When will you shift from XF1 to XF2?

[Freelancer]

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.

 

[The Sandman]

The question really boils down to add-ons - which of your current add-ons are indispensable and which ones can you live without? Once the indispensable ones are ported to XF 2 you can really switch over whenever you want. Add-ons aside, XenForo 2 will be plenty safe enough by the time 2.0 goes gold.

 

[LeadCrow]

If its not broke, keep it that way. XF1 will remain supported with fixes for a reasonable duration.

Only early adopters and creators of new forums really have any reason to upgrade to XF2 the first year. While the beta phase shouldve ensured a lot of addons have since been rewritten or made compatible, webmasters running 'premium' communities are already running a setup they approve, so an upgrade would not be as compelling as it sounds to enthusiasts.

A handful of forums depend on addons and server work whose code and discussion are not publicly available (developped inhouse, or just tied to corporate contracts). These 3rdparties also need to update their own code but they tend to be slower than modders since breakage is a much more serious risk with those than for addons with a scale scope whose fixes can be quickly produced and pushed.

 

[Freelancer]

The question really boils down to add-ons - which of your current add-ons are indispensable and which ones can you live without?

And I out myself being in the 90-100 add-on range of (non-fancy) great working add-ons. But if you want eCommerce, more User Upgrade features and more user administration control then you are like in the 20-30 add-ons range with the blink of an eye.

If its not broke, keep it that way.

Always a good advice. I keep it like that way. Never touch a running system. My users would never notice the difference between two systems but they would notice if something is not running smoothly.

A handful of forums depend on addons and server work whose code and discussion are not publicly available

That I have too. Custom add-ons developed for that board only. It takes another round of time and money of letting the developer upgrade the add-ons.

 

[Bionic Rooster]

Custom add-ons developed for that board only. It takes another round of time and money of letting the developer upgrade the add-ons.

I think this will be a show stopper for many in this position.
I for one expect years of programing to rewrite what few add-ons I have but they are essential to xf 1.5.x. It took at least (if my memory is working) about 3 years for xf dev to get this far with xf2 plus all the additional second and third points of releases for it to mature.
Extra time? Lots of time until I lose interest or one day I don't get out of bed. Lots of money? That's not as easy to throw away on promises of something bigger and better than what is working perfectly fine now.

 

[Jim McClain]

My criteria is to upgrade only after my custom style has been recreated (and possibly improved) and any plugins I need are updated. I currently use only 14 plugins, including the Media Gallery. Two of those I could live without now and others may not even be necessary on XF2. I have no plans to use a completely different style, so adapting my style to XF2 is a priority.

 

[Maddox]

Any forum reliant and depending on 3rd party add-ons to deliver on their (and their members) expectations will not upgrade until they can see parity with their current setup. And therein lies the problem with software that is highly dependant on 3rd party add-ons to make up the shortfall of stock features; XF is not alone in this, the chasm of lack of stock features and waiting time for 3rd parties is always going to be the drawback for anyone upgrading.

If you are just starting out and are not looking for anything but a basic forum, then using XF2 when released as stable and supported would be OK. Over time 3rd party developers will get to grips with upgrading their add-ons (if that falls within their desires) and then large established forums would be wise to use a test site with their chosen add-ons to ensure that all is well before taking the big step.

How long XF1 will remain supported will also play a factor as to when sites will be upgraded (if site owners desire this); the longer it remains supported the less reason there will be to upgrade until 100% certainty of everything is working as expected.

Personally I'm contemplating waiting for XF2.1 to see what new features are going to be incorporated into the stock release - it would be painful to shell out good money for a 3rd party add-on if down the road the feature the add-on provides will be included in the stock release. We won't know any of that for sure until 2.1 is about to be unleashed.

 

[Freelancer]

I find Theme adaptions very easy, especially with XF. XF is one of the best customizable software I know, not only in the forum genre, even compared to CMS and eCommerce online software.

There is another obstacle to overcome: Some third-party developers are not willing or hesitant to develop their XF1 add-ons for XF2.

 

[LeadCrow]

A lot of webmasters reluctantly upgrade at great risk because security updates are otherwise witheld from them if they run 'too old' versions. The more common alternative is running outdated software with known serious security issues.

Honestly, the forumware industry needs some 'long term support' standards like for operating systems, even as a more expensive paid support tier. In the days, encouraging people to update by witholding fixes to 'old' branches was really a business move meant to make them pay for renewals/support, but nowadays nothing prevents a compromise approach from accomodating a vendor's bottomline all the same.

 

[Steve]

There is another obstacle to overcome: Some third-party developers are not willing or hesitant to develop their XF1 add-ons for XF2.

I wonder why that is? Lack of knowledge of how XF2 code is or maybe just discouraged over the fact of learning the system again?

At first look on XF2 for styling I was a bit put off because it is a lot to take in but once I started digging into it I found things are so much more straight forward and just plain easier to do in XF2.

