[Master Of Unive]

Originally Posted by Mark.B

Again, and I'll keep on saying it, lack of add-ons will not kill any of the forum products in the market, because only a TINY FRACTION of site owners are interested in modifying and customising their boards.

It doesn't matter how many times people trot this one out, it doesn't change the facts. A thriving add on community certainly doesnt hurt, but it is absolutely not essential, it is a niche and a very small one at that.

Another huge mistake forum owners make, is trying to turn their forums into Facebook,a nd demanding the vendors make their forum products into Facebook clones. It won't work. Forums are not Facebook. Facebook and Twitter have taken a lot of activity away from forums, but that's because they have taken people's TIME. The attractions of Facebook are not going to be replicated in a forum, it's the presence of family / friends / colleagues all on the same network that provides the attraction, not the fact there's a like button or that posts are laid out in a certain way.

The way to keep your forum active is with CONTENT, not by trying to make it look and feel like Facebook.

because only a TINY FRACTION of site owners are interested in modifying and customising their boards

Definitely not tiny, if so vB3 and vB4 were no where near what they archived. I've built many forums and I know each forum need special things to attract people. You could begin a forum plainly simple, without modifications but at the end, site owner have to do more to increase activities, if they do not want the site looks dead. Back in the days, I had some forums which could fill the latest posts statistic within every 10 seconds, and I knew modifications got an important role. Content is the first thing, but the question is how to keep people interest, how to make them keep supporting your forum, not only content can do, because your site is not an unique on the internet.

You provided an example of vbulletin did not have many modifications from early days, but it is invalid argument for me. vBulletin had potential to be great and useful was main reason attracting more modifications and addons, but now they want to turn back to the bronze age. You could not pay for every modification as I stated in my previous reply.

I know some giant forums which have great contents also great amount of active users. Most of biggest forum are still in old version with plenty of modifications, you just cannot see through their old style, for example 2-step authentication. They've been there since vb2, upgraded to vb3, some forums even upgraded to vb4, and likely stalled forever or chose to migrate to another board / system.

Anyway, this thread is just a unreal expectation as it would never be considered. I just want to express the fact of how their strategy changed.