The Most Important Factors about IPS

[Echelon One]

I thought I would give you my views with IPS, and how I have found them to be such a friendly and great company.

Support


The Suite



Overall view



Support for any product is always a first on my list... and IPS have certainly showed me they can do this, above and beyond expectations.

I moved to IPS products over a year ago now, before I was running vBulletin. I did the conversion myself, but I had to ask IPS Support about one small issue using the converter - turned out to be some corrupt data in a field that was stopping IP.Board importing, so nothing major there. That was my first encounter with Support Tickets on IPS, and I was impressed by the time factor. A very friendly team - my last Support Ticket was a bit different though, which I am assuming is a bug since it went from Tier II, Tier III and then on to Advanced Development. On this occasion it has taken longer, but then it was not just something simple and will probably end up on the Tracker.

In the end I bought the entire suite, the blog I did not really need but I got it in a sale, so I grabbed it. IP.Nexus, well that really does do IP.Board justice, monetizing your forum could not be easier. What I don't understand is why some people complain about the IP.Gallery, it is far better than most gallery scripts. I used to use Photopost Pro with vBulletin, and that is a nightmare of a script, alignment issues, coding problems and hasn't had a major coding overall in years! IP.SEO, that's one piece of software that should be used with any IP.Board in my opinion, what harm can it do, it's even free! If you know about SEO it is very useful for setting up your keywords and descriptions, setting these up correctly can take a few weeks, but the time factor does pay off in the long run. Just last week I had a person asking me if it was possible to get his forum on the first page of Google and in front of his competitors - it took me just two days to achieve that goal, eventhough his competitor's domain was 7 years older and more established. And that was done using some tweaks to IP.Board and following search engine guide lines on keywords and descriptions using IP.SEO.

My own view on IPS is if you want a forum, which you can expand upon as your forum grows then IP.Board is the best for your needs. I know quite a few forum owners, that I do work for - I even persuaded them to move away from vBulletin, since it started going 'downhill'. So many people told me not to change to IP.Board because I would lose my PR (Page Rank) and indexed urls, this is one thing that did not bother me, since I was starting a new domain anyway. In less than 10 months using IP.Board I had a PR4... and a MOZ of 5.6. It just goes to show if you throw a few tweaks in to IP.Board you can get good placement in search engines.

[bfarber]

Thanks for the positive comments. Just one quick note:

I am assuming is a bug since it went from Tier II, Tier III and then on to Advanced Development. On this occasion it has taken longer, but then it was not just something simple and will probably end up on the Tracker.

If a ticket is escalated above Tier 1, it will generally take longer to resolve the issue. Usually this means the issue is of a more advanced nature, the issue is unique to your environment, the issue is a bug that needs to be researched, etc. Such tickets are more difficult (and thus take longer to resolve) by their nature. :)

[Echelon One]

You are more than welcome!

I agree with you regarding the current issue I found, which I was informed may need to be recoded to operate a different way due to the nature. I did try numerous functions disabled, but the issue did not resolve, that is why I submitted a ticket. Not really a major issue, just strange in my opinion.

I actually work on a Support Desk myself, but for a hosting company - some tickets are more difficult than others, again it does sometimes involve the clients environment.