Xenforo for 30 days: IPB4 Vs Xenforo Review(based solely on my opinions)

[Izaya]

Long review but detailed :smile:

Our experience with Xenforo has more or less stagnated activity as the community either flat out dislikes it or tolerates it enough to not flat out quit :yum:

Let's get this out the way. Xenforo is not a bad software. It really isn't. It's actually really good. However, its fanboys will lead you to believe that because many sites are moving to it....that means it is the best. We all know popularity doesn't necessarily equate to being best. They'll lead you to believe that Xenforo is the only option...when there are some amazing products such as IP Board(3 and 4) and Woltlab Buring Board that do offer a lot more.

For us? Why is it underwhelming?
1. The Support Community

As active as their community is and as helpful as their community is(as well as the excellent support response time), there is a recurring theme that if you so much as speak negatively against the product you find yourself attacked. You'll find yourself needing to be on the defensive when you rightfully criticize the product about what it lacks or various usability.

Negative responses on suggestion threads

Even speaking with longtime(Since Day 1) XF users, many will say it is a blessing and curse simply because while the support is great, the moderation team at times plays favorites with the fanboys allowing them a bit more free reign to do/say as they please to lesser known or lesser liked individuals.

Not to mention the scandals and what not some of the Xenforo developers have been involved in that definitely makes you nervous about downloading various add-ons. Do a google search

Two big board forums(Anime forum with about 10,000,000 posts and a Korean Music forum with 11,000,000 posts) were considering a Xenforo switch but based on various things within the community as well as the sketchiness of various developers and Xenforo's delayed stance on various situations, they decided elsewhere. A 3rd big board Korean forum running IPb4 skipped a conversion to Xenforo as well.

]2. Xenforo feature set:

The reason for us Xenforo is underwhelming is the fact there are compelling products that offer more. Woltlab Burning Board, for example, is almost half XF's price while offering nearly the same feature set and even more. The only reason I went XF(a 3rd time) was because of community request and I particularly wasn't fond of WBB's look/themes.

IP Board is about 35 dollars more than XF but it's plus is the fact that it offers a full suite of apps that can extend your forum and make it into a lot more.

IPB Vs XF...they are both forums but their approaches are a bit more different. XF focus mainly on forums and it does well enough but IP Board is more of a jack of all trades. Not necessarily a master or perfect but it has a bit of everything(Good and bad).

I dislike XF simply for the growing need of add-ons we require to replicate features found in competing software. As I mentioned earlier, early versions of XF lacked very simple features such as merging users, that you'd expect a forum software of $140 to have from the start.

While XF has came so far, it still finds itself playing catch up to features. One only has to look at their Have you seen forum to see this.

Have You Seen...?

While it is a cheap product compared o Vbulletin and IP Board, Xenforo(at least in our experience) begins to get pricier than even VB and IPB simply because in order to get the same feature set you have to start buying add-ons and they have their own renewal period as well as the forum software.

(Don't point this out to XF fans as they will quickly say you are simply adding add-ons to make XF look bad in favor of competing products.)

3. Xenforo's Apple like mentality

Several things in Xenforo make zero sense to me because instead of the developer's giving the admin the right to do as they wish for their community they remove the choice.

Biggest example....Profile posts. YOU ONLY GET 140 CHARACTERS. What does that sound like? Twitter? Exactly. Their reason being is that it makes it easier for post to post to twitter.

Okay, cool. Good to be forward with social networking. So why not let admins have the choice to do so, eh :smiley:

I Can always download a friendly add-on for $5 to get the control I need...instead of it being core.

4. Lack of Compelling 1st party/Reliance on 3rd party

Let me start by saying, not every Invision Power product is perfect or great.....However you at least have the option of a cohesive product. IP Board(Forum), Commerce(Store), IP Downloads, IP Chat, IP Blog, IP Gallery, and IP Pages(CMS). At least you know that ALL products made by IPS will work together with little to no issue and that you don't have to really configure them and worry about Product A clashing with Product D because they are all made together.

Being 1st party is a major benefit...but as I said, not all IP products are created equally and some could use a lot more love and care and focus.

Xenforo pretty much doesn't offer much in the 1st party way that could accurately compete with IPB's entire suite and I am not entirely sure how it compares to WBB's suite of products.

It does have a gallery(which is really good) and a downloads application they call resource manager along with the forum itself. But you'll still find yourself with a reliance on 3rd party.

3rd party is not bad.....it actually gives those developer's more freedom. Of course with 3rd party, you run the risk of wanting to upgrade your software but unable to do so because the developer hasn't updated or has abandoned his app. Remember, there is a lot of shadiness with Xenforo developer's.

