53 replies to this topic

[Razasharp]

 A few ex-vB users have been singing the praises of IPB, so I'm here to take a look as I am considering using a different solution for our sites. Got a few questions I hope someone can help with...

Firstly, the thing I am most interested in is your IP.Content, so I'll kick off with a few questions about that:

• Can the pages created include a user comments area? (So members can comment on published content)
• Can the pages created be set-up with multiple custom fields? Eg, Name, Address, Tel, Postcode, etc?
• Can members search by those custom fields?
• Can some of them be set as 'required'
• Can permissions allowing members to (or not) publish content in these IP.C sections be granted depending on which usergroup they are in?
• Is IP.C server efficient for a busy site that will have lots of published content?
• Does IP.C offer SEF urls? Or can we set our own? Eg, /about.htm
• If user comments are allowed - do they get counted towards post-count and can be found from the users profile? 'eg in the 'latest posts link' or similar
• Can we have different types of 'content' in IP.C, for example most of the above could apply to an article publishing system where the pages are the story - could we create another page then in IP.C that acts like a homepage for the above, pulling in the latest 10 articles, most read articles, most commented articles etc (I guess so, but just checking).
• How easy is it to do the above? How much PHP knowledge would you need? Are there any tutorials on getting some basic stuff done?

Ok I think that's enough about IP.C for now.. here's some more about IPB in general:

User profiles

• Can you choose not to use the tabbed layout? Can I just have one scrolling page and each element where I want? (Like this example)
  
• Can we have custom profile fields? Is there a way to create graphical representations of some of those items in such fields? (Again see link above, i.e. the consoles owned)
• Can I rearrange custom profile fields how I want? (i.e. the order and placement)
• Will custom fields parse line breaks correctly?
• When you reply to a comment left on your profile - does the comment appear on both yours and the persons profile who left you the comment?

General Questions

• Conditionals - I guess you can show only certain things to members/guests? Can you read things from a users profile too - eg, if there is a custom field on the profile asking if the member is male/female, I can use a conditional to show they are m/f in the posts they make? Same for any other profile info - is it available to me in posts they make (via template>conditionals) ..see  this page for an idea (console platform images)
  
• Does IPB have plug-ins or an easy way to say, show the last ten threads in a column on forum home?
• Will you be adding Social Groups? This is a must for a number of my sites. SGs should be able to have their own mini-forums and group blogs too.
• Have you got any example urls to some customised professional looking IPB forums?
• ..Could the site's design I have linked to above be easily customised into IPB?

Well I think that's it for now - I'll have another look at your demo at a later date (it ran out before I could have a proper look last time!) but hope someone can answer these questions in the meantime. Cheers.

[Charles]

While someone I am sure is typing out the answer to all of your questions ... I went ahead and created a 7-day demo account and emailed the information to you.

[Collin1000]

Replying now..... I swear if someone beats me to this

[Collin1000]

I dont use IP.C so im just going to tackle everything else......

Ok I think that's enough about IP.C for now.. here's some more about IPB in general:

User profiles

• Can you choose not to use the tabbed layout? Can I just have one scrolling page and each element where I want? (Like this example) With a bit of modification and customization, yes.
• Can we have custom profile fields? Is there a way to create graphical representations of some of those items in such fields? (Again see link above, i.e. the consoles owned) Yes and yes, both built in.
• Can I rearrange custom profile fields how I want? (i.e. the order and placement) Not sure what you mean by this, like the order it shows up in topics?
• Will custom fields parse line breaks correctly? I honestly do not know.
• When you reply to a comment left on your profile - does the comment appear on both yours and the persons profile who left you the comment? No, it does not. It only appears on the page you wrote it on.

General Questions

• Conditionals - I guess you can show only certain things to members/guests? Can you read things from a users profile too - eg, if there is a custom field on the profile asking if the member is male/female, I can use a conditional to show they are m/f in the posts they make? Same for any other profile info - is it available to me in posts they make (via template>conditionals) ..see this page for an idea (console platform images IPB has a built in conditionals list. I know if admin, if guest, all built in. I dont know if there is "if male" or not, but it wont be too hard to see.
• Does IPB have plug-ins or an easy way to say, show the last ten threads in a column on forum home? Built in hook.
• Will you be adding Social Groups? This is a must for a number of my sites. SGs should be able to have their own mini-forums and group blogs too. I think there may be a mod for this. I know there was back on 2.1ish. Personally, I dont think it should be built in though. Bloat.
• Have you got any example urls to some customised professional looking IPB forums?

