My IPB 3 fears

[PeterJ]

Is ti possible that the new version of IPB will also fail to deliver, from my point of view the essential tools that are crucial for one forum based website grow? I am not talking about the code problems or skin problems. These are at the highest professional level. No questioning there. I am talking about interaction with website visitors and website members. The code is cool but it is cold.

Here is my experience of IPB so far: On the left side you have this great forum company with efficient forum software and excellent support service. On the right side you have the after market with some cool sites like Invision Moding and IPS Beyond. The right side makes this great mods and skins of the forum so that your members interaction on your website is more efficient.

Now here is one thing that I simply can't understand: Why in the world IPB doesn't make their essential mods truly interactive for website use in the first place. Let me explain again: We have this great and powerful gallery. It is cool and powerful but there is no proper interaction. As if it is intentionally half done. No image of the week, no awards to the members for their submissions in the gallery, no last 5 images on the front page of the forum, no nothing that is pushes members to use it. It just stops where in modest opinion should excel. Then there are some mods that should be integrated as standard feature of the forum but they are not.

So you say you are "the forum" company in the first place and we should look on the right side for enhancments?

Let us see on the right side. On this side, as I sad before, there are several very competitive websites who offers these great enhancements and skins of IPB forum and adons. The problem is these enhancements are more often than not functional but not complete. The make things worse even if you order a costum mod there is no guarantee that anybody will respond for custom mod development no mater how much you are prepared to pay. The support service on this side is functional but hugely dependend on members free time.

So I am wondering is this new version of IPB forum is giong to be the same as the old one in this regard? A Superman without a soul? Is it possible that you can't see that the bouth side walks cripled. I am sure there would be 70% more forum purchases if this interaction problem would be solved in proper way.

Don't get me wrong. I love IPB and this is just my modest opinion or five cents as you say...

[Morrigan]

I would suggest you read the IPS company blog as they have already announced just a few of the NEW amazing interaction features that you are mentioning here. ;)

[Jaggi]

yea ipb3 has the ability to integrate all mods into your forum and make it seemless. For example the search feature can search any modification u tell it to, there is also hooks on the pages where you can add in your own "widgets" to display information like your gallery pics if you want to. etc.

[.om]

Interaction will be great with IPB 3..I do hope all your issues will be addressed with it.

[3DKiwi]

I agree the gallery leaves a lot to be desired with its integration.

While there's some cool stuff coming in IPB 3 I wonder if they will have addressed some of the basics e.g.

Stop members posting images in signatures and using multiple lines.
Image resolution controls for attachments. Got them for the gallery but not the forums. Members can post ridiculous resolution images so long as the file size is below the per post limit.
No option to remove quote reply. You would be surprised how many people use this thinking its Fast reply. I've replaced it manually in my skins with Fast Reply.
No proper Links system from IPS. The bfarber one while quite good isn't really complete.
Portal recent topics is a lot more use if it's Recent Replies. Should be option to change this without having to alter code yourself.

3DKiwi

[Jυra]

We have this great and powerful gallery. It is cool and powerful but there is no proper interaction. As if it is intentionally half done. No image of the week, no awards to the members for their submissions in the gallery, no last 5 images on the front page of the forum, no nothing that is pushes members to use it. It just stops where in modest opinion should excel. Then there are some mods that should be integrated as standard feature of the forum but they are not.

I'd love to see more intergration and interaction (why am I using such big words?) between the forum and gallery, but some of those things you mentioned should be mods. You'll have forums all over with everything turned on and looking all the same.

[TCWT]

Will members lose their unread topics information after the upgrade?

[W13]

Will members lose their unread topics information after the upgrade?

I doubt it.

[henke37]

If they can keep the info, they will. But this is not the mission critical kind of info. Some people probably are storing it in the Memory MySQL table type.

[TCWT]

I doubt it.

Well, when I upgraded from 2.0 to 2.2, all members lost their unread topics info.

[Cybertimber2009]

I don't see why. I mean, simple logic query...
Member Last Visited on: x date, x time.
What topics were posted in and/or created after "x date, x time"
Show topics

**disclaimer I know very very very basic querying structure but hopefully this covers the plain english example.

[Brandon D]

Using your query, every topic prior to the user's last visit would be marked read, even if the user never entered the topic. It's a bit more complicated ;)

[Matt]

IP.Board 3.0.0 will offer much better integration between our 'add-ons' and other modifications.

It would be incredibly trivial to write a 'hook' that grabs gallery data and displays it on the board index. We might even write some for you.