September 3, 2010 at 11:22“New XenForo Forum Engine” or “What VBulletin 4.0 Could Be Like”
Today, through one of my friends, the news of the announcement of the new forum engine XenForo reached me . Its authors are two respected developers Mike Sullivan (Mike Sullivan) and Cyr Darby (Kier Darby) , thanks to which the world saw VBulletin 3.x as it is now.
Leaving the team after the takeover of JelSoft by Internet Brands giant, they worked for more than a year to submit to our court XenForo , a new commercial forum engine, which is positioned as a serious opponent for VBulletin and InvisionPowerBoard.
The output of VBulletin 4.0 in my opinion was epic fail. Instead of the promised major rewrite, MVC support, and generally improved architecture, we only got an updated style developed by an independent design studio that quickly hated the community , CMS, which still (a year after the release) makes ~ 150 requests on the empty main page and A huge number of critical bugs at all stages of the project.
The new team did not treat customers very well. I would say we were a little ignored. So, for example, release 4.0.3 included a number of critical bugs that did not allow the database update to complete normally when upgrading to a new version or even viewing user profiles. Do you think they immediately released 4.0.4 to make it convenient for users? Nothing like this. The developers started a topic on the forum and posted instructions like “open this file and replace XXX with YYY in it to fix the ZZZ problem”. Very convenient, isn't it? Especially for ordinary users.
The new team of programmers includes at least a couple of strange personalities who leave comments in the engine code like“This seems like a terrible place to put this, but I don’t know where else it should go.” , Which at least testifies to their ignorance of the VBulletin architecture and, most strange, the impossibility of obtaining explanations from colleagues.
All in all, a complete epic fail in my opinion. I already regretted ten times that I had not left the forum that I am administering on the 3.x thread, which, however, they are also trying to spoil .
What does XenForo offer? Of course, it's best to see for yourself . From my point of view, the user is invited to ... well, just an intuitive Ajax-driven interface, which is very convenient to use. By the way, despite the fact that the project is still in alpha. Subjectively, the interface is more convenient than PHPBB , VBulletin and IPB can offer . I don’t know why over the many years of Ajax’s existence and the large number of libraries that make it not just easy, but very easy to use, no one has released a forum comparable in convenience to XenForo (if you know this, please inform immediately comments).
Unfortunately, moderation tools cannot be felt with your hands, but there area small video on which you can see the process.
A convenient API for developing add-ons will be offered for developers. Something tells me that, most likely, a system similar to VBulletin (hook system) will be used.
In general, third-party users and customers of Internet Brands (owners of VBulletin) are positive. Many say that after the official release they will switch to XenForo with VBulletin 4.0. By the way, among them is your humble servant. For an instant assessment of the situation, just google “xenforo shit” and you will understand what the second search word refers to.
In the Have you seen section of the XenForo forum, you can see descriptions and a demonstration of the new forum features added to the engine.
As for the release date - it is still unknown, but something tells me that you can focus on the end of this year / beginning of the next.
XenForo is now being discussed on many sites on the Internet, including even the official VBulletin community forum . However, I am sure that this topic will soon be covered ...
Russian site about XenForo .
PS I posted a blog post on VBulletin, because I could not find a more suitable one. If there is one, please reschedule.
Leaving the team after the takeover of JelSoft by Internet Brands giant, they worked for more than a year to submit to our court XenForo , a new commercial forum engine, which is positioned as a serious opponent for VBulletin and InvisionPowerBoard.
VBulletin 4.0 = epic fail
The output of VBulletin 4.0 in my opinion was epic fail. Instead of the promised major rewrite, MVC support, and generally improved architecture, we only got an updated style developed by an independent design studio that quickly hated the community , CMS, which still (a year after the release) makes ~ 150 requests on the empty main page and A huge number of critical bugs at all stages of the project.
The new team did not treat customers very well. I would say we were a little ignored. So, for example, release 4.0.3 included a number of critical bugs that did not allow the database update to complete normally when upgrading to a new version or even viewing user profiles. Do you think they immediately released 4.0.4 to make it convenient for users? Nothing like this. The developers started a topic on the forum and posted instructions like “open this file and replace XXX with YYY in it to fix the ZZZ problem”. Very convenient, isn't it? Especially for ordinary users.
The new team of programmers includes at least a couple of strange personalities who leave comments in the engine code like“This seems like a terrible place to put this, but I don’t know where else it should go.” , Which at least testifies to their ignorance of the VBulletin architecture and, most strange, the impossibility of obtaining explanations from colleagues.
All in all, a complete epic fail in my opinion. I already regretted ten times that I had not left the forum that I am administering on the 3.x thread, which, however, they are also trying to spoil .
XenForo = True Web 2.0 Forum Engine
What does XenForo offer? Of course, it's best to see for yourself . From my point of view, the user is invited to ... well, just an intuitive Ajax-driven interface, which is very convenient to use. By the way, despite the fact that the project is still in alpha. Subjectively, the interface is more convenient than PHPBB , VBulletin and IPB can offer . I don’t know why over the many years of Ajax’s existence and the large number of libraries that make it not just easy, but very easy to use, no one has released a forum comparable in convenience to XenForo (if you know this, please inform immediately comments).
Unfortunately, moderation tools cannot be felt with your hands, but there area small video on which you can see the process.
A convenient API for developing add-ons will be offered for developers. Something tells me that, most likely, a system similar to VBulletin (hook system) will be used.
In general, third-party users and customers of Internet Brands (owners of VBulletin) are positive. Many say that after the official release they will switch to XenForo with VBulletin 4.0. By the way, among them is your humble servant. For an instant assessment of the situation, just google “xenforo shit” and you will understand what the second search word refers to.
In the Have you seen section of the XenForo forum, you can see descriptions and a demonstration of the new forum features added to the engine.
As for the release date - it is still unknown, but something tells me that you can focus on the end of this year / beginning of the next.
XenForo is now being discussed on many sites on the Internet, including even the official VBulletin community forum . However, I am sure that this topic will soon be covered ...
Russian site about XenForo .
PS I posted a blog post on VBulletin, because I could not find a more suitable one. If there is one, please reschedule.