Michael

Dll, on 25 May 2012 - 09:39 AM, said:

We have never posted an announcement one way or the other about this. Matt's, or any other staff's, conversation in a topic is not really gospel ... IPS is very communicative with clients and we cannot always know what is said in conversation might be something we change our mind about later.

That is the key here. No one knows, exactly and without any sort of confusion, what should be done. In fact many people we have spoken to on the matter say IPB isn't even something that needs to comply and others say yes it is. Until the situation in the EU matures we cannot justify doing anything.

I of course hope that you are able to decipher it all and sort out what is best for your site.

The problem with SEO is that everyone's an expert, and it's never good enough.

Are You A Human, on 23 May 2012 - 03:21 PM, said:

Would be nice if the plugin could be posted here in the marketplace so that we easily can report bugs and give general feedback. You will get much more feedback here than on your official site. Also many people don't even know about your IPB plugin, it seems hidden on your site... please put it on the marketsplace here for all IPB users to see. It's a Win-Win for all.

The reputation system can be easily abused and as a result shouldn't be relied significantly on as a general indicator of a user's post reception, IMO.

Currently the ip board defaults to a minimum of 4 characters for search. This may be a due to limitations in MySQL full text search but it breaks search for many thousands of people by returning an error and makes our sites very unfriendly places to search.

Typically, many or most people these days search for phrases or ask questions. It's highly successful in Google to simply ask a question and it's my main method of searching. Many of these phrases or questions will contain some words using less than the 4 allowed. So instead of returning a failed search with an annoying and potentially confusing error - why not just ignore any words below the minimum characters and at least return results with the other words a user searched for?

For example: The following, perfectly legitimate real-world searches on this IPS Community just fail with an error message in a red box.

• how can i upgrade my ips board?
  
• how much does it cost to buy ip.board?
  
• what is ip.content?

These are searches from people interested in buying. Similar searches on my ip.board and every one else's result in the same disappointing results. We all know people soon get frustrated and go elsewhere don't we?

So instead of frustrating our users, can't the search simply ignore all words below the threshold and return at least some results?

The results page could still have an advisory box saying that certain words were not used in the search.

So now searches for the three examples I mentioned will all produce some results and the advisory box can subtly inform and educate users that they need to use words longer than 4 (or whatever it's been customised to) letters.

I'm not sure if this feature is available yet, so I'm posting it here. I checked the System Scheduler and IP.Downloads Tools but didn't see anything that seemed to do the trick.

Is there an option to rebuild IPD-generated topics based on current settings?

This would come in handy in many scenarios - e.g. a new Topic Prefix/Suffix, or custom field, etc., that would otherwise only be added into an existing generated topic if the file is re-submitted.

I know this is available to mod authors so that administrators can be informed if an update is available. Why not skinners?

I regularly have people e-mail me and tell me my products are 'bugged' or 'flawed' yet in reality, it's because they've upgraded from 3.2 -> 3.3 without downloading the latest version of the skin.

This would be an extremely useful addition in my opinion.

Thanks.

Just throwing a suggestion out there: wikify the dev articles? As in, allow seasoned developers (several of whom have commented above) to actively take part in editing the articles. The edits don't have to be applied immediately, but can be reviewed, e.g. by bfarber and whoever else is in charge overall with those. Sure, there's the commenting system, but I think that developers would be more encouraged to develop the articles if given a more active part in writing them.

Date would not hurt to add, but files aren't necessarily associated with a single version. This more falls to the author to implement, I think--if they're not including some indication of version in the filename, that's simply poor management.

Now this is not a 'I am leaving and I want to vent' it is more of 'I really like this software butt'....

A long time ago I talked my then site partner into moving from phpBB to InvisionPower the main reasons were the support and the more stable nature of the beast. Back then phpBB was stuck trying to release the next version and it was hurting our site. Then, as now, the cost was our only downside as we were basically a free site running on donations. We went to a membership model (way before Subscriptions/Nexus) and that kept our head above water. Since then as IPS released stuff we, then me when he retired from the site, have pretty much always stayed with the IPS model, when Nexus came out I dumped aMember, even though I was making serious dosh from doing support/cutom work. Eventually I even dumped Wordpress and my own software system built with cmsBuilder and moved it all over to IPS products.

On a planetary scale I am not a big customer only four licenses with add-ons in each about $350 a year in support costs so compared to a number of other clients definitely small cheese. As a developer I have never been a fan of the way applications/hooks work, mainly applications. The big whinge I have is the documentation/sample code which I believe is totally atrocious, the huge whinge is the lack of reasonable information on Nexus (as it is encoded) as mentioned I made serious money working with aMember and I would have thought I could have done all sort of nice things for people with the base of Nexus but the inablilty to get into the processing is very frustrating. I did do a DVD fulfillment addon for my site but even something as trivial as that was a right royal PITA.

Sorry guys, you keep telling us you will improve the documentation but you have said that for the last three major releases and still the documentation doesn't have reasonable examples of the API calls, even the calling information is difficult the result is needing to look at the code continually to see what to do to achieve stuff. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a solution as each version iteration has only kept making it harder not easier, it aint as though I am a coder in swadling maybe it is that I have gotten old and cranky but I am really frustrated and the main causes are IP.Content & IP.Nexus primarily documentation and weird behaviour. The reason I have always loved IPS is the support, top notch, absolute best practice with wonderful people but it is not enough!

As I said at the top no decision point has been reached, but I am at the tipping point. To take your breath away I am considering Expression Engine mainly because as a coder it gives me 'control' uses a template system that is easy (for me) and that I may be able to get back into development which is what I like to do.......

Keep in mind an admin can change a user's password to gain access or just simply directly-query the database. Granted this feature may make it a bit easier for an admin to access a user's information on their community but they have always been able to.

Frontpage, on 15 April 2012 - 04:09 PM, said:

Comparing two completely different sites will give you results that don't matter at all.

That is an incredibly specific use case, and frankly, I doubt most communities would have any use for it.

I mean no offense, but I think you vastly overestimate the role of social media. With some exception, for the most part social media and communities simply fill different niches.

Major social networking sites have been around for quite a few years now, and yet forums are still there.

Keep in mind this is an "Extra" app and not an officially supported App.... we are currently beating the developer silly and holding back all milk and cookies until it's updated!  Stay tuned!