Will XenForo scare away unfamiliar new visitors?

Until the "big boards" start converting, familiarizing large numbers of people at once (and we just see a surplus of XF powered websites all over), do you think you risk losing potential new members on your XF forum? For example, if someone completely unfamiliar with the backend forum world and industry that has a small handful of forum accounts on sites that all use vBulletin, IPB, or maybe phpBB, does a Google search for "dog forum" and finds their way to a dog forum powered by XF, would they think it's a "weird" website and keep looking until they find one that looks like the vB/IPB/phpBB structure they automatically associate with the term "forum"?

Not saying I feel this way, but it's a thought I had and I'm interested to hear what others think. Is converting your forum this soon a bad idea for this reason?

 

Yes, I believe this will scare away people and prevent them from registering to forums using XF. Which is why I'm waiting to purchase a Xenforo license until I see 30-40 successful XF forums out there.

 

XenForo would not scare me away because I know its story, how it works, and I do indeed like it. But when I come across a forum that isn't powered by your usual vB, IPB, MyBB, phpBB, maybe SMF, I do kind of feel the need to look elsewhere. Which is why I made this thread. I'm sure I'm not the only one that can be a little picky about the type of software they're willing to be a member on, for assorted reasons. Could it become a real problem for your community?

 

Generally speaking, I'm generally turned away from non-vB/IPB/MyBB/[all other common forums] because they just aren't up to par with the well-known forum solutions, in terms of functionality.

But XenForo, in my opinion, is visually and technically superior. It may not have a feature-set as large as the rest, but it's well on its way. When somebody who is used to vB/IPB or is new to forums as a whole randomly lands on a XenForo site, I think they'll be intrigued because XenForo is so modern. I don't know how to really describe it, but long story short, XenForo is appealing and really captivates users' attention, so I don't think it'll be an issue in terms of losing visitors.

 

Personally I'm very picky on which forums I join. I'm a member of about 50 and active on about 12 of them, the ones I'm active on the ones being powered by vBulletin, IPB, MYBB, and SMF. I think it's because I'm used to them and can easily navigate through them.

From an Administrative/Developer Standpoint XenForo might be dominate, However I've yet to see the ACP or the Code.

 

I am not sure how having a great UI would scare people away. My view is quite the opposite, it will bring them in.

 

Thats what I thought myself, if anything XF should attract members through curiosity of seeing such a new and decent look forum software. I dont think majority of forum users care so much about what a forum is running as long as the content is good and they are able to use it easily enough.

 

You guys look and say this as Admins. However think about the casual users. From their point of view it might look unattractive and maybe harder to navigate through.

 

I'm looking at it from the perspective of a user. And I still think its interface is the most superior there is. One of XenForo's many great attributes is that it just works. It does what you expect it to do and it's easy to navigate/work. I think this is a huge plus and will make forums powered by XenForo much more attractive.

 

Perhaps it depends on your forum & forum members?



Ours are not high tech, and I can assure you that switching to xf will increase activity on our forum, and will be an advantage over the other forums in our niche.

 

XenForo I suspect will do very well, especially later when new versions get released making it much more stable.

IB should be worried, I would be. It looks different and nice from your average forum script. And already people are showing just how easy it is to change the themes colours fast.

If I was still interested in running a forum, which I'm not anymore. I would purchase XenForo first before another forum platform. Yes, before vBulletin and IPB. And for a lot of reasons, I can fully understand why so many people, even vBulletin customers are heading towards using it.

 

Other than, you know, much more modern, flexible and efficient coding that allows for perhaps greater extensibility than anything else, right?

 

If you look at the theme changer on XenForo itself near the footer on the left-side, you can turn pop-ups off for the most. Not sure if that's only there on XenForo though as an option?

Look for "Enhancements Disabled" in the theme changer, click it and see what happens when using the forums.

 

I wouldn't say I have seen any signs of that so far. I would even say that I don't expect any changes in development approach. Like, stop bloating forum core with marginally used and underdeveloped features and start supporting plugin operations like they should have been from the very start. This vBulletin "feature" always gave me laughs - like, without plugins/mods vBulletin is barely usable and with them, it's unsupported. It's like Microsoft would say: Windows is cool and self-sufficient but if you run any program in it, you're out of support. Ridiculous!

 

For the record, I own the IPS products. 5 different people from our forum attempted to use our test install, and the ips forums. The unanimous reaction was: well, ok, if we have to use it I suppose we could get used to it.


The results were also unanimous regarding xf - "when can we use it"?


For us, the important part is the UI. Nobody cares about the underlying code, at least not my members.



I fully realize that a nice ipb skin could improve things, but there is much more to the situation than a skin could change.

 

OUCH, that's harsh.

Actually they did start with the zend framework, but changed some things and built alot into it, and coded other things from scratch.

But I can see what you're saying as well.

 

Those who are on dozens of forums might notice the difference, but I don't think the average user will really care. They join for the forum content and perks, not for the scripts used to run the forums.

 

I'm not sure why it would 'scare away' visitors. I first saw the thing on Monday, was registered Monday night thanks to the easy Facebook integration (much easier than, say anything with vB, or IPB that I've seen), and love it. Since it's a new bit of software, I'd say I'm unfamilliar with it, but that's just me.

So far, I've seen nothing scary about it, seems very user friendly to me