Is your site dependent upon add-ons? Should it be?

[Tracy]

I don't spend a lot of time over on the XenForo site other than to check out any updates in the resource manager for add-ons that I use.
But I did recently take out time to check out the off-topic area as sometimes there is some funny stuff there. One of the posts I found there though was not funny, but fairly serious.
And it brings up the topic title of this thread.
One of the more prolific developers for XenForo add-ons (over 600 with many of them paid) has not been responsive to requests for assistance for a few months on the Xenforo site and on his support site apparently and is getting near the point of having their paid add-ons removed from the resource manager listings over on the XenForo site.
This will affect a lot of people, as many are dependent upon several of his add-ons to extend the software to what they feel it should have been in the first place.

They are now having to try to figure out how to continue offering the same feature set while being able to upgrade to the latest version.

Before anyone tries to claim that I'm calling out a certain software, this is not a XenForo limited issue as I have seen it with my time with using Invision and also with Woltlab. In fact, I recently read of a similar issue with the newest version of Woltlab and a site owner having issues with getting feedback from one fo the developers they use.

The question is... have you contemplated how dependent your site is on those third party add-ons? How many of those are life/death for your site and how many are "nice to haves"?
Have you developed a plan for if/when those add-ons are no longer supported? Will you simply stick on the version of the software you are running? Will you remove those add-ons and not have the feature sets that you or your users may have become dependent upon? Will you look for a bespoke offering, realizing that the same issue can come up with it as with any other 3rd party add-on?
It is one reason that many look for a script that offers more of what they need as either 1st party add-on offerings or built into the core in a more fully developed suite compared to a component created system.

We all need to realize that most of the developers used by site owners are 1 or 2 man operations (usually one). And life happens. Someone can have a heart attack/stroke, get struck by a car, have a legal issue or a myriad of other things that would directly impact their ability to offer support and updates to their offerings.
Does the developer being a 1/2 person operation ever play into your purchase, or is it just about the features that the add-on offers and you haven't given thought to what happens in the worst case scenario?

I personally use the Snogs flag add-on and although it is not life and death, it's a nice feature for my users to see where their fellow members are connecting from to give an idea of conditions in that locale. I also have purchased paid options of this developers offerings, so I am somewhat impacted, but none of the ones I have are deal killers for the site.
Most of my other add-ons are from 1 person developers and several are critical to the site. If they ever ceased, I would simply choose to stick on the version of the script that they last had an official release of, even if the core script updates had features I would like to have.

 

[joelr]

There is a heavy and hidden "cost" to third party mods.

Yes, they're cheap at time of purchase. Yes, they're fun. Yes, they extend your community in useful ways.

But you're relying on hobbyists to do this for fun in a sustainable manner. Just look at the number of hobbyist sites who are still online after two years, and then ask if you trust a hobbyist developer to have all of the pressure of customer service, service tickets, new features, new apps, maintenance updates to stay in lockstep with the core software ,etc. It's a lot to juggle, and I admire the devs who offer mods!

As @Tracy pointed out, the cost of a one-man development shop disappearing overnight is a real fear and cost that should be factored in.

The model of core + active third party was viable when forums were new and cool and a lot of devs were playing around with forums for fun. Now that the forum market is shrinking, you really have to be careful about relying on mods and third party authors.

 

[joelr]

I should also add that it's fascinating to see the divergence in forum communities now between XF and IPS, especially in regards to third party development.

XF still openly hosts links and support discussions to third party mods. IPS, which tends to be generationally ahead in their market outlook, has removed the third party marketplace (the software still allows third party mods, they're just not hosted or discussed on IPS).

 

[Tracy]

I should also add that it's fascinating to see the divergence in forum communities now between XF and IPS, especially in regards to third party development.

Yes, and it's the reason that I felt this topic would be a good one to post.

