May be moving back to vBulletin

After 4 months of running on Xenforo I'm looking to go back to vBulletin. My biggest reason is the lack of updates and communication from XF on those updates.

Our search traffic has dropped signifantly. Though this maybe due to my error of setting member profiles to high priority in our sitemap.

The editor is a major pain in the arse. A couple of my members have been complaining to me about the editor acting funky, nor letting them edit text properly (inserting characters and lines etc). I didn't believe them until I ran into it last week. A search of XF.com shows a a moderator saying the editor "is quirky"

Honestly with vBulletin at least I know what I'm getting. With XF, I don't.

 

I've never noticed any issues with the editor on my sites, but I do understand what your saying with the updates.
I'm going to hold strong on these two sites on xenforo, I like the setup I currently have and it's working for me.
There may be a time down the line where I would consider moving back to vbulletin, but for now we're sticking with xf.

 

Did you set up 301 redirects for the new pages and such? I'm still a vBulletin 4 fan and always will be, so this is good news to hear.

 

Yup, they have been in place since day one. I've also noticed a decline in registrations.

Some of this still proves true too: http://xenforo.com/community/threads/feel-like-im-running-in-the-dark.28344/

I was with XF for the long haul but the utter lack of updates/offical word on upcoming updates has really left a bad taste in my mouth.

Bad news is the vB.org importer script is erroring out on me so it looks like I'll have to buy an IPB license.

 

You should see if there's one on vBulletin.com impex?

 

Nope. The vB.org importer is an IMPEX module but it's 3rd party so of course it's not supported.

 

Damn man. That really sucks. What type of error is it shooting though?

 

Table doesn't exist. Basically it imports all my forums then craps out so I cannot get to the next step (threads). I posted on the support thread (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=283111&page=4) hopefully the dev will have an answer. If I cannot find an IPB license to borrow I might just hire him to do the conversion for me.

The biggest pain in the arse is everyone will have to reset their passwords. I wish I could get around that.

 

The lack of updates is actually making me happy. I have done some customizations on my skin and also have some plugins, so anything new can mean I'll spend 2-3 more days working on what I've already worked on. Can't comment on the dropping in rankings, since I haven't migrated to XF, started sites directly on it. I did migrate from MyBB to VB and lost 80% of my google traffic and 60% of the overall traffic. it took us months to recover. So migrations are tricky.

Anyway, if you don't feel like xenforo is working for your community, i see no reason to keep working on it. I for instance am very thrilled with it, but, if your community was better with VB, you can always try a reverse migration and work from there

 

I think the traffic drop has more to do with your marketing strategies. If I were you, I would have posted individual threads to facebook and twitter. As your threads, or pages are part of the whole pagerank shtick. Your pagerank isn't just your main site, it's everything on your site. Your priority should've been your content.

CODForums is still growing thanks to xenForo. No redirection required. And I continue to upkeep the traffic over and over and over and over and over.

In fact, I'm getting hit with more spam than I was with vBulletin. I would go into my webstats and see where the most landing pages are; and clean up the spam. If one profile has spammy links, then more than likely, other spammers found your site that way. This is one of those ways that your rankings are losing steam.

 

My marketing strategies have always been pretty much nil. A link here or there on Twitter or Facebook but no major effort on my part. You cannot take away nothing from nothing, you know what I mean.

I don't dislike XF actually I think the software is pretty good. I do dislike how the devs are handling things as far as keeping customers updated on what's going on. Seeing traffic and registrations dip is my biggest issue.

 

I'm not for or against any particular platform... but moving platforms is a huge undertaking. And moving platforms because of a person's actions (or inactions) is strange if you ask me.

There are lots of good reasons to move platforms (for example if a different platform does something better than you need/want). But moving because developers don't have a fireside chat with you is, well... silly.

But yeah... traffic and registration dips are a good reason as well... but with all that's going on with Google's Panda/Penguin updates, I'd do some research and see if that (or something else) is the cause, rather than assume it's the platform. The platform is the easy target to blame, but it may not actually be the case.

But moving platforms out of "spite" because developers don't talk to you enough is just plain absurd (and mostly a waste of your OWN time).

 

I have to agree with you Shawn on the switching just because they don't talk to me. I don't want them to talk to *me* just let everyone know what's going on/coming down the pipe. At least with vB I have an idea what's going to be.

The biggest issue I have is with their editor. It's a little flakey at times. My members notice and rake me over the coals for it.

The dip in traffic and regs could be Panda. I couldn't tell you to be honest. All I know is I feel my community ran better on vB.

 

Well technically they are not allowed to speak about anything beyond what's coming out within 2 weeks. But that's really here nor there.

I absolutely agree. The TinyMCE editor is definitely the weakest part of XenForo. I really hope they replace it.

*That* is a good reason to switch platforms...

 

Come on over to the IPB side
I've already converted my forum to IPB last month from Xenforo and saw monumental changes. Activeness is much better on my site.

We used XF for quite a few months and the memeber's did love it and there were no complaints really with the software...

However since the move to IPB our site has seen 2-3 times the post count, they love the development of the 3rd party community(IPB 3rd party mods are awesome and have added even more activity to the site. For instance the store integration and the ability to not only earn points and buy stuff has encouraged posting).

For me as an admin, I am a bit superficial and I love the Skin community and have found plenty.....there is STILL only one Skin on Xenforo i like. smh

The admin tools for IPB are more...richer in my opinion and I feel like I have more power.

I don't regret using Xenforo as a software but using IPB 3.3 has been heaven FOR ME and i am definitely a fan of the software.

As far as Vbulletin is concerned, I was considering starting a new site up using Xenforo but I've slowly grown to like Vb to the point where I just can't really justify using XF in it's current state.

Best luck in whatever you do

Side-Note:
I've been using IPB since late May, early June.
They have issued 2 updates for IPB 3.3(3.3.3 and 3.3.4)
and the tracker has updated any bugs.

There has been no adverse affect on my community when upgrading. All mods still work fine and skins work.

 

@Dan, if you feel the community is better off on VB, then make the switch. That's what matters in the end, making them feel safe and nice. I don't have issues with XF yet, it's true I started my forum from scratch, so I didn't have to lose features or encounter problems at migration. I would personally not change it for any other script, since it works exactly as I want it to and my members are either tech savvy (the admin forum) or don't care about the script anyway on my other forums. Can't wait to see how it works for you back on VB and let's hope the migration will be smooth