When will you shift from XF1 to XF2?

[BioWarfare]

Just to throw in an additional perspective here: In a large corporate entity with shareholders, hundreds of employees, and thousands of end-users, this process is even slower and I speak from the experience of making recommendations on behalf of my community team wanting to upgrade and facing a lot of obstacles. In case you're curious, here's a quick breakdown of how this request (via 1 email) has expanded into a massive undertaking:

1. The request needs to be approved by the Director of Public Affairs, the Director of Community Relations, and the Director of Human Resources.
2. Internal Auditing Department needs to verify the validity of my request, including that I have no personal stake in XenForo and would not make any profit by making such a recommendation for upgrading to new software. Then, they need to make sure everyone else involved won't make a profit either. This will take about a month and puts every other business process on hold.
3. Strategic Planning needs to evaluate how the switch over might impact future profitability of products, goods, or services.
4. Community Engagement needs to evaluate how they might modify their strategies of communications and special events/opportunities to work with customers.
5. Community Support also needs to learn more about the software and all changing strategies as it affects how support is provided and key phrasing/core messaging they can use.
6. HR Education Team must learn all changes to XenForo Software and then create guides and documentations on how to utilize the software for staff internal-users, such as moderators, with guidance from Community Team and Web Development Team. Webinars or Meetings must be scheduled to go over the changes.
7. Marketing needs to work with Design to determine if the changes will effect the image and branding design and how they will counteract or improve it thereafter. With this, comes evaluation of other changes they would like to make since they will be apparently overhauling it anyways.
8. UIX Team and HR needs to evaluate software usability and if there will be any issues with accessibility of the software in compliance with ADA requirements, etc.
9. Web Development/Design Team needs to be consulted on how custom plugins, styles, and system integration will change and how much additional work they'll need to do to complete these tasks (which they estimated to be around 500 hours of work for the team of 8).
10. Software needs to go through staging and extensive alpha/beta tests before released to public, including a review by advisory team, executive advisory board, all of the mentioned departments above, and shareholders if they so desire.
11. Final review and approval by executives.
12. And more I'm sure I'll probably discover along the way.

All in all, it's probably over a year out from even being moved to staging. I really like the advances of XF2 and I'd like to use it because I believe my community would embrace the changes and additional features... here's to that eventually happening!

I wouldn't mind being paid to really sit and think very hard if I am for or against upgrading a forum from XF1 to XF2.

 

[LeadCrow]

That sounds like an overly bureaucratic procedure. Even if the size and interconnections of a huge forum may justify the careful review, most these steps would not need to performed sequentially.

Sticking to a longterm support version would still be the most reasonable option in your example. Regardless of the attractiveness of XF2, its too early for bigboards to adopt without compromise.

 

[Ummagumma]

This is directed towards those admins that use the XenForo platform for professional reasons (business owners with premium communities). What is your plan with XF2? Will you force it no matter what or will you "play it safe" and wait until you are 100% sure everything XF1 will work under XF2? Vote and leave your opinion below. This is out of curiosity and secondly to see what the XF admin community focusses on.

My answer is obvious: I'll play it safe. I'll wait until all my add-ons will be ported to XF2 which could easily take another year or more after XF2 stable release... I want the highest level of consistency and user convenience. They shall hardly notice the transition if possible.

Exactly the same here. Will only move when we can - and that is when our add-ons (including custom made ones) are ported and compatible, and all creases are ironed out of XF2 and it's fully stabilised.

 

[John Yoerger]

That sounds like an overly bureaucratic procedure. Even if the size and interconnections of a huge forum may justify the careful review, most these steps would not need to performed sequentially.

Sticking to a longterm support version would still be the most reasonable option in your example. Regardless of the attractiveness of XF2, its too early for bigboards to adopt without compromise.

