IP.Board & The Forum Will Be Dead Within 5 Years

[Eduardo Bautista]

Yes, sex also makes people spend less time on forums, are you going to do something about that?

[Rheddy]

The reason I have it disabled was that I was getting too many new members who could register with their Facebook connection but that the forum software was allowing them to register without a "Forum Username/Displayname". I just found this to be problematic as it could create problems with spammers and trolls. Luckily, I haven't had any issues with it but I did catch it before it became a problem.

I think that there needs to be more options for admins who use the Facebook login method. I wouldn't mind allowing my members to use the Facebook login as long as new accounts couldn't be created with the Facebook interface. Anyone have a solution for this? I recognize the need for the Facebook login but I don't want anyone creating accounts with the Facebook option.

[Eduardo Bautista]

The reason I have it disabled was that I was getting too many new members who could register with their Facebook connection but that the forum software was allowing them to register without a "Forum Username/Displayname". I just found this to be problematic as it could create problems with spammers and trolls. Luckily, I haven't had any issues with it but I did catch it before it became a problem.

I think that there needs to be more options for admins who use the Facebook login method. I wouldn't mind allowing my members to use the Facebook login as long as new accounts couldn't be created with the Facebook interface. Anyone have a solution for this? I recognize the need for the Facebook login but I don't want anyone creating accounts with the Facebook option.

I thought that issue was fixed in 3.1?

[Mat Barrie]

OP raise a valid point with respect to the role of social media and the decline in forum discussion participation. It is a paradigm shift in social discourse.

Let us compare Invision Power versus Facebook using Compete.

You did not just use an opt-in panel of less than 0.1% of the internet-connected consumer base to illustrate your point did you?

Oh yes, yes you did.

Unless you can get metrics out of IPS and Facebook directly, any comparison of "unique views" is fundamentally flawed.

Even, you're counting views to this site, which is forum owners (who will tend to be technologically savvy and privacy aware enough not to sign up to be part of some company's great tracking experiment), versus views to Facebook, which is end users. Very disingenuous.

[Lase]

I think the original poster could have come up with some more original ideas if they thought they were going to "save the day", I think if it needed rescuing and your tips are to make some small skinning changes then your tips fall way below the mark. [u]However I do not think it needs rescuing[/u].

You're the second poster to critique the fact that only one method of improvement has been demonstrated. And like I said in the OP, Is it really up to a new client to start listing fundamental ways through which to improve their product when someone, somewhere is probably on a handsome salary to exhaust avenues like this.

To be quite honest I've been concentrating on IP.Board for 4 weeks and I'll list my stats in a moment. In that short time I've noticed between 15 and 20 methods through which to make massive improvement to this software. To put my money where my mouth is I'll demonstrate another of the more trivial things I've come up with...

Why am I scrolling through threads in 2012?

I get to the half way point and I've had enough, or suddenly decide I wanna search or check for something else. Maybe check the shoutbox who knows. 'Back to top' is great, but I have to scroll all the way down to use that (and 80% of IP.Board users probably don't know it exists). How it should look :

IP.Board can have that one for nothing. But If I was to devote time to spilling my mind out, I'm a new user it's not like I owe the company anything, I'd want paying. "Buzzards gotta eat same as worms", and my minds worth it. If only I had a small army of scriptwriters and programmers and graphic designers like Invision has there'd be something pretty new and all-encompassing in development guaranteed. It doesn't stop at that with Invision; It's got a gigantic user base, largely untapped.

Re; this navigation bar - Sooo yeah the writings on it's side. Does it really matter? It's still legible a user's gonna know what that is when they see it floating as they scroll, or so maybe it needs tweaking or thought through fully. Frankly I think you could get away with that as it is.

.... and is that trivial? Any step up against a competitor isn't trivial. The share buttons I pictured in the OP are by no means trivial either, to my mind they're long overdue and I've only been onboard 4 weeks.



So my stats.

Like I said in a previous post I'm going for professionals.

