IP.iBaLLiN

In our continuing efforts to enhance the support services offered by IPS we recently made several changes that should help you to enjoy your IPS-powered community even more.

Easier Documentation Search

In response to customer feedback we have enhanced our documentation search system to search our official documentation, community-submitted articles, and resource downloads all at once.

Read the full information on search changes...

This change should allow you to more easily search all the various resources available to you as an IPS Community Suite user.

Try new documentation search now...


Reorganization of Documentation

We have a lot of great information in our documentation but it is often difficult to find as it is spread out into so many articles. As an example, Sphinx search setup alone has three separate articles explaining search settings, setting up Sphinx, and troubleshooting Sphinx. Using this example, we are working on merging all these various articles into one "everything you need to know about Sphinx" article and will be doing this with other articles as well. Another example may be the System Settings overview: rather than 10 mini-articles on settings you will now have one, comprehensive article to read.

This change does mean we will have to eliminate the current IP.Board option of the in-line AdminCP article view but we believe eliminating that one option in return for overall more comprehensive and easier to read documentation is one that will benefit everyone.

These changes will take place over the next several weeks as we merge things and add in more documentation content.


Official Support on Company Community

For years IPS has only offered official support through our support ticket system but today that finally changes. We are renaming the Peer-to-Peer Technical Support forums and will begin having IPS Staff monitor those forums and provide official support responses right here on the IPS Company Community.

Having forum support will be a great benefit to all IPS Community Suite users as it allows everyone to engage each other to help in a group effort. We have an amazing customer-community here at IPS and between customers helping each other and the addition of IPS Staff assisting in forum questions we believe that the overall support experience will greatly improve for all.

Guaranteed support will still only be offered in tickets and we may still ask you to submit a ticket if, for example, we need to login to your community to diagnose a problem. Forum support will be available to anyone with an active support service for IP.Board or the applications.


Community Hosting Improvements

We are making several large changes to our community hosting services which will benefit all new and existing customers of IPS community hosting.

• All new account orders will have the IPS Community Suite software included in the packages automatically installed.
  
• We are introducing a new Starter plan at just $4.99 per month for those just getting started in online communities.
  
• The current $5 per month add-on package that includes IP.Content and incoming email will be changed to offer both IP.Content and IP.Nexus (when it is released) and will be available on all packages excluding the Starter plan.
  
• Incoming email will now be a feature of all packages.

These changes will be applied to all existing customers on the package types listed on our web site and all new orders as well. If you are on an older package that is no longer offered on our web site your services will remain unchanged.

We are also discontinuing traditional web site hosting so that we may better focus on our core expertise of community services. If you are currently on a traditional web site hosting package your service will remain unchanged.

All of these changes will be phased in over the next few weeks.



Everyone at IPS hopes you enjoy these new changes and enhancements to our support and services!

In addition to the great software that IPS offers in its Community Suite line, we offer many great benefits that go along with the products to enhance your community, make it easier to manage, and allow you to focus on your members rather than software management.

As the first supported release of IP.Board 3.1.0 and its applications is nearly here, we thought we would take this time to review all the great benefits you get along with the software suite itself.


Spam Monitoring Service [more info]

The Spam Monitoring Service is a great, free service for all active IP.Board license and IPS Community Hosting clients. The Spam Monitoring Service leverages the many thousands of IP.Board community installs all over the web to help track and catch those spammers attempting to register on your community. It works like this:

• Someone attempts to register on your community.
  
• Your local IP.Board install contacts IPS Spam Monitoring servers to see if that user registering is a known spammmer.
  
• If so, the service gives the account a score of the likelihood it is a spammer and your IP.Board can ban them or put them up for manual approval depending on your preferences.

The Spam Monitoring Service can "learn" from the thousands of communities reporting registration statistics to it and spot trends. For example, a real human would never be able to register on 50 communities in a matter of one minute but a spam bot could so the service learns from this and bans accounts it sees doing that sort of behavior.

For the privacy of you and your members registering, the service does not store any member information permanently.


Skin Generator [more info]

The free Skin Generator is a great tool to get you on your way to customizing the look and feel of your community to make it your own. For both novice and advanced skinners, the Skin Generator speeds up the process of creating a skin with custom colors, header, and other options. From there you can continue to edit it to further create your own, unique look for your community!


Community Projects [more info]

There are many great products that IPS itself doesn't have time to make. To fill those gaps, some of our great community of customers have come together to volunteer their time to create free products that work right with IP.Board as any other application. All are offered for free to active license holders and done for the fun of it by the volunteers. Be sure to thank them for their time and expertise!


