Ulitmate IPB

[AndyF]

there is no button "[b]Buy a drink to AndyF for all of his help[/b]". I am serious on this one. I can't donate some money to this guy for all of his help with my website. I would buy a drink to others that helped me as wall but I can't since there is no way of doing it.

:blush: , Thank you for your kind comment.

I help people because I want to, rather than financial gain :)

[bfarber]

I don't disagree with your suggestion per say. Honestly it would be nice to have officially supported what I refer to as "typical mod packages". The main reason is because every time a new version comes out, people tend to have to wait a few weeks to months before upgrading because of the time it takes to adapt the mods. Since most of the people do them for free on their free time, which I am thankful for and have donated to quite a few people as well as outsourced for certain programming needs.

But from a realistic stand point it wouldn't be possible to see this come to light unless there was going to be more funding or increase in product costs to allow the ability to hire more programmers, techs, etc to support expanding their product base.

I think it would be more realistic though for a group of people both 3rd party as well as IP Dev to look at some of the typical forum mods like Wiki, Portal, Downloads, etc and see about creating or standardizing the way they integrate into IP Products to prevent the constant need of rewriting modules when a new version comes out. Don't get me wrong though there has been a step in this direction with how they have done some of their modules and it is getting better. It is nice to wish it would happen sooner though ^_^ but I'm a realist (which my wife says I'm a pessimist).

Pretty much all of what you've said is spot on. With regards to your last paragraph, we've been taking steps to do this. Firstly, we offer a Downloads module and a Portal module (portal is included with the software out of the box at no extra charge). A wiki isn't one of the most highly requested features, just for the record. We have created a community developers team, however, that we interact with in order to provide support, help and resources to in order to facilitate some quality, community-driven projects. :) See: IP.Tracker and IP.Shoutbox, and we have other plans for the future.

I was hoping more IP users would put some sincere thought on this but unfortunately they didn't. It seem to me am the only one around here who is not a coder or IP guru in one way or another. I thought it would be nice if IP world reorganizes it self to be more productive, organized so it can compete with the competition and most of all is more attractive to new customers. Right now at least from my modest point of view you guys are way dispersed all over internet, your mods are excellent but most of time half finished and not easily adaptable to all users needs. Even worse! I can find in one place of internet an official mod that cost 20USD then go to the other side and find out that the same mod is completely for free. Well I lost my 20 bucks guys but the coder that develop it probably lost even more.

Some of you pointed some good arguments but most of them are just an easy excuse. I guess business as usual is way to go so I apologise for suggesting something that is obviously not acceptable.

Part of the problem is, all of this is outside of our control. We have only so many in-house developers, and we have several products requiring our current focus, making it difficult to just launch something new (or several somethings, as in your first post). Additionally, while you may want or require such features as you posted, the vast majority of our customers do not. Those features which are the most highly requested often make it into our product, but a lot of things we just don't have the resources for.

As noted in my paragraph above, we launched a team of community developers to get started several quality, IPS-backed projects. Our first two projects (IP.Tracker and IP.Shoutbox) have been very well received. We have plans for other projects in the future, but everyone on the team is volunteering their time for these projects and can only do so much. At some point, it's just more than a single company (or team of volunteers) can handle.

I understand the situation from your perspective. You want all these modules, and either have a hard time finding them, can't find them for free, or the ones you find you do not like/are of poor quality/no support/etc. It is unfortunate to run into such a situation, but it's also an unrealistic situation to expect that everything you want will already be available, at a cheap price or for free, and also be of high quality with quick support. Your best option is to contract a developer who can create the modules you want custom. You could, if you wanted, ask the developer to release the modules for free to the public afterwards, so that they will be available to the next customer who wants them. :)

[BryanH]

I'd rather IPB remain solely a forum software and simply strive to integrate with other services, through IP.Converge or perhaps the new 3.0 hooks system.

IPB + WordPress would be great.

[PeterJ]

You want all these modules, and either have a hard time finding them, can't find them for free, or the ones you find you do not like/are of poor quality/no support/etc. It is unfortunate to run into such a situation, but it's also an unrealistic situation to expect that everything you want will already be available, at a cheap price or for free, and also be of high quality with quick support.

You all think I need all of those plugins and some of you even imply that I won't all of them for free but I don't however I do think it would be nice if they were available, supported and monitored by IPS at predicted place, price and with some decent level of production quality.

I have tested several open source solutions out there, small and big ones before IPB including some commercial ones like vBulletin. Some of them runs literary on air and on spare time and what amazes me is the fact that they can still deliver a decent production stable forum, portal system and all other mods which are described here as something that needs a lot of money and human resources. Take for example drupal, php-fusion and so on.

It is true I have no clue about programming business and what it takes to deliver some excellent software like IPB but I somehow sense that even you guys don't have to reinvent something that is all ready invented elsewhere. With excellent IP Portal, IP Gallery, IP Blog and IP Downloads you gave us some really sweet "carrots" so it understandable that some of us, unfortunately as obvious minority here, dream of more yesterday not tomorrow. :whistle:

Anyway thank you guys for your answers and once again do please excuse me for searching for more IPS quality stuff.

[Tarun]

I'd rather IPB remain solely a forum software and simply strive to integrate with other services, through IP.Converge or perhaps the new 3.0 hooks system.

IPB + WordPress would be great.

And IP.Board + Joomla.

[bfarber]

You all think I need all of those plugins and some of you even imply that I won't all of them for free but I don't however I do think it would be nice if they were available, supported and monitored by IPS at predicted place, price and with some decent level of production quality.

I have tested several open source solutions out there, small and big ones before IPB including some commercial ones like vBulletin. Some of them runs literary on air and on spare time and what amazes me is the fact that they can still deliver a decent production stable forum, portal system and all other mods which are described here as something that needs a lot of money and human resources. Take for example drupal, php-fusion and so on.

It is true I have no clue about programming business and what it takes to deliver some excellent software like IPB but I somehow sense that even you guys don't have to reinvent something that is all ready invented elsewhere. With excellent IP Portal, IP Gallery, IP Blog and IP Downloads you gave us some really sweet "carrots" so it understandable that some of us, unfortunately as obvious minority here, dream of more yesterday not tomorrow. :whistle:

Anyway thank you guys for your answers and once again do please excuse me for searching for more IPS quality stuff.

Take phpbb for instance - most of the mods you speak of are created by independent parties, not the authors working on phpbb itself. That is all volunteer basis. You just happen to be able to obtain all of the files at the same place (note we have a similar setup with the resources site, though we obviously have no control over the third parties who submit files there).

We simply do not have enough developers to deliver and support so many products at this time. It's not that we wouldn't like to do stuff like that - it's just that it takes people to do it, and there's only so many people here.

[Karbonize]

The only feature that should be included in the core of IPB I think is the SEO feature. If anything gets done in the future, I'd LOVE to see an SEO feature already in the core.