IPS direction

[Nityananda]

Hi guys,
I have now been the owner of an invision licence for a fair while and its a while since I have given some feedback, however I feel its time I did so.

IPS Company

PROS
As a company I think the way you want to run it is excellent. The friendly/personal approach to the way you treat people I really like and many other companies should use you as an example.

CONS
I feel you miss too much at times lately. There is so much going on and things are moving at such a speed that things are being missed. This leads some people (myself included) to feel like they are being ignored on certain issues, when the reality is probably more like you just don't see them.


IPS Products

PROS
You have some excellent products and personally I dont think I could do without a lot of the products that you provide. They are for the most part well written, and headed in a very good direction for the future as well.

CONS
You are occasionally going too fast. Modification development will have started to get more difficult because of this, and also things are being missed because of it. Dont get be wrong I love the fact that you guys wanna get those new features out, but you are going at it way too quickly IMO. As an example IP.Nexus was created and is a fantastic product, however I have gotten to the point where I feel like removing it because it has been developed too quickly. There have now been 2 releases and another one on the way and still I cannot switch a product to only allow Subscribe to paypal as a payment option. I understand that things are depreciated when products are replaced, however something like this can lose people money from their forums. Also on each upgrade the adverts dissapear and have to be resaved, another thing which has been reported by people but is still present in the new version. Whereas the gallery which looks to be getting launched at a slower speed and being worked on carefully, looks like it is going to be a fantastic piece of software once it is released.

Disclaimer to the cons of that one: All the developers on here do an excellent job, and I dont want to put anyones work down. To me this is more organisation than shoddy programming. The work itself is for the most part excellent.


IPS Staff

PROS
Again the friendlyness and willingness to interact as people, not as staff. It makes a massive difference.

CONS
Absolutly none. You have a great bunch of people on here.





Just to add to the above, I would rather see a product with no releases for a few month that is excellent and bug free, than see constant releases of excellent software that has its annoyances. Please I beg of you all, slow down and take the time to read more of the feedback.

[Charles]

Sounds like your biggest complaint is that we move too fast. I get what you're saying but keep in mind that a lot of people will say the exact opposite. :)

As for being ignored that's certainly not true. We just cannot reply to every single feedback topic. If we did we would never have time to actually implement any of that feedback. I mentioned this in the IP.Board 3.2 expectations blog entry but we will start posting frequent development updates about the 3.2 release in just a couple weeks. Everyone should see then that much of the feedback some people think we are ignoring has actually already been implemented. We just don't like to say "yes" to things in public because sometimes plans change. We blog about updates when they are done that way people always have confidence the new, cool thing we are talking about is real and not just a mockup or a possibility.

Appreciate the feedback. Always nice to hear "cons" put in a constructive way :) ... we will continue to work to improve as we always do.

Edit: since you mentioned the frequent IP.Nexus releases I wanted to specifically say that those are released frequently on purpose. In the very first announcement of the very first release of IP.Nexus we said to expect frequent updates. There are two basic reasons for this: 1. IP.Nexus deals with making money on your community and 2. it's still quite a new product that needs to mature.

[Nityananda]

I did say that I dont think your ignoring them at all. I simply think things get missed at times :) I have no doubt at all that 3.2 will be a fantastic product, as it always tends to be on a new release. Just good to give feedback every now and then :)

To be honest I tend not to bother giving feedback on a product that I dont like, because at the end of the day all it is then is moaning. I give feedback on IPS products because I enjoy using them and as a software developer I know how important feedback can be (even if it is annoyin at times lol)