Why is it so insanely difficult to find good developers on xenforo.com ?

Joeychgo said:

I generally ask how much the addon is going to cost total. The per hour price doesn't really matter to me and is impossible for me to track anyway.

I once asked 2 different developers about the cost do create an addon. One told me it would take 4-5 hours and another told me 8-10.

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A single price is usually how they are quoted, but it usually still works out per hour on the developer's end.

I usually give a range when I quote because you never know what you might run across. Something like 'between $80 and $200'. The $200 is the max and would not be exceeded under any circumstances. Though I have had some people pay more voluntarily because of things added at the last minute that weren't in the original quote.

I confess. I didn't read EVERY post in this thread. I tried to skim to see if this was already recommended. One of the best XenForo devs we have come across is: techdaddies.com. We also recently got introduced to Brandon Sheley. We haven't done a project with Brandon, but he has great credentials and seems to know his stuff.

Brandon is a good guy and has been around for a long time

Alfa1 said:

As a side note: I will have a GARS importer developed this year. Its in the project queue for one of my favorite developers.

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GARS really set my site a part from the other forums in my niche at the time. I really enjoyed creating new content and sharing it with my community.

sbjsbj said:

DaUnknownAdmin
So you prove what I say, which is the normal case. Everybody is in the same boat as you and act like you.
And what addon are you talking about, just curious.

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Well, yes and no. I had a very active forum some years ago. Myspace and Facebook pretty much made forums in my niche obsolete. I decided to take the forums down and now years later former members are expressed an interest in having the forums back, if only for nostalgic reasons. Between working and studying full time, there isn't much time leftover to re-grow a community. So its up for now, mostly as a archive and to see if there would be any potential in reviving the forums.

Personally, I would have never re-installed the forums. There's just no incentive or purpose from my point of view. I think you said it best when you stated "Everybody is commenting on youtube, facebook, twitter, reddit or other platforms. But when it comes to forums, people don't post anymore. They don't upload their pictures anymore or care for their signatures."

As for the Addon; its Xenword.

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/xenword.2775/
http://www.tuxreports.com/technology/xenword/2016/07/05/xenword-3-0-gold-is-available-28457/

After the death of my forums, I started a personal blog and I had some success with visitors to the site. However comments are only present from the facebook plugin. Now that I have both WP front and a forum. Cross posting between the two can be Meh. Sure it's easy enough to copy and paste an article from WP to XF and from XF to WP with a link between the two. But the big "con" in doing it this way is that you can potentially split any conversations in either location. Someone posting on the WP section won't be seen by those forum only dwelling members.

That's why I've been watching this particular addon. Not only will it post to both WP and XF, comments are also unified. Someone posting a comment in WP will be shared in XF, so those forum only dwelling members will see the comment, creating an opportunity for conversations that wouldn't be there otherwise.

A big problem is really time, cost and schedule. We have a small task force (which I'm looking to expand, but few developers are good enough, the ones that are usually seem to want to freelance or already work for another company), we're generally booked and had to clear out schedules to follow ETA commitments and not everyone seems to be able to/want to pay the cost for custom development + support.

I'm working on a few methods to increase the support and performance delivered in these instances. Along with, hopefully, a growing task force we'd individually hope to cover a wider range much more efficiently.

But yes, the same development firms and individuals exist on XenForo, a lot are unresponsive. It's important to remember a lot of developers (as I remember someone on XF.com also mentioning) are kids in school. School has started again, a lot of the smaller developers disappear at this time.

It's just hard work finding them. Costly (but you know, you get what you pay for and all that) and lately, I apologise in advance here; I've just started personally losing faith in some of the devs and some of the work too.
As I said on there, I agree that some of the hassle devs have to put up with is crazy, but also that when add-ons get dropped, or people walk away from them.. it just infuriates and frustrates the situation further.

I think XF is very hard to work with and lack of API has proven to be difficult with some of the jobs we've needed.
It's just hard work trying to get somewhere.

Some add-ons we've used, have varied in cost from £50 - to £5/600

Glockie said:

I think XF is very hard to work with

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I would have to disagree with this. XenForo is really very easy to work with if you understand the class and template system.

Snog said:

I would have to disagree with this. XenForo is really very easy to work with if you understand the class and template system.

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It probably is, if you know it well enough - but I have seen so many developers say how difficult it is to work with.
I do low level stuff myself and leave the rest to developers, but a few have often said or mentioned how it's not 'out of the box' user friendly for developers.
*shrugs*

Snog said:

XenForo is really very easy to work with if you understand the class and template system.

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A stated goal of 2.0 is to make it easier for developers.
I think that suggests Xenforo LTD feels "developer ease of use" can be improved.

Glockie said:

It probably is, if you know it well enough - but I have seen so many developers say how difficult it is to work with.
I do low level stuff myself and leave the rest to developers, but a few have often said or mentioned how it's not 'out of the box' user friendly for developers.
*shrugs*

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If a developer is coming from a 'flat' PHP system such as vB3 or 4, I can see where it might be confusing. But if they are already familiar with classes in PHP, it shouldn't be all that difficult.

