Possible forum software change

[Chris Craig]

I've been looking around at different forum software recently for various reasons, and I wanted to gauge the response to another change so quickly.

A bit of background for those of you who don't know...

About 6 months ago we decided to move from phpbb to Simple Machines.  There were some good reasons to do this.  The biggest were plugin support and better messaging support.  It was a lot of work for brew and I, but we did it with minimal hiccups.  All has been good since.

But, there are some concerns and annoyances that I have.  Perhaps some of you share them.

1. The messaging system could be better.  Trying to have PM conversations is brutal.  It's all too easy to lose track of the conversation, and impossible if you decide to add/remove people.

2. In the Facebook/smartphone age, we've all gotten used to notifications.  There is currently no easy way for us to implement a system to force a notification if your username is mentioned in a post.

3. Software updates are almost non-existant in SMF.  Since 2011, there have only been security updates.  No feature updates.

4. Many other smaller issues.

I've done a lot of reading, and I think that purchasing XenForo would be a great next step for our community.  We should be able to retain our current functionality, and easily modernize and add new functionality easily.  This is commercial software, so we should be able to count on a fast development pace.

I'd like to start preparations for this in the new year, so any feedback/discussion on our current software is highly encouraged at this time.

Take a look at the XenForo site.  http://xenforo.com

[fakr]

I would have to agree with you Chris on all fronts.

XenForo looks pretty good and isn't overly expensive...having regular functionality updates from the vendor would be great.

[jamie_savoie]

I agree that pm are a pita to deal with and I also agree that the price is fairly good.