I totally agree. You've recognized a point we made that a change like this will result in us just hemorrhaging money. However, at the same time, we've been given the directive of always making recommendations and strategizing to implement the most emerging and innovative technologies which results in internal pressure from our Directors to implement new things, like XF2, ASAP. I kid you not, when Windows 10 was released, it was imaged to all of our computers 2 days later. And yes, there were software compatibility issues that thereafter put different departments on hold for multiple days. It isn't a good strategy at all, but it's the one we have!

 

[Neutral Singh]

Ironically, while I was stripping down to vanilla xF1 setup to prepare for an upgrade to xF2, now my members absolutely love the vanilla xF1 skin...
Now, i am torn between keeping it as it is or go for the upgrade... having a xF1 skin for the xF2 would be awesome...

 

[eva2000]

I'll be waiting for XF2 addon compatibility before updating my Centmin Mod forums

 

[ŽivaAkcija]

lots of forums owner got custom work on and plugins on XF1 its not easy upgrade to XF2 and realy if your forum run premium plugins, custom style, custom work its cost to much money to convert it all for XF2 also lots of developers decide to they XF2 premium plugin will not be free even if you got same ones for XF1.

 

[LeadCrow]

Xenporta was just ported to xf2.

No other addon was as indispensable to have so its a matter of time and planning.

 

[Matthew S]

After seeing what's coming in IPS 4.3, if you have to go to the expense and trouble of having styles and add-ons recoded for XF2.x, an XF1.x owner would have to seriously consider whether the effort is better put into changing to IPS.

 

[Alpha1]

That indeed is a consideration. But the real feature waterfall release will be XF2.1 and XF2.0 is mainly feature parity. So its not possible to really value XF2 yet, until XF2.1 is out.
IMHO it would make sense to make that decision at that point. Otherwise you may risk wanting to head back over to XF when XF2.1 is out.

 

[LeadCrow]

an XF1.x owner would have to seriously consider whether the effort is better put into changing to IPS

XF1 is perfectly fine currently and an upgrade/migration likely unnecessary this early.
Many of IPB's advances come at a cost (performance, higher server ressource concumption). It might not make a big difference for profitable forums but total cost of ownership significantly favours XF's ecosystem.

 

[Sysnative]

Are there any ideas when 2.1 will release?

I personally prefer XF2 so far. I was never completely keen on XF1, I think partly because I always found the mobile experience a little off, but I'm enjoying our test build of XF2.

More themes would be nice though, but they'll come in time, and under the hood we're pretty excited about XF2 and the possibilities with it.

 

[Matthew S]

That indeed is a consideration. But the real feature waterfall release will be XF2.1 and XF2.0 is mainly feature parity. So its not possible to really value XF2 yet, until XF2.1 is out.
IMHO it would make sense to make that decision at that point. Otherwise you may risk wanting to head back over to XF when XF2.1 is out.

Totally agree and I'll add further; that would still only be the 2nd release for the new XF software. In the IPS case, the 4th, so they have a head start on bringing interesting and compelling features. We don't know what is yet to come in XF2, but I personally hope (need?) to be "wowed". People looking to transition will be looking for the best value proposition, and IPS is making a case for themselves.

 

[Fillip H.]

Totally agree and I'll add further; that would still only be the 2nd release for the new XF software. In the IPS case, the 4th, so they have a head start on bringing interesting and compelling features. We don't know what is yet to come in XF2, but I personally hope (need?) to be "wowed". People looking to transition will be looking for the best value proposition, and IPS is making a case for themselves.

Then again, what your point fails to take into consideration is the notion of familiarity. Undoubtedly, XF 1.5 and 2.0 are different, and there's some very obvious changes in terms of layout and functionality, but by and large XF2 is going to feel somewhat familiar to someone currently browsing a 1.5 forum.

When you decide to change forum software, you want to try to make sure that the new forum software is either intuitive or familiar. With a change from XF 1.5 to 2.0, the familiar aspect is going to get a tick (mostly), but with 1.5 to IPS you would not. That would bring us onto the point about intuitiveness.