Digital Doctor said:

A stated goal of 2.0 is to make it easier for developers.
I think that suggests Xenforo LTD feels "developer ease of use" can be improved.

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I've seen the same statement. And I will be in heaven if it gets any easier.

Snog said:

I would have to disagree with this. XenForo is really very easy to work with if you understand the class and template system.

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No, it isn't. There is worse, but XenForo is far from perfect and employs a high level of redundancy in its code. Honestly I'd say any developer saying that XenForo is efficient to extend and work from, especially when compared to more modern software, is wrong. There is lots of hacky code needed at times, a lot of code repetition, etc. What is right, though, is that forum software in general seems to be poor to code for. I'd rather code for XenForo 1.x than IPB4, for example, but at the same time I haven't looked into IPB4 that much (so my opinion is variable to change. Last I looked into it, I wasn't that good of a PHP developer and it was a very brief look). But in terms of general software, coding is quite poor for it. Eventually it can get annoying having to repeat so much.

That said, XenForo has been a pleasure to code for. The community is excellent, the team is not far from helpful and understanding and it is a great piece of software. XenForo 2 looks like it will fix a lot of the problems developers may face.

Snog said:

If a developer is coming from a 'flat' PHP system such as vB3 or 4, I can see where it might be confusing. But if they are already familiar with classes in PHP, it shouldn't be all that difficult.

I've seen the same statement. And I will be in heaven if it gets any easier.

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2016 PHP code and MVC layout is a lot different to how XenForo works, tbh.

Regarding overwhelming support requests though, XenForo's community has generally been very understanding as far as support goes in my experience. It's very reasonable to work with most people, which is a big surprise for me as a developer, and it's great to work in this industry.

I never said there wasn't room for improvement or that it was up to "2016" standards. Generally speaking the entire XF program was written between 2010 and 2012 with little changing since then.

What I did say is I've generally found it to be extremely easy to program for it and any improvements to that would make me quite happy.

I am so hyped about the XF 2.0.
They praise that it will be much better for developers. And I want to become a developer (for my own needs).
I tried to develop for this version, but due to lack of a dead dev scene (cause I need help), I postponed this. Hopefully 2017 everything will be better .

Same old same old

Existing XF devs saying how "easy" it is.

Others saying it's not

Let's hope 2.0 makes it it become easier and more devs adopt it as a skill set.

Main issue I think is devs that will tip back their head and yawn in your face when you tell them you need work done.

We need more skilled and hungry, XF developers.

A small group of smug, but competent, always busy devs mixed with the usual flakey, unreliable devs doesn't provide a large enough pool for forum owners to chose from.

Above are my reasons not to migrate my 10 million post VB forum untill XF 2.0 has settled in and the (expected) add on update frenzy has died down.

Have you checked on the numerous freelancer sites?
I don't see a ton of request, but the ones I see do get filled quickly.

It's not the developers, it's more the customers. Most XF's customers wouldn't spend more than couple of dozens $ for an add-on development. The developers know that forum development business has many "cheap" customers, so they prefer to move on to more paying platforms such as Wordpress, magento, etc`. I don't think XF 2.0 would bring back developers - I honestly think XF made a great mistake announcing XF 2 so early. They also had to keep developing XF 1 and bring more updates to the table to keep people engaged. XF did what Duke Nukem did in the old days, keep people anticipating something for a very long time, and when it was finally delivered the hype was already over.

Those who know the value of time will have no problem paying XXX or X,XXX for a custom plugin. I don't feel being a xf, ipb or vb admin has anything to do with it. As others have said, it may be the documentation or knowledge base that's less then ideal for a programer to use that is the issue.
I'm only speaking for myself but I think KMA know what they are doing in regards to release dates. I have a hard time believing they would hold back a release for political purposes as has been suggested from the start.

Moshe1010 said:

It's not the developers, it's more the customers. Most XF's customers wouldn't spend more than couple of dozens $ for an add-on development.

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In fairness, this sort of thing happens on every platform, not just XenForo. I've lost count on the amount of times someone has requested 1-2 weeks worth of work (even if we disregard the inevitable days of minor tweaks and/or bugfixes) and offered $200 for it.

As someone who's distinctly not a millionaire, I understand that $200 is a lot of money. After all, you paid that much for your forum license, and that contains hundreds of thousands of hours worth of work, right? Comparatively speaking, a 1-2 week project is a sneeze, and $200 is very generous.

Of course, that's not how it works out for the developer - those 1-2 weeks are weeks we're not spending creating new modifications that will make us thousands over its lifetime. Your custom work, even if we're allowed to re-sell it, might not have mass market appeal, meaning it would not sell as well as the other modification we could have made in that time. Therefore, we're forced to charge a price that reflects the true value of our time, which is too steep for some people through no fault of their own.

Reading Belazor reply it has me thinking.

Looking at a forum as a business rather than a hobby. How many pay not just for themselves, but the bills, mortgage, car loan etc.

That is how many forums exist that can think about hiring a professional programmer... If there is any profit.

Now the forums that pay for their running costs but not enough to pay a full time job to the admin are also the other group that may afford a developer.

So yeah it's probably a small number, that attracts an even smaller number of people to try and deliver professional services ( that pays their mortgage and their car loans)...