@Opus X is looking at moving away from XenForo (which I sold him really cheap) to Invision because he believes that he can use Pages to create a lot of the content solutions he wants for his site like a link directory and a reviews feature. And he can because I did when I had that site under IPS 4.x.
He specifically does not want to use a lot of outside add-ons as he has seen the current issue that I have in having to wait for add-on updates from another prolific XF developer to be released before I can contemplate upgrading.
And if he will take the time to learn Pages and the Invision templating system, he can probably do a lot of what he wants. Granted, not to the level of the XF add-ons from XenAddons, but at least well enough to create meaningful content.
His big issue (as mine is) would be the hosting. He doesn't have the funds to pay for SaaS solutions so he has to concentrate more on self-hosting, either on one of my VPS instances or on a lower end VPS that I would help him maintain until he got up to speed on managing a Linux server.
Minimizing, or eliminating add-on dependency is a great goal, but no matter what script you use is usually unrealistic. None of them are perfect and we all want some function extended or a special little feature.
Where we all need to pay attention is how negatively the loss of those add-on features would affect our site and to make plans for it happening, because it usually does. It doesn't necessarily mean that the developer gets out of the field, it can be as simple as them stopping doing development for a particular script and doing it for a different one that they prefer.

 

[zoldos]

I don't think my forum is "dependent" on add-ons, but the ones I've chosen (with great care), really enhance things!

 

[Tracy]

I don't think my forum is "dependent" on add-ons, but the ones I've chosen (with great care), really enhance things!

For certain niches, quality add-ons can serve a great benefit to the site and its users.
This is an example of XenAddons Review Management System. I created this review on October 13. Two days later it's already at the top of Goggle search using TOR and a German based location so it was not influenced by any of my browser history.

Having quality content and a quality way of displaying it to both the user and the search engines ultimately benefits a site.
But as noted, you have to be very selective on your developer you choose to use. Those that are creating 600-1000 add-ons are more apt to have issues with support/updates than a developer that is creating 5-10 add-ons.

And that was one of the reasons I started the topic. Over my years I've seen many a site admin/owner (especially newer ones) install add-on after add-on. I remember several times back in the XenForo 1.3-1.5 days helping admins out and being shocked when I accessed their ACP and saw that they had 100+ add-ons in use. I think a big issue with a new site admin is wanting to throw tons of bells & whistles that sound neat onto the site without really evaluating what benefit they bring to it and what complications for upgrades that they present, not to mention the support factor.

Another issue is if the script developers basically stub a feature out and then are dependent upon outside developers to get it to what most would consider a quality usable level. I know of at least one script that does that regularly.

 

[Heatman]

I don't think my forum is "dependent" on add-ons, but the ones I've chosen (with great care), really enhance things!

The simple truth is that too much use of add-ons doesn't mean getting the best result from them. There was one forum I used to work as an admin last year - Community Forum or something, it was a forum I saw the highest number of add-ons used. It made a serious mess of the forum.

 

[Neo]

Add-ons can be beneficial. And in the case of some scripts (especially XenForo) they are pretty much required to get the extended benefits that other scripts offer built in when compared to them - and yes, I am specifically calling out XenForo here.
Again, using XenForo as an example. They offer basic offerings with first party add-ons that are in desperate need of improvements. meanwhile Invision offers a package that has add-ons like Pages that will allow a basic knowledge admin to have much more ability to offer functions well beyond what the basic XenForo doe.
From my many years of using XenForo I have found that they generally offer a bare bones extension of end user improvements and depend on outside developers to extend them to what most admins would consider the bare bones basic.
And ironically.. it seem that the XF staff and developers get extremely butt hurt when called out on their weaknesses instead of actually taking the time to improve what they offer.
And the irony is that there are a certain segment of the XenForo sphere that follow the company line and seems to be unable to think for themselves.

 

[Shortie]

I would say that the forum that I run with my other half which is a gaming, content creation and live streaming forum does rely heavily on add-ons which can be a pain when Xenforo releases big software updates.

WWE Hub does not rely heavily on add-ons and I don't feel I have a need for it to.