• The first week was getting it set up, I wasn't working alone.
• A week after I paid the money to IP was when the drive to get people over started. This was what I set up the Twitter account for, but of course had no followers. This is week Two.
• So during the second week achieved approx 110 registrations. I was quite happy with that given that it was mainly word of mouth, there's sod-all on the board and I'm also forcing people to register with their real name, something many users aren't comfortable doing I'm sure.
• The third week it dwindled. This was when we put the Board Index share buttons on. These can't be blamed but they should've been installed from the off on hindsight.
• Now I'm four weeks in and on 210 approx.
  

But the activity levels dreadful. It's on 100 posts and that's me and a couple of the people involved in the forum. Organic user inputs IRO 20 posts / threads. All the while members are busy bees on LinkedIn and Twitter (can't comment on Facebook I don't use it). LinkedIn because it's a massive social network of professionals, but with group functions and a forum structure, with 'likes', 'shares' basically all the things I'm hinting need looking at on IP.

Threads and posts have been 'liked' in-site, so this has had me a little frustrated that people don't notice these share buttons the way they are currently. There's a lot in the balance with a new board. Ten years ago you'd be laughing.

LinkedIn aren't going backwards. And look at the pair of them; LinkedIn's put its head down and provided script that auto-runs any profile holder's latest tweet directly to each contact's homepage whom the user has in their network. That can a be a lot of people. It's pretty good teamwork I can tell you.

IP.Board isn't going backwards either... but it isn't moving forwards as quick as I'd perhaps like. And I love the board you must understand I've got it's best interests at heart. I've admin'd on iphbb etc so I knew where I was going this time around.

In my opinion this is like comparing apples and oranges.

If you have a good niche with good content. You don't need to worry about anything.

'nuff said.

Yeah nuff said ay, pretty cushy time to start a board six years ago. There's a hell of a lot more going on now in 2012 mate. I dunno what you're into, but take it as a given if you were starting whatever board you started then now you'd be twiddling your thumbs, and you'd be pissed off about the share buttons as well I shouldn't wonder.

I have to agree. But, I think IPS needs to stop these "facebook is awesome, message forums suck" topics from continuing to pop up. It's distracting to those of us who license the software and it's disrupting and demoralizing to those of us who support IPS. We support IPS products, pay our licenses and visit these support forums for answers to solutions regarding IPS products. It's not that Facebook shouldn't be discussed here, but it serves no purpose for topics like this one to be nothing more than "feeding that nasty troll" that keeps dredging these topics up.

Yep see this? The problem we've got is, most of the members posting here are pretty loyal to IP.Board. Their community is established and thinking about the now's easier than considering the tomorrow. Also the emphasis with a lot of these posts unfortunately is centred all on Facebook. Partly my fault because I mentioned it in the header, and it was the Facebook share buttons I was loading my guns about.

Whilst I think these are completely essential at this moment in time, I'm under no illusions about the limitations and the dangers Facebook is going to face, despite its CIA, MI5 and military backing. But not many people seem to be concentrating on Google+ at all. I don't blame them, it hasn't really got going yet in fareness. IP.Board should be forward thinking particularly because it has the money, the size, infrastructure and facilities to adopt software similar if not better to what we have here currently. Is the consensus that they won't bother? People are being way to optimistic, and shortcomings at this stage will be picked up by the other monster.

And the forum will be active in five years there's no doubt about that. But how many new boards are going to be being created? This is Invisions bread and butter growth strategy. How many people will be registering to IP.Boards forums in five years?... Will people be gifted forum building facilities on the registration of en email address?

If you ask me any seemingly tortoise like characteristics with whatever it's developing now is purely because they're getting ready for bigger changes.

[list=1] [*]when you are 30+ years old you will realize what has come and gone and realize that all these social media are just fads, [*]believe it or not they will be replaced sooner or later by newer and more trendy apps.

[/list]

That's really impressive mate. See people like myself starting a board for the first time won't have a clue how to go about doing this ourselves. Installing a shoutbox became a laborious affair and the Board Index share buttons a real pain in the arse. I honestly don't know how, years on from the inception of horrible sites like these, there still isn't a comprehensive widget that IP.Board have as an optional mod as default. Explaining what he wasn't doing would be more appreciated by the reader. Maybe you didn't have time.

