Former vBulletin lead developer Kier Darby to develop new forum software?

[MRGTB]

I won't argue that XenForo will be up against selling, when you have other good free boards like MyBB on the market that feature wise is still stronger than XenForo and is free to use. I posted as much on my own forum in more detail.

On that I agree, and will have to been seen as being head and shoulders above free forum board competition first. But to be fair it's not far from being that already after only 9-10 months. So expect when it gets released it will be. Better code optimization comes into play also when your talking about comparing it to free forum boards.

XenForo may have the same features as MyBB soon. But performance wise it may "wipe the floor" with it because of better coding standards used. That matters a great deal for people who take their forum software used seriously.

[AWS]

It's probably too early to make any long-term predictions of how the forum market is going to change over the next 1-2 years. But right now, the momentum is behind xenForo, who have built a very smart platform that allows extremely fast development.

It's been said in this thread a few posts up. It will take years for this product to get anywhere near what IPB and vbulletin is. Who knows what IPB and vbulletin will be in that time. What I have seen so far is the same group of users that post here that are displeased with IB. There is not one person on that forum from any other software product other than the recent IPB converts such as myself.

This is too little to late and I feel it's just sore grapes on Kier and Mikes part. I wish them well, but, in all honesty I doubt that they will be as successful as IPB or IB. That ship sailed long ago. The time was right for UBB to be toppled. vBulletin 4 as bad as it is still the market leader. The only real competitor to that throne is IPB.

[MRGTB]

I think the best they can hope for. Is to get some sales from FREE forum board users who like what they see as an alternative to vB and IPB. Who maybe don't want bloat. And to pinch some vB sales from unhappy customers who don't like IPB.

That can earn them a good living in itself. They don't have to be King of the Hill to make it worth their while, they can build a hut half way down the hill and live quite happily.

[ManagerJosh]

This whole thread needs a reality check... vB's biggest and best competition with a full suite and a bucketload of improvements in various areas over vB is still not good enough for pretty much all of you still posting here to consider switching over to, yet Kier's bare-bones pre-alpha is enough to start gushing over and talking about switching to? Heck, if he had a whole team of 10+ working on it it'd take him over a year just to match v3, let alone expand on to the point of v4. Not to mention the bugs - ironing the bugs in the millions of lines of code takes YEARS and thousands of people using the software, constantly reporting bugs. And where's the ImpEx equivalent, the business background, support system, staff... none of this is even remotely realistic unless an investor with a big sack of cash steps in to fund Kier's baby.

Call me pessimistic, but the best that Kier & co. can hope for is is a niche product that only his biggest fans will buy and possibly those who need a product that just happens to match his design and feature philosophies that you'll only start seeing glimpses of over the next few years as features start being added. There are already around 30 PHP-based forum solutions on the market, so just finding a niche not already filled would be hard enough.

Sorry guys, but this ain't 1995. Kier & friends could code day and night for the next decade and never catch up to vB or IPB. The romantic days of solo/duo software developers scoring international hits are long gone.

(And just to clarify, I'd like nothing more than to have an alternative to v4. But I'm not even that hot on IPB, let alone xen, which at best needs another 5 years to be anything more than a curiosity to watch.)

That does sound a lot like the old mentality many UBB users and UBB management had when vBulletin first came out...

[ManagerJosh]

It's been said in this thread a few posts up. It will take years for this product to get anywhere near what IPB and vbulletin is. Who knows what IPB and vbulletin will be in that time. What I have seen so far is the same group of users that post here that are displeased with IB. There is not one person on that forum from any other software product other than the recent IPB converts such as myself.

This is too little to late and I feel it's just sore grapes on Kier and Mikes part. I wish them well, but, in all honesty I doubt that they will be as successful as IPB or IB. That ship sailed long ago. The time was right for UBB to be toppled. vBulletin 4 as bad as it is still the market leader. The only real competitor to that throne is IPB.

One does have to admit though, even at the current alpha stage XF, it is quite comparable to the first generation of vBulletin 3.