 

[zoldos]

The simple truth is that too much use of add-ons doesn't mean getting the best result from them. There was one forum I used to work as an admin last year - Community Forum or something, it was a forum I saw the highest number of add-ons used. It made a serious mess of the forum.

Except for an occasional glitch, all my add-ons seem to work great. I have 4 or 5 paid add-ons and lots of free ones.

 

[zoldos]

Add-ons can be beneficial. And in the case of some scripts (especially XenForo) they are pretty much required to get the extended benefits that other scripts offer built in when compared to them - and yes, I am specifically calling out XenForo here.
Again, using XenForo as an example. They offer basic offerings with first party add-ons that are in desperate need of improvements. meanwhile Invision offers a package that has add-ons like Pages that will allow a basic knowledge admin to have much more ability to offer functions well beyond what the basic XenForo doe.
From my many years of using XenForo I have found that they generally offer a bare bones extension of end user improvements and depend on outside developers to extend them to what most admins would consider the bare bones basic.
And ironically.. it seem that the XF staff and developers get extremely butt hurt when called out on their weaknesses instead of actually taking the time to improve what they offer.
And the irony is that there are a certain segment of the XenForo sphere that follow the company line and seems to be unable to think for themselves.

I respect your words, of course. I've used many paid forums, and pretty much all the free ones, and in my opinion, Xenforo works the best for my needs.

 

[zoldos]

I would say that the forum that I run with my other half which is a gaming, content creation and live streaming forum does rely heavily on add-ons which can be a pain when Xenforo releases big software updates.

WWE Hub does not rely heavily on add-ons and I don't feel I have a need for it to.

I do agree, I probably can't upgrade to 2.3 any time soon. But I'm not too worried about it.

 

[Jason]

There's only a few major add-ons I would want anyway. Usually, they would be major ones where support is a bigger deal to the add-on maker.

 

[Tracy]

And ironically.. it seem that the XF staff and developers get extremely butt hurt when called out on their weaknesses instead of actually taking the time to improve what they offer.
And the irony is that there are a certain segment of the XenForo sphere that follow the company line and seems to be unable to think for themselves.

Everyone needs to give them a break.
They have been under a lot of pressure trying to get 2.3 out and in a stable release. Then they are dealing with the heat that came with their announcement of 3.0 and it basically being a style engine redesign and then having to scramble to deal with the PR fallout of that announcement not going as they hoped.
They have at least released information that instead of making everyone wait for 3.0 to get the new editor that they will be releasing that in their 2.4 version and have promised some goodies that will be of benefit to end users finally.
You have to give them that they seem to be trying to change the way they communicate with their license holders. I rarely read over there any longer as I mainly go there to check on any updates for the add-ons I use that are only available from their site.

 

[zoldos]

Everyone needs to give them a break.
They have been under a lot of pressure trying to get 2.3 out and in a stable release. Then they are dealing with the heat that came with their announcement of 3.0 and it basically being a style engine redesign and then having to scramble to deal with the PR fallout of that announcement not going as they hoped.
They have at least released information that instead of making everyone wait for 3.0 to get the new editor that they will be releasing that in their 2.4 version and have promised some goodies that will be of benefit to end users finally.
You have to give them that they seem to be trying to change the way they communicate with their license holders. I rarely read over there any longer as I mainly go there to check on any updates for the add-ons I use that are only available from their site.

Yes, well put. I'm not interested in an upgrade any time soon, but am definitely loyal to XF.

 

[Tracy]

but am definitely loyal to XF.

According to some (and several of the developers) apparently I'm not since I deign to criticize them (and regularly heavily) for what I perceive as sheer stupidity in action on some of their decisions. After a decade of putting up with it, I finally got tired of it.
Guess they can't take heavy criticism that comes about when light criticism over the years has shown to do no good.

XenForo is really a great script. It's just a pity that it has become so reliant on outside developers to get it to be much more than a basic forum script with a 1/2 arsed resource manager and gallery that's been generally ignored for years.