Resources Section [more info]

We have some amazingly talented people in our customer community and many of them create great articles, tutorials, graphics, skins, and modifications to the IPS community suite. Many are free, some have a small fee, all can be useful enhancements to your community.

Take a look through the directory of articles for interesting tutorials and tips for your community. The Downloads section is full of graphics, skins, modifications, and more for your community. Finally, be sure to subscribe to receive updates (or the RSS feed) on the Resources Blog where our community of contributors can post updates on their latest creations!


iPhone App [more info]

Our new iPhone App for IP.Board has already been a great success and is free for both you and your members! Now your members can visit your community quickly and easily while on their mobile device. They can upload Gallery images and even update the status on your community and, if enabled, Facebook and Twitter all at once.

The iPhone App is brand new and we will continue to enhance it with your feedback. An Android platform app is on the way too!


Technical Support

Included with every IP.Board license and IPS Community Hosting account is great support. You can feel free to ask us a basic question, request we install or upgrade the community suite software for you, or query us on an advanced question. We are here to help your community grow and let you focus on your members rather than technical issues.


IP.Chat [more info]

Having Live Chat on your community adds a unique way for your members to interact. The IP.Chat service includes 5 online users for free with your suite and you can upgrade to higher levels for a very low yearly fee.

Your chat logs are available right in your AdminCP (with IP.Board 3.1) and you can easily kick, ban, or even privately chat with members by simply clicking their name right in the chat room.


Community Directory [more info]

The new Community Directory allows any IP.Board community to be listed right on your site. Show off your community and get more traffic! The Directory is brand new so be one of the first to list your community. Also, for even greater exposure, a future version of our iPhone App will include mobile access to the Directory.



We hope you enjoy all these benefits to using the IPS Community Suite! We will continue to innovate and add more benefits all the time. Everyone at IPS is looking forward to the release of the first supported version of  IP.Board 3.1.0 on the afternoon of June 1 (Eastern time). Thank you for your support!

The mobile market for communities has exploded and we have responded by offering a great, new mobile skin for IP.Board and its applications. There are inherent limitations in a mobile skin that are difficult to work around such as image uploading, logging in, and more that are either impossible or just tedious on a mobile device.


IPS is happy to introduce a new iPhone app to solve these issues and add new options!


Easy Login to all your IP.Board Communities



You can add a list of all the IP.Board-powered communities you visit and save your username/password to those communities in the app. You now have one-tap access to all the communities you visit. No need to tap out your login each time you wish to visit the community of your choice and easily switch between all the communities you visit!

Uses Standard Mobile Skin



When you visit the community, you will see that it uses the standard IP.Board mobile skin available standard in the platform. We considered creating a native interface within the iPhone app but there are several advantages to using the built-in mobile skin:

• Common user experience - regardless of a user visiting through the iPhone app, normal browser, or any other mobile device they will have a similar browsing experience on your community
  
  
• Design control - As the owner of your community, you want complete control of the look, feel, and branding of your community. If we were to create a native, standardized interface then IPS would be in control of that look: not you. We obviously never wish to get between you and your visitors so using the mobile skin allows for you to have complete control of the look of your community.
  
  
• Advertising Control - Much as above with the look and feel: IPS does not want to get between you and your advertising revenue. By using the standard mobile skin, you are free to place your own advertising and sponsorships. Tap into the mobile market without worry about a third-party getting in the way!
  
  
• Native Interface Option - If you did want a native iPhone interface, there are great skins available from third-party skinners in our community that will make your community look like it's running right on the iPhone while still maintaining the three advantages above.

Member Status Updates



Your members can update their IP.Board profile status right within the app without having to navigate to any other page. Even better, if you use IP.Board's built-in Twitter and Facebook integrations, your members can even update the status on your community, their Facebook, and their Twitter all in one click! This allows your community to become the center of their online social experience.

IP.Gallery Integration



If your community has our IP.Gallery image gallery software installed: your members will be able to upload images, videos, and camera shots directly from their iPhone to your community! Members can select their source, write a caption, description, and even choose from the albums they have created on your community to upload their media.

Sharing



Two simple but easy sharing functions are available: open in Safari and email. Found a great topic on a community you visit and want to share it? Just click email and send it to a friend. You can also open the community in Safari to bookmark a page or perform other functions available in the OS browser.



Pricing and Availability

It's already done! Please note that the app will require IP.Board 3.1 is installed to communicate with your community. Also please note that this is not an application which is supported via the Ticket System. For all assistance with it, feel free to use the Peer to Peer Support section that was created for it, here:  http://community.inv...ne-app-support/

We are happy to say that the IP.Board iPhone app will be available totally free to all! There are no ads from IPS in the app or anything intrusive that will distract from your community.

