# XenForo

> XenForo is a British software company that builds a commercial internet forum and community platform written in PHP. Founded in 2010 by former vBulletin lead developers Kier Darby and Mike Sullivan, it sells a self-hosted licence plus a cloud-hosted service and a family of official add-ons (Media Gallery, Resource Manager, Enhanced Search). Its software powers some of the largest discussion boards on the web, including IGN, SpaceBattles and RedCafe, and it competes with Discourse, Invision Community, phpBB and its own ancestor, vBulletin.

- **Founded:** 2010
- **Headquarters:** Reading, United Kingdom
- **Founders:** Kier Darby (Co-founder / Lead Developer (ex-vBulletin lead developer)), Mike Sullivan (Co-founder), Chris Deeming (Developer (joined 2014; author of Xen Media Gallery))
- **Team size:** Small (privately held; core team of a handful of developers)
- **Products:** XenForo (core), XenForo Media Gallery, XenForo Resource Manager, XenForo Enhanced Search, XenForo Cloud
- **Notable:** Built by former vBulletin lead developers Kier Darby and Mike Sullivan after leaving Internet Brands in 2009., Shipped a stable 1.0 in March 2011 and has maintained active development into the 2.3.x series (2024-2025)., Prevailed in / settled high-profile Internet Brands litigation in both the UK and US by February 2013.

## Products & services

- **XenForo (core)** — Commercial internet forum / community software written in PHP, running on PHP and MySQL. Includes reactions, granular permissions, theming, an add-on framework, SEO features and a REST API.
- **XenForo Media Gallery** — Add-on giving members a hub to upload, organize into albums, tag and share images and video, with comments and ratings. Grew out of Chris Deeming's Xen Media Gallery.
- **XenForo Resource Manager** — Add-on for organizing downloads, tutorials and guides as rated, reviewable, watchable resources separate from discussion threads.
- **XenForo Enhanced Search** — Add-on that improves search by indexing community content through Elasticsearch for faster, more relevant results.
- **XenForo Cloud** — Fully hosted, managed XenForo service (Starter and Pro tiers) for customers who don't want to self-host.
- **XenForo Importers** — Tools to migrate existing communities from vBulletin, phpBB, IPB and other platforms into XenForo.

## Achievements

- Built by former vBulletin lead developers Kier Darby and Mike Sullivan after leaving Internet Brands in 2009.
- Shipped a stable 1.0 in March 2011 and has maintained active development into the 2.3.x series (2024-2025).
- Prevailed in / settled high-profile Internet Brands litigation in both the UK and US by February 2013.
- Powers boards with tens to hundreds of millions of posts, including IGN and SpaceBattles.
- Introduced dark mode and OAuth2 support in XenForo 2.3 (July 2024).

## Latest updates

- **2024-07** — XenForo 2.3 released, adding dark mode, OAuth2 support and refreshed core add-ons.
- **2025-07** — XenForo 2.3.7 released as the current stable version.
- **2025-11** — XenForo 2.3.11 and matching add-ons (Media Gallery, Enhanced Search) released for licensed customers.

## Links

- Website: https://xenforo.com
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/xenforo
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/xenforo

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/xenforo
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-08