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New Marketplace Categories


Hexsplosions

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I know this has been said elsewhere but I wanted to say it myself, in my own thread, so I at least feel like I've done it...

I hate the new categories.

I'm not posting as a developer, but as a user. I cannot find things as easily as I once did. I thought to myself, I wonder if there's a hook for the calendar that does this thing I want... I gave up on the new categories. They are too generic, I can't find what I want and the entire experience is frustrating. I honestly think the old categories are better.

If it's not broken, please, don't fix it!

Love IPS, hate the Marketplace now. :(

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I 100% agree. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the categories before. And as a developer with merely a couple paid releases, my sales have went down tremendously. Granted, I'm sure some of it is because people are prepping for IPS 4, which probably won't be out till the very end of the year, and probably will end up being pushed back anyways...

Did they ever say why they were changing the categories? I mean, really made a good valid point why? Did it increase sales, because I know every developer I talked to, lost sales. I have no idea where to really put some of my stuff.

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I also agree.

Not to sound like I am hating but, it also seems like it has been several weeks since the "old categories" of 2300 has moved. I understand they are busy, but now all the mods are thrown everywhere. And don't get me started on the fact it 'updated' the last update for every mod they moved, so mods that really havn't been updated in a year, say they were updated May 2013, which is inaccurate. I found that to be a major downside to this change, all mods that were moved lost their accurate update date, which is frustrating to me to know if I should use the mod or not.

I understand what they were trying to do (organize), but probably like you said Heff, If it isn't broken, don't fix it!

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I don't see the problem, any hooks or applications I want I generally search for them instead of using the category system anyway. :sweat:

Search blows. You know how many times I could be searching for something, and I get returned 40 themes and 200 of Adriano's hooks haha. And I could be searching for something "RSS" related as an example, I don't like searching, it doesn't work for me.... but that's just me. It's like it has to be keyed in 100% exact or it no worky.

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Search blows. You know how many times I could be searching for something, and I get returned 40 themes and 200 of Adriano's hooks haha. And I could be searching for something "RSS" related as an example, I don't like searching, it doesn't work for me.... but that's just me. It's like it has to be keyed in 100% exact or it no worky.

Oh I'm well aware you hate the search feature :tongue:

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I don't see the problem, any hooks or applications I want I generally search for them instead of using the category system anyway. :sweat:

It's hard to search when a search term could be almost anything, especially with so many results, and maybe you want to browse instead. It's simply not intuitive any more.

In my line of work usability is a key factor I have to pay attention to throughout a project. If users start to complain that something is frustrating, no matter how simple I might think it is, I will look to address it. I'd definitely be looking at the Marketplace...

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Take searching IPC Slider for example, you would think that being the title of the product would be the first result in the results (filter on relevancy), instead its the 5th?

Exactly. Or Shoutbox. Or any popular mod. I don't know how that 'relevancy' sort order is supposed to be working, but it certainly does not return the most relevant results at the top.

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It uses MySQL Fulltext relevancy.

SELECT id, body, MATCH (title,body) AGAINST('xxx') AS score FROM table WHERE MATCH (title,body) AGAINST('xxx') ORDER BY score;

What about all the other stuff people have been asking. Feedback on that?

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Going to have to step in and agree.. I get the idea was for grouping by function but man, I can't find a thing. While what I want is to find things according to the app I'm using what I'm getting is a jumbled mass of everything. Every single one of these hooks or apps targets a specific codebase.. I can't understand why there isn't yet a dropdown field or something where a user can select which app and version it applies to.

Sample use cases..

1. I want to see if someone created an IP.Content block that would replicate the forums.. now I'd bet if anybody did it it would be Marcher, but I also know he assigned a crapton of stuff to NuclearGeneral. But maybe he didn't create one at all? Where do I start?

Integration? Content Management? Who the heck knows.

2. I want to know if there are any new apps for User and Social Engagement - Social Groups was that.. right? Well let's go to the User and Social Engagement category and see what's there. Okay.. not social groups..

From what I can see it's a huge jumbled mass of hooks (?) and maybe apps.. I don't know. I'd hate to be an app developer because a hook carries as much visible space as your full app. I only say that because the hooks aren't segmented by application.. and the applications are damn near impossible to even spot anymore.

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I have to agree with the OP, while the new categories for new items is a great idea, there was no need to rename the pre-existing categories such as "Modifications", "Hooks and Plugins", "Skins" and so forth. It was easier to use Marketplace before and now IPS has turned the Marketplace into a freaking guessing game. I hate to say it, but the new Marketplace, in regards to the renaming of the previous sections, is a very major FAIL.

