Inspiration to get Xenforo

I plan on getting another forum software and I need some inspiration to buy Xenforo.

I plan on picking between Xenforo and vBulletin. I just can't seem to find a reason why I should get Xenforo over vBulletin.

The demo feature seems to be down so I can't check to see what features it has to offer. The only plus I see at the moment would be the design of Xenforo.​

 

- xenForo is not server intensive. So, even if you have 53,000 threads, your site will be running smooth, without too many hitches.
- Thread notifications, much like facebook. This is good since your members want to be reminded of which thread got replied to or quoted you.
- As you said the design of xenForo is the "great thing" about xenForo visually, to you. The best part is, it's a next generation forum software using..... wait for it. Wait for it.... HTML5!
- SEO is right out of the box, resulting in better search. I am telling you that it works, I've experienced xenForo's SEO ever since it's been released. I was one of the first xenForo customers.
- Intuitive ACP, powerful options, and all around easy to manage.

 

not too discourage you but i am not sure i would buy XF at this point and time....Not even sure i'd buy Vb4 but out of the two just because of the present issues, It could be a bad move to spend 150 dollars for a software that is facing legal trouble.

Demos have been down for awhile now...

1. XF notifications are the best out of the box for a forum. While I use IPB, XF notifications are stunning.

However if you go with Vb4....go here
http://vbsocial.com/join-today/plugins/vbsocial-notifications-6-0

These notifications are a 3rd party add-on but they are better than XF's notifications.

also to go along with add-ons, VB4 ecosystem is much stronger because of it's longevity in the forum world. So you are likely to find tons more add-ons and styles for Vb4.
Given the drama with XF(google it) you'll see that some developers have puled their work from XF's site as well as a few have even left XF....given their legal troubles, it does seem like development has stopped or slowed down not only from the XF developers but the 3rd party community.

2. SEO.....
I honestly can't say anythign positive or negative except...When i used XF and moved to IPB, i never noticed much difference.
I recently used VB4.....still not much of a difference so carlos may be right.

3. Design
Design is subjective.....It is easy to style but i've noticed that most XF forums visually look the same no matter how much they style it.
I've seen a many VB4 or IPB forums that you can't tell are using those software because they look unique to the site i am on.

Almost every XF forum i have seen is not unique in it's design, no matter how easy it may be to do so.

4. ACP
The Acp is attractive(Much more so than Vb4) however....

Doing certain tasks in Xenforo is harder because while it has a good look and seems more organized....as a whole, XF software is still lacking basic features that it's paid competitor softwares and free softwares have. Cue, the random excuse.....XF is only 2 years old and Vbulletin is more mature so it should be more powerful It's just an excuse and in 2012, really isn't suitable in my opinion.

It's been awhile since i used XF(haven't used it since the summer) so i can't fully remember my cons.

For new members who sort of just wants an easier experience without much learning and who can deal with XF having basic functions missing.....I'd recommend XF.
When i started using it in December 2011, i really didn't want to learn and it is easy to use.

However, it is almost one year later...I've moved on to IPB 3.3 which is MILES BETTER than XF in my opinion and I have begun learning VB4 and i realize that while both softwares have a small learning curve, I'd rather learn and have a powerful software to help me create a community and know that the company will support it and me for as long as possible.

I'd recommend checking out IPB or Vb4 over XF.

 

Great points you mentioned, thanks! The only thing that would be debatable would be the SEO. Yes XenForo's SEO is great, but vBulletin can be just as good. I seen VB forums that started out brand new that had an Alexa ranking of under 100,000 and PR2 and first page for their keywords; all this in under 2 months.

 

Thanks for the feedback!!

I tried VBSocial in the past and I am not a huge fan of it. I rather use the Xenforo notification.

I have been using vBulletin for over 3 years compared to Xenforo which I haven't touched before(ACP).

SEO... Your right, I can't say one is better than the other when it comes to this. It depends on the niche, keywords used, work done by owner and content

The design, you got a point with the Xenforo. I always notice when a forum is Xenforo but there have been times where it was close to impossible to know that a software was actually vBulletin due to its unique design.

