Xenforo – A First Time User

After almost eight (8) years of using SMF in my UBP, has moved on to use a commercial forum software, Xenforo. The reason behind of the migration was to provide better user experience to the community as I believe that SMF has lagged behind in providing mobile support natively.

The migration was not without glitches. There is no official migration tool between SMF to Xenforo. I need to convert the SMF forum to a third party software first before importing it into Xenforo.

The learning curve for Xenforo is so steep that it took me awhile to configure it the way I want it to be. When it was done, my Moderators complained that they were not getting any moderation tool. It was hard work again to find the cause of the disappearing overlay moderation tool. In short it I found out that it was once of the addons I installed. I just deleted but it defaced my site after that.

Anyway, here is a short evaluation of Xenforo after a month of using it. Xenforo is much easier to extend its functionality using add-ons that SMF. It supports natively mobile devices. IMHO, it is more inclined to be a social network than a purist forum. Die-hard Xenforo users may argue with me on this. But my worst nightmare is that Xenforo is not documented properly. It got a forum support but I do not want to be insulted if I will ask a stupid question. More so with its addons are not well documented as well. More documentation is required particularly on usage and configuration.