Skype - http://forums.skype.com/
Vodafone - http://forum.vodafon...dex.php?act=idx
O'Reilly - http://forums.oreilly.com/
nVidia - http://forums.nvidia.com/
Roxio - http://forums.support.roxio.com/
NBC - http://boards.nbc.com/nbc/index.php
Television Without Pity - http://forums.televi...ithoutpity.com/
Atlanta Falcons - http://life.atlantafalcons.com/index
American Idol Forums - http://idolforums.com/

• ..Could the site's design I have linked to above be easily customised into IPB?

[bfarber]

A few ex-vB users have been singing the praises of IPB, so I'm here to take a look as I am considering using a different solution for our sites. Got a few questions I hope someone can help with...

Firstly, the thing I am most interested in is your IP.Content, so I'll kick off with a few questions about that:

• Can the pages created include a user comments area? (So members can comment on published content)
• Can the pages created be set-up with multiple custom fields? Eg, Name, Address, Tel, Postcode, etc?
• Can members search by those custom fields?
• Can some of them be set as 'required'
• Can permissions allowing members to (or not) publish content in these IP.C sections be granted depending on which usergroup they are in?
• Is IP.C server efficient for a busy site that will have lots of published content?
• Does IP.C offer SEF urls? Or can we set our own? Eg, /about.htm
• If user comments are allowed - do they get counted towards post-count and can be found from the users profile? 'eg in the 'latest posts link' or similar
• Can we have different types of 'content' in IP.C, for example most of the above could apply to an article publishing system where the pages are the story - could we create another page then in IP.C that acts like a homepage for the above, pulling in the latest 10 articles, most read articles, most commented articles etc (I guess so, but just checking).
• How easy is it to do the above? How much PHP knowledge would you need? Are there any tutorials on getting some basic stuff done?

Ok I think that's enough about IP.C for now.. here's some more about IPB in general:

1) At present, only the database system supports direct comments. We may or may not expand comments to pages in the future. An alternative that you can do presently, as well, is to create a topic and feed it to a page (or mirror it, if you want to just copy it). Then you can feed replies to that topic to the page and style them as comments. Users would then go to the thread to reply.

2) Pages in IP.Content are exactly that - pages. You get a big textarea basically to define the page content. Databases, on the other hand, are completely custom organizational units. You create the fields for your custom databases yourself. There are no limit to the number of fields you can create.

3) Members can filter content based on the custom fields, yes.

http://community.inv...tml?category=35
This is a custom database we created. It is using the default template, which we haven't modified. You'll see sorting and filtering options at the bottom of the page, which you can use to sort and filter the content (i.e. to search for errors in a specific module, for instance).

4) Custom fields in databases can be set as required, yes.

5) Yes. You can control permissions on a per-category basis as well (i.e. allow members to publish articles in a database, but then only allow admins to publish articles within a specific category, for example).

6) We use IP.Content for our main website and have had no trouble at all. I would not anticipate any IP.Content-specific resource issues.

7) When you create pages you specify the URL. It can have an extension if you prefer ("about.html", "somepage.page", etc.) or you can leave the extension off. It's up to you. Databases, when embedded into a page, use that page name you specified, and then append query string parameters to identify what content to load. Again, see the link I provided earlier for the error codes database as an example.

We are considering SEF urls for categories and records within databases for the next release. It's a bit harder than the rest of the software, because we allow you to define folder and page names for IP.Content, but I imagine we'll be able to come up with something.

8) No, they do not count towards post count. There is also no block in the user profile presently to show comments a user has made, although this wouldn't be a difficult thing to add.

9) Yes, IP.Content is a powerful tool for this sort of thing. You can create a database of articles, for instance. Then you create a normal homepage, and create feeds from your database (and blog, and forum, and whatever else you want to grab data from) and place those feeds on your homepage.

On our main website homepage at the bottom you will see two such feeds pulling our latest blog entries and our latest news.

10) For the stuff you've listed, it's extremely simple.