1. [*]But it isn't under 30's that are using Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr and Google+. Serious people are using them in serious ways. [*]I've no doubt about this. So how far will IP.Board lag behind in allowing administrators to work fully in conjunction (if inclined) with these new sites when they do rise? It would do well to get a universal framework in place now (in terms of the share functions I detailed in the header post for one instance) to A - Utilise whats dominant in the interim, and B - Be better prepared for incorporating the next giants (which I'm sure, will be a lot better than what's around now remember, providing newer challanges).
   
   
   
   

I agree with the points various people have made that social media such as Twitter and Facebook are excellent ways of driving people to your forum, particularly if your community targets a specific niche.

However I also agree with the original poster's point about IPB's current sharing buttons being inadequate (in fact for a long time I never even noticed they were there). That's why on my site, the top of every topic page now looks like this:

[img]

[/img]

You really don't know how to compare sites do you....

[Mat Barrie]

That's really impressive mate. See people like myself starting a board for the first time won't have a clue how to go about doing this ourselves. Installing a shoutbox became a laborious affair and the Board Index share buttons a real pain in the arse. I honestly don't know how, years on from the inception of horrible sites like these, there still isn't a comprehensive widget that IP.Board have as an optional mod as default.

Something like AddThis?

[Marcher Technologies]

I will say one more thing.
of all the things I could say....
The OP is quite correct in One Regard, at least i can hope..... the title. :rofl:
Now! Before I get Blasted OFF here.... note, I mean quite literally that I could see, at the point you speak of, that IP.Board, will no longer be Completely Required, and that the Invision Power Suite with each unique component becomes a reality.... and is Promoted and labeled as such.

[Rheddy]

Marcher, in regards to the Facebook login method, I've tried looking for the settings and you cannot really select one or the other. The options seem to have a "single option for all". When I looked at the settings, IPB only allows you to enable or disable the system. You can't simply allow "User Facebook Login" and that's it. The settings seem to "bundle Facebook Login with Facebook register". There is no option to allow just the Facebook login. There is simply no setting to disable forum registration through Facebook, which is what I've been looking for.

My apologies for not being clear on that issue. I thought this would have been fixed, but apparently there have been no changes to the "social media login method". The same problem exists for the Twitter login option, as well.

[YoungL]

[img]

[/img]

Why am I scrolling through threads in 2012?

I will agree with this part... look at what I did (http://www.ibpdownloads.com/ipb/topic/21181-potm-april/page__pid__53079#entry53079) the entire header including the PMbox, Notification Box, Navigation and Breadcrumb navigation all float.

The trouble you see is not everyone wants that, not everyone wants certain things.

IP.Board has to look at the picture as a whole and has to decide which features it implements. If IP.Board were to implement every possiblity and eventuality it would be one hell of a bloated piece of software. Facebook runs on hundreds of thousands of servers, it is one sophisticated piece of software. But again, not everyone likes the direction that is going in. Companies have to choose which way their software is designed.

IP.Board does expect you to customise your skin, it completely does, hence why it has a skinning system. You can go out and buy a custom made skin for a few hundre dollars if you want, you can then specify how you want it to look. IP.Board caters for countless numbers of sites, it can not possibly accomodate them all. I think you are very naive in thinking that they should be expected to have a skin which is perfect for your needs your needs probably account for less than 10% of their customer base.

IPS has a great community, a great modification and application marketplace and there are a lot of talented developers building addons, modifications, applications and skins. If there is something you want this piece of software to do I am sure it can be done. If it is so niche that it is not available in the store you can get a custom mod developed. The possibilities are truly endless. But if you want your forum to be succesful you need to do the hard work and you need to adapt your forum to meet your sites niche and make it individual to your users needs.

