Plans for XenForo 2.0

Tek7

CGA President, Tribe of Judah Founder & President
Staff member
So as some of you might have read, XenForo 2.0 was recently released. I'm old enough and have little enough free time now that I'm not as excited about being on THE BLEEDING EDGE of technology as I once was. I'd rather wait a while, let other folks work out the bugs, then hop on board with a more stable release.

Our license for our paid XenForo style, Splash by Pixel Exit, expired 3 days ago on 1/4/18. Pixel Exit has stated they will not be upgrading their current XF 1.x styles, but rather releasing new styles for XF 2.x once they're ready. Looks like "once they're ready" could be any day now, according to this thread on the Pixel Exit Forums.

I do not plan on renewing our current Pixel Exit style license, but I do plan on purchasing a license for the closest equivalent style for XenForo 2.x upon release or shortly thereafter.

Our license for XenForo expires on 2/4/18. I plan on renewing that.

I had originally purchased the XenForo license using my own money since there wasn't much interest in moving from vBulletin to XenForo at the time.

I purchased the license for the Splash style by Pixel Exit using CGA funds.

I plan on making both future purchases (renew XenForo license and purchase license for whatever XenForo 2.x-compatible Pixel Exit style most closely resembles Splash) using CGA funds.

At this time, I plan to wait until Pixel Exit releases styles for XF 2.x before upgrading to XF 2.0 or making any purchases.

If anyone has any objections, comments, concerns, or recommendations, please post them here.

Otherwise, I'll plan to proceed as explained above.
 
Tek let me know if you need assistance with the upgrade. Im still on 1.5 too but Im pretty well verses on xenforo now, in fact i've modified Fear the Lords a lot. I dont plan to move to 2.0 for at least a year or so myself.
 
General answer for everything: Unless a product does something you will actually use buying it is not only a waste but a vanity.

After a bazillion pointless Photoshop, Windows, Netflix "updates", which are often actually worse, I have been left a bitter skeptical man of any update. That said if you find it does something significantly better, easier, or safer, go for it, if not wait until you think it does. I haven't looked into the, ahem, "Tek-nical" details so I trust you... and I'm also too lazy to research yet ANOTHER thing XD .

I did wonder about adding something like this https://xenforo.com/community/resources/ah-discord-widget.5550/ (IDK if you saw me mention it or not).

Positives: Christians could find the Discord easier and it shows activity in the CGA forums.
Negatives: Trolls could find the Discord easier.
 
Tek let me know if you need assistance with the upgrade. Im still on 1.5 too but Im pretty well verses on xenforo now, in fact i've modified Fear the Lords a lot. I dont plan to move to 2.0 for at least a year or so myself.
Thank you! We'll likely upgrade sooner (maybe even before the end of January?) provided all available information suggests it's safe (i.e. we won't lose content or features) to do so.

General answer for everything: Unless a product does something you will actually use buying it is not only a waste but a vanity.

After a bazillion pointless Photoshop, Windows, Netflix "updates", which are often actually worse, I have been left a bitter skeptical man of any update. That said if you find it does something significantly better, easier, or safer, go for it, if not wait until you think it does. I haven't looked into the, ahem, "Tek-nical" details so I trust you... and I'm also too lazy to research yet ANOTHER thing XD .
I understand and I agree, but in this case, we might as well upgrade because we'll be paying the yearly license fee regardless. Plus XenForo has been fantastic so far and I'm excited to see where the developers take it from here.

I did wonder about adding something like this https://xenforo.com/community/resources/ah-discord-widget.5550/ (IDK if you saw me mention it or not).

Positives: Christians could find the Discord easier and it shows activity in the CGA forums.
Negatives: Trolls could find the Discord easier.
I'd definitely consider adding a Discord widget, especially given that our Discord server sees more activity than our forums these days (which makes sense, given that Discord is real-time and forums are asynchronous). I try to keep things as close to stock as possible to reduce administrative workload, but if it's easy to set up the first time and update, there's a good chance we'll add it.
 
@Tek7

We have that setup on ours. Its easy to setup and once it is, you dont have to worry about managing it. I can walk you through it. I have 2 of them, Nixfifty and [8WR]. I like nixfifty the best, however, it doesn't give a Discord Tab in the forums, which I think looks good to show viewers that people are online. 8WR does that.

You can see how it function on our discord, basically anything in the Activity Wall: https://discord.gg/g5VryDR
and how the tab looks on our forum: http://fearthelordgaming.com/forums/
 
Splash isn't in the first wave of Pixel Exit styles built for XF2.

I guess we're clear to go ahead and upgrade to XF2 rather than wait for Pixel Exit to build a new Splash style for XF2, unless anyone objects.

EDIT: Alternatively, we could:
  1. choose one of the Pixel Exit styles that are currently compatible with XF2 and buy it instead,
  2. wait for Pixel Exit to build a XF2-compatible style that closely resembles Splash (though they may not even plan to do that), or
  3. choose a different XF2-compatible style altogether.
Thoughts?
 
i would not upgrade to 2.0 until the theme is ready to go...if the theme is ready to go then i say go for the upgrades at your leisure...:)
 
I'm really digging Omni - https://pixelexit.com/xf2demo/?theme=Omni

I think @CowRocket would like the default red/black palette and I think I'd prefer the color scheme in the Mist sub-style: https://pixelexit.com/xf2demo/?theme=- Omni - Mist

Fusion Gamer looks cool, but I'm concerned it would be more bandwidth-intensive, which could be an issue for mobile devices.

Other top contenders, in addition to Omni, would be:

Apex - https://pixelexit.com/xf2demo/?theme=Apex

Blackened Pro - https://pixelexit.com/xf2demo/?theme=Blackened Pro

Omni would still be my top pick of the set, if only due to the versatility offered out of the box.
 
Fusion gamer is the one i like the best. More and more devices are on unlimited and this server runs compression on all outgoing traffic. I do not think we will have to worry about pushing anyone over their limit anymore than with the other themes IMO...:)
 
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