ACP is not a problem for me because I know the vBulletin ACP inside out. Xenforo seems much easier so doesn't seem like it would be a problem for me to learn it.

I understand what you mean because of the legal issues, but honestly they are more than 3 months away which is an extremely long time! I also doubt much will happen. If anything does happen then I might switch then, but I believe the chances of that happening are slim to none. I have to check out IPB as well I guess. I do enjoy the overall design of IPB. I find the design of IPB to top all other forum softwares.

But I was able to get my hands on a demo from a member in Xenforo. I am playing around with it and seeing what the forum is capable of. I still haven't found too many great things about it. From what I can see so far, there are more plus sides to getting VB. But again I have to check out IPB as well.

 

Be sure to post more in the future about which direction you went.

I need to learn how to SEO better lol. my alexa rank...sucks

 

Well, it's a personal choice. Get into the demo for ALL premium scripts: IPB, XF, VB. See which works best FOR YOU. Buy it.

We're all running forums on separate platform (I actually have VB and XF forums - same number) and they do the job. Whichever is working well, is the one you need to get

 

@Carlos and @Forever Young

Lets take it easy guys. I think you are both passionate about what you like and that can sometimes clash, I don't believe for a second that either one of you want to fight each other.
Let's stay on topic and help the OP decide what forum they may or may not want.

Thanks

 

sorry about that

 

Sure no problem, I just don't want things getting "personal" when they never should be.

 

I just noticed something that Xenforo doesn't have which is a huge pain for me. Multi quotes...

I love that feature on vBulletin. I want to do it right now for this very post but I have to copy my post and quote another post and paste the previous section to the new post...

After much consideration I think I will go with vBulletin. Not 100% set yet, but most likely going with that. Ya Alexa ranking can be a pain. In the first 3 months I brought my site to 300,000 then it went up to 1.5 million and I recently brought it back to 400,000. My site was offline for 2 weeks 6 months ago and that is what brought it up to 1.5 million...

Yes I agree with you, thanks for the input! I believe I am going to go with VB

Thanks, but personal opinion is also interesting to hear. When someone is that passionate, they go into detail about why it's good or bad. It makes me think twice about anything. As long as it doesn't turn into a fight

 

lol it wouldn't be my first time gettign into an argument with him

As far as multi-quote goes(yet another basic feature XF doesn't have), yeah that is annoying. especially when you have to keep hitting reply and then copy and pasting and going to another page, paste the response there...too much of a hassle.
What kind of site do you plan on running if you don't mind me asking?

 

I'm telling you from first hand experience that - the SEO sucks on a brand new vB4 site. I already tested it 2 times. One is a brand new vB4 site (Modern Warfare 2, supposedly a niche grabber), and a general Call of Duty forum called CODForums. I said this elsewhere:

 

Ya its a pain...

I rather not say until it is actually launched. It is not really a secret but I just not a fan of people keep asking me when it will be open or what it will have or why it hasn't opened yet. It will be open soon. <-- I love that

Yes well I guess it depends the forum niche and the work done on it. The forum I know of is an affiliate marketing forum which is way far from your forum's topic

 

I am currently running 2 other sites that have seen traffic spikes recently, and has grown just from SEO alone. Not advertising on another site, not this not that. It's that killer.

Halo, and Metal Gear. The best part is, I had pegged Metal Gear as a small niche. I've managed to capture a new piece of the pie.

Call of Duty, of course we all know that the niche is strong for websites, more prominently for forums.

 

I'm not interested in those kind of post on my forum, they always turn into a fight in my experience. Then that turns into a whole lot of moderator discussions on what we should do all the while these post are public and building by the minute.
I'm pretty laid back but I'll do my best to prevent anyone from feeling that we "took their side" on a fight or opinion, which is what usually happens.

 

I am a pretty laid back guy, also... but when people really test me, you know what happens. I'm a nice guy, if you ever met me, you'll know that from the get go.

vBSocial doesn't look all that attractive to me.