[Marcher Technologies]

Marcher, in regards to the Facebook login method, I've tried looking for the settings and you cannot really select one or the other. The options seem to have a "single option for all". When I looked at the settings, IPB only allows you to enable or disable the system. You can't simply allow "User Facebook Login" and that's it. The settings seem to "bundle Facebook Login with Facebook register". There is no option to allow just the Facebook login. There is simply no setting to disable forum registration through Facebook, which is what I've been looking for.

My apologies for not being clear on that issue. I thought this would have been fixed, but apparently there have been no changes to the "social media login method". The same problem exists for the Twitter login option, as well.

this is not the fault of IPB actually.... -.-
read both the Twitter and Facebook TOS on the matter.
..... It seems that to use their service, "No more is required of the user to access site entry beyond logging in through our service".
ergo.... you speak of WHY these two are so crippled, lack of any control or privacy.

[Lase]

That reminds me. This was meant to be included in my [URL= post. Dated today :

Twitter fights spammers in new lawsuit, implements additional anti-spamming measures

[Rheddy]

Marcher, I think you misunderstood me.

When I enable the Facebook login method, the login methods automatically allows new members to register through the Facebook login. I want to be able to prevent new registrations through IPS's Facebook/IPB Integration Login method. I'm not saying that I want to disable all registrations, I just want to be able to allow "current registered members to login with their Facebook account" but I want to prevent new users from registering through the Facebook login. Since this is a setting in the IPB Admin Control Panel, this is an IPB related issue I'm trying to resolve or that I'm trying to find a fix for.

[Marcher Technologies]

FB will be dead in less then 3 years... so see.. we all have opinions... Remember myspace?

What is this MySpace you speak of?

That reminds me. This was meant to be included in my

previous post

. Dated today :

Twitter fights spammers in new lawsuit, implements additional anti-spamming measures

It’s about time. The spam is out of control. I feel like I’m back on MySpace in 2005.

:lol:
I'm sorry.... I'm rolling over laughing here now.

[TracyIsland]

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]IP.Board can have that one for nothing. But If I was to devote time to spilling my mind out, I'm a new user it's not like I owe the company anything,[/font][/color][color=#ff0000][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif] I'd want paying[/font][/color][color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]. "Buzzards gotta eat same as worms", and my minds worth it. [/font][/color]

Whoah ... dude, that's really cutting right in front of another's wave ...

Following your logic, then any and all on this community board who have received free advice from Andy, from Marcher, from Michael, from Devfuse, from Neoportal, and from countless others, we all need to pay up, and @Lase you had better be prepared to pay for any "help" that you request.

I, for one, am eternally grateful for the time, patience, and incredible willingness by so many of the members of this community who have offered gratis, free, probono to help resolve just MY issues. I cannot thank them enough and will continually thank them over and over.

[Rimi]

Wait. Am I getting money now? I am ok with this.

[Christophe]

Facebook will be replaced by the next thing. I for one have not used FB for several years now. When companies realize that they are sending their customers to FB instead of to their own websites there will be a reverse of fortune for FB. Further more FB is the worst thing ever to happen to privacy on the interwebs and this will bite them in the arse.

Remember myspace? Look at Groupon...those companies reach the top, everybody loves them then the next year they overspent and they go down. Myspace farket up because their designers sucked and did not understand their audience

Social media is the most widely misused tool ever given to a marketing department. I cringe when I hear 22 year old telling us that we need to tweet all day and send our customers to Facebook. Companies use FB when they had no website...now it is not acceptable to send people to FB instead of to your own site. I for one do NOT want third parties to monitor me and what I LIKE so why would I want to force my customers to do the same.

Further more, the Like function is a total joke. I remember two years ago being asked to LIKE a katy perry video before even watching it...you needed to LIKE it in order to watch it WTF!!! The like function is a joke that has nothing to do with LIKING something. Plus if you are going to allow people to LIKE something you should also allow them to DISLIKE something...both options can be abused but DISLIKE is bad for business so that is why you do not see it on FB.

Discussions forums will NOT be dead in 5 years as people will migrate back to private communities after being sick of not having their privacy respected. Facebook is a portal for teenagers who do not know better. I consider it a cancer ran by people who are only interested in selling my data to third parties and bombarding me with advertising.

