XenForo is a commercial
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least tempora ...
software package written in the
PHP
PHP is a General-purpose programming language, general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementati ...
programming language
A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language.
The description of a programming l ...
. The software is developed by former
vBulletin lead developers Kier Darby and Mike Sullivan. The first public beta release of XenForo was released in October 2010, the stable version on March 8, 2011.
The program includes several
search engine optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as "natural" or " organic" results) rather than di ...
(SEO) features.
On November 12, 2014, Chris Deeming joined the development team. One of his products, Xen Media Gallery, now XenForo Media Gallery, joined the XenForo family of products.
Development
One of the developers of XenForo, Kier Darby, had been a lead developer for the community platform
vBulletin. The original owner of vBulletin, Jelsoft, was acquired by the American
new media
New media describes communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for ...
company
Internet Brands
MH Sub I, LLC dba Internet Brands is an American new media company based in El Segundo, California, United States, that operates online media, community, and e-commerce sites in vertical markets. The company also develops and licenses inter ...
in 2007. Disagreements occurred between the developers and the new management and most of the vBulletin developers left Internet Brands in 2009. Darby and other former vBulletin developers began work on a new platform, XenForo.
Internet Brands lawsuits
One day before the scheduled release of the first public beta of XenForo in October 2010, Internet Brands announced that it would file a lawsuit against the XenForo team in the UK, claiming:
copyright infringement
Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, ...
of property acquired by Internet Brands, use of code in XenForo that was refactored from vBulletin code,
breach of contract
Breach of contract is a legal cause of action and a type of civil wrong, in which a binding agreement or bargained-for exchange is not honored by one or more of the parties to the contract by non-performance or interference with the other par ...
, and engaging in
unfair business practices
Unfair business practices encompass fraud, misrepresentation, and oppressive or unconscionable acts or practices by business, often against consumers, and are prohibited by law in many countries. In the European Union, each member state must r ...
.
Representatives stated that XenForo "unfairly stands on the shoulders of more than a decade of development", development which had become the property of Internet Brands through the acquisition. Internet Brands denied that the timing of the lawsuit was to coincide with the public beta. In November 2010, Internet Brands sued XenForo and Darby in California District Court in the United States, additionally claiming that Darby had not returned confidential information from Internet Brands regarding the vBulletin software. The XenForo team denied the claims.
On February 28, 2013, XenForo announced that the lawsuit had been settled between the parties in both the UK and the US. Although specific terms of the agreement are confidential, Internet Brands withdrew both the US and UK lawsuits. XenForo announced that all license holders with a valid license from June 19, 2012 would receive an additional 255 days of support and download access.
Release history
See also
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Comparison of Internet forum software
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:XenForo
Internet forum software
2010 software
PHP software