Lazek

Invision Power Services, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of IP.Board 3.3.0 and IP.Content 2.3.0!

Everyone at IPS is very proud of IP.Board 3.3.0 and IP.Content 2.3.0 updates. We have worked hard to create a quality, modern community platform and the feedback from our clients has been tremendous.

We are releasing the following new software:


IP.Board 3.3.0
Fully featured community platform including forums, members profiles, calendar, status system, integration, and much, much more.


IP.Content 2.3.0
Content management for your community - run a full web site or a simple community portal. The possibilities are endless.

Release Notes

Though IP.Board 3.3.0 and IP.Content 2.3.0 have been tested for months, you never know what you are going to get when thousands of people start using it overnight. Therefore: now that IP.Board 3.3.0 and IP.Content 2.3.0 will be used by a much larger audience we will probably come across as yet undiscovered bugs. You can expect maintenance releases as we work quickly to address any issues reported.

• We are now providing technical support and services for IP.Board 3.3.0 and IP.Content 2.3.0. As you might imagine, many thousands of clients will be asking for help so please note that if you request upgrade or install assistance that there could be a delay up to a few days to process that request.
  
• You may wish to take advantage of the automatic upload service in the client area to help upgrade your version.
  
• We may reply to this topic with hot-fix patches or notes if any critical issues come up so please use the "Follow this Topic" feature to get notified.
  
• If you experience any problems, before submitting a ticket, please disable all third party applications and hooks.
  
• You may wish to check our knowledge base for common upgrade issues.

What's new in IP.Board 3.3

In addition to this list there are countless other minor improvements and changes based on client feedback too numerous to mention. IP.Board 3.3 was all about polish so we hope you enjoy it.

Archive System: New feature to archive off topics to remove post table overhead
Warning System: New more flexible feature replaces old warning system
SEO Update: 'Dead end' links, unfriendly error pages, metadata tags, bounce rates
SEO Update: Banned users
SEO Update: Duplicate title tags, profile tabs, skin and language selectors, direct links to posts
SEO Update: Microformat and Schema Updates
SEO Update: Changes to tags, guests and unread links, title tags, soft 404s and schema additions for ratings
Performance Updates: Improving topic markers, today's top posters, post table access
Auto-share on posting: Tweet and share to Facebook when creating a topic
Reputation Updates: Like/reputation updates on a user's profile
Miscellaneous Updates: Log-in autosave, emoticons in signatures, log in as a member, duplicate forum, system schedular as a CRON and more.
Applications and Hook Updates: Application ordering, hook list update, hook settings
Moderation Tools Updates: Hide/Delete/Soft Delete consolidation and interface updates


What's new in IP.Content 2.3

AdminCP Interface Part 1 & Admin CP Interface Part 2: Significant ACP interface changes to improve consistency, usability, clarity and approachability
SEO Improvements: Duplication, header code, meta tag, page title and on-page HTML improvements, as well as a new URL memory system
Commenting & Other Enhancements: Improvements to commenting, quick navigation panel integration, reporting, reputation support and other article/database enhancements
New Features: Currently viewing plugin block and shared media field for databases
Tagging: Tag support implemented and a new tag cloud plugin block made available
Navigation Bar: Full tab control for the primary navigation bar
Relational Fields: Type-ahead relational fields and automatic cross-linking of related content
Nexus: Nexus package, purchase, support request, shipping, invoices and transaction feeds, and donation plugin block
Block Templates: New block templates functionality allowing developers to more easily share blocks and quality block templates
Odds & Ends: Updated default installation, ModCP integration, improved ACP logging, teaser paragraph article field and interface improvements

I don't think we're going to be making several alternate layouts for all of our applications. We have to create a single default theme that we can maintain and that will appeal across a broad spectrum of customers. If what we have now doesn't work, we can try to improve it, but we're not going to maintain several variations of themes as a general rule. It increases our workload exponentially, to the point that making releases would become too difficult.

Welcome to IP.Board 3.1.0 Beta 1!
Welcome to the latest development version of IP.Board 3.1.0. We're excited to reveal the product we've been working on for the past few months. This build contains all the features we've blogged about recently including the search improvements, Twitter integration, Profile Customization and more.