--Create your custom database
--Configure the custom fields for the database
--Configure categories, moderators, or anything else you need (none of these are required)
--(Optional) Edit the database templates for the layout you want. You can also use the default templates to get started, as we've done in the error codes database
--Add the database to a new page
--Done

User profiles

• Can you choose not to use the tabbed layout? Can I just have one scrolling page and each element where I want? (Like this example)
  
• Can we have custom profile fields? Is there a way to create graphical representations of some of those items in such fields? (Again see link above, i.e. the consoles owned)
• Can I rearrange custom profile fields how I want? (i.e. the order and placement)
• Will custom fields parse line breaks correctly?
• When you reply to a comment left on your profile - does the comment appear on both yours and the persons profile who left you the comment?

1) You would need to modify the skin template, but it's doable, yes.

2) Yes

3) Yes

4) Yes

5) No, only on your own

General Questions

• Conditionals - I guess you can show only certain things to members/guests? Can you read things from a users profile too - eg, if there is a custom field on the profile asking if the member is male/female, I can use a conditional to show they are m/f in the posts they make? Same for any other profile info - is it available to me in posts they make (via template>conditionals) ..see this page for an idea (console platform images)
  
• Does IPB have plug-ins or an easy way to say, show the last ten threads in a column on forum home?
• Will you be adding Social Groups? This is a must for a number of my sites. SGs should be able to have their own mini-forums and group blogs too.
• Have you got any example urls to some customised professional looking IPB forums?
• ..Could the site's design I have linked to above be easily customised into IPB?

Well I think that's it for now - I'll have another look at your demo at a later date (it ran out before I could have a proper look last time!) but hope someone can answer these questions in the meantime. Cheers.

1) Yes

2) Yes (we have such a plugin on our forum index actually, in the right hand sidebar). You can use hooks, or if you use IP.Content you can create custom blocks in IP.Content and then embed them anywhere in the forums too.

3) We have not decided on this as of yet.

4) http://boards.nbc.com/nbc/
http://forums.skype.com/ (yes, this is an IPB)
http://answers.oreilly.com/ (again, yes, this is IPB)

Few examples off the top of my head.

5) Yes - there's very little you can't do in terms of layout and visual customization (see the last 2 examples I gave)

[Razasharp]

Thanks for the replies, especially Brandon for the detailed response and Charles for the demo account (which unfortunately I haven't had time to play with yet). I'll probably just go ahead and buy a license so we can have a good mess around - and if I think of any more questions will pop back to this thread with them.

While I have a few in mind tho...

• Is there a 'who visited the forum in the last 24 hours' hack?
• When reply notifications are sent - is there an option to include the text of the post? (I once removed them from our largest site and the members didn't like it one little bit!)
• Can you move actual blog posts to the forums and vice versa? This is important for us as we tend to keep certain things in blogs, certain things in threads.
• You said you hadn't decided on social groups - any idea when you will come to a decision? I don't fancy the 'wait and see' game many of us have been playing for far too long over the road
• Is there a roadmap anywhere? Or a place where you have touched on the direction your product will go in? Specifically...
• Are you more interested in making IPB _more like_ facebook, or making IPB something that works _along side_ (or compliments) facebook? (I am more interested in the former).
• IP.Content - so you can set up 'databases' of things (lets say for eg names and addresses) can members then add to/edit/comment on entries in that 'db'? Am I correct in thinking IP/Content can then also be used to create a page that displays data from that database? (eg like a section homepage - for the names and addresses 'db', perhaps with blocks to display latest entries, most commented entries etc?). If so that sounds just like what we're looking for.
• Failing 7 above, is there, or are there any plans to add a custom thread fields option? Where basically custom fields for certain forums can be added in the AdminCP?

Ok think that's enough for now - and thanks in advance!

[bfarber]

Thanks for the replies, especially Brandon for the detailed response and Charles for the demo account (which unfortunately I haven't had time to play with yet). I'll probably just go ahead and buy a license so we can have a good mess around - and if I think of any more questions will pop back to this thread with them.

While I have a few in mind tho...