More importantly, whenever you need to find a simple feature, you are constantly told "No, it can't do that. But there is an add-on for it."

Your forum becomes bogged down with a bunch of add-ons because the software itself is anemic.

The chatroom solutions on Xenforo are abysmal, IMO.

 

[Izaya]

5. Usability:




At least compared to IPB 4, As an admin the usability is annoying on XF.




No Mod Control panel...because many of the moderator actions are inline. That's cool but there are many things I am forced to log into the ACP to do that I can do from the Mod CP on IPB. Actually, I lied....there is $45 add-on that can give me a XF moderator control panel with a lot of features. Plus its $25 renewal.




Want to easily see how many and who all is in a usergroup? You have to go through hoops to do it when it is like 2 steps on IPB?




Want to set usergroup colors? Well on IPB, it's a simple hook you install. On XF, you have to not only install the hook but manually go into edit theme templates. If you have multiple themes, that becomes tedious.




Want to easily arrange the layout of the forum's boxes? Requires some tweaking. IPB4 simply has a drag and drop approach that allows you to move the boxes/modules around.




Forget to add a tag for someone (@User) can't do that. You can add it but it wont tag them. IPB4, simple edit and add @User and it'll tag them.




Want to easily delete your PMs from your inbox? There's no actual delete message. There's 'leave' conversation. I can also download an add-on for $45 that will give me a lot more features than XF does by default. Oh plus a yearly $25 renewal.




Want to allow your user's to change their name? By default, there is no feature. Yet another add-on :smiley:




Maybe you want to have Animated Avatars? Might want to check to make sure your host/server has proper extension set up......Because you know unlike IPB, where you simply hit a toggle in the ACP to switch it on/off and then upload the image, I have to contact my host to let them know "I need this tweaked".




I can go on and on...But the biggest offender....




6. Usergroups:




User permissions in theory make a lot of sense. All users are in the default registered group and you can set permissions that way by utilizing secondary groups to do so.




Problem with this is, first of all the usability of permissions suck on XF. You sometimes go set permissions in the actual usergroup itself and then sometimes you have to go into options and go into the specific add-on to set permissions and everything right. I'd prefer IPB's way...you install the add-on and you toggle the permissions within that particular add-on.




Why? Because if you have a crap ton of Add-ons, you'll soon find your user group permission lists growing to the point where it becomes more difficult to find an add-on and its particular section for permissions.




Secondly, having to utilize secondary usergroups is annoying....You wind up having a user with like 20 different usergroups, let's say you run into an issue where there is a permission clash somewhere. You have to look in all the groups to find out where it clashes. More importantly, with those secondary usergroups, if you have usergroup styling set up for them, you have to set a display priority so the correct stylien and group shows as it should.




There's no reason why when someone is promoted to another usergroup they need to retain in the former group they just left? We're born infants, we grow into toddlers(no longer called infants), then so and so forth. A 80 year old is not considered a child.....however using XF's mentality, they are an Infant, a toddle, a child, a teen, a young adult, a middle-aged adult, a senior citizen, etc etc.




It's an utter mess and not user friendly.




As I said Xenforo itself is not a bad product. And it powers around 30-40 percent of the premium software world's forums based on various stats compared to IPB's 13 percent.




That doesn't make it better? In fact, I am willing to bet that IPS is still a more profitable company than XF is. But it's fanboys will have you think that Xenforo is god's gift to man. The developers are all Gods and the moderation team are kings.




In reality, it's a forum software that is pretty good but is not really much better than anything else. It's just pretty and even then Xenforo's stale and dated design makes almost every theme look a bit unattractive save pixelexit and Audentio themes.




3 times we tried XF....30 days so far.....and XF isn't anything revolutionary or exceptional. It's just...popular. So is Miley Cyrus and Kim Kardashian. Doesn't make them great people. It just means they are liked.




I appreciate Xenforo's ease of use for customizing styles. I appreciate the excellent notification system and I truly applaud Xenforo's cool add-ons such as post ratings. A lot of amazing mods but then so are IPB's :smiley: Without the developer scandal because IPS offers a bit more protection to users

 

[Kaynil]

That's a pretty complete analysis and I think it is important that people are aware that there are other options around.
Like you said, Xenforo has a distinct point of view that makes its development different from others. Many people migrate only to find out that many things they thought were core features are actually non-free third parties add-ons.

