XenForo Is XenForo Really Worth the Price

[Shawn Gossman]

Do you think the price of XenForo is worthy?

Now I'm referring to the forum software itself, not the official add-ons. Just the forum platform and the features it provides.

If you think it's worth the price, why do you say that?

If you disagree with the price, what would it actually be worth to you in your opinion?

 

[Tracy]

If you like XF and have the money then it's worth it. As a forum offering it remains one of the cheaper ones available and has a renewal policy that is license holder friendly. But this can also be a negative if the developers are not adding features and functions regularly to their script offering as there is no real encouragement to pay renewals when you go months between updates. I just updated my license into 2027 to try and help finance them even though have not really gotten anything that I use from the last few updates.

The good thing about Xenforo is since it is used on a lot of sites, the end users are more likely to be familiar with how it works. That is always a plus as if you are running a different script than other larger sites in your niche, users coming to your site have to adapt to a new way of doing things, and for many that is off-putting. And I have gotten several members comment to me about that.

But there are other options out there for basic discussion areas that I think are comparable and in some cases are free. Discourse is one of them.

 

[frm]

If you think it's worth the price, why do you say that?

Because it has a pretty solid framework to do just about anything.

I'll be getting around to developing my older (and first) MMORPG text-based game on the XenForo framework.

I know that you can disable the forum, but I wish they made it the "Xen" framework — decoupling it from the forum — and forced you to buy the Foro 1st party add on that you can choose to install or not. I think that would invite a lot more developers to the scene to bring life to X(F), perhaps being a contender to even WordPress as developers could make better use of Pages, etc.. But, what do I know?

That said, I'll probably use the forum with the game for in-game discussion, and perhaps to boost the gamification of the game.

Although the forum for discussion may be disabled, different thread content types will be used such as a "Map" to easily plot out a 1000x1000 navigational map (arrows up/down, etc. to move your position) that has, at first, randomly generated, say, discoverable items to picking up in-game currency, which with the framework for user groups, can make plots easily moderatable to add, remove, or change items on that plot. If, I choose to use the forum's thread types over add ons for different content types.