Quick Site News

Quick Site News: Wednesday, November 9, 2011.

Apologies ahead of time for the 'What is new' section showing content from the newly added project manager section "forums > products > *" where I will spend the next few days populating it with some development stuff.

As (perhaps) annoying it might be now, it is in theory a temporary frustration. Over time the products are added and then new content and releases will be incidentally. I just need a few days to organize things.

And now the positive spin on this:

We've added a new /products/ forum (not shown by default) with sub-forums. Each sub forum is basically an official xenfans product.

The /products/ forums first add-on is the XenFans.com "What's New Block", which is an add-on that replaces the boring empty page with just a phrase saying "no results found" with a dynamic and fun, friendly looking, page with all sorts of options to provoke your users who would otherwise click away to stay active on your site and feel more involved in the community.

The reason for this is that a) we will now have a public project tools section where we are open to 1) new suggestions, 2) new bug reports. b) A spot per product for pre-download and post-download support questions. And at the top of the forum a clearly listed sticky thread with the latest public release (and .zip download).

Content in the products/ forums are prefixed with a status, using thread prefixes. This allows us to use it as a release forum, support forum, and project tools, all at the same time. There's a thread explaining the prefixes listed in the parent of the products forum.

The last few weeks we've been working on updating some of our add-on products, and releasing them on both xenfans.com and xenforo.com - with improved support options. The last week we've handed out a few small plugins for personal requests, and a few private betas to people who were looking for certain features. The private beta testing period is ending and we're processing the feedback. I expect we will be releasing these add-ons this week and this weekend.



One more thing: We're (My idea, Fuhrmann trying to prototype it).. derailing. We're working on a fun sidebar plugin that we hope to realize this month, for a release in December. Keep your eyes open for beta requests. I have a feeling this might end up to be one used by many web sites. I am going to keep this one a bit of a secret a little bit longer.



Oh, and if you like the What's New add-on we're about to release, you might like our 'Get rid of that boring Xenforo 404 error page' add-on that I am prepping for a beta test.

Okay, ONE more thing .. It's almost Thanksgiving, so if you liked our Halloween theme then stick around as Nix and I are releasing a xenfans thanksgiving theme around the 20th of November.

Argh, someone just whispered to me not to forget to mention the Newsletter .. It will be mailed in the next 24 hours.

That's it, enough news .. This was supposed to be quick !! Thank you for your attention and patience, once again. Enjoy our site. Create some topics! Discuss some XenForo.

Quick Site News: Saturday, November 12, 2011.

The last few days we've started working on the basics of the Thanksgiving '11 theme for XenForo 1.1 and we've published our monthly Newsletter.

We've also released a few add-ons that I think you guys will like. And the board is now upgraded to 1.1.0 beta 5.

Quick Site News: November 18, 2011.

We can now convert phpBB3 boards over using an internal script, this includes attachments and passwords.

The XenFans.com web site has been upgraded to XenForo 1.1's release candidate. Have fun posting.

Quick Site News: November 23, 2011.

As the last month of the year approaches we're finalizing our articles and newsletters that we have scheduled for November and December. Before we take time off near the end of December to prepare for XenFans 2012.

This week was supposed to be about the Thanksgiving theme, but unfortunately my eyes have been acting up and rushing the style to a finish wasn't possible when the last few days I have been feeling under the weather because of a cold or beginning flu. I am a bit forced to focus on other priorities on my todo list.

XenFans has been upgraded to 1.1, the announcement of the 1.1 release has been posted and we invite everybody to come post on our site about their 1.1 experience and opinion.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

Quick Site News: November 27, 2011.

The hosting solution for XenFans has been paid last year with the help of donations, my own money and funding from my parents. From people that support my project, our project. The bill can't be paid in 2012, and this means that 2 months ahead of renewal that this dedicated solution has to get cancelled. I've done so today.

The end-date is February 1st, 2012. Giving me two months to find a sponsor for 2012, or an affordable solution with Linode.com or Leaseweb.com.