Future Ideas

This is the very first version of the iPhone app and we have tons of great ideas to improve it and will continue to do so over time.

Yes: we will be creating an Android platform app as well. (highlighting since many have been asking and didn't notice this line)

We will also be creating an option, for a small fee, to create a private-label version of the app for anyone who wants one that can only be used on your community. Information on the private-label service will come after the app has gone through a few maintenance updates.

Other fun features like mobile access to the Community Directory and Push Notifications for new activity on your community are already in progress! Stay tuned!




Important Notes

Because of Apple's approval process, the version of the app available in the App Store is now a couple weeks out of date. It therefore has a few known issues that have already been addressed. We have submitted an update to the app for approval to Apple that will fix these issues and are waiting for its approval. The update will show in iTunes like any other app.

As of this moment, you can use the app here on the IPS Community. We will be releasing an update to IP.Board 3.1 Beta 3 (and included in final version, of course) to support the app.

If you find issues, please post in our bug tracker and if you have suggestions we would love to hear them in our feedback forum.

IP.Board 3 was released on June 25, 2009 and through the various update cycles is now a stable, mature product with a version 3.1 release forthcoming.

So that we can focus all of our development, support, and service efforts on our new version 3 platform, we are announcing the end of support (sometimes called end of life or EOL) for the following IPS software versions (and earlier versions than those listed):

• IP.Board 2.3.6
  
• IP.Blog 1.4.2
  
• IP.Gallery 2.2.4
  
• IP.Downloads 1.2.2

Technical support, installations, and related services will end for these products on July 1, 2010. On that date all technical or service requests will be advised to simply upgrade to the most recent versions of the products. We will not force upgrades but will also not be able to diagnose issues or answer questions relating to the older software. Also, on that date, IPS will no longer address any new issues or bugs reported in the older software versions.

Security Updates

In the event an issue is discovered impacting the security of these older versions of the software, IPS will provide a patch posted in our announcements forum. We will continue to provide security updates until January 1, 2011.

Just thought I would put this message on for 2 reasons. One as I would like to tell Invision "You are doing it right!!!", and secondly to show this to any potential VBulletin convert as I think its important.

I have been a user of vbulletin on and off since early version 2 and have seen many upgrades of a large size done to the vbulletin software under jelsoft. Jelsoft IMO was the company to beat and if they had carried on as they did in the version 2 days I think you would have struggled to compete with them, I will say that honestly. Now in my opinion there are 2 things that have changed. One is the management of their software being taken over by internet brands, and the second being the seemly inability to keep up with the times and add what every user needs to their community software.

Now I think the second item there you clearly win hands down as this software suite simply has most of what your ever going to need. People can mention that vbulletin has more hacks/mods etc that any other software and that is true, however from what I have experienced over the past few month this it not down to the dedication of free addon providers, but more down to the lack of need. Of course there are going to be some, however I have around half the quantity of modifications on my current site as I did on vbulletin and 0 loss of usability with the added benefit of 100% support from invision on the majority of it as they are official products.

This one however is the big one for me. I have been reading every blog, every topic posted on the progress of 3.1 and one things stands out above all else, and thats the fact that you guys listen. You have an excellent team of developers that are active in the community they work for (and remember guys, this is a job for them not a hobby). Charles I think has a massive affect on the structured organisation of this and I think is a big asset to invision, and I do hope that his managers are reading this topic also.

So if you guys wanna know why your winning, the answer is simple. You listen to us and act upon in accordingly. NOTHING AT ALL is more important to any of us, whether it be a hobby like myself or a business than you listening. NOTHING!!!

THANKYOU IPS

Alrighty, so I noticed a few things that sorta irritate me lately since I have been working with IPB more and more. I hope some of these features will be added but of course it's just a suggestion, I hope to receive some feedback from the staff and members about it though.

1.) In the user profile page, can we have "View Posts | Pages" just like that below "View my Content" I do like the whole content idea but is a few extra steps for the most common and (for me) very used feature. If you put it like I mentioned in this sentence it will only be one line and not look cluttered if that is what you are worried about. It's just an easier for of access IMO.

2.) When you view "User Posts" it has a very nice display. You can read the posts and topic title etc which is fantastic! but... why isn't the rep there? I wanted to see what I was repped in my posts so I went to "view Posts' but the rep I received isn't in the preview so I had to go through each posts to try and find it (and still didn't lol) I am curious to see what people like that I post so it would be nice to have that in the user posts preview as well.