And the xF ACP is easy to get a hang of, eh? vBulletin's ACP was good for a while until I begun owning sites and administrating them. I find more errors and problems than not. Don't get me wrong, I've gone through some errors with xenForo, but not as bad as vB. When I upgraded CODForums to vB4, there were a lot of problems and I did not want to deal with building the site on vB4 anymore after a few weeks, the one that killed it for me was 4.1.4. This is a guy that used to be really obsessed with the power of vBulletin - the whole shenanigans - the user interface, the ACP, the ease of design with the stylevars system in vB3. I liked everything about vB2/3. I even stopped caring for free forum solutions because of vB. I still don't like free forums because of the limitations most FSS have.

Same here. Problem is, it's buggy both as a user, and as an admin. Especially in upgrades.

As I've mentioned before I can say xenForo is better than vB when it comes down to SEO. And it's even better than vBSEO, which is a $140 plugin.

That's a good thing, isn't it?

I'm not worried about the lawsuit, I have faith in the developers' ability to make a quality software, and squash this lawsuit like a bug.

If you do get vB4/5, you'll be sorry in a year and come back in here with a sad face. Your loss.

I lost $600 in licenses with vBulletin in two straight years. I don't think a lot of people can take that kind of loss.

 

@Carlos, I had 7 licenses last year. 3-4 were upgraded to vb4, so you can imagine my losses were similar. I am now pleased with XF and plan to keep my 3 licenses in place with it and develop from here. Then probably I'll take another 'loss' and move out of VB for good, especially if the new version remains as crappy as it is today. But this is a PERSONAL opinion and if someone loves VB, IPB or whatever, let them use it and have fun. I don't miss multi-quotes or whatever that feature is since I never used it anyway. But, if it's important for someone else, then it's their money and their call.

I am just happy we have at least where to choose from. Who likes XF can use it, IPB clients have their own platform, same with VB

@ashimashi, if VB is what you like, then good luck with it. Regardless of how I feel about it, it's a solid platform and there are gazillion of successful forums that run on it. And never forget, all people who are getting into fights over a piece of software: this is just a small part of your community. You can have the 'worst' platform and run a very successful forum or you can pay tens of thousands of bucks for god knows what custom 'engine' and never see 2 active members in your forums. The platform, while it can give a boost, if it's a good one, is a part of your work as an admin. You need to come with good designs, excellent content and put a lot of work to really make a 'dent' in the niche.Otherwise, you can just collect licenses and moan that others don't agree with your choice

 

My problem is that people ignore the details that are right in front of their nose. They know that the particular product "sucks" but continue to use it and praise it blindfully. When their product doesn't work like they want to - they lose - and I don't mean a "promised feature that doesn't really work" I mean, the features that are riddled with bugs that ultimately breaks the entire product.... Then what happens? Your users will just either argue about it with you, or straight up leave in droves. End result: You lose members, you lose activity, you lose visitors, you lose 'authority' on search engines, and then by the end of the day... You lose money.

I admit that I am new to the forum game as the "owner," and not one of those administrators that hopped on-board to help that particular site succeed. I've been doing it for 10 years now, and only a few years ago, I've begun my entrepreneurial path. I spent over 3 thousand dollars on my entire business - from niche blogs, to niche forum domains, to forum licenses - of all of them, I've only lost money from vBulletin. I spent over $1,100 on CODForums alone. Only to lose money for a whole year before xenForo was released. I was not able to make any money from it until the following year. That's embarrassing. Now, I'm doing twice the traffic numbers that I did with vB4.

That's what Internet Brands is trying to prevent with the lawsuit against xenForo. If xenForo loses the lawsuit, we do not have a quality software anymore. IPB is so stupid I don't know how people can sit through a slow ACP, and overall slow forum experience. 5 minutes was enough for me to spit at the IPB product. Disgusting waste of money. I feel sorry for every single license holder. Pity.

If xenForo loses it's either vBulletin or IPB. No other major contenders. That's it.