Lithium

I'm just wondering whether or not anyone here has been able to have a play in the back end of a Lithium community?

Lithium offer their community product as a SaaS product, meaning everything is included. The prices are astronomical though, and it is mainly targeted at big businesses as a support tool.

 

Well they power the Skype community forum, and it looks nice, but I haven't been able to play around with the backend.

 

They power a lot of communities, Skype, Sky, Barclaycard, (giffgaff), Spotify.

 

I can't speak much about the admin side (because obviously, I have no connection to any business that'd want to use Lithium as their forum software), but from a user's point of view... it's pretty mediocre from what I can see.

Seriously, the features are pretty much equivalent to vBulletin or Invision minus the add ons. With the odd choice of using HTML for markup in posts, complete with all the idiotic problems that causes (I remember Nintendo's old forums using it and nearly getting hacked a few times because people would abuse HTML and the filtering wasn't much cop). I do like the member promotion system though, like how Nsider managed to have you level up based on a variety of factors like time registered, post count, reputation, number of topics or whatever, etc. That should be put in IPB or XenForo sometime in the future.

So in general, Lithium doesn't really impress me. I mean sure, them hosting it and providing support is nice, but the whole thing just strikes me as a bit of a rip off, like any 'enterprise' solution. A forum solution for people with more money than brains if you ask me, for businessmen who have no idea what a forum should cost, don't bother to research it and likely pay thousands for motivational speakers on the side. I also doubt the software is that much 'better designed' than it can stand up to heavy server load more than anything else can. After all, most corporate sites using Lithium or Jive are not 'massive' forums in size, and don't compare to a lot of the sites listed on Big Boards or the like.

But that's my opinion on this whole Lithium thing. Is it accurate? Who knows, my only experience of it was through Nintendo's old forums in the early 00s. But it doesn't seem particularly great to me.

 

The community managers should turn off advanced HTML, but yes - on the Spotify community anyone can add their own JavaScript (I made a thread snow...).

I really do like the ranking system in Lithium - it is really advanced, and permissions are based on rank as well.

From what I here, the admin panel is extensive. And you have to take into account the fact they have kudos, solutions, idea boards and blog boards, as well as knowledge bases as well, all built into the one ppackag.

Quite frankly, I believe it is a rip off myself, but they do do custom work like SSO and theme integration and the like.

 

I have to wonder why advanced HTML is on by default really. Shouldn't it be at least an admin only option?

And yeah, the ranking system is great.

Admin wise, I'm not sure. I guess you know more about that (although someone with first hand experience could fill us in a bit better), but I'm not sure it's more 'extensive' than that in any other commercial forum software. Ever seen IPB or vBulletin 4's admin panel? They're not simple or lacking in options by any means, and they arguably have most of the same things Lithium or Jive do. I wouldn't be surprised if my own site literally had every feature Lithium were advertising already. Maybe I'm wrong, but I seriously suspect Lithium are in no way unmatched on features alone.

The custom work is a good point, although I do have to wonder why they charge so much for the software/hosting itself as well as the work. Surely it'd make more sense to sell the software and hosting at a reasonable price then charge the big bucks for the custom work? Indeed, I'm surprised IPB and vBulletin (because we all know Internet Brands loves money) haven't jumped on the custom work bandwagon already.

In fact, I have to say that I think Invision Power Services could probably offer anything Lithium or Jive do for a much more reasonable price. I mean, they're a large company, sell great forum software with hosted solutions and services and could probably match Lithium or Jive on tech expertise or price, so I don't honestly see why you'd go with the few hundred thousand dollars company instead of the more reasonably priced one.

 

One thing that really bugs me about Lithium is the fact that it doesn't have a decent ignore feature. Yes, you can ignore people but all that does is stop you receiving their PM's to you.

You can still see all their posts etc.