As always, this is a very early beta build so please expect to find the odd bug here and there. Please report any bugs found into the tracker as usual.

As always, we'd love to hear your feedback. Happy clicking!

Note: Please perform a hard refresh / delete temporary items in your browser to ensure you get the correct CSS and JS

Preview Only: IP.Board 3.1 is in preview only. It is not yet available for download. Keep an eye out for a future announcement.

What's New
Link Sharing
Easily share links from your community to Facebook, Twitter, and more. Great way to drive traffic to your community!

Status Updates
Enhancements to the existing member status system in IP.Board to include the ability to reply and more.

Topic Preview
Preview the first few lines of a topic without loading the entire topic.

View Reputation
Optionally allow your members to see who gave reputation points on their posts.

Twitter Integration
Your members can now link their account with their Twitter account!

Improved Facebook Integration
Further enhance the link between your community and Facebook to drive traffic.

Advertising Code Integration: Part 1 and Part 2
Easily place advertising code throughout your community with simple settings in the admin area.

Profile Customizations: Part 1 and Part 2
Allow your members to customize the look and feel of their profile page.

Skin Upgrader
Upgrading your skin between versions of IP.Board just became a lot easier.

Soft Delete Posts and Topics
Rather than actually deleting a post or topic you can now hide it from view to easily restore it later.

Notification System
An easier way to be notified of all the various events that happen in your community.

Modification Development Enhancements
Great tools for those that create modifications for IP.Board

Hook System Improvements
Improvements to the IP.Board hook system to make it easier for modification developers to expand the functions in the software.

Search Engine Optimization: Part 1 and Part 2
Allow search engines to better index and rank your community in results.

Search Engine Overhaul
Search engine rebuilt from the ground up introducing more flexibility and power.

Due to the increased interest in our products from vBulletin users over the past few days, I thought it would be convenient to collect pertinent information in one place and give you an overview of who we are and what we do.

About Invision Power Services
We've been creating forum software for over seven years. We work closely with our community and we're very open about our development and we're all very active on this forum. Our customers range from small focused communities through to Skype, Vodafone, EMI, Sony and more. We take pride in our customer service and treat all feedback equally.

Our Products
We offer many community products and services:
IP.Board
IP.Board has come on leaps and bounds since the early days of 1.3 and 2.0. We've invested heavily into development and the result is on your screen now. A feature set overview is available. It has a built in report center, reputation system and warning system. It also extends the classic PM system into personal conversations that enable you to host private topics rather than a simple email-like PM conversation. It is very extensible with its new hooks system and applications framework. Not forgetting it's incredibly easy to write your own single sign on code or log in module to allow single sign on with your existing website or systems. It also ships with log in integration for OpenID, LDAP, Windows Live and Facebook.

IP.Board also has many SEO tools built in. It allows for customizable 'friendly URLs' with proper 301 redirect headers is tampering is attempted. It also offers meta keywords and descriptions automatically populated based on post content. 301 redirects from standard 'old' URLS (showtopic=xxx) and more.

IP.Board is available for $149.99. This entitles you to run the board indefinitely (for life). You get six months access to technical support, services (Spam monitoring) and to download the latest version of the software. Once that six months is up you can optionally renew for another six months for $25.00. You can allow your renewal to lapse without penalty and renew at any time.

Licenses are not tied to versions so, for example, if you purchased IP.Board in 2006 and now want to renew for $25; you'll be able to download IP.Board 3.0.

We offer one installation completely free and we can upgrade the board for you when requested. 30 days telephone support is also included free of charge. You will also get access to our peer-to-peer customer only forums. It's worth noting though that all our feedback from customers is in this public forum. We don't try and hide it, good or bad.

We also offer a "Business License" - the main difference being that phone support is included while your license is active (not just for the first 30 days). The Business License is $349 and renewals are $50 per 6 months. As with the Standard license, it is not tied to a version and you can let it lapse and renew whenever you like.