• Is there a 'who visited the forum in the last 24 hours' hack?
• When reply notifications are sent - is there an option to include the text of the post? (I once removed them from our largest site and the members didn't like it one little bit!)
• Can you move actual blog posts to the forums and vice versa? This is important for us as we tend to keep certain things in blogs, certain things in threads.
• You said you hadn't decided on social groups - any idea when you will come to a decision? I don't fancy the 'wait and see' game many of us have been playing for far too long over the road
• Is there a roadmap anywhere? Or a place where you have touched on the direction your product will go in? Specifically...
• Are you more interested in making IPB _more like_ facebook, or making IPB something that works _along side_ (or compliments) facebook? (I am more interested in the former).
• IP.Content - so you can set up 'databases' of things (lets say for eg names and addresses) can members then add to/edit/comment on entries in that 'db'? Am I correct in thinking IP/Content can then also be used to create a page that displays data from that database? (eg like a section homepage - for the names and addresses 'db', perhaps with blocks to display latest entries, most commented entries etc?). If so that sounds just like what we're looking for.
• Failing 7 above, is there, or are there any plans to add a custom thread fields option? Where basically custom fields for certain forums can be added in the AdminCP?

Ok think that's enough for now - and thanks in advance!

Hello

1) http://community.inv...line-today-100/

2) Yes, this is a per-user option so that each user can decide if they want the reply text or not. It's set in the My Settings page (click your name at the top and choose My Settings).

3) Not at present, I'm afraid. You can "blog this post" if you have created a blog (to start a blog discussion about a forum topic) but you can't actually move data from one to the other.

4) It's something we have mixed feelings about. If we implement it, it has to be done right (overwhelmingly, most of the users converting to IPB and talking about social groups have not been happy with the way they've been implemented in competing packages, and we don't want to go down the same road). It's not something you are likely to see in the next update, if it helps. I can't really say much beyond that, as the plans are not definite.

5) We discuss upcoming changes in our blog quite frequently. We don't generally announce expected changes until we're sure they'll make it in (which is usually after they are actually coded). Outside of that, we are very communicative in the forums themselves - just have a look around our suggestions forums and you'll often see us putting in feedback and thoughts on various suggestions.

6) Both, though we're not out to clone facebook at the same time. You will notice we have enhanced how status updates are going to work (to be more like facebook) in our next update from this blog entry. At the same time, we've enhanced twitter and facebook integration options in 3.1 to communicate with those sites as well. You can shut off any facebook integration via the ACP if you don't wish to use it.

Long story short - we have no intentions of recreating everything site a or site b does. But that doesn't mean that ideas may not be useful within a forum environment. Additionally, we have no aversion to integration with strong and stable third party sites/services.

7) Yes, members can add/edit/comment on database entries (if you allow them to with the permissions). Yes the database automatically can be listed and displayed on the front end. The most common use for it is articles, but we didn't want to limit the feature to only support articles, because there are many other databases people can create with our setup that can be useful. Rikki has been working on a mockup site for an enterprise client that, while we probably can't reveal "as-is", I'm hopeful we can show to everyone in some fashion to demonstrate just how powerful IP.Content is.

Our articles, links and error codes are all separate custom databases in IP.Content.

8) This isn't high on any internal priority list that I've seen at this time. You could always post a feature suggestion so we can gauge how many people want such a feature.

[Razasharp]

Thanks again for the reply and sorry about the delay in getting back to you.

You could always post a feature suggestion so we can gauge how many people want such a feature.

I must be going blind - can't see it.. is it for licensed customers only? I wanted to ask if you've decided on social/member-created groups yet - it's a must for the site I am thinking about converting to IPB, and I need to know asap as I have to decide on which platform to go with by the end of this month.

Cheers.

[Ditchmonkey]

Well if Razasharp is considering the switch - pigs must be flying etc. I'd be happy to give you a tour of my work with IP.content Raza. You and I had extensive discussions in forum integrated CMS's over at VB if you recall.

[peaderfi]

If it helps I'm in the process of developing a Social Groups addon for IPB. It will be a paid addon (probably in the region of $15) and should be released within the next week.

[Razasharp]

Well if Razasharp is considering the switch - pigs must be flying etc. I'd be happy to give you a tour of my work with IP.content Raza. You and I had extensive discussions in forum integrated CMS's over at VB if you recall.

Hey D/RM - I remb our discussions 

Tbh, I don't think either package will give me exactly what I want.  Both vB and IPB have their pros and cons but IP.C will, I think, give me the type of custom fields that I'm after whilst being more server friendly than vB's publishing platform (that seems to be aimed more at people who want a simpler system that just publishes articles).

In what way are you using IP.C? How are you finding it?

