xenforo is a dumphouse. there is a guy who offers hosting to people. he scammed me. i posted a story on their forum. they locked that thread stating third party issue. fine. since then, every couple of months, another guy would post a similar story dealing with the exact same guy. he keeps on changing his company name. xenforo people don't give a shit. he is still active on their platform.
wrt third party addons... they don't take a cut on sales (of course). paid addons are sold from third party websites. you have to register an account on developer's website to pay for it. xenforo is not involved at all. they are just working as a directory. they do sometimes pick addons and check its code for compatibility with their guidelines. issue warnings to non complying developers. nuke the addon if developer does not respond back. this is what happened to the imgur add on. xenforo developers found serious issues with the code. they asked developer to fix it. developer did not bother. addon was killed. bunch of us lost money in the process.
there have been way too many instances of someone developing a pretty useful addon. pricing it high. selling a bunch of copies. and then the developer would either just disappear or stop selling the addon for some or the other reason. you are completely on your own.
in the end there are only a few safe sources of addon. some of the best addons are completely free developed by forum owners who coded it for their own use and they decided to release it for free. and then there are a few developers who have developed excellent reputation over the years (Xon is one). they are safe to go for but their addons are quite pricey from indian point of view. but at least you get good support and reliability. and then there other developers who code hundreds of addons and charge a subscription for access to all of them. you would end up using 5-10 of these addons but overall it turns out to be good value for money because you can ask the developer to code something that you need and he might do it and add it to the existing package so you get that for free.
wrt third party addons... they don't take a cut on sales (of course). paid addons are sold from third party websites. you have to register an account on developer's website to pay for it. xenforo is not involved at all. they are just working as a directory. they do sometimes pick addons and check its code for compatibility with their guidelines. issue warnings to non complying developers. nuke the addon if developer does not respond back. this is what happened to the imgur add on. xenforo developers found serious issues with the code. they asked developer to fix it. developer did not bother. addon was killed. bunch of us lost money in the process.
there have been way too many instances of someone developing a pretty useful addon. pricing it high. selling a bunch of copies. and then the developer would either just disappear or stop selling the addon for some or the other reason. you are completely on your own.
in the end there are only a few safe sources of addon. some of the best addons are completely free developed by forum owners who coded it for their own use and they decided to release it for free. and then there are a few developers who have developed excellent reputation over the years (Xon is one). they are safe to go for but their addons are quite pricey from indian point of view. but at least you get good support and reliability. and then there other developers who code hundreds of addons and charge a subscription for access to all of them. you would end up using 5-10 of these addons but overall it turns out to be good value for money because you can ask the developer to code something that you need and he might do it and add it to the existing package so you get that for free.
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