 

[Alpha1]

I don't care about feature parity. I need much more than that. There needs to be compelling reasons to upgrade to XF2. Upgrading to XF2 will require financial and time investment to port style, custom addons. Who's to say this will not be needed again whenever a second point XF release will introduce breaking changes? XF2.0 offers mostly feature parity and does not offer some of the highly popular features.

Another issue is:
I lost over 5k on highly problematic 3rd party addons, developers who don't know what they are doing or do not deliver at all. Some addons had to be developed 3 times over, because the first 2 developers could not deliver a working product. I'm not willing to go through the same struggles with XF2. There still is no minimum requirement for addons and no quality checks of what's in the XenForo resources. If you post a project on xenforo.com then the replies are often baffling.
Getting a site developed with the mass of addons required to make a big board work is mostly a long struggle. I am very glad that I found a few reliable developers, but as a whole there really is a significant problem with xenforo there.

So it really needs to be worth it to upgrade to XF2.

I see XenForo as a platform to build upon. I will keep building on XF1 until XF2.X offers compelling reasons to upgrade.
Currently XF2 is certainly a step forward and a really great framework, but it doesn't yet resolve the main issues I see with XF1. I know the XF team is committed to implementing customer feedback so I expect that XF2.1 and 2.2 will likely be very compelling reasons to upgrade.

 

[we_are_borg]

I agree with Alfa1 if you want to upgrade you will need to look out for the traps, style, addons and other stuff needs to be taken in account. What i have seen the stuff that is added to XF2 is not yet on the wow factor for me i am happy on XF1 and can continue using XF1. The first thing XF needs to learn is that the software is being used in all sort of way’s not only as a forum.

 

[Bionic Rooster]

What i have seen the stuff that is added to XF2 is not yet on the wow factor for me i am happy on XF1 and can continue using XF1.

I agree and most important to me is the stuff removed such as XFMG loosing many functions because other new users found it hard to figure out. More specifically is functions removed from controlling watermarks. I don't know what other functionality has been removed. Can't be bothered anymore.

 

[Maddox]

XF is a great piece of kit, but (and this is the crunch) it is - in my opinion - geared more towards developers than it is users. The sheer volume of add-ons is testament to this observation. That doesn't mean it's bad, but it does mean that it become an expensive and sometimes haphazard piece of kit. I've been incredibly fortunate to have chosen add-ons from developers who are willing to go the extra mile and help out where conflicts with other add-ons have occurred; this is the exception rather than the rule, but it is good to know that there are 'some' developers who believe in first class customer service.

It is, again in my opinion, a wasted opportunity for the XF team to pull something spectacular out of the bag rather than aiming for feature parity with XF1. There have been some compelling suggestions for core features but they seem to have been pushed aside; perhaps some will make it into 2.1 and beyond, but it leaves a vacant space of disillusionment for end-users who are unable to quantify how an upgrade will be possible without updated add-ons that they use.

Of course it's impossible to factor in all possible conflicts with add-ons from 3rd party developers and perhaps some kind of code of practice can be introduced by the XF team to ensure that add-ons play nice with each other. Whether that comes from feedback from customers with a time limit imposed for fixing conflicts, or whether it's some kind of quality control from the XF team before add-ons can be listed in the resource manager. Either way, it will take time to implement and to oversee and that begs the question who will do it and will 3rd party developers play ball - it could end up in a war or words as to whose add-on is causing a conflict. Whatever the outcome it's the end user that either ends up suffering or having to shell out extra in order for things to work as advertised. This is the problem with relying on 3rd parties to fill the gaps that the official side do not want to fill.

It's worth watching for a while before making any firm decisions. No software is perfect, but developers (in all camps) need to listen more to their customers.

 

[zappaDPJ]

The forums that I own or admin which meet the stated criteria might upgrade after all the important add-ons are catered for. I say might because I'd want to more than feature parity otherwise why bother?

 

[bossArch]

1. I wil upgrade asap due to security reasons.
2. Will advise all customers do the same; will force to do it cross-bones

 

[we_are_borg]

1. I wil upgrade asap due to security reasons.
2. Will advise all customers do the same; will force to do it cross-bones

What security reasons?

 

[Chris D]

There isn't actually any notable security improvements between XF 1.5 and XF 2.0.

 

[we_are_borg]

There isn't actually any notable security improvements between XF 1.5 and XF 2.0.

I would rather think that XF1.5 is more secure then XF2, XF1.5 is worked on for sometime XF2 is not. Would you agree with that Chris D

 

[Chris D]

Both versions have the same principles regarding security, both versions have the same security features. I'm not sure you can say one is more secure than the other. It is true that XF1.5 has been tested for longer on a wider array of installations, but that shouldn't necessarily imply it is more secure. Having more confidence in XF1.5 is probably more accurate.