IP.Board and its applications require PHP 5.1+ (although we recommend 5.2+) and MySQL 4.1+ or MSSQL 2003+ (MSSQL driver available for an additional $60). IP.Board is just as happy on apache as it is in IIS.

IP.Content
IP.Content is our new community content system. We have avoided labeling it as a CMS as this gives certain expectation. IP.Content can do many things inlcuding pulling content from your forum to display on your home page. More information on IP.Content is available here and here.

Charles put together two short videos to help illustrate what it can do:





It's worth mentioning those videos were taken during a beta of the first version. The next version adds much more functionality. Information available here.

IP.Content is on offer at $49.99 currently and includes 1 year technical support and access to download the latest version of the software. Renewal is $30 per year.
Just like with IP.Board, we'll be happy to install or upgrade it for you at no extra charge.

IP.Blog
This is our blog application for IP.Board. The best way to see what it does is to have a look at our company blog.
IP.Blog allows your users to create their very own blog within your community, and because it's part of our Community Suite, it's fully integrated and easy to use!
IP.Blog is available for $49.99 and includes 1 year technical support and access to download the latest version of the software. Renewal is $20 per year.
Just like with everything else, we'll be happy to install or upgrade it for you at no extra charge.

IP.Gallery
This is our full gallery application for IP.Board. We have the gallery installed here.
IP.Gallery is our easy-to-use photo sharing application. Fully integrated with our other Community Suite applications, it allows your users to create albums and share their favorite snaps with others!
IP.Gallery is available for $64.99 and includes 1 year technical support and access to download the latest version of the software. Renewal is $30 per year.
Just like with everything else, we'll be happy to install or upgrade it for you at no extra charge.

IP.Downloads
This is our full download application for IP.Board. We use the download system here.
If you need to share files with your users, or want them to share amongst themselves, IP.Downloads makes it easy. Documents, updates, utilities, media - whatever you want to share!
IP.Downloads is available for $49.99 and includes 1 year technical support and access to download the latest version of the software. Renewal is $20 per year.
Just like with everything else, we'll be happy to install or upgrade it for you at no extra charge.

Other Products
We also offer the following:
IP.Converge
IP.Converge is our innovative authentication system that enables separate applications to centrally authenticate users, and optionally share data such as profiles. IP.Converge works with all IPS products, and third-party products such as Wordpress and Joomla. It effectively provides a central log in system that all your applications can use so that your members only need one username and password. It does not need to be on the same server, either so you can link up a dozen IP.Boards from all over the internet if you wished.
IP.Converge is free to all IPS customers.

IP.Subscriptions
This is an application for your IP.Board that allows you to sell subscriptions to your members. It is based on elevating permissions via the member group system. It works with PayPal, Sage and Authorize.net. PayPal allows for recurring payments.
IP.Subscriptions is a free application for all IPS customers.

Spam Service
Even with a good CAPTCHA, communities are seeing a rise in human spammers that can bypass all "anti-bot" systems. There is no real way to automate protection against these spammers other than to learn and block them and that's precisely what this system does.
Each IP.Board has a feature to "Flag a user as a spammer". This will unapprove all their recent posts and flag them as a spammer in the Admin CP. It also sends a ping back to us with their email address and IP address. If enough people report the same details, they are marked as a spammer. You can then set your board to not allow these users, or manually review them before validating the account.
It's an incredibly effective tool and it's caught many dozens of spammers on this site alone.

The spam service is free to all active standard license holders.

IP.Tracker
This is a community developed free application for IP.Board that adds project tracking to your forum. We use it ourselves here.

IP.Shoutbox
This is a community developed free application for IP.Board that adds a shoutbox to your forum.

Modifications and Skins
IP.Board has a very healthy modifications and skinning community. There are many independent skinning and modification websites dedicated to IP.Board. We also maintain a list of resources here. IP.Board 3 is a new product but the modification authors are gaining traction and making use of the new systems to product easy to install modifications. There are modifications for donating via PayPal, arcades and more.

Please list any modifications you have and we'll try and match them up with IP.Board equivalents.

Other Information
Volume Discounts
Please contact sales@invisionpower.com to discuss volume licensing.

