Anybody notice about XF support

[Tracy]

That compared to the last 5 years... that the support from the actual XenForo developers on the XF site have taken a mighty dump on itself and there is a even HEAVIER dependence on other admins to provide support in their forum? Just as an exercise in curiosity.. I went down the trail of several posts... and in many of them there were no replies from XF staff/developers on posts needing core support. No replies from XF staff... and none from fellow admins (as many of them were somewhat "site specific").
It's really pitiful for those of us who have been XenForo license holders for decades and we regularly saw developer support in the forum
I'm of the honest opinion now, if you want support, submit a support ticket and get what you actually pay your money pay for if you are an active license holder instead of a post in the forum. Don't waste your time on submitting a post to the forum for support and praying for a response. Styling questions related to the base style? Ask in a ticket. How to set requirements for upgrades and such.. ask in a ticket. In a nutshell... get what you are paying for.
Classic case.. I submitted a ticket about my SMF2.1->XF 2.2 conversion... was told that they weren't aware of "any problems" (note, they were SPECIFICALLY told it was a SMF 2.1 -> XF 2.2 conversion).. guess what.. there were.
I ended up fixing the issue myself.. and i am in NO manner familiar with PHP.. but honestly... they were told about this issue over a year ago but apparently decided to sit upon their thumb and spin.
To simply prove the point, I (someone who only has a base knowledge of PHP scripting) had to modify the OFFICIAL SMF conversion PHP while I was waiting on the reply so I could get my site converted over instead of (after a year of them being told about THAT VERY the issue) spinning my wheels in the mud and it being dead in the water after paying them for a license renewal. Granted.. the XF developers eventually responded to the errors.. but that was after those self-same developers told me they were aware of no issues (after a year of SMF 2.1 being in existence and the VERY same issue being detailed in their support forum and NO changes made to the converter to fix it after a year). Somewhat pissed... you bet your arse... as I said, the failure was CLEARLY given to them over year ago.. yet apparently they decided to "fwapp...fwapp" the problem
Ultimately... it will simply push the point that for "live" support for their license holders on the forum.. it has SORELY slipped over the last few years. Do they want to address that? Then they can simply acknowledge that more support needs to be done via ticket (since they don't answer forum posts regularly) or acknowledge that they can't provide the level of support they charge for and make changes so that they can. Seems that XF developers have become sorely dependent upon their license holders to provide a base level of support for them.
Now, if you aren't an active license holder, you aren't left with much choice.

Note.. this isn't limited to XenForo.. IPS finally realized apparently that they were having MAJOR issues supporting their self hosted script and finally pulled their head out of their arse and realized that some of their actual admins might be able to help support them in the forum instead of the "submit a ticket" routine that they lived/died by for years, so they are now pushing their "base" support to the forum... and if you want more, pay more.
Only problem.. it depends on having admins willing to help... and some in both script families have decided that the ones getting paid monies can provide the support as they (as license holders) get no benefit.

I realize this may not affect many.. but honest to God... everybody needs to be fully aware of this trend towards pushing support for a script off on the other license holders while keeping the license prices the same and reducing the support level (IPS isn't as bad at this as XenForo currently is).

 

[Jason]

I had a math teacher once who said (something like) students wouldn't do the homework, so why should he help? There is a battle in some people's minds between lending a hand vs feeling the other person is lazy.

That might be the case here. I don't know. However, there's the saying "The customer is always right.".

 

[Tracy]

I don't know. However, there's the saying "The customer is always right.".

Pretty much in this industry.. the bell-weather is exactly this.. sorry if it may "butt-hurt" developers.. but if you sell a product, you are ultimately responsible to those poor schlubs you give you to money. A developer may want to try to "push" it off elsewhere... but at it's core.. the failure resides TOTALLY with the developer.
Classic case.. XenForo in NO manner tells you if you use Redis cache.. you specifically need to use qualified $config['cache']['namespace'] parameter if you use MORE than 1 site on the same server using REDIS cache.. and lots of fvcking luck finding any documentation on their site easily reflecting this.. neither on their so-called "support" forum nor in their documentation. I (as a 10 year+ user of the script) had to dig the shit out of Google to find this out. I knew it applied to MemCached.. but good frigging luck on finding the data out for REDIS.... I fought with this for 2 days on my secondary site on my server until I came across an obscure post (via Google) about it.

 

[TwitchisMental]

You would think that being a paid for product you'd get better support than that. Sorry to hear that you had to deal with that.

 

[Tracy]

You would that being a paid for product you'd get better support than that. Sorry to hear that you had to deal with that.

The main issue is.. they seem to concentrate on "one license holder/site" aspect.. and not take into consideration that there are some that run 2 or more versions of their script on one VPS/dedi instance.. yes, most of us can figure it out after chasing our tails for a bit.. but wouldn't it be MUCH easier to simply document that fact in their manual? Could I have better spent that time I wasted doing something else... like creating content for my site than basically doing my own support after paying for what puts "vittles" on their platter?
They seem to be VERY close minded in many aspects of how their license holders actually use their script, and very limited in their ability to "ascertain" what their license holders need.

 

[joelr]

Were you happy with their 2.3 update?

 

[Tracy]

Were you happy with their 2.3 update?

What? The basic remix of what they have already said... except to say "Oh, we were going to redo the style sub-system, but we can't so it has to wait until 3.0 and that's taken a lot of our time"? Honestly... that kind of a change should probably come in a X.y.z release if it's going to break the core to the point of a massive rework of your add-on/style developers. And they realized this finally - but as skilled developers with a guideline that they said they follow that points out stuff like that should be a major release inclusion and not point... did they just "forget"?
But honestly.. how much time was wasted on something for 2.3 that now isn't for 2.3 and should have been realized that it should roll out in a major revision number instead of a point one.
The other sad thing is how much hell had to be raised to even finally get commentary on it.... and then you have the fanbois all gaga over the fact they actually heard something.
If you notice... there was no general date given in their announcement.... just a "in the near future"... got to wonder, is that anything like "the next few weeks" that turned into 50+ of them?