IPB4 / xF: 2015's opinions?

[jekyll]

Not unlike many other people, I started a forum immediately when I saw XenForo the first time.

Not unlike many other people, it bores me to see XenForo now as everyone has it and everyone uses the same old effects and styles.

After having looked at the current Woltlab Burning Board (which is like an even more annoying version of XenForo) and stumbled upon the IPB4 release, I wonder if anyone of you has had a chance to directly compare IPB4 and XenForo yet. (I tried to get a demo, but I got one with "Bandwidth Exceeded", sigh.) How's your experience?

 

[Digital Phoenix]

Not unlike many other people, I started a forum immediately when I saw XenForo the first time.

Not unlike many other people, it bores me to see XenForo now as everyone has it and everyone uses the same old effects and styles.

After having looked at the current Woltlab Burning Board (which is like an even more annoying version of XenForo) and stumbled upon the IPB4 release, I wonder if anyone of you has had a chance to directly compare IPB4 and XenForo yet. (I tried to get a demo, but I got one with "Bandwidth Exceeded", sigh.) How's your experience?

I played around with the pre-release and wasn't happy with it. Compared to both woltlab and Xf it falls flat on it's face.

 

[jekyll]

What can Woltlab do better? All Woltlab boards I've seen so far all look the same and have annoying pop-ups everywhere.

 

[Digital Phoenix]

What can Woltlab do better? All Woltlab boards I've seen so far all look the same and have annoying pop-ups everywhere.

It has more features for a start, also if you're needing chat, Tim's chat has no comparison. I'd write more but it seems life is getting in my way and I have to run. Lol

 

[the grayson]

Not unlike many other people, I started a forum immediately when I saw XenForo the first time.

Not unlike many other people, it bores me to see XenForo now as everyone has it and everyone uses the same old effects and styles.

After having looked at the current Woltlab Burning Board (which is like an even more annoying version of XenForo) and stumbled upon the IPB4 release, I wonder if anyone of you has had a chance to directly compare IPB4 and XenForo yet. (I tried to get a demo, but I got one with "Bandwidth Exceeded", sigh.) How's your experience?

Your second sentence definitely echoes a sentiment I hear quite a bit in regards to Xenforo communities really. From my understanding, nearly 30 percent of their users are now running on IPB4. This thread on TAZ gives you a taste of various forums running it and I enjoyed reading their feedback threads to see what major issues there are/were and improvements they have taken.

https://theadminzone.com/threads/forums-running-ipb4-ive-found.134167/

They do have some bugs/flaws to iron out, which is expected of a brand new product, of course but it does seem like they are moving in the right direction. Quite a few big sites are using them.

This site recently moved to IPB4 and the site seems to be doing quite well
http://www.uk-muscle.co.uk/

 

[jekyll]

Lovely. IPB4 forums look similar too. But I guess that's because of its rather young age ...

I don't expect much of a forum. I'm just tired of the missing QA in the Open Source world and I want to have something which doesn't come in my users' way.

 

[jekyll]

Neat. Is there a IPB4 skins gallery available?

 

[jekyll]

Haha, ipsthemes even has a XenForo-like skin. Neat.

 

[jekyll]

Ahh, I see.

IPS4 seems to lack community contributions yet.

 

[TheChiro]

From my understanding, nearly 30 percent of their users are now running on IPB4.

Source?

 

[tomk]

After having looked at the current Woltlab Burning Board (which is like an even more annoying version of XenForo) and stumbled upon the IPB4 release, I wonder if anyone of you has had a chance to directly compare IPB4 and XenForo yet. (I tried to get a demo, but I got one with "Bandwidth Exceeded", sigh.) How's your experience?

jekyll depends on what you are looking for. If you are looking for a forums-only option, then I'd stick to Xenforo or WBB with a paid style/theme and some custom work. Both of those scripts offer far more features when it comes to forums features compared to IPS4, things like selective quoting, better editors, and so on.

IPS Blogs and Gallery are also very new, and lack basic features, like Archive by date for Blog. If you need either of these options, I'd suggest you look at WBB with Blogs and Gallery (2.1 beta).

The value-add for IPS is Pages, which allows you to create custom pages and integrate with all the other add-ons into your site. Very powerful and I don't think they have a competitor with this add-on, but I could be wrong. At least not one fully integrated into the package released and updated by the core team.

WBB is pretty powerful and full featured, and they have a pretty aggressive release schedule for fixes and features. You are correct though, without some style work WBB is boring and looks like most other WBB sites. There are some awesome styles available and very affordable from cls-design however, which change the entire look of WBB. Take a look at this site for what an awesome custom skinned WBB site looks like (not my site btw).

I like where IPS is headed, they are doing some neat things, and more focused around 'content' then topics/threads, and bringing it all together. The development pace has finally picked up, which is good. The bad is that each new release brings many new bugs, some so simple you question if they actually test this stuff before they put it up for download. They just released 4.0.10 this morning, which is focused mainly on bug fixes, we'll see how this release works over the next few days.

TLDR; if you need forums-only, XenForo and WBB with paid styles are your best bet. If you need blogs/gallery/etc, WBB and IPS (if you can wait) with their respective add-on's are your best bet.

All my opinion btw, at the end of the day you should sign-up for the hosted demo's from each vendor and test them out and see how YOU like them.

 

[jekyll]

The bad is that each new release brings many new bugs, some so simple you question if they actually test this stuff before they put it up for download.

