noticeable other than having to get a new style and having more features to use.

I cannot express how much I LOVE the push notifications, for one. Also, emoji support is nice.

 

[trapped_soul]

Dreadfully. My sites are a failure even though the content is there. I think it may be my choice of styles or customisation.
But it's dire and I'd love a solution.
XF is really absolutely content rich, but definitely missing some key focuses.

 

[Mr Lucky]

y sites are a failure even though the content is there. I think it may be my choice of styles or customisation

Easy solution then is to use a default style

 

[bill78]

Thanks for your feedback everyone.

Dreadfully. My sites are a failure even though the content is there. I think it may be my choice of styles or customisation.
But it's dire and I'd love a solution.
XF is really absolutely content rich, but definitely missing some key focuses.

Did your sites take a nose dive after upgrading from XF1 to XF2? Did you change theme at the same time?

 

[Abraham54]

What I did with my forum running XF 1.5?
I installed a fresh copy of XF 2.0 and imported my XF-1.5 forum.
Previously I first had made a testforum just with upgrading to learn how and what.

After the import, making everyting ready to open again, my forum was even faster than before the operation.
My members were delighted with it.

I'm also admin on a other XF forum, the owner of it forbade me to do it the way I did if for my forum (probably due to Google AdSense).

Last year a new e-mail add-on the owner had installed, just went bonkers and sent about 10.000 e-mails automatically.
All that was due to still pressent XF 1.5 instances.

 

[bill78]

What I did with my forum running XF 1.5?
I installed a fresh copy of XF 2.0 and imported my XF-1.5 forum.
Previously I first had made a testforum just with upgrading to learn how and what.

After the import, making everyting ready to open again, my forum was even faster than before the operation.
My members were delighted with it.

I'm also admin on a other XF forum, the owner of it forbade me to do it the way I did if for my forum (probably due to Google AdSense).

Last year a new e-mail add-on the owner had installed, just went bonkers and sent about 10.000 e-mails automatically.
All that was due to still pressent XF 1.5 instances.

That's good to hear, thanks. Interesting note about Adsense, I wonder why? You can still use adsense on XF2

 

[Abraham54]

Another point was the fact that the owner did not want his forum to be offline for half a day or so.

 

[trapped_soul]

Easy solution then is to use a default style

I don't think that would work for us sadly. 99% of the deletion requests are always because of navigation issues which I really don't understand. I think it's because people cba to acclimatise. I don't know.

Thanks for your feedback everyone.



Did your sites take a nose dive after upgrading from XF1 to XF2? Did you change theme at the same time?

They massively improved if I am honest, after XF2. The stats flew up... but retention is a massive issue. Newbies constantly, out of which a handful stay and become active and participants. Yes, changed the styles too.
Some people will just say what they feel is a reason to leave i.e navigation when in fact it could be the fact they're just lazy and not prepared to work it.
You don't go to PC World and buy a full copy of Office 19 and by the afternoon are able to use Excel to it's full capacity for example..
XF is no different,you don't know how to use full capacity after one day.
We have loads of great content, but seems some people genuinely struggle.