Personally, I have only encountered one solitary IPS site in this decade (neowin.net), and I was around when they switched from vBulletin to IPS. I'm sure there there are thousands of IPS sites out there hiding away, but from my perspective it doesn't seem to be a very popular forum software. That is relevant because if fewer other boards run the software you're switching to, the less of a chance there is that any given forum member is going to find the software familiar. Any vB or XF site feels familiar to me because so many forums I have encountered in the past 18 years have ran vBulletin 3 and 4, and now XF. An IPS site does not feel familiar to me because I have so little experience using IPS as a member (or admin, for that matter).

I'd say it's very difficult to create a truly intuitive forum software, since it has so many features, and no-one has thought to create a tutorial system similar to what we see in games (where you're guided through common processes with dimmed out views etc), so I don't know if I would class vB, XF or IPS as "intuitive". vB and XF are only intuitive to me because I have a lot of experience using them, and I cannot remember far enough back to when I was first starting out on the internet and learning about forum software.

In short; suppose the following assumptions are true:

• You're currently running vBulletin or XF 1.5 and are looking at XF 2.0 or IPS as choices
  
• Any given forum member has more experience with being a member of vB or XF boards than being a member of IPS boards

Statistically speaking, from my perspective, moving to IPS is decidedly the wrong move.

I have no real statistical evidence to back up my assumptions or my point, I have only anecdotal evidence; one of our customers was running XF 1.5 and before 2.0 was released, they moved to IPS. I suggested that users would hate it (although I do confess that I did so partially because this particular customer provided valuable feedback and testing, so I was biased), but they forged ahead. Four months later, what do you know, I received this message: "You were right about IPS. Users are asking me how to do basic things. Namely, they can’t figure out how to edit their profiles." and they are now moving back to XF (going with 2.0).

Obviously a sample size of one is not statistically significant, but if four months was not enough for that forum's member base to acclimate to IPS, then I'd say IPS fails the "intuitiveness test" when you are dealing with a member base whose forum historically ran XenForo.


Fillip

 

[Alpha1]

I actually had my members ask me to move to the same software as another site. It was running IPS 4.2 with clubs. My members found it much easier to use than my XF1.5 site. Mind that this has never happened before in the last decades. IPS has always been more difficult to use than vb and xf.

In regards to IPS3: my staff, a group of members and myself could not get used to it exactly because of what Belazor describes. IPS4.2 is much more user friendly though.

Times change. Heck today there was a member who found Reddit easier to use than XF. Now there's a shift in reality. The new Reddit app is good though.

 

[LeadCrow]

IPS has always been more difficult to use than vb and xf.

It's all a matter of implementation. Most webmasters seem to either stick to default parameters or enable everything they find in the admincp.

It should be harmless for features improving staff's ability to manage boards, but users' navigation should be streamlined to reduce distractions. There's a much bigger discrepancy in skill level among users than among the small pool of staff taught to handle the forum functions theyre given access to.

 

[Pete]

I certainly found IPS 3.x more convoluted to use (both as a user and an admin) than XF of the time; these days I don't run either, but what I'm currently looking for in a forum platform is so marginal, I needed to build it myself anyway.

 

[dojo]

I have 2 forums now on XF. One that's few months old, so it's on 1.x and a new one I just renewed a license for, which is x.2. I'll keep them both on their current versions until it's worth migrating to 2.x. While I'm pretty impressed with the new release, I do believe xenforo works wonderfully even on the previous version (at least that has been my experience in the past few years with it anyway)

 

[Jason76]

I'm not seriously getting into XF 2 yet. However, I will eventually because it's always best - for hacking prevention - to have the highest level software.

 

[dvduval]

I have been on XF2 for maybe 3 weeks now (2 Forums). The main customization that had to be imported was my own ad server, and it was a breeze integrating into the design. But I must say traffic is up, and my forums are running faster (also upgraded from PHP 5.3 to 7.2)