Standards of Service
Our average support response time is less than two hours but, depending on the nature of your request, it may take up to two business days for your issue to be addressed. Our technicians will work to keep you updated on your request's progress.

You can always view your existing tickets to see the progress of your request or what department your ticket has been assigned to. After a ticket has existed for 48 hours, you may use the management escalation feature to tag your ticket for management review if the issue is not being resolved properly. Billing, customer service, and special requests will only be answered during normal business hours.

Our full standards of service page is here.

A copy of our software license is attached below:
 license.txt   5.94K   82 downloads

Example Sites
Here is a list of some sites that make use of our software:
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/
Neowin - http://www.neowin.net/forum/

Conversions

We can convert your data from vBulletin, including converting vB Blog to IP.Blog, and the albums feature in vBulletin to IP.Gallery. If you use the popular Photopost gallery, we can convert that as well.
Almost every piece of data can be converted - and members will be able to log in with the same username and password they did on vBulletin.



You needn't worry about broken links after you convert either, we have some redirection scripts that will take users from your old vBulletin URLs to the new URLs on IP.Board - so if members follow links from search engines, they'll still be shown the right content on your community.

There are two ways to convert: firstly, you can download the free converter scripts on the conversions page and use them yourself, or you can purchase our conversion service and one of our technicians will handle everything for you.
The conversion service costs $120.
It's important to note that the free converters will only work with vBulletin version 3.8 - if you're not using 3.8 you should either first upgrade your vBulletin installation before converting, or if you purchase the conversion service we'll handle everything for you.

If you have any special requirements such as merging multiple forums - please contact sales@invisionpower.com and we'll do our best to accommodate.




Please feel free to reply. I'll maintain this post to add more information if required.

Introducing Community Content System

Many clients have expressed interest in tools that would allow them to extend IP.Board's traditional forum community functionality by providing methods of creating new pages within the IP.Board framework.  Uses for such a system span from a simple custom portal all the way through to a complete website built utilizing IP.Board's powerful backend codebase.  When your community and site systems are truly integrated, single sign on and a matching website/forum theme become much easier.

Our new Community Content System lets you do all of this and more. CCS is a new application that allows you to create content for your site. Blog entries over the next several days will discuss some of its powerful features in more detail along with examples showing you just how easy it is to create website pages and other content just by clicking through the admin control panel. For now in this introduction, here is a brief overview of its main features:

• Page Templates
  If you are creating many pages for your website you will find that they generally follow a similar structure each time.  By utilizing page templates, you can create templates complete with the full functionality of our skin system, including use of template conditionals and plugins. You can create the HTML structure once, and reuse it for some or all of your pages. Novice users can type in normal HTML code or power users can choose to use the powerful skin tags.
  
  
• Page Manager
  The core of CCS: this tool allows you to create pages, plain and simple. No fancy terminology or new methods to learn. A wizard will guide you through creating your pages, and allow you to configure things like permissions for who can view the page, which page template to use, and more. Pages can be edited as raw HTML, raw PHP, or through our traditional WYSIWYG editor using BBCode. You can also set page-types as JavaScript or CSS and the system will automatically detect those special types.
  
  
• Media Manager
  A tool to allow you to manage images and other media for your site.  You can define the root path to your file storage directory, and then create folders and upload image files within that directory via the ACP.  You can move and delete files and folders from the ACP as well.
  
  
• Block Manager
  An extremely powerful tool that allows you to create "blocks" for your pages. Blocks are inserted utilizing template plugins so you can insert blocks anywhere in the CCS content or even anywhere in your forum community using the skin manager in the admin control panel. This means that content blocks you create in CCS are not just limited to that application!  There are three types of blocks you will work with:
  
  
  • Custom - create blocks by editing BBCode (using our WYSIWYG editor), raw HTML, or raw PHP. Input any information you like.
    
  • Plugins - some blocks require code to execute in order to determine what should be shown.  For instance, you may wish to show a mini-calendar on one of your pages or a login box so users can login right from your home page.  Plugin blocks allow developers to create blocks that can easily plugin to the system without having to create code modifications.
    
