Charles

Matt, on 25 May 2012 - 12:57 PM, said:

Mh, you're right.

Same if you only sell items (without an online shop) with "prepayment" (or "advance payment") and only ship the item if the customer paid the invoice...

And: The main problem of this topic (forcing to sign electronic invoices) is "out of date": Forced to the bill signing ends

And additional the (official) information from the "Federal Ministryof Finance" (translated version here).

Matt posted a general idea -- it was not an announcement, blog entry, or anything that should have been construed as an official representation of IPS' permanent view.

From my perspective, if we were to do a cookie list/map - IPS then becomes liable for full compliance with the law. It would be quite easy for us to do a complete list of current cookies and how they are used. The moment a change is made, you install a modification that generates cookies, or similar - the list is inaccurate and we find ourselves in a position of having provided a false sense of security to our customer base.

Thus, we've decided to provide the user with a method of indicating their policies, but we are not incorporating any specific compliance directives into the software itself. Doing so starts us down the slippery slope of keeping track of all off-the-wall laws around the globe that ultimately, users are responsible for adhering to.

As a final point, nobody fully understands the law. That's why the deadline for compliance was extended a year. It's not even clear if the policy applies to Google, for which, as I understand it, the policy was written for to begin with.

To those who are concerned about members going off and downloading the mobile app on their own...the same concerns (should) exist with tapatalk and forumrunner.  There is nothing stopping your members from seeing these in the app store, thinking that they will work with your site, purchasing them, only to find out that they don't work, or for you to offer a branded in-house solution at a future point in time.

Our offering is no different from our competitor offerings in that regard.

Isn't there some irony in that you chose to tell everyone that forums will be dead soon via a forum? And the topic itself has over 8,000 views with 177 replies?

Hmm, I am so confused.

There is a mobile skin that comes with the default product. Fact.

There are other mobile skins available from skinners for a price. Fact.

There are at least two "mobile apps" already in the marketplace that cost forum owners nothing but they do cost the users money. TapaTalk and ForumRunner. Fact.

Now there are three "mobile apps" in the marketplace that cost forum owners nothing but they do cost the users money. TapaTalk, ForumRunner, and IPS. Fact.

The cost for the IPS app is $1.99. The cost for the TapaTalk app is $4.99. The cost for the ForumRunner app is $0 (read only) or $1.99 (full version). Fact.

Mobile Skin <--> Mobile App: two different animals. What in the world is the issue? Would it make everyone feel better if IPS started a subsidiary, maybe called 'TalkWalk' that sold the mobile app? Then it is just another company selling a mobile app product in the marketplace ...

As for me, I am very excited that IPS has this product in house because I am hoping for the white label version where I might be able to offer the app to our premium, paid members for free.  I can't do that with TapaTalk or ForumRunner. All I can do for those two mobile apps is buy the white label and give it to our members for free.

Estimated cost of white label product from IPS? Unknown. Fact.  Suggested $1,000 price tag? Speculation by one person.

My gawd, it's $1.99, it was just released and they're promising speedy development. For cryin' out loud, what is it some people expect? I'm not asking any members to buy it; I'm simply telling them it's available and they can choose whether it's worst $1.99 to them.

Looking forward to where things will be on 3.3.2 and you guys keep up the good work, Brett.

Thanks, you did very good listing pretty much everything!

What I mainly wanted to know, is if IP Board had built in security, addons, updates. You eased my mind, thank you once again!

I believe that they are still open at this point. Tickets marked Mission critical (site offline, inaccessible for reasons not related to hosting, miscellaneous issues that are causing the site to be down, etc) are generally handled first. If you're is marked mission critical, it may also receive after-hours support. I don't know the exact time frame for Mission critical tickets, but I would assume under 24 hours.

Furthermore, it would help and be much faster if you gave the following information within your ticket, so they don't have to stop and ask:

Admin ID:
Admin Password:
FTP URL:
FTP Username:
FTP Password:

Just an FYI.

Not having javascript enabled is hardly a concern in 2012, I'm afraid.  If you disable javascript, you can expect more than half the web to not work correctly.  It is well accepted these days that users who disable javascript understand this and accept the broken functionality.

As far as I'm concerned, there are two golden rules for creating a healthy and successful community.

The first is to be involved in your site. Don't try to take a passive role and hope it takes care of itself--it won't. Choose a subject matter you care about. Spend some time every day to actually talk with your users and contribute to discussions. If there aren't any going on, start some. You'll get to know your users, and your users will get to know you. The community and friendships you build are what actually make for a successful site, and will encourage other people to join as well.

That leads me to point two: Get others involved, too. As you get to know your users, you should be able to tell who are the most knowledgeable, helpful, and capable. Give them a chance to help out--let them moderate a particular forum or section. If that goes well and you need the help, bump them up to global moderator or eventually even administrator. You'll end up with staff you can trust, and they'll be more loyal and appreciate you for it. You can also consider setting up an intermediate rank to recognize good users you're not sure you want moderating.

Under no circumstances should you ever post moderator applications or the likes. The types of people you will encounter may not be the best choices for your community, and it'll discourage the ones who are. Find users who will be good at it, not the ones who want it.

Don't oversaturate your ranks. Keep it simple so that new users can understand what's going on and don't feel left out. If you need help, bring some more staff on--but not too many, or you might have trouble keeping them all in line.


These are just a few thoughts from my experience, and they've worked out pretty well so far. Ultimately, you need to figure out what works best for your site. Your circumstances may require a different approach, and that's okay. But never undervalue your users and the community aspect. If you don't give people a reason to become involved and stay involved, they won't.

Thank you for your feedback, however I don't really see much of anything in this topic that would be considered "feedback or suggestions for IP.Content", so I'm going to close this.  If you have ideas on how to improve our software, feel free to share them.

Hey, I am the author of the Social Groups app for IPB. You can convert vB social groups into IPB, although the gallery images are not converted currently since there is no gallery feature in my Social Groups app yet. Let me know if you have any questions!

Kage Kazumi, on 25 June 2011 - 05:14 AM, said:

Kage Kazumi, on 25 June 2011 - 04:04 PM, said:

Clearly reading your own posts is not one of your strong points in life

Quillz, on 03 June 2011 - 01:30 AM, said:

This is not true.... but what is true is you nor IPS nor myself will ever make ALL customers happy with any changes made. This is why it makes a great option for your own custom skin.

Even from this thread you will see many that like the new design and some that don't, it's for this reason that we have the ability to make custom skins and create/change things as we see fit for our own boards. Trying to make one design fit everyone will never happen!

DDH, on 02 June 2011 - 05:58 PM, said:

yeah, okay makes sense but will you be online 24/7 on our community, explaining what the bullets are for in the forum, and in the blogs and in the member list and in my content?  I need something, a set of icons, that is instantly understandable to my members since they don't log on as frequently as say a gaming community or a car community ... and it isn't about just what I want ... having icons and symbols that are instantly recognizable and understandable are a UI must-have for the internet