Isn't this true for all software?

if you need forums-only, XenForo and WBB with paid styles are your best bet. If you need blogs/gallery/etc, WBB and IPS (if you can wait) with their respective add-on's are your best bet.

Thanks for your insight.

I gave WBB a demo run today but I still don't like it. It has all of XenForo's pros with some very own cons (including the weird "tree" widget which looks out of place wherever I see it). IPB has a demo too, but they seem to have serious issues. I have a "509 Bandwidth Limit Exceeded" on my freshly registered demo all day yet ...

 

[jekyll]

What "weird tree widget" are you referring to?

The one that sits in every single WBB I've seen yet. "Board structure" or something. It seems that it's mandatory to have it look exactly like it does, or at least no one seems to be willing to change it.

It happens... it's probably due to a config issue they have.

Well, I guess my trial period is still "running". I can't even post a help request in their forums about it, as I'm not a "client" yet...

 

[Digital Phoenix]

The one that sits in every single WBB I've seen yet. "Board structure" or something. It seems that it's mandatory to have it look exactly like it does, or at least no one seems to be willing to change it.



Well, I guess my trial period is still "running". I can't even post a help request in their forums about it, as I'm not a "client" yet...

You can submit a support ticket though, client or not. Someone will respond.

 

[tomk]

Depends on the QA. XenForo releases new features -but normally they are well tested and their releases rarely have bugs.

4.0.10 is old news, 4.0.10.1 will be out in a few minutes, I'd imagine 4.0.10.2 later today or tomorrow.

QA, we don't need no stinkin' QA.

 

[Digital Phoenix]

4.0.10 is old news, 4.0.10.1 will be out in a few minutes, I'd imagine 4.0.10.2 later today or tomorrow.

QA, we don't need no stinkin' QA.

Why pay someone to QA when your users will do it for free?

 

[the grayson]

jekyll depends on what you are looking for. If you are looking for a forums-only option, then I'd stick to Xenforo or WBB with a paid style/theme and some custom work. Both of those scripts offer far more features when it comes to forums features compared to IPS4, things like selective quoting, better editors, and so on.

IPS Blogs and Gallery are also very new, and lack basic features, like Archive by date for Blog. If you need either of these options, I'd suggest you look at WBB with Blogs and Gallery (2.1 beta).

The value-add for IPS is Pages, which allows you to create custom pages and integrate with all the other add-ons into your site. Very powerful and I don't think they have a competitor with this add-on, but I could be wrong. At least not one fully integrated into the package released and updated by the core team.

WBB is pretty powerful and full featured, and they have a pretty aggressive release schedule for fixes and features. You are correct though, without some style work WBB is boring and looks like most other WBB sites. There are some awesome styles available and very affordable from cls-design however, which change the entire look of WBB. Take a look at this site for what an awesome custom skinned WBB site looks like (not my site btw).

I like where IPS is headed, they are doing some neat things, and more focused around 'content' then topics/threads, and bringing it all together. The development pace has finally picked up, which is good. The bad is that each new release brings many new bugs, some so simple you question if they actually test this stuff before they put it up for download. They just released 4.0.10 this morning, which is focused mainly on bug fixes, we'll see how this release works over the next few days.

TLDR; if you need forums-only, XenForo and WBB with paid styles are your best bet. If you need blogs/gallery/etc, WBB and IPS (if you can wait) with their respective add-on's are your best bet.

All my opinion btw, at the end of the day you should sign-up for the hosted demo's from each vendor and test them out and see how YOU like them.

I think in regards to styles, that is likely subjective to the individual user. Only because of what we find to be attractive or suitable for styles will differ between customers so I probably wouldn't use that as criteria as to which is better or worse. But I do agree with your overall post.

Ahh, I see.

IPS4 seems to lack community contributions yet.

Yes and No...
Yes because it is a complete rewrite so all of the existing contributions are not applicable with Version 4.

No because considering the product is new and only recently released gold, they do have a pretty decent selection of skins as well as 3rd party resources thus far in a short time. From what I gather many of the 3.X products are being updated regularly to Version 4
https://community.invisionpower.com/files/

Source?

I was wrong. I tis actually more than 30 percent of their users.

I used the reference to DP cookie tracker
https://tools.digitalpoint.com/cookie-search

Scroll down. 32% percent of IPS customers are running on Version 4

 

[the grayson]

That's all users including new ones (like me). If i'm a new licensee, why would i want to run the legacy code?
It's a pity it can't break down the actual number of legacy that have performed an upgrade.

What I find amusing from those charts is a whole 0.3% of the vBulletin base are on version 5 and 2.2% on 5.1.

If I am no mistaken, it actually Is still possible to buy 4.X and run 3.x if you so choose

 

[the grayson]

You can.. and I had to, to do the conversion of the site from myBB 1.8 to IPS. But the point was - why would one want to run the legacy code if you were new to the script.

Kind of like paying $500,000 for last years Lamborghini and you could have gotten this years for the same price - why go with the old when you can do newer.

A good likelihood is that while the code is legacy, the add-on and style support for their 3.X line is still higher than the 4.x line is and this also gives individuals time to move to that particular platform while giving a little more time for 4.X to mature. I've seen some users do this. With VB, but they quickly discovered that they were waiting for a mature VB5 for nothing.

Another reason is that you can still run a perfectly adequate forum on their 3.X line for some time to come as well. Nothing really too bad about it.

 

[jekyll]

Oh, IPB.

My demo still has bandwidth issues. I registered on their forums (as "Some-User") to tell them. After confirming my account, I could not log in because a "-" was "not allowed" ...