If you respect your customers you will thrive...if you don't you will disapear

[Christophe]

My problem with Facebook

You have depression and go to a site that sell Brand X of anti-depressants. That site has a FB widget that phones back to FB telling them that User 12345 is reading a topic on anti-depressants. Next day you log in Facebook, the system matches your 12345 id with your account and now FB knows you are reading anti-depressants topics even when you were logged out of FB when you were on those sites and FB then sells this data to third parties.

This is just a simple example but how many people do you think realize that all these social widgets phone home and track everything you are doing. How far are these acceptable to you? If you know about this privacy tracking, why does it not bother you?

[CrossFire-Radio]

Just to throw this out there for fun....


"5 years" will be 2017... The worlds going to end Dec 21, 2012... So I guess forums, Facebook, twitter, etc... Will all be gone by then... :D

[Ocean West]

The like function is a joke that has nothing to do with LIKING something. Plus if you are going to allow people to LIKE something you should also allow them to DISLIKE something...both options can be abused but DISLIKE is bad for business so that is why you do not see it on FB.

I always felt wrong that people LIKE things such sad news or a death.

[Rheddy]

Actually, when Facebook's IPO goes public, Zuckerberg will be beholden to his stockholders. I don't think Zuckerberg has enough personal talent himself to satisfy his stockholders when they demand results and, he'll also have to answer to his Board of Directors. Facebook may generate a lot of money from its stock but their growth is going to be limited. Another IPO bites the dust.

[Charles]

It's interesting to me to read topics like this as I look at things a bit differently from the perspective at IPS. I posted earlier in this topic about our own internal business of course.

However I also see impact on clients I advise. I have spoken to many clients who had a fear of Facebook/Twitter/etc. and who were surprised when I strongly suggested they embrace those networks. I am a huge proponent of leveraging this networks to bring traffic to your own community that you control. A place where you control the experience, the branding, the advertising, and can (if it's a business) monetize the experience.

Every single time a client has come back to me later and said they have seen a marked increase in user traffic and such when they stopped giving traffic away to other networks. When they stopped fearing them and instead used them to their own advantage.

[Rheddy]

Charles, Facebook, as a potential source of new members is a good thing. But, if you already have an established message forum, Facebook becomes more of a hindrance. I've built my community since 2004 and while it's a relative small community, my site has built a reputation among the online community. My site is built around Japanese anime and manga and it's taken several years but I have heard about how respected my site has become when it comes to reporting news around the anime industry.

If I had just built my site, I would rely on Facebook but most of us just see a conflict with Facebook. We're just staunch defenders of IPS. But, you can't really blame us for that. lols :lol:

[Alfa1]

I do not think embracing social media is a good thing by definition. Using social media to get new members to your site is an excellent approach. However, promoting social media to your members does exactly the opposite: it promotes facebook/twitter at the expense of your site. I love it when my competitors do this. I instantly invite all their members from their facebook & twitter page over to my site. It greatly boosts my member base.

[paw]

I am a huge proponent of leveraging this networks to bring traffic to your own community that you control. A place where you control the experience, the branding, the advertising, and can (if it's a business) monetize the experience.

Every single time a client has come back to me later and said they have seen a marked increase in user traffic and such when they stopped giving traffic away to other networks. When they stopped fearing them and instead used them to their own advantage.

I was honestly about to delete the little fb page i have as fb does not interest me in any way, but after reading your post, making fb my tart that i pimp out to bring more one way traffic sounds like a gig I could work with.

[connorhawke]

The vast majority of attempts that I've seen of using social networking to increase membership count don't work, or don't work well. After all, if people are interested enough in something to join a website dedicated to that thing, they are much more likely to Google it and join that website first than to first search for the corresponding fan group on Facebook, Twitter, etc. With regards to which tends to drive people where, I believe that it's usually the other way around: members join the fan group, instead of fan group fans becoming members. But please, show me an example of a fan group that drove a relatively significant number of people to join a site rather than vice versa.