On my own site, but I can repost it here if necessary: http://dsultimate.net/ProblemOverratednessofXenForo For the general gist of the argument, I'm not a hater of the software, it's just that letting the old vB devs run another product seems like a dangerous thing after their lack of listening to customers when back at vBulletin. And stuff about fanboys.
Well I do think it's highly over rated myself, and I'm not a fan of all the popups, outs, and rollovers, its something different though, and refreshing. To their defense, they didn't own Jelsoft, so probably didn't have the final say on what was going on with the vBulletin project, so I dont hold any of that against them. Just like I dont hold Adrian or Fabian responsible for the disaster that become vBulletin lately. Like I said, give them 6 months to see if they still are actively listening to customers, then wait for the project to hit a larger scale like vBulletin is on and see how well it goes. Edit: After reading your article some of it has nothing to do with the software itself. Xenforo doesn't encourage people to stop posting mods or supporting vBulletin so I dont know why you'd consider that against them. It seems your article is more of a rant against the Xenforo supporters, than the actual software.
Good post. Pretty much what I feel about it. I never really cared for Kier which is unfair since I based my opinion of him by his posts at vbulletin when he worked there. In my lurking I am starting to see the same arrogant replies and one line say nothing posts. Even still I will wait and see if in deed it was James fault that the features we wanted were never added or was caused by Kier. I do know that what they are going to offer, a forum only product, does nothing for me. That seems to be what Kier always wanted at vbulletin. People wanted a CMS. We got social groups and profile customizations. People wanted a gallery. We got half baked albums. IB took over and the CMS was announced and it was mass exodus. That told me a lot about the ones that left. They wanted vbulletin to be their own little playground and bad IB said no. Now a couple of them have their own little playground again. It remains to seen how this plays out. For the sake of competition I hope that it goes well.
I will watch the progress of the software but momentarily it doesn't even look worth spending any sort of money on. I just hope people don't go buy it for the prestige of the entire thing.
I'll address just a few of your opinions: No, you haven't. I have. I can tell you from first hand experience, it's good and strong enough for me to ditch vB (okay, not that big of a deal) and IPB to develop for it exclusively. That and the IPB market for me is a waste of time...too saturated and cheap. Apparently not bad enough to make you stop using it What? This is not something Kier or Mike are fostering. I've seen one person make that statement over there, but even if it were more, so what? It's their code to do with as they choose. Bottom line...enjoy the view from the side of the road
I'm not going for the prestige, it looks a solid product. It depends what you term as arrogance? Judge the platform on the quality not the developers behind it. I'm liking what I see so far. I've not visited the forum for a few days only because I've been busy getting some sites started up.
How have you seen the code? Because it was good enough as software once the bugs were fixed. And because I'm damn grateful to IPB staff who helped fix it, indeed, it was Matt Mecham himself who fixed my installation of IPB, after sending him a message here. They've got good customer service. It's still rather fanboyish. Then again, that sadly seems to describe most forum software fans. Seems to almost be seen as a crime to hate whatever Kier and co work on around these parts.
I'm not entirely sure how you manage to claim something overrated when it's still just a blip on the radar, but to each their own. To me this is over-speculation on something that has yet to flesh itself out. Save your breath and wait to make this argument 6-12 months from now after the gold version of XF has been released and installed all over the place. Even then you're still not going to be able to argue "developers shouldn't run the show". That's something that will take a while to reveal its true colors - good or bad, no way anybody can determine yet. You cannot compare Kier/Mike running XF to their vB days. It's a completely different environment, and also do not lose sight that there is a third staff member at XF (Ashley) who is strictly there to manage the business side of things.
True, there is at least one person who can manage the business side, it's just people have been way too non skeptical about this. It's being treated like the second coming of Christ, which it most definitely isn't. That's the reason I wrote this article. But way too many people see old vB and think it was some kind of paradise and that developers should have full control. I've read online all about what happens when that occurs, dropping sales figures, author appeal over what the consumer wants, treating the customer as a second class citizen (oh wait, that's half the internet). You do know this has nothing to do with my forum? It's on the main site, is a personal article, doesn't show up on the home page and isn't mentioned via RSS posting bot in the announcements forum. It's not supposedly to even tie in to my forum, that's why I didn't post it there. If I wanted promotion in this kind of cheesy way, I'd have posted a Nintendo related article, maybe tearing apart a hyped game like Metroid Other M on a fan site dedicated towards said series and call them idiotic fanboys. So don't make assumptions about the intent.
Ok, and? So yet again all you're saying is that people are getting too excited. You have no real basis for why developers should not run software...and again, I will point out that Ashley, not a developer, is leading the business side of XF. Your entire argument consists of: 1) People are too excited This is based solely on your observations from the XF forums. First, I don't think the positive response does anything to hurt XF's potential. Second, you need to realize where you're getting your data from - from the XF forums themselves. Of course people will be excited there. I think you're just confused, upset, jealous, or something at the fact that somebody is excited and you are not
That's between me and Kier and Mike Listen, you are indeed welcome to your opinion and it doesn't make it right or wrong but I think Ryan (GTAce) has given some good feedback to you. I think a lot of the enthusiasm you see (and what appears to have irked you) is due to there being lot's of folks really dissatisfied with what they have been through at vB and they see xF as a breath of fresh air and are excited by it's potential. I think we all would be well advised not to rush to judgment one way or the other until this product has been out there for a bit.
Mine? What do you mean? It's a relaxing day on the beach...Maybe you think it's crazy because it seems too unrealistic. You would be right, it doesn't happen often - but it has before, I have evidence!
although I have a similar feeling as the OP It's nice to have something new, but I don't expect it to be the answer for everyone. Only time will tell
I'm excited. It's always good to have more options, and to encourage new developments. That doesn't mean that you throw out the things you have learned in your past experiences and leap off a cliff blindly into the unknown just to be able to say you have the "latest thing". It just means that you are open to the possibility that something great may come along. I have no idea at this point whether or not I'll ever own a copy of XenForo, but I'm quite willing to entertain the idea.
And if people are dissatisfied with their current software, and are looking for something similar to what XF ends up being, there's nothing wrong with wanting to adopt it instead of IPB or VB, if those ones don't do for them what they want.
eh I wish I could agree with your article. Some parts you're right on. Other parts are way off. Of course Kier and Mike know that they have a long way to go. Of course it's not going to be able to compete with vB/IPB right off. And no, it won't have all the glitzy stuff like CMS, blogs, etc etc etc right away. But it's a darn fine piece of software as is, and since Kier has announced that once released, updates will come very quickly, I expect that it won't take too awfully long for it to become a competitor. Just wait and see....