[ThorstenA]

One does have to admit though, even at the current alpha stage XF, it is quite comparable to the first generation of vBulletin 3.

vb 3.0.3 which I used first seemed to be far more advanced than xf now. But of course everyone has a different view to internet pages.

[ManagerJosh]

vb 3.0.3 which I used first seemed to be far more advanced than xf now. But of course everyone has a different view to internet pages.

I'm interested in hearing how vBulletin 3.0.3 is more advanced than XF

[zshadow]

Sorry guys, but this ain't 1995. Kier & friends could code day and night for the next decade and never catch up to vB or IPB. The romantic days of solo/duo software developers scoring international hits are long gone.

Feature-wise I do not see anything missing for my purposes. The CMS/Blog that vB has means nothing to me. Why wrestle with a half-baked CMS when I can use WordPress?

For what it's worth the owner of one big-board has already voiced his intent to switch over to XF. Of course, it's not going to make vB and IPB sweat out of the gate, but that's going to give it a considerable edge over the lesser known competitors.

XF also focuses on performance. Kier said he's taking full advantage of modern day cache techniques. This again is a huge plus for those of us that run high traffic forums. vB 4 is lacking in the performance department, which I think only a full rewrite can fix at this point. That may not come till vB 5.

[MRGTB]

Kier is already working on a front-page that can be used as a CMS (type thing) here: http://xenforo.com/community/pages/example-page/

This is an example page. It sits in the tree structure along with your forums and categories. We call this the "node tree", as it's not focused on forums. Right now, you can include categories, forums, pages, and "link forums", which are really just arbitrary redirects.
A page is primarily designed as a way to include custom, mostly static content in your forum. You have full access to HTML and the entire XenForo template syntax, including some default variables (like info for the user that's browsing). It's not designed to rival a CMS or a portal.
Putting it in the node tree automatically gives it the correct breadcrumb structure. More significantly, the automatically gains access to the node tree's permissions system. You can specify permissions on the page itself or let them inherit from a parent node. If you deny access to a page, all child nodes (of any type) will by denied as well.

While it sits in the node tree, it doesn't have to show up in the hierarchy. All nodes have the option to not show up in the list, but they're still accessible if the URL is known. The breadcrumb will still work even when the page isn't shown in the list.

Have a look at the URL. Notice that there's no ID in it. This is an option for all node types, though it's only exposed for pages now.
You might've also noted the navigation that's on the left here. That's auto-generated, depending on whether you want it to include siblings, children, or neither; if you choose neither, you can still built it manually. I've chosen siblings and children to show it off.
Finally, there's some page info in the bottom right, like publishing date and views.
Hopefully you can think of some uses!

[AlexanderT]

I wonder about all these "wow, finally xf is so good" people that are so picky about vb4 when there are minor (well for me) things not included like the profile customization. Will it ever be in xf officially? Seems to be an initial positive wave.

Have you ever wondered _why_ a majority of people is so picky with vb4, while at the same time perhaps overly enthusiastic about XF? A lot has to do with communication, and if you follow how the XF team is communicating with their prospective clients, and compare this to how IB is communicating with us (or not), then it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone why things are the way they are now. And by communication I mean talk _and_ listen.

[AlexanderT]

Kier told IB he needs 18 months with more than a handful developers to produce a vb4.
And without these developers and only 1 left? Fact is, we will wait to see a real release.

XF is not a vb4 or anything comparable to vb4. Kier & his team did not have to build on an old code framework and "refactor" everything. Hence comparing how long he would have needed to code a proper vb4 to how long it would take to code a proper XF is like comparing apples and oranges.

Still, xf is far away from any vb release way. In fact, there is no xf at the moment. Or do you want to compare the vb4 (vb5?) promises to the xf promises? I see the vb forum far more advanced than the xf forum.

You are the only one who keeps comparing XF to vb4. Maybe, perhaps, vb4 is not at all what many of us have wanted?