  • Feeds - not just limited to RSS.  You can create "feeds" of almost any type of data - forums, topics, replies, calendar events, blog entries, gallery images, download manager files, and of course traditional RSS imports.  A wizard will guide you through creating these feeds, allowing you to specify how the feed should be pulled (do you want to show the last 5 gallery images?  what about a random sampling of forum topics? how about all topics from the visitor's friends list since their last visit?) to make it simpler for you to define the block.

The system is very flexible, allowing you to do nearly anything you want, while at the same time providing a simple user interface and wizard-based approach for creating content to keep things easy for newer users. Power users can ignore all the special features and just type in raw-PHP if they prefer. The choice is up to the administrator.

The CCS supports friendly urls (you define the folders and page names while creating pages), and does not require the page output to be accessed through your forum directory. This means you can have your community at example.com/forums but your main web site can show under just example.com easily. You can use IP.Board's skin system (inheriting the forum skin) or you can elect to create raw pages without inheriting any CSS, wrapper, or JavaScript from IP.Board.


Pricing and Availability

The CCS was developed completely separately from the IPB3 and applications process allowing us to develop CCS without any delay in IPB3's development time. As such, we are happy to say we will be able to release CCS about two weeks after IPB3's first supported release! Pricing will be announced at that time.


We are sure there will be many questions about the CCS and we welcome them. Over the next several days there will be blog entries on our company blog going into greater detail on each of the core features of CCS. Hopefully all of your detailed questions will be answered then. Please accept our apologies if we may sometimes ask you to wait for the next blog update before answering your questions. Thank you!

We are pleased to announce the second release candidate of Invision Power Board 3.0.0 is now available.

This is the second release candidate release so please take a moment and read this entire announcement before downloading.

The second release candidates for IP.Blog, IP.Gallery, and IP.Downloads are also now available.


What is a Release Candidate?

A release candidate is a version of the software between the beta phase and a final release. With the second release candidate of IP.Board 3.0.0 you can safely assume that we consider the software stable enough to use on your live community. There will be bugs and issues but it is our belief that any issues that come up should not impact your overall ability to manage your community. Keep this in mind as you make your decision to upgrade to IP.Board 3.0.0 RC 2 and only upgrade if you are comfortable working around any possible issues that are present.


Technical Support and Service

IP.Board 3.0.0 RC 2 can be considered safe to use on a live site but it is not quite the final version of the software just yet. We want to give those comfortable upgrading to an RC release the chance to do so and report issues before we encourage everyone to upgrade. Technical support and service is not offered during the RC stage but of course will be available when the final version is announced.




Download IP.Board 3.0.0 RC 2 along with IP.Blog, IP.Gallery, and IP.Downloads

To download, log in to your client area. You will see the RC download information by clicking into your downloads then development releases. As stated above, technical support is not available so please only download if you are comfortable testing software.






Please keep an eye on our announcements forum and company blog over the next couple weeks for updates. Thanks!

The system we use to build our downloadable "zip" files for release had a small issue this morning when generating the IP.Board 3.0.0 RC 2 package and missed some language strings.

If you are encountering a javascript 'undefined' error when posting a new topic, please download the attached javascript file and upload it into 'public/js/' overwriting the existing file.

The main zip has already been updated at the time of this post.

I can say it's coming soon.  As of right now it's been 2 weeks + 3 days.  It's not like we're 3 months off from the estimate.    He did say "or so" which you should interpret to mean "plus or minus a week roughly".

Thanks guys, go nuts and test it out as much as you can. Please don't be alarmed if we seem to take a minor step back with some stuff, I've fiddled with a few things, mostly:

• Topic Marking
• CSS Caching
• Memory Debugging

So let me know if you see anything odd with any of that.

We are pleased to announce Invision Power Board 3.0.0 Beta 4 is now available.  Additionally, the following development releases are available in your client area to test:

• IP.Converge RC 1
• IP.Blog 2.0.0 Beta 2
• IP.Downloads 2.0.0 Beta 2
• IP.Gallery 3.0.0 Beta 2

  The fourth beta release of IP.Board 3.0.0 is now available for download to those with current, active licenses to IP.Board. This fourth beta is only available to active license holders.
  
