XDA Developers

Modernize and streamline one of tech's largest communities

Project overview

Quick Facts

Members

10M+

Posts Migrated

78M

Key Services

UI/UX, Migration, Native App

The challenge

The community had outgrown its legacy forum software (vBulletin), leading to deteriorated content discovery and performance issues. The core challenges were safely migrating massive data (78 million posts) and redesigning the UX for a community of massive scale.

The solution

We executed a safe, multi-stage migration to XenForo 2, streamlined the data structure, and redesigned the UI/UX with a focus on legibility and Google Design standards. We also introduced a custom native app to replace their older Tapatalk solution.

The results

The migration and redesign were successful, resulting in a more performant, secure, and modern platform with improved page load times and content discovery, setting the foundation for continued growth and engagement features like gamification.

Project background and goals

Purpose

Tech's Largest Global Resource

XDA Developers is a community founded by developers for developers with an interest in Android mobile software. For two decades, they have been industry leaders and the largest global Android resource. With growth to over 10 million users, XDA had started to outgrow their forum software and needed a modern look. Our partnership began to improve the look and feel, upgrade their software, and safely migrate their data.

Discovery and Goal Alignment

Roadmap to the Future

At the start of the project, XDA Developers had 78 million posts and 3.5 million threads. The two largest challenges identified were the massive data migration and designing a better UI/UX. The core goals set with the client were:

Streamline data structure organization to improve content discovery
Move to a more scalable and extendable forum software like XenForo 2, improving performance and security
Redesign the UI/UX of the community to improve user flow and content discovery
Introduce gamification with a leaderboard and achievements to increase engagement

Designing a community for better usability and scale

Community Design

For Better Discussion

With a long-standing community, it was important to find a design balance that focused on better type hierarchy, legibility, whitespace, and brand-ability, without alienating current users. We found this balance by keeping the iconic brand orange, emphasizing device imagery, and leaning into the Google Design standard appropriate for an Android community.

Content Discoverability

For Easier Engagement

A large component of the design phase was putting in measures to improve content discoverability. Following the natural progression of mobile conversation, we designed the forum homepage to feature trending topics at the top (built with a custom algorithm), top manufacturers, and devices. A flexible tag list and left-canvas topic list also aid in quickly narrowing down where discussion is happening.

Exploration Phase

To Get It Just Right

Our teams experimented with color palettes, illustration, and node structure to find the right tone. Ultimately, a dark color palette was chosen as it is best for a content-rich community, and illustration was removed to maintain focus on the site's utility.

Quick look at what we did

Building a performant and scalable community

Laying the Groundwork

The Tech-Stack

XDA Developers was unique in its complexity. It required a full team effort to address SEO, port over existing add-ons, build a trending algorithm, restructure the node architecture, and pay critical attention to performance. We also introduced gamification features with leaderboards and achievements. Our development team worked extensively to deliver an optimized, fluid, and clean experience.

Optimizations

For Better Performance

Ahead of go-live, our lead backend developer focused on optimizations to page load times (not including JS or CSS). The result was a dramatic improvement from the original speed, delivering a much faster experience for the end-users.

Data migration to the masses

Transferring the Data

Safely and Securely

To tackle the largest anticipated challenge, we performed several test migrations ahead of the official go-live date. This helped anticipate issues (such as attachments) and plan solutions. When close to the final import, we switched the forum to a read-only state so users could still access content. Our full support team ensured the go-live was successful, which required close collaboration with client-side systems and devops.

A native community app

Mobile-First Community

A Native App

XDA Developers was previously using Tapatalk for their official app, but they needed a more custom solution. With the new update, releasing a new app made sense. The new app would be the first native XenForo experience, allowing us maximum flexibility in prioritizing ease of use, custom gesture support, and fluid animations.

Integrating the App

With XenForo

The XDA Developers app was a customized version of our community app, spanning over a year of development. Our goal was to handle as much natively as possible to ensure visual theme consistency, minimize directing users to the web, and maximize control over the overall user experience.

Quick look at what we did

Project Background and Goals

01 / 05

A word from the client

"XDA-Developers is one of the largest phone communities in the world, and one of the largest forums currently online with over 10 million members. We tasked Audentio with the seemingly impossible task of migrating us off of old vBulletin software to XenForo, which included the migration of tens of millions of posts, the creation of multiple custom theme templates, and the orchestration of ensuring a smooth transition for our users and tech stack. Working with Audentio was a great experience--from the project director, who was always very organized, to the front end specialist that had a deep understanding of UI and UX, and even to the owner himself, who helped oversee the project when needed---we felt confident using Audentio for this massive change to our website. They're truly a one-stop shop and we're so happy to have used them."