The Old Man

One final thing, and this goes to IPS. I've been licensing the IP.Board software since IPB 2.1 and I have always been satisfied with it. With such new applications as IP.Content, IP.Downloads, IP.Blog and so on, you guys have always kept on improving the IP.Board experience so that it's always being updates and that we're always getting cool applications for the software.

I'd also like to say thanks, for allowing the software to be open source so that those of us who license the software can modify it for our own communities. While there have been bumps ini the software on some features, they usually do get ironed out. I doubt IP.Board will ever get stagnant as long as the software is continually updated.

Have to totally disagree. Frankly I detest FB and only use it to keep in touch with family and a few friends. In fact I came this > < close to closing my account a few days ago because the "Timeline" addition was nearly the last straw in things about it I dislike.

The best way to lose members to FB and others, is to add links and likes to social media on your forum.

FB will be dead in less then 3 years... so see.. we all have opinions...  Remember myspace?

The mobile skin is designed to provide efficient use for its users. It is intentionally designed to be minimal to provide quick and easy navigation of your community. While IPS might consider it in the future, IMO a mobile skin is not intended to be used as a moderation or administration tool. I suggest you click the "Full Version" link available at the bottom of the mobile skin if you're determined to use those features.

I'd like to see this as well.

..Al

I'm really disappointed at the amount of things that were removed in IP.Board 3.2. If IPS doesn't like certain features, they should at least add an option to disable/enable it in the Admin CP. Removing features is very counterproductive if you ask me. This is the only release of IP.Board that I've had negative comments about.


Another thing that was removed which I don't think has been mentioned in this topic yet is user notes.

Keep in mind that the concept of an "avatar" is no more as we now only have member photos. Of course this is all just naming but if you take a step back and think about it: everyone understands what a photo is but only people familiar with the history of the web understand what an avatar is. Therefore we are choosing the term photo to be used globally throughout our software. Of course having avatar galleries makes no sense when one doesn't have avatars anymore

We will look into re-adding the ability for remotely-linked photos in a future update.

Jamer, on 15 August 2011 - 08:48 AM, said:

totally agree, the removal of this feature has wiped out 6 years of hard work from my creative members in helping those who aren't Confident in graphics.

our fandom had competitons every year adding 25 avatars to our galleries which members who weren't able to create such items were excited & happy to use, now IPB have stripped these members from being able to do this because they feel everyone should use Gravatar or upload their own, absolute incompetence on their behalf.  They obviously don't give a rats arse re these kind of people.

Thanks IPS for ruining my community which has built up over the past 6 years like family, we help each other but IPS obviousy couldn't care less

Jυra, on 14 August 2011 - 03:10 PM, said:

Over the last 6 years of using IPB I have never encountered this issue & this still doesn't explain why they removed the Avatar Gallery?

The Avatar gallery was maintained by my mods who happily uploaded thes to my server NOT a remote third party server & therefore all those were served by my site & wouldn't break the site yet IPS in all their wisdom decided to get rid of this? Why?

bfarber said himself in another thread that he is used to people using IPB for their Fan sites not like Facebook yet now we have been denied the use of a Gallery specifically catered to our Fandom for those who had no knowledge of how to create an avatar & some members also who weren't the best with technology who happily had the option to simply select an image from our site to use, waas so easy but now IPB have made that whole process a damn lot harder by forcing us into using what they want us to use rather than what was appropriate for our community, talk about removing the rights of an Administrator using their own forum

The Old Man, on 14 August 2011 - 05:18 AM, said:

Can't believe the avatars have gone!! please bring back the gallery feature

Jυra, on 14 August 2011 - 03:10 PM, said:

Just because you don't make use of a feature doesn't mean it should it be removed. If you don't want members to use remote avatars on your board, then simply disabling the feature should suffice. Not every board owner is going to like every feature and that's why there are on/off toggles.

In regards to what you said about remote avatars breaking and loading badly, I've never seen that happen on any of the boards I've ever visited in my life. And as far as I know, ImageShack and PhotoBucket have never been hacked. If any of them have ever been hacked, it must have been a rare occurrence. However, people can use avatars with dumb messages regardless whether they are hosted remotely or not. In either case, you can easily remove their avatar as a super moderator or administrator. Have you personally even ever encountered these problems?

One thing that everyone needs to keep in mind is that avatars use up disk space and bandwidth. If you run a board with thousands of members and billions of hits a day, the disk space and bandwidth of the avatars hosted on your own server(s) adds up very quickly. There are boards that disable avatar uploads for this very reason.

Lastly, I would never recommend my members to use Gravatar, Facebook, or Twitter as a place to host their avatar. Aside from being an annoyance and distraction, most people don't use a real-life picture of themselves as their avatar. If avatars were still separated from profile pictures, then maybe you could argue the importance of these websites.

Kind Regards,
Haku

yes but my ticket was why the Avatar Gallery was removed & why the Topic descriptions were removed, my members used these features all the time & to only receive the above reply after requesting an explanation is just outright disgraceful service

I have been running IPB for over 6 years & you would think paying renewal support fees every 6 months over that time for Ip Board Gallery & Blog plus the original purchase prices for each would warrant a better standard of service & reply

My community is a FAN site which has been using IPB software for over 6 years, we found it to be perfect for our community needs however the new 3.2 has ruined part of our community as the software is falling below our needs rather than improving them.

I sent a Ticket to ask how I can have Third party Hosting for our members Avatars & how my community can have the Title descriptions returned as we used this feature all the time & why the Avatar Gallery was removed.

Our Fan community often have competitions in creating themed Sig & Avatar combos & have always used them on Photobucket which they could share everywhere, they can still host their sigs form there but not the Avatars

The idea of uploading them to my server is stupid as it just clutters up my server and basically I'd have to clear out unused images that just remain there after members update / change their avatar again

only 3 months ago my Community created 25 new Avatars which were placed into our Avatar Gallery for members who didn't have graphic skills etc so that members could use them & now I regret updating to 3.2 because these images have now disappeared as their is no longer an option for it

I wrote a Ticket to IPS re this & all I received was

Quote

That didn't answer anything just told me what I already knew & that is these options are no longer available.

I keep seeing posts that many IPB owners don't even visit these forums yet apparently this is what people wanted? why was I never informed? where was teh survey?

This is just appalling & sory IPB after spending so much money on this software over the past 6 years I am about to walk to the competition, I can't believe you would shaft your members like this without any good real reason at all.

As I asked in my reply to the ticket, What is Gravatar paying IPB to only use them?  simply appalling & I wish I hadn;t upgraded now, even though I have paid for the right to do so & the right to use the new features, the removal of the abve instead of allowing Admin to simply toggle these features etc on their own boards is a step  back in time for this software & that is unfortunate

Ever heard of don't fix what isn't broke? just appalling

Forum Rules Link Removed: Major Headache for Forum Administrators

The biggest problem I see with IPB is going to prove to be a very major headache for those of us who run active forums. Some of you may have already discovered that IPS has removed the "forum rules' link from the top of the forums. This is a major mistake. I'm going to run into major problems when someone tries to look for the forum rules link but cannot find it because some gumby decided to place the link in the footer section, obscured with small font text and with font colors so light that you will skip right over it.

kenichi tanaka, on 13 June 2011 - 06:34 PM, said:

Yeah, that was a bad move. Because of this, administrators will probably now have to make a forum only dedicated to rules just to make sure everyone sees it. I really hope IPS changes their mind about this. This is getting very irritating now.