Everythings been said all questions answered nothing new to talk about
Pretty much my opinion with regard to this topic (I mean that more politely that it sounds), but I'll cover some stuff anyway.
Regarding funding, that's more an area for SG/TLB to delve into than myself, but there are still obviously server costs and XenForo will require funds, especially considering the price of some of the plugins. Some of the essential plugins that make XenForo good (spam filters etc) tend to be at least $40-50, and there are quite a few. I've got no idea whether or not donations/questionnaires contribute more than SG has to pay out of his own pocket for server costs, but I think it's worth considering that they might not.
Apart from the other obviously touted opinions on the decline of BL (which is genuinely doing remarkably well comparable to the 4-5 other message boards I've used over the years):
Forums (that I've used for for close to 2 decades at lesat) on the whole are dying left right and centre. Probably loads of reason. Long term posters getting too cliquey, abusive (somewhat) to new users, the youth of today more interested in snapchat or whatever bollox is currently popular. And facebook / reddit having pages for pretty much everything people could want and already have an account for. Perhaps there are just more places out there. There weren't many general drug forums around back in the early 2000s, probably here and shroomery, so everyone gravitated towards them eventually, compared to now, more places so the userbase is more spreadout.
There is all of this.
But basically IMO vBulletin style boards are fucked. To young people, they are probably a bit like those bulletin boards & guestbooks you used to get people communicating on in the 90's/early 2000's, or a geocities/microsoft publisher website.
Personally I think that one of their (all major bulletin boards) greatest failings is the refusal to include a mobile app, as they see the web page format as sacrament; and admittedly also because it would be a lot of work to design something without compatibility issues for plugins/themes/different layouts etc. It is just such a ridiculous failing to not provide mobile app support considering the prevalence of phones and tablets and the direction of technology and I think the people at the top of the bulletin board companies need to
majorly rethink the way these message boards operate if they want to stay current.
This is where XenForo will help a lot, but not completely, but it will solve some massive flaws with BL which
will effect the userbase. Our version of vBulletin was in development between 2004-2009, and realistically has probably been designed almost entirely (at least initially) for windows and internet explorer...! The mobile theme is buggy and clunky, and this is exactly why. Young (and older) people coming here on their phones will probably just think "urgh, that looks like it was designed in the 2000's and it doesn't even work". For perspective it would literally be the equivalent of me coming here, as I did, at sweet sixteen, and viewing a website that started development when I was two and finished when I was seven. That's like when I joined in 2003, if the websites software development had started in 1989 and finished in 1994.
I think this would be great if it worked, other than the yearly cost:
Again, XenForo won't solve all our problems, but it will certainly solve some.