PUH-LEEZE, return the category names back to their original category names.

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Going to have to step in and agree.. I get the idea was for grouping by function but man, I can't find a thing. While what I want is to find things according to the app I'm using what I'm getting is a jumbled mass of everything. Every single one of these hooks or apps targets a specific codebase.. I can't understand why there isn't yet a dropdown field or something where a user can select which app and version it applies to.

Sample use cases..

1. I want to see if someone created an IP.Content block that would replicate the forums.. now I'd bet if anybody did it it would be Marcher, but I also know he assigned a crapton of stuff to NuclearGeneral. But maybe he didn't create one at all? Where do I start?

Integration? Content Management? Who the heck knows.

2. I want to know if there are any new apps for User and Social Engagement - Social Groups was that.. right? Well let's go to the User and Social Engagement category and see what's there. Okay.. not social groups..

From what I can see it's a huge jumbled mass of hooks (?) and maybe apps.. I don't know. I'd hate to be an app developer because a hook carries as much visible space as your full app. I only say that because the hooks aren't segmented by application.. and the applications are damn near impossible to even spot anymore.

1) http://community.invisionpower.com/tags/downloads/block/

2) Many authors have not moved or tagged a single file yet. It would be a lot less of a mess if the change was embraced instead of fought. Social Groups is here:'?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>

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The tags could be so much better to accommodate the new categories. >I suggested before, click tags that filters the listings by IP product and you have something.

No matter how many changes to these category names, nothing (I don't think) will truly be perfect unless you can offer to refine search results down to what product the end user ultimately wants to search in.

Something like this might work out quite well. A list of all IPB products the user wants to refine results down to.

So tag what IPB product you want to search for, and go from there.

Quick example of what I mean:

refineresults.jpg

With only few contributors specifying tags for the product its intended for, theres this issue that clients cannot filter though the listings by the product in a category liked they used to, so easily before.

Immediate issues are obviously the search and its relevancy for listings, and the fact the whole category structure has essentially been merged into one product, and no-one can easily root through it to find what they want.

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With only few contributors specifying tags for the product its intended for, theres this issue that clients cannot filter though the listings by the product like they could so easily before.


It is improving in that regard. You have to bear in mind those who do not use English as a primary language may not always be aware of what to put here. :smile: I may mention this on a new submission that is held up for other reasons though, ie lack of docs or not working as it should which would be the ideal time for them to be added if its devoid of any as they'd already have a PM about their file.

Thought: Are you saying all new submissions should compulsorily have tags required as part of their acceptance ?
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I think the issue we're getting to was that the previous system (for the section categories) made it easier to find what each of us were looking for. The renamed categories has just made that more difficult now that each marketplace file entry is no longer tagged as "hooks" or "skins" and that all we have to go on now is just the filename. There is no distinction as to what file goes to which IPS product. As it stands now, I wouldn't use the Marketplace at all because of the confusion.

Not being critical here, we're all just saying that the new system seems to be lacking a lot of detail and that maybe this should have been worked out before being implemented.

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Dylan, that's the exact point were all making here, as well. I might get into argumentative discussions with other members here but I do agree with everybody that the new "renaming of the categories" in Marketplace wasn't very well thought out. I can see if they wanted to rename the parent categories and then have sub categories, keeping everything the same, but to call mods and hooks "integration" and just merged everything under a "child" category? Good grief.

The way it sits now, I'll be avoiding IPS Marketplace and just registering on developers websites to get what I need for my community. IPS simply made it 10x more difficult to find what you're looking for. I don't know about everyone else, but I rarely used the search and simply browsed through the categories that were specific for the lcienses I have. Now, it's become one major guessing game where you have to play a game of "scavenger's hunt".

While I love playing that game when looking for music or movies, not when it comes to IPS digital content. I hope IPS puts the categories back where they were.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I can only echo the many opinions of the category names in the MP and agree that we should have stayed with what we knew. I am quite confused to what half of the categories even mean and what they are for. I hardly go in there much nowadays and used to be in there often as I knew exactly where to look for something.

I understand a need for change sometimes and mostly a good thing but in practical terms it doesn't work for me in this instance.

:smile:

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What about all the other stuff people have been asking. Feedback on that?

This topic has been up for two weeks now? The only IPS comment is on how 'relevancy searching' works. No comment on the subject of the topic itself - marketplace categories.

I'm with the OP on this. The categories are a disaster. They don't make things easier to find - they make me give up looking.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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