From my understanding their "anaemic" state is actually part of the appeal for many of their users. The idea XenForo has boasted from the beginning is basically to offer a light product that will do all the basics you expect and it's flexible enough for you to built upon it through add-ons. Many of the features we're used to in other forums are questioned here regarding if they are that important as to make it part of the core. So it is not even them playing catch-up, they will always be 'behind' because they are adding features based on the popularity of - and people's request for - add-ons to become part of the core. In this sense, it has been the community what has shaped XenForo and if you're looking for something that offers a lot more out of the box then definitely I agree it will become quite expensive to shape your community the way you wanted.

However, if you are looking for a fast loading community without the fluff xenForo is actually cheaper than IPB, given that their license does not require renewal. All you renew every year is the right to get the updates and direct ticket customer support. If you find yourself unable to renew you can still keep your community up with the version you go until you can sort it out and use their forums if you're in a tough spot. This for me is a key difference that brings me peace of mind.


Regarding add-on renewals, this is more of a recent practice that some of the developers have gotten into when they felt that the original one-time payment wasn't enough to cover for maintaining the add-on through the Xenforo major updates, giving customer support, etc of some of their products. I guess it depends on the nature of the add-on since the vast majority, at least from the impression I have, tend to be an one payment to be done with it.

The real problem with add-ons in xenForo is that many developers are not longer offering them directly and instead you get redirected to their own website. I understand the developers needing more control but it doesn't make it easier on the user having to be signed up to all these different websites - many of which will ask for your license to check you have an active license instead of nulled - just for add-ons.

It is an unfortunate thing with the sour experiences of the bad apples. When I moved I found attractive a few add-ons from one fo these developers that ended up being kicked out for shady practices, like injecting code with backdoors. Unfortunately, I think this kind of people will try to squeeze their way in any platform they can, so it is a shame xF was quick enough to catch them up and I even get the impression they tried to hush the issue instead of clearly informing the public, especially the ones affected.


I agree with the ACP set-up, it definitely could be improved and make it more intuitive. Many times adding an add-on with an ACP area, you don't know where the darn thing will be sitting in the menu because there is not a designated area. Instead, each developer has to choose which tab might be the most adequate: appearance? users? design? Keep clicking through it until you find out.

About the Moderator Panel issue, I haven't explored things much. I don't feel I am missing much from having to choose between two ACPs instead of one and the in-forum moderating feels pretty natural to me. As far as I understand you can make them access the ACP while graying out the options they cannot mess around. So you could specialise your staff for different activities according to your needs so their ACP can be an MCP of sorts. I think it would be better it disappeared the options and tabs you are not granting completely, but for all I know they might already have updated that.


The usergroup permissions are probably my biggest gripe with XenForo but not for the same reasons. It is a different approach, but once I got the hang of it is something I would miss a lot. I love the No, yes, never and many add-ons add the permissions right there. That is fine and I hope doesn't change, that's pretty cool and helps you see exactly what each new group you create changes, since instead of manually granting each permission you just revoke or allow the base layer. If you promote someone, all you really need is two layers the base (usually registered) and the upgrade (the permission changes). Rather than having to go manually setting to "yes" and "no" to every single permission (which can become quite a task as you add more stuff) all you do is to focus in the changes regarding the base. User-permissions you just move to yes all the moderating stuff, board-permissions, tick the yes for the staff area. Done. Promote someone, use test-permissions-as-userX and make sure it works.

Really their bane is that they don't make it more intuitive what is what you are supposed to be doing, at least hint to tutorials or tip recommendations right there in the the ACP sprinkled through the tabs options would help heaps. It is a big change and expecting people to go on a hunt in the resource-zone before they get stuck or already messed around the ACP options trying to understand it themselves is bad. heck, I didn't even know they had tutorials there, why would I assume that resources was a recommeded first-stop when I just purchased a forum and I want to udnerstand its basic, core software?

Anyway, my beef with the user-groups is setting up permissions for moderation or other special staff. In my opiniuon, XenForo over complicate things. I always miss one step because in any other software there is just one: add them to the right user-group. With XenForo you add them to the group, go to their profile and think they can use moderating tools (instead of being something set for the user group as whole so anyone added gets it) and then what was it? I forgot, but make sure to check in usergroups that the member indeed is considered staff. There are no instructions in doing this (unless you head to the resource area and find a tutorial) so you basically find it out as you 'promote' someone and they tell you they still can't do X or view Y and you go to the ACP and their profile wondering what on earth is the problem.

But yeah, Xenforo is not anything 'revolutionary' nor close to perfect. It is still a pretty solid choice in my opinion, but definitely not the best choice if you want to have your community have a lot more functionality. If you do try out Wolbat Burn Board, I's love to read your thoughts on how well it fares in comparison, as from what I heard, it seem to be the cheaper option and seems to pick the looks of xF with the openness of IPB.

 

[Shole]

Very detailed and very good review, thanks a bunch