Reading through the numerous complaints in this thread, I would like to reflect on the most recurring ones — without having any insider knowledge of the DPReview situation:
"Is it change for change’s sake?"
It seems that those who claim this either didn’t read the “Why this matters” section of the first post carefully or interpret it in some odd way. All the points Dale mentioned about performance and sustainability aren’t just words — they reflect the reality of any long-running IT system. I experience this firsthand in my day job, where we support and develop a workflow system that’s over three decades old. We’ve had to completely overhaul it twice and upgrade internal components — such as databases and plugins — dozens of times. It’s inevitable: software evolves rapidly. Operating systems change, browsers change, security requirements change, service providers change, user demands change, and so on. If you don’t adapt your system, it will simply stop working one day.
"It will look as ugly as other XenForo forums do."
Many XenForo forums stick with the default interface. I don’t find it ugly, but that’s subjective. As shown in Matthew’s video, they customized the interface to look as close to the current forums as possible. It already looks quite pleasing to me, and there will certainly be more polishing in the coming months.
"I can’t live without threaded view."
The flat view in XenForo is much more convenient than in the current DPReview forum. It links replies to the original messages and reduces scrolling due to a more efficient layout.
Those who miss that single feature tend to overlook the numerous advantages XenForo introduces: far more flexible text formatting for replies (e.g., tables, colors, code), improved user profiles, pinned messages, visible likes, better notifications, attachment view over whole threads, enhanced moderation tools, greater integration with other site content, third-party add-ons, and more.
"User numbers will plummet."
Yes, they would plummet to zero if DPReview couldn’t find the resources to maintain the old software. But no, they won’t plummet just because the forum software is updated. I’ve lived through two major forum migrations* in the past as a moderator of a big forum, and while we received our share of complaints, everyone eventually adjusted. Besides, it’s always a tiny vocal minority that openly likes or dislikes the change — nine out of ten users simply don’t care and come here for the content, not the UI.
* We initially had a self-written forum that had to be integrated with the main site — not unlike what DPReview has. It worked quite well in the early days of the internet, when there weren’t as many factors to consider. However, as the web became more complex, we had to deal with numerous integrations: snippets from the main site, online shops, ads, and so on. The system load also grew as the number of visitors increased. It started to become tedious, as we had only a single programmer who simply couldn’t keep up anymore. It became clear that the costs of maintaining and developing the forum had to be managed differently. Trying to save on costs, we first migrated to a freeware forum solution but quickly noticed that its development wasn’t progressing as smoothly as it should have, and bug reports weren’t being addressed promptly. So, a few years later, we bit the bullet and moved to a paid forum software. That decision eased our burden and freed up resources for more important work.
That forum and website sadly no longer exist — the financial crisis of 2009 eventually killed them off — but the underlying problems were much the same as those DPReview faces today.