3.) The reputation system here is really great, I love the ease of it all, the only thing that bugs me similar to #2 I posted is that its hard to see what I was repped for... can we add in the user profile field and/or user CP the option to view the list of rep I have received/given along with the ability to leave a comment when repped...

3.5) This may be a bug.. but so far on this board sometimes I can view who repped someone by clicking the number and sometimes I can't... and for some reason I see no option to be able to neg rep posts.. but yet I see some posts that have negative rep...

4.) Quick Mod Access!! I can not stress this enough.. one major downer since the switch is the mod editing of user profiles. Its a pain really.. I cant just go to their profile page click edit member and be taken to the admin CP to edit their info/group/permissions/ban etc Instead I have to go to the admin CP and type in there name (if I can even remember it) Why not have a quick access to edit all their info via Admin CP?

5.) Maybe I'm missing this.. but is there a way to remove someones status other than the admin CP editing? To make one user not able to create a status update at all.. that would be something really helpful. Same with the ability to not allow a user to receive and/or send profile comments or reputation.  I'm not sure if it's possible to edit per-user without a user group mask but I hope it is because having too many user groups gets really messy on IPB.

6.) Ability to allow some users to hide their display name history and reputation.  Pretty self-explanatory. Some people would like to be anon.

7.) I think this has been discussed before-- but can we have the option for notifications to just be inline pop-up with no "Check Message" section... it gets annoying to have to go through each message for it to disappear from my "new notifications" warning. Also alot of my members complain that its not default for notifications on profile comments, gallery image comments, and blog comments to be inline (with out a pop up) just a little New Notifications icons by the user settings so they know they have new comments and when they go to the new comment it disappears.

8.) Today's Posts can this be added to the "view new content" feature. If you kept the "view new content" that would be great.. but when you click on it, have it go to a tabbed table similar to "View Your Content" so that the user can view "Today's Posts" "Unread Posts" "Latest Posts" and maybe even "Unreplied Posts"

9.) Quick Selective Quoting - Also a very, very excellent feature! It has been mentioned serveral times throughout the IPB mod request / suggestions. Its just a little "Highlight the text and click the QS button" for it to drop down to the quick reply box for you to quickly get specific information out of a certain post that you wish to reply to. It's REALLY useful

Anyway that's all I can think of for now
I hope for some positive feedback on this, its just a few suggestions/questions.

With the upcoming release of IP.Board 3.1 we are happy to announce a pre-release promotion so everyone can have the chance to become familiar with IP.Board on your community now and be ready for IP.Board 3.1 as soon as it's available.

Purchase an IP.Board license and any two applications or services and receive a $50 account credit!

Simply purchase your IP.Board license before May 1, 2010 along with at least two qualifying applications or services and receive a credit on your account of $50 good toward any future purchase. You can use this $50 to buy an additional application at a later date or simply save it and it will automatically be applied to future renewal fees.

To qualify be sure to enter coupon code: PRE31CREDIT


Qualifying Applications and Services

• IP.Blog
  
• IP.Gallery
  
• IP.Content
  
• IP.Downloads
  
• MS-SQL Database Driver
  
• Conversion Service

Recently Purchased?

If you recently purchased IP.Board along with at least two of those items in the list above between the date of this announcement and March 15, 2010: simply submit a ticket to account services to request an account credit.

Credit Applications

Anyone who makes a qualifying purchases after the date of this announcement and uses the special coupon code does not need to do anything to get the credit. Please note that credits will not be applied until after May 15, 2010.

Existing Customers

Existing customers can take part in this promotion. It's a great time to buy an additional license to convert that other community you have running or start that new community you always thought about giving a try. Volume discount licenses also qualify. If you have issues ordering or are not prompted for discount code please just submit a ticket to account assistance.

IPS Community Hosting is one of the most popular services we offer. Community Hosting allows people - from novices to experts alike - the ability to quickly deploy a community without having to worry about servers or software. By hosting your community with IPS you can take advantage of a single place for your entire online community presence.

Today we are happy to announce enhancements to all of our community hosting packages!


Online User Limits

Our community hosting packages primary limit are based on the number of concurrent online users on your community at any given moment. We have always felt this is the most fair way to handle the primary limit as it stands to reason: more people online the more resources your community uses.

One of the main concerns both prospective and existing customers have expressed to us is the occasional short-lived increase in traffic. The concern is that, as an example, a community is on the 25 online user package and gets a short-lived spike in traffic to 100 people online. Would their community be shut down? Would they be charged more? Not at all. We understand this happens and would not do that to you. Even so, many were concerned that this could happen to them. We have heard you loud and clear.