But honestly, I'm not "loyal" to any script. I will use the one that gives me what I need. Currently for my main site that is XenForo, but not because of the forum script or 1st party addons themself but due to some of the complex add-ons that are available for it that fill the need(s) of my niche.
I still find it ridiculous that you have to depend on so many small add-ons to extend the core XF script to what many others currently offer in core.

Basically what I'm saying is that we need to give XF developers some slack. They have sat around for a few years before getting an update out for whatever reason(s) they may have. At least they are presently trying to make an appearance of doing better in the communications to their license holders and getting something somewhat new out, even though the most recent release was mainly admin/developer targeted for improvements and the end user of the script (the users that we rely on) were pretty much ignored. There were some indications that in 2.4 in addition to a new editor that they will be making some end user improvements. I only hope they are more than simple basic stubs of offerings that beg for 3rd party development to make them really useful.
There is a reason that developers like Xon, Ozzy47 and Andy have so many small user interface improvement add-ons out. It's because the core offering was not realistically fully thought out in design. It has always seemed that it's been "offer basic and if you want more look for an outside developer".

 

[zoldos]

On the add-on reliance, I've been on several XF forums that run NO add-ons at all, and they are fast, have very useful features, and run great. I just enjoy particular add-ons for my forums.

I don't mind the lengthy update schedule. I ran XF 1.5.x up until just a couple of years ago, and had no issues.

Also, personally, I love their in house gallery system, despite no significant updates

 

[Tracy]

On the add-on reliance, I've been on several XF forums that run NO add-ons at all, and they are fast, have very useful features, and run great. I just enjoy particular add-ons for my forums.

And for basic forums it is great to not run add-ons. But if you want to offer your users a more complex and developed site, there are add-ons that are going to be required. That is why Invision offers an entire suite of their product.

Classic case, compare the so-called articles of XenForo to the articles offered by XenAddons Article Management System.
And for sites that are more than simple discussion based (think chat about a topic) there are a wealth of add-ons/extensions needed.
Some sites needs items like a link directory, reviews, articles, resources, a real classifieds area (instead of a half-baked forum node offering) and more.

Also, personally, I love their in house gallery system, despite no significant updates

Then you aren't pushing it to it's limits. One glaring weakness. They offered the ability to mirror images from a forum to a gallery category. But guess what they either overlooked or decided was too complicated and could be done by making their users install yet another add-on.... the simple mirroring of additional data that they allow an admin to create from one of the stronger points of XF - custom user fields. They will pull the image in from the post, but any custom fields that are associated with it... forget it. To me, it seems like a pretty basic need. Why just post an image to a gallery category with NO other information than something like "To see the real information, click on the link and go to another portion of the site". And it should be easy enough to read the database of the node it's being pulled from, find the custom fields and then let the admin select any/all that they want to import with the mirroring.
Some aspects of their offerings were not fully baked in the oven.
There are other points that have been mentioned/reported/suggestions made (and ignored)... like moving from one category (or album) to another. You have to already know the album URL instead of being presented with a list of what you have access to. As I've said, simple stuff like that.
Or how about certain limits from the forum being placed on the gallery items. The gallery should in reality be able to have certain limitations that the forum has applied (image size, etc) not applied to it. It should have it's own set of permissions (again a reported issue and suggestion made - and ignored so far).
I could go on, but then it would seem like I'm "burning" them... when in reality just relaying weaknesses I and others have found for our use needs (which frequently translates to the use by others once it is offered).

 

[Heatman]

Except for an occasional glitch, all my add-ons seem to work great. I have 4 or 5 paid add-ons and lots of free ones.

Well, that sounds great. As long as everything is working very well the way they are supposed with few paid add-ons and more free ones, it's all that matters. Experiencing occasional glitch is a very common thing. It's not a big deal.

 

[zoldos]

Well, that sounds great. As long as everything is working very well the way they are supposed with few paid add-ons and more free ones, it's all that matters. Experiencing occasional glitch is a very common thing. It's not a big deal.

Yes agreed!