If it helps I'm in the process of developing a Social Groups addon for IPB. It will be a paid addon (probably in the region of $15) and should be released within the next week.

Hey Peaderfi

Nice that you're working on one, but generally as a rule I try to steer clear of 3rd party add-ons preferring functionality that I consider extremely important to be included in the core. Mainly because I don't like to give my members something then have to take it away further down the line (coders come and go - projects get abandoned etc).

Let me know when it's out tho - if it blows vB's SGs out of the water I might be tempted!

[Panupat]

http://answers.oreilly.com/ <--- this one is using IP.content for the main page?

[bfarber]

Thanks again for the reply and sorry about the delay in getting back to you.



I must be going blind - can't see it.. is it for licensed customers only? I wanted to ask if you've decided on social/member-created groups yet - it's a must for the site I am thinking about converting to IPB, and I need to know asap as I have to decide on which platform to go with by the end of this month.

Cheers.

Feature suggestions for IPB go here: http://community.inv...um/298-ipboard/
It is a public forum.

As for social groups, all I can say is that it's not slated for our next release (3.1). It's a feature we're considering, but unfortunately I have no info further than that to share.

http://answers.oreilly.com/ <--- this one is using IP.content for the main page?

No, that's actually just IPB with some custom hooks. They don't use IP.Content (at least for that page).

[Razasharp]

Feature suggestions for IPB go here: http://community.inv...um/298-ipboard/
It is a public forum.

As for social groups, all I can say is that it's not slated for our next release (3.1). It's a feature we're considering, but unfortunately I have no info further than that to share.

No, that's actually just IPB with some custom hooks. They don't use IP.Content (at least for that page).

Hi Brandon,

Is there anyway you can find out from the powers that be please - or nudge them gently to decide by the end of the month? (They've been considering it for a while now right?) I think so long as it's confirmed to be included in the not-so-distant future it'd prob be ok. It's the only thing stopping me from giving IPB a go tbh.

vB4 has improved a great deal in the latest release - and they have promised custom fields and content types for the CMS in either 4.1 or 2... IP.C was the main thing drawing me to your product, but if you you're not going to have user created groups/forums then vB4 becomes more appealing to us.

Also, do you offer any money-back guarantees? When I first bought vB they were so confident in their product, that they said I could get a refund if I didn't like it or get on with it.

Cheers.

[Klisis]

Eh, the famous (or is it infamous?) Razasharp of the Vbulletin forum considering the switch ...
Yep, Vb must be doing something wrong.

[bfarber]

Hi Brandon,

Is there anyway you can find out from the powers that be please - or nudge them gently to decide by the end of the month? (They've been considering it for a while now right?) I think so long as it's confirmed to be included in the not-so-distant future it'd prob be ok. It's the only thing stopping me from giving IPB a go tbh.

vB4 has improved a great deal in the latest release - and they have promised custom fields and content types for the CMS in either 4.1 or 2... IP.C was the main thing drawing me to your product, but if you you're not going to have user created groups/forums then vB4 becomes more appealing to us.

Also, do you offer any money-back guarantees? When I first bought vB they were so confident in their product, that they said I could get a refund if I didn't like it or get on with it.

Cheers.

Hello,

Unfortunately, I don't have any more information on social groups at this time. We are very open and public about the features we have implemented or are implementing in the next version, however we don't generally like to talk about stuff that could be 6 months out, for instance. Things change in our industry quite quickly, so while we could plan on doing something in 6 months, it's likely by the time we reach that point, other things have come up. And that would leave us in the situation of saying we're going to do one thing, then we do something different, which we try to avoid.

I'll double check in the morning if there's any more information we can share about plans for social groups, but if your site is heavily based around social groups and it's a must-have feature for you, your safest bet is honestly to go with software that supports it now.

My understanding of the refund policy is that, generally speaking, once the software is downloaded no refund is issued. This is relatively industry-standard I believe. You can contact sales[@]invisionpower.com if you like to confirm this - I'm a developer and don't directly work with sales and billing, so I can't really give you an authoritative answer on that particular question.

[Razasharp]

Eh, the famous (or is it infamous?) Razasharp of the Vbulletin forum considering the switch ...
Yep, Vb must be doing something wrong.