As mentioned earlier this year I will try to improve transparency with xenfans, this is one of those decisions where I decided to include the community.

Worst case scenario, I end up hosting on a very cheap vps hoping it helps me run the site in 2012.
Best case scenario, I find the funding and a matching vps/dedicated solution to run the site in 2012.

A bigger percentage of my time in 2012 will be spend on other elements on my life, but xenfans won't go away just like that. The site can remain open with the efforts of the team, premium and regular members.

Quick Site News: November 30, 2011.

Preparations for content creation in 2012 are being made from December on. I've made a start today.
Final drafts for the articles in December and the Newsletter are being reviewed before making them public.

The "old" products forum has been merged with the "new" products forum. And has now replaced the "old" one. The url portion is set to 'products' in preparation for the December forum structure review/changes.

The spam from this year has been reviewed, processed and deleted from the site. The statistics from today 11,200 posts, are without archived spam. Of course, we still have archived staff and user discussions from 2010/2011. Some other maintenance to the archive/ has been done as well, but that's of no interest to you guys.

Because we want to keep XenFans.com online and moving forward in 2012 without much of my interaction it's important that I prepare for 2012 early, write out the internal and public policies and set the pricing ahead of time. I do invite you to share your resources, articles, tips, experiences, questions and fun chats on our forum. The more active it is, the more reason we have to keep things running.

Please note that any of our quotes, pricing, team positions, advertising, premium memberships, etc are all to expire on December 31st, 2011. And that per 2012 we might have some updates on these (or not). We've got a pretty good idea what we want in 2012 (yes, we go by an internal roadmap) and we're ironing out these ideas into decisions that help us, and you, and future visitors. No, we're not abandoning our team, you or our premium membership, just letting you guys know (for sake of transparency) that a new year is coming and this means it's time to review what we have, and how to approach it in the new year - based on the new situation of my available new time, and everything involved in running a site.

Quick Site News: December 8, 2011.

From the beginning we've taken XenForo and XenFans serious, despite that XenFans.com is a hobby site. However, we knew that we were new to the XenForo game. Despite having years of experience with community software, importing between them, and administrating the sites on the front-end as well as the back-end of the server it runs on.

We decided internally on prices vs value map. and decided to help early adopters to convert early and quick - to the best of our knowledge. The reality is that I then decided that any price will get cut in half, and then some. As the year progressed we made a few adjustments as our experience grew. And when XenForo 1.0 became stable so did our pricing. We announced that we wouldn't make any further updates until the end of the year. Even with us offering it at around 50% off.

It's now the end of the year, and this is a heads up that we will adjust the products / services / and account pricing early 2012. Details will follow. The schedule is to set new pricing for early 2012, and to adjust them summer 2012 one more time.

We've created great unofficial partnerships with third party sites and individuals and constantly refer to them where we can't help (and visa versa). XenForo isn't a cut throat universe, it's one big group of guys and girls doing teamwork to help you achieve what you're trying to do with your community.

In other news; the monthly newsletter will be short and sweet, and soon out of the door. Our articles will soon be published. And we will slightly organize the site to be ready for 2012.

Come post. Create new threads, new conversations. Check out profiles and talk to your friends. Ask questions, we can help. 2012 we will introduce more articles, video walkthroughs, polls and interviews.

XenFans sits on top of XenForo.com, and is part of the XenForo universe. We have in 2010, we are in 2011 until the end, and with your help we will remain so in 2012.

Quick Site News: December 10, 2011.

The monthly newsletter has been mailed. Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year everybody.

The next version of our staff page has been made public; http://xenfans.com/pages/team/
It's still not 100% how I want it, but it's up to date at least, and has the new html5-shell around it.

Quick Site News: Saturday, December 17, 2011.

Our team will be around on the site during December when they can. Personally I will be around for XenFans again in January.

Update: January 2012

The XenFans.com Community is running in Archive mode,

allowing you to login, view discussions and download attachments.