Will XenForo scare away unfamiliar new visitors?

Xenforo is built specifically with 2 things in mind -
1. ease of use for the end user
2. the coders/mods and skinners/designers.

Members are constantly commenting about how they love the speed and ease of use and the lack of 'bloat', while it still has what they essentially need.

Coders are constantly commenting about how easy it is to mod for XF.
Designers are loving the style properties/templates/css.

I'd say it's pretty much on the mark.

 

If I came on one of theses Xenforo powered site a a visitor I would definatly take a look. Its fast loading first of all, easy to use and combined with the right skin can be pretty nice. Not sure how it will affect large boards , have not seen any really major site in a rush to convert to this script.

 

XenForo will be fast loading because it's very light-weight forum software compared to vB and IPB. So I'd expect no less from it right now.

It looks nice, sure! But then any forum can look nice using a custom skin.

 

A few of my members have made cryptic comments about XenForo being moredifficult than vB but when I asked for specifics they couldnt put their finger on anything. I think the perception seems to be out there,