(04-05-2021, 09:46 PM)deanhills Wrote: Thank you for the offer to help the Forum with a new-look script @Pacific Spirit.  I agree however with @perry and @mzltest we're OK with the old work horse MyBB for now. It has a few quirks and little idiosyncrascies - it's not perfect, but for our purpose it is working OK.

Most important consideration against using Xenforo for me is that Xenforo is a paid script.  And quite expensive at US$160 for a single license and for continuing support of the script @55 every year.  Xenforo is really intended for wealthy users.

I tried Xenforo out a few months ago when Gigarocket was looking at it, and my impression is that Xenforo is more intended for blue chip corporations who want a snazzy looking discussion Forum for their elite clients and are willing to pay for it.  For that purpose it is brilliant.  But for our "free" and budget level voluntary efforts, MyBB is still the better script to use.  @Dynamon particular but also @TrK and @perry are experts on the Admin side of using and supporting MyBB and coding it for our objectives.  It's the script I'm also quite familiar and experienced with.  It works for us.

For post4vps objective of writing posts for getting a VPS in return according to a list of rules, and administration of the rules for quality posts, Xenforo for me isn't really the right script to use.  MyBB for me has a better layout for separating Forum and discussions (like with XenForo it feels as though the discussions are running into one another). MyBB is also easy to moderate and administrate.  If we were to spend any money on scripts then vBulletin would be the better script to use for our particular application of posts for hosting.  Although it is much more complicated and time-consuming to figure out vBulletin, and to install, maintain and use, the script is very dynamic to use at the same time. Its structure is definitely more appropriate for posts for hosting compared with XenForo. vBulletin is quite expensive at US$250 but maybe cheaper than XenForo in the long run as the license payment is a once-off fee with a life time support included in the fee.

Short answer to your suggestion of XenForo is that I tried it out.  I don't think it is worth the high price for it and that for our particular objective of post4vps forum, MyBB is more functionally viable.  I don't think XenForo has been designed for purposes like ours - like it's been designed more for a nice looking community forum that impresses.  Also, we've got a wealth of Admin and Staff experience in using MyBB and it is working well for our simple needs.  It also serves our community principle of supporting open-source project related developments rather than paying for scripts.  Like there is a certain amount of pride involved to work with scripts that have been developed by an open-source community on a project basis rather than paying for a script.

We ran into some of these issues when you and I demoed FlaskBB too, the features provided are cool, but there was not anything justifiably groundbreaking that would urge the transition to a new software. I have also used vBulletin in the past and while it is a solid and stable script, you have to pay per upgrade and themes and plugins are not free. I was a Technical Moderator for a forum in 2012-2015 and we were constantly getting nickel and dimed for quality of life improvements for the forums.