  This is the fourth beta release so please take a moment and read this entire announcement before downloading.

• As this is a beta release there will be bugs and issues with the software. Please report any issues using our bug tracker. Before reporting please first quickly check to see if anyone has already reported your issue.
• This beta is encoded using IonCube. Beta releases are encoded so we can better control the release and ensure any reported problems are code-related and not due to modifications. Please ensure you are familiar with how to install IonCube encoded PHP software. The final version will not be encoded.
• Technical support is not available for this beta software.
• Do not use this software on a public install. Wait for the final series for your public installs.
• There may be no upgrade path between beta versions.
• You may upgrade from IP.Board 3.0.0 Beta 3, or from any pre-3.0.0 version of IP.Board.
• In general, only download and participate in the beta test if you are comfortable working with beta software.

  System Requirements
  
  This beta version of IP.Board 3.0.0 requires PHP 5.1.0 or greater and MySQL 4.1.22 (5.0 or greater preferred) to operate. We have included the Ioncube loaders with the download for 32 bit servers. If your server is running a 64 bit operating system, you will need to visit Ioncube directly to download the loaders.
  
  Testing Help
  
  This is the second beta to include the upgrade script. Please be sure to test this thoroughly on backup copies of your forum database. Do not upgrade your live site. Also, we would appreciate feedback from those upgrading from older versions of IPB as well.
  
  Also please give good testing to the skinning system, importing, exporting, creating new skins, etc.
  
  Known Issues
  

• The AdminCP help system is still being populated and styled. The final version will be complete and look much more integrated. It will also be hidden by default.
• Subscription Manager is not included in this beta.

  
  
  
  Download IP.Board 3.0.0 Beta 4
  
  If you have an IP.Board License:
  
  To download, log in to your client area. You will see the beta download information by clicking into your license purchase. As stated above, technical support is not available so please only download if you are comfortable beta-testing software.
  
  If you have IPS Hosting:
  
  Shared hosting customers can download by clicking into their hosting package. Forum hosting customers can also download but will not be able to install in their hosting account as Forum Hosting packages are limited to one install. Feel free to use another hosting account for this.

We are pleased to announce Invision Power Converge 1.1 Beta 1 is now available for testing.

The first beta release of IP.Converge 1.1.0 is now available for download to those with current, active licenses to IP.Board. This beta is only available to active license holders.

For more information about the new features in IP.Converge 1.1, please read the original announcement.

This is a beta release so please take a moment and read this entire announcement before downloading.

• As this is a beta release there will be bugs and issues with the software. Please report any issues using our bug tracker. Before reporting please first quickly check to see if anyone has already reported your issue.
  
• IP.Converge is encoded using IonCube. Please ensure you are familiar with how to install IonCube encoded PHP software.
  
• Technical support is not available for this beta software.
  
• Do not use this software on a public install. Wait for the final series for your public installs.
  
• In general, only download and participate in the beta test if you are comfortable working with beta software.

System Requirements

This beta version of IP.Converge 1.1.0 requires PHP 4.3.0 or greater and MySQL 4.1.22 (5.0 or greater preferred) to operate. We have included the Ioncube loaders with the download for 32 bit servers. If your server is running a 64 bit operating system, you will need to visit Ioncube directly to download the loaders.

Testing Help

We are particularly interested in testers setting up IP.Converge with both a 2.3.6 version of IP.Board and the latest beta of IP.Board 3.0.

We would also like testers to try both fresh installs and upgrades from previous versions of IP.Converge.


Developers

Any developers who wish to create modules for making any third-party applications IP.Converge ready should E-Mail mwade@invisionpower.com
Developer documentation and an example application can be downloaded here: http://resources.inv...s&showfile=2101

Download IP.Converge 1.1.0 Beta 1

If you have an IP.Board License:

To download, log in to your client area. You will see the beta download information by clicking into your license purchase. As stated above, technical support is not available so please only download if you are comfortable beta-testing software.

If you have IPS Hosting:

Shared hosting customers can download by clicking into their hosting package. Forum hosting customers can also download but will not be able to install in their hosting account, but feel free to use another hosting account for this.