Starting today, the online user limits are no longer a maximum limit but instead are an average limit. This means that instead of, in our example, a maximum of 25 online we only look at your 7-day average to be sure it doesn't exceed 25 online. This means no more need to worry about those occasional bursts of traffic. One word can make a huge difference!

Post Storage Limits

We have also taken this opportunity to increase the post storage limits on all packages. As always you have unlimited bandwidth to serve your community and you can always prune old posts if you wish.

Blog, Gallery, and Download Applications

You have always been able to purchase IP.Blog, IP.Gallery, and IP.Downloads on community hosting packages. Some packages these extras were included and on others there was an extra fee. As of today all packages include these applications for free!

We will be providing account credits to any clients who paid for the add-on service within the last 15 days.

IP.Content and Incoming Email

We are now officially supporting IP.Content on all community hosting packages. There will be an extra fee of $5 per month for those that want IP.Content on their account (fee waived for Advanced packages). Included in this fee is free incoming email and a future as yet unannounced product we are developing will also be included. (The new product will be announced in the coming weeks)

Note that previously some accounts did have IP.Content installed and, as always, we will continue to honor those previously having IP.Content.

IP.Chat

All IP.Board license holders and IPS Community Hosting customers have always enjoyed the free 5 online user package of IP.Chat. Now, all Community Hosting packages will include a free 20 online user IP.Chat package! Those on Advanced community packages will get the 250 online user IP.Chat package at no cost.

Advanced Integration

Those of you enjoying an Advanced package at the 450 or 750 level will have the added benefit of custom single sign on integration services for your community at no cost. This service includes IPS Staff working with your technical team to develop a single sign on authentication bridge between our community platform for your existing user login system so your users need only login one time to enjoy your entire site.



We hope you enjoy these enhancements to IPS Community Hosting!

Please contact sales@invisionpower.com or post in the pre-sales forum if you have any questions before purchasing.



Note: all enhancements only apply to those packages published on our web site. If you are on an older, legacy package your package offerings will not change. You can always switch to a new package type by contacting account services.

We've talked about updating the moderating page, there's no definite plan on when that will happen, but it's on our radar at last.

I think 0.3 or even 0.6 is very reasonable given the size of Neowin and the hardware they run it on.

For what it's worth, our main competitor is very pleased with these figures:

Blog: .662 seconds, 40 queries
Forum: 1.09 seconds, 31 queries
CMS: .87 seconds, 100 queries

It boggles my mind when someone says that "0.3 seconds" is slow.


We make resource and efficiency improvements with every release. IPB 3.0 was a brand new codebase, so it's natural that throughout it's life cycle we will improve upon this new codebase to make it more efficient over time as things are discovered. I would not say 3.0 is slow, myself, however.

I have a better idea.

Have a 'virtual tour' that can be used locally.  It would have a series of HTML pages and as you go through the different pages, when you hover over different areas, it gives a pop up window (perhaps highlighted areas so you know where to mouse to) and it tells you about the features.

Sort of like a cross between a video and a help file.  (I've seen some very sophisticated help files that is just like using the application itself, only it provides information on the functions as you click them.)

Not only discover new features, but learn more about older features and possible enhancements to them.

Being only 16, I was struggling to get money to buy your product, so at the same time I was hesitating to spend $150 on software for my website.  I then had the opportunity to sell an old blog of mine and I got enough to buy IP.Board.  I am very glad I did, this is the best forum software out there.  I am excited to see what new features you guys will be bringing to the table since I will be a customer for many years to come.  Expect me to get IP.Content and IP.Blog in the near future since those are very good products as well.

Maxxius, on 06 March 2010 - 02:30 PM, said:

As most +Active Customers will tell you, IPS doesn't give release dates.  I wish they did because then I could have an idea of when the next version MIGHT be released, or at least when there should be a better idea of an actual release.  However, as BacTalan said, whenever they have given an estimated date (not a guaranteed date!) then they encounter problems with people expecting a release.  Apparently, some people can't tell the difference between a goal and a guarantee.  They say that perception is reality, so go figure that people hear(read) what they want instead of what is actually said.

That said, the "When It's Ready™" is the best answer you can expect to get.

From past experience, I can tell you that a release before July is unlikely.  True, v3.1.0 is basically v3.0.x with some added features, but those features still need to go through testing to find and fix bugs, and as they are fixed, more bugs are found and little feature tweaks are performed.  Mind you, it's possible to be released before July (since it's not a full major release), but it's best to plan for July and then if it happens sooner, be happy.  If not, then you weren't waiting and expecting a release for four months.  Either way, you benefit.

I wouldn't call this urgent and it's not something I would want to have at my site. But hey I could see it serving a purpose in some forums.

3DKiwi