[MRGTB]

Have you ever wondered _why_ a majority of people is so picky with vb4, while at the same time perhaps overly enthusiastic about XF? A lot has to do with communication, and if you follow how the XF team is communicating with their prospective clients, and compare this to how IB is communicating with us (or not), then it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone why things are the way they are now. And by communication I mean talk _and_ listen.

Not so sure I agree with you on that one. Communication was never a strong point here before IB purchased vBulletin. I'd say people where picky about "Quality and attention to Detail", and hence why vBulletin was a big hit. And seeing as Kier and co was responsible for that.

Hence why people are showing a lot of interest in XF now, because they think it will have that also.

Communication here now, is no better than it was before I think.

[ThorstenA]

Have you ever wondered _why_ a majority of people is so picky with vb4, while at the same time perhaps overly enthusiastic about XF? A lot has to do with communication, and if you follow how the XF team is communicating with their prospective clients, and compare this to how IB is communicating with us (or not), then it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone why things are the way they are now. And by communication I mean talk _and_ listen.

Not so sure I agree with you on that one. Communication was never a strong point here before IB purchased vBulletin.

Communication was nearly non-existent with the exception of the use of the announcement forum. You can search up Kiers posts here if you like to do so. That will tell you the communication before IB. If you had luck there were sometimes mystic shortened sentences ending with three dots which could mean anything, and Kier is doing the same now on xf forums. However not so often. It's his style. If you like that, fine.

Certainly lots of people were thinking of vbulletin 4 as a software that would bring vbulletin 3 "to a new level". And why? Because we were told exactly that from IB. We were told 4.0 is "gold". Whoever took them by their word and upgraded, their communities suffered. A lot of trust went downhill.

You can compare both communication, and then the old one may come up as your favorite. The communication has improved since Adrian is on board and I hope it stays that way.

[AlexanderT]

Communication was nearly non-existent with the exception of the use of the announcement forum. You can search up Kiers posts here if you like to do so. That will tell you the communication before IB. If you had luck there were sometimes mystic shortened sentences ending with three dots which could mean anything, and Kier is doing the same now on xf forums. However not so often. It's his style. If you like that, fine.

Whatever you mean by "nearly non-existent", I can say with absolute confidence that I was never let down by the vB product, meaning my expectations were met, meaning someone must have been listening. Perhaps it is just my imagination, but never before has it been necessary for so many old-time users to protest, to get in constant quarrels, to feel unheard, yes, even cheated, as it has been since the emergence of vB4. Sorry if you don't like Kier not replying to you in long-winded essays, but in case you have forgotten, this man's job is to program. Question: How much of a chance did we have to talk to the programmers of vB4? Talk and discuss?

Certainly lots of people were thinking of vbulletin 4 as a software that would bring vbulletin 3 "to a new level". And why? Because we were told exactly that from IB. We were told 4.0 is "gold". Whoever took them by their word and upgraded, their communities suffered. A lot of trust went downhill.

False communication from IB. My point exactly.

You can compare both communication, and then the old one may come up as your favorite. The communication has improved since Adrian is on board and I hope it stays that way.

If you mean communication as in someone is here to chat with us and talk with us without any promising results, then I agree with you, Adrian did as much as he could do. But that's not what I mean by communication. At the end I only care about the product, and if they could deliver a promising product, it'd be a way of communicating to us, "yes, we've heard you and we've fixed this mess."

[AWS]

That does sound a lot like the old mentality many UBB users and UBB management had when vBulletin first came out...

As someone who was there during those days I can tell you that this is nothing like it. There was nobody posting anything negative about John because UBB disallowed any discussion about it.

John was not a UBB dev. John did not quit UBB. John was just a guy who ran a large UBB forum and UBB didn't fit his needs any longer. UBB had long said they would never add mysql support which everyone wanted. John created vbulletin. The development process and feature requests of vbulletin were discussed at EZ Board on a temp forum John setup.

Just to be clear vbulletin on the first release was on par with UBB as far as feature set goes and in fact due to mysql backend was a step ahead.. Xenforo is no where near vb or ipb.