Hey K, nice to see you here


I was always a loyal vB fan - so feel bad and all dirty for even considering another platform   but the more I see of IPB the more I really like it - it has the sort of little touches that really resonate with me! 

Hello,

Unfortunately, I don't have any more information on social groups at this time. We are very open and public about the features we have implemented or are implementing in the next version, however we don't generally like to talk about stuff that could be 6 months out, for instance. Things change in our industry quite quickly, so while we could plan on doing something in 6 months, it's likely by the time we reach that point, other things have come up. And that would leave us in the situation of saying we're going to do one thing, then we do something different, which we try to avoid.

I'll double check in the morning if there's any more information we can share about plans for social groups, but if your site is heavily based around social groups and it's a must-have feature for you, your safest bet is honestly to go with software that supports it now.

My understanding of the refund policy is that, generally speaking, once the software is downloaded no refund is issued. This is relatively industry-standard I believe. You can contact sales[@]invisionpower.com if you like to confirm this - I'm a developer and don't directly work with sales and billing, so I can't really give you an authoritative answer on that particular question.

Hey Brandon - thanks again for the reply.


I've fired off an email to sales, will see what they say. I have a few more questions I hope you can help with...

• Can you tag photos in the gallery? (This is a must for at least 3 of my sites - as I'd like to tie them in to some custom content types with IP.C) If it's not a feature right now - what are the chances of it being added/has there been talks of adding it? (Is the exif data searchable btw? So for instance you could search for all photos taken with Nikons?)
• I'm sure you've heard all about the proposed change to copyright laws of images on the web... will the gallery have an easy watermark facility where members can watermark their images, with perhaps their profile url or other text?
• Do the thread icons on the forum display page tell you if you've posted in a thread or not? (This is one of my own most used features in vB.)
• When is the next version of IPB due out? Will it be a major release or just a small update?

Sorry for all the questions - you sure you want me as a customer? You can just imagine how many I'll ask when it comes to skinning etc lol   (but if it's any consolation the sites ought to be good showcase sites).

Just want to say that I like what I see here - I don't know what I didn't start checking IPB earlier, there are some really nice touches here and there, just the sort of thing I like. Well done to you and the rest of the team.

[bfarber]

Hey Brandon - thanks again for the reply.


I've fired off an email to sales, will see what they say. I have a few more questions I hope you can help with...

• Can you tag photos in the gallery? (This is a must for at least 3 of my sites - as I'd like to tie them in to some custom content types with IP.C) If it's not a feature right now - what are the chances of it being added/has there been talks of adding it? (Is the exif data searchable btw? So for instance you could search for all photos taken with Nikons?)
• I'm sure you've heard all about the proposed change to copyright laws of images on the web... will the gallery have an easy watermark facility where members can watermark their images, with perhaps their profile url or other text?
• Do the thread icons on the forum display page tell you if you've posted in a thread or not? (This is one of my own most used features in vB.)
• When is the next version of IPB due out? Will it be a major release or just a small update?

Sorry for all the questions - you sure you want me as a customer? You can just imagine how many I'll ask when it comes to skinning etc lol (but if it's any consolation the sites ought to be good showcase sites).

Just want to say that I like what I see here - I don't know what I didn't start checking IPB earlier, there are some really nice touches here and there, just the sort of thing I like. Well done to you and the rest of the team.

1) At present, the only application with built-in tag support is Blog. However, we fully intend to expand tagging throughout all of our applications in upcoming versions. We are planning it out presently so that when we implement it fully, we will have a strong base that does not need frequent changes, and that works well for other addon applications. There is no time-frame for when it will be implemented, but I would expect to see tagging introduced within the next few versions.

Exif data is not directly searchable, unfortunately. You would need a custom modification of some sort to handle that.

2) I'm not sure which proposed changes you are referring to exactly. The site administrator can set up a watermark image to be used, however it cannot be specified per-user at this time.

3) Yes. A regular plan folder means you have not replied, while a folder with a pen+paper on it means you have. You can turn this feature on/off in the ACP to save resources if you like, though it doesn't use much.

4) The next version of IPB will be 3.1. It will be released "when it's ready ™" - we don't give expected release dates usually. You can review many of the features you can expect to see in 3.1 by reading through our Blog, however.


Thank you for the positive comments.

[ZakRhyno]

Sorry for all the questions - you sure you want me as a customer? You can just imagine how many I'll ask when it comes to skinning etc lol   (but if it's any consolation the sites ought to be good showcase sites)

I check out vB myself a few years ago and every time a update was made it was a head headache for people to update there skins all the time. Now when IPB 3.0.0 came out in June of 2009 I bought some skins and updated my site but every time a new update for IPB came out I didn't have to change my skin at all once. When the new gallery and blog system came out well my skin didn't like that. BUT now they have the Skin Upgrader that will come out soon it will auto upgrade your skins for you when major changes happen so say bye bye to headaches that vB give me and others.

[Razasharp]

1) At present, the only application with built-in tag support is Blog. However, we fully intend to expand tagging throughout all of our applications in upcoming versions. We are planning it out presently so that when we implement it fully, we will have a strong base that does not need frequent changes, and that works well for other addon applications. There is no time-frame for when it will be implemented, but I would expect to see tagging introduced within the next few versions.

Exif data is not directly searchable, unfortunately. You would need a custom modification of some sort to handle that.

2) I'm not sure which proposed changes you are referring to exactly. The site administrator can set up a watermark image to be used, however it cannot be specified per-user at this time.

3) Yes. A regular plan folder means you have not replied, while a folder with a pen+paper on it means you have. You can turn this feature on/off in the ACP to save resources if you like, though it doesn't use much.

4) The next version of IPB will be 3.1. It will be released "when it's ready ™" - we don't give expected release dates usually. You can review many of the features you can expect to see in 3.1 by reading through our Blog, however.


Thank you for the positive comments.

Glad tags are making it, especially for the gallery. I actually used tags in a fairly radical way on one of my sites - the biggest thing I felt was missing from vB tags tho, is not being able to search for more than one tag at a time, and the ability to view a tag or tags in a specific forum. So say I wanted to search for threads that were tagged with 'Nikon' AND 'D300' AND 'portrait' AND 'photos' so that would give me back portrait shots taken with the nikon D300. RE viewing tags in a specific forum, I'd want to be able to do it via the url, eg: invisionpower.com/forum/305-pre-sales-questions&tag=nikon&tag=d300 etc. Why? This is so we can easily create links to sub-categories - that don't fully warrant a sub-forum.


Do you want me to repost these suggestions or can you raise them at your next meeting with the devs? I have loads of ideas on how to use tags but think these are prob two of the most common and widely usable of them. You could do something REALLY radical and turn forums up on their heads if you really want to run with tags. Re-define how forums work - but I'll leave those suggestions for now as I'm short on time.

2 - watermark and new copyright law, check out this: http://www.copyright...n-public?page=1 the proposes basically mean anyone can use any image posted on the web which doesn't clearly have the owner's name and contact details plastered over it! It's suggested it is being pushed thro because media tycoon Murdoch wants it. Basically anyone serious about their images will stop posting them/uploading them unless they have a watermark. I thought, by being able to add the url to their profile would be great not just to help with this issue, but it would actually give the site a plug at the same time.

3 - great stuff

4 - this is the sort of thing many of us complained at vB. When your product effects our product it really hurts being kept in the dark - most of us plan our sites well in advance and having some kind of indication when to expect what is extremely important. It's one of the reasons I like open source platforms as you pretty much know what you're going to get and when you'll get it. Nobody's asking for strict dates - just an indication. Could you please put this to Charles and ask him to take a look at the rest of the policy with the team? If you want more professionals on board this would be a really good issue to resolve - it's one of the biggest reasons people started to resent vB. Although in fairness to them they have improved a great deal on this and have started to give indications on when to expect major releases now. When customers like and respect you they won't hold you to ransom to any ETAs. If there's a genuine reason things slip them most customers would be more than fine.

I do like your blog and the sheer number of updates you post a month! One of the reasons I like what I see here. Just going a little further and giving us an idea of when to expect stuff would really just top it off quite nicely.

So far I like what I see - the only major sticking point is Social Groups. These are important for larger sites, not only because the main forums get too busy but opinions get wider. Having member created groups allows like-minded people to talk about things without having to deal with people who oppose them all the time. They are like safe havens. People love such groups - it's one of the main reasons flickr and facebook and other SN sites are so appealing to people.

Anyway, I'd be grateful if you could pass my comments and suggestions on to the rest of the team or bring it up at the next meeting please.

Cheers - and thanks again for answering all my questions