A couple of things that surprised me about the upgrade...

[Darkshines]

So, I've been poking around the new upgraded forums and I've noticed a couple of things........

• I can post in this forum even though I'm not a customer (yet ). Is this a thing now? Did it change a while ago?
• My rank icon (pips) points to the another url - which is not an image but appears to be a broken test install of IPS4. I think I'd rather have the pips... 
• Unlike the demo board, the "Create" menu only contains Status.

I think these are related to configuration, not actual bugs, so I'm not posting any of it in the bug tracker

[Rhett]

Please post any bugs in the tracker if needed, the rank/pip is already reported, as with all beta software there will be bugs, our team is working on them around the clock however.

 

Thank you

[Darkshines]

As I said, I didn't think they were bugs. Speaking of which, where is the bug tracker? There doesn't seem to be a link anywhere anymore.

[Darkshines]

...ok, after a little digging I have found a link in the announcement in the sidebar: http://community.invisionpower.com/bugs.html/4-0-0/

But when I click on it I get the message: 

Sorry, there is a problem

You do not have permission to view this page

=| =| =|

[Skipy7]

I think you need to be a customer to report bugs by the looks of it. I found the link to the tracker by resizing to mobile view and you see more links in the nav then.

[Darkshines]

I think you need to be a customer to report bugs by the looks of it.

​That wasn't the case before the upgrade. =/ In any case, it seems bizarre that you would have to be a customer to report a bug. Nearly every IPS customer should have dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of users on their own site, all of whom should be capable of noticing, and therefore reporting, bugs. =/

I found the link to the tracker by resizing to mobile view and you see more links in the nav then.

​I would say that's a bug. 

[fadedturbulence]

I might be seeing it wrong here, but this is a paid product. So logic tells me, if you aren't a 'Customer' of this site, how did you get the software to begin?

Their purchases work like this: once you pay the full price, you are always a "customer', maybe just not an active one (which is okay, for this particular instance as I am not an 'active' customer though I can report bugs. though for things like upgrades, that you need to be active for).

So in a general situtation, I can see why they have bug reporting blocked to only once paid members. 

[Darkshines]

You can notice bugs without getting the software. If you're using this forum, or any other IPS-based site out there, as a user, you can spot bugs, and therefore should be able to report them.

Not to condone piracy either, but even if software pirates could report bugs it would be helpful in the long run. Pirates don't have (easy, prompt) access to updates, so the only people who benefit from pirates being able to report bugs are IPS... so why wouldn't they do it?

[Mur]

As I said, I didn't think they were bugs. Speaking of which, where is the bug tracker? There doesn't seem to be a link anywhere anymore.

[Darkshines]

​Did you read the topic? You can see the link, but I can't, and even if I go to the URL I get a permissions error.

[Rhett]

You are a visitor, this is why,  there may or may not be an issue here, we will double check this though. 

[TSP]

​That wasn't the case before the upgrade. =/ In any case, it seems bizarre that you would have to be a customer to report a bug. Nearly every IPS customer should have dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of users on their own site, all of whom should be capable of noticing, and therefore reporting, bugs. =/

I can very much agree on this. It makes perfect sense to let every member be able to report bugs in a software they are using. Besides you'll get the added perspective of someone who is not hosting their own community, but just a regular member, moderator or administrator at a community.

I really hope this permission issue is done in error and that it is not intentional that non-clients can't report bugs. 

I've been a member at this board since before I was a client. I would report issues, report bugs from the preview board for 3.X and give feedback. The reason is that I was very active at a community board that used Invision Power Board. I was interested in learning which software they used and genuinely wanted to help the administrators out with getting issues in the software fixed and maybe getting some features implemented, that they didn't have time for themselves. 

If I'm a moderator at a community and I discover a bug, why would I want to put the workload of reporting a bug to the client owner, if they already know how to reproduce the bug and so on? 

Why would a regular member need to put the workload on the client owner when they have some feedback that they want to get heard? What if the client owner doesn't even want to bother with such things? 

I doubt I would've become a client, a contributor and administrator at three large community boards if it hadn't been for the fact that IPS let me submit feedback and bugs before I was a client. Why would I be enticed to do that, if I didn't feel like they wanted to listen to the opinion of someone who is using the software on a every-day basis. (Even if that use is "only" as a regular member)

​

[Rhett]

Look up one post, it's likely it's a permission error, no need to stress just yet. 

[TSP]

@Rhett: My post took more than 5 minutes to type  

Besides, you wrote «there may or may not be an issue here, we will double check this though.»

The first part seems to imply that there's a 50/50 chance it's a bug, while the second part seems to imply it's more likely intentional. 

[Rhett]

50/50 would be a good guess, I'm not certain what it was before, but we will double check it to be safe.   

[TSP]

I was at least able to report bugs as a regular member years back. 

I've also linked bug reports for my member to follow the status on, where I've said something along the lines of «I've submitted this as a bug to the software developers, you can follow the status or report any additional information here: <link to issue>»

[fadedturbulence]

About the average joe (non-client/paid member here) reporting bugs:

I still don't see it. I look at it this way...I go to a mechanics shop and I notice something broken. What's the chances i'll I run around the place trying to find the 'corporation' to report this 'broken' part to? Slim. What usually happens is, [most] people will just go to the shop owner and say "oh hey just so you know, I think 'x' is broken, looked it anyway'"

Few reasons why I would do this [report to owner] for a website (in general):
1. A lot of sites are white labeled anyway. So if you go to a site that is white labeled and has a 'bug', what do you do now?
2. The 'bug' could be something simple, webdev related, server related, etc. Who knows best? Probably the owner
3. You may be 1 in 20 or so that would go 'above and beyond' to report problems to the 'main' corporation (3rd-party debug)
4. Creating loops. If some average joe opens tickets/bug reports saying "domain.com is using your script and their menu is not working" now IPS may spend time looking into this, when all the while if the owner of the site was simply told and he/she looked into it come to find out it was a simple code error from some previous dev work (<-just an example). But who closes these loops? Even telling the website that you 'reported' this issue. What was the point? You could have simply told the website the problem, and THEY either fix their own coding bug, OR THEY can report it to the 'main' corp....THEY would know which to do (it being in-house bug or framework bug)
5. I'm definitely no expert of every website, just barely getting there with this. So if I go to some random site, I personally wouldn't be quick to point where the bug originates. Again, site owner probably knows best...they could even be doing some work at the time. How would you know?

I could honestly probably keep going. I really don't see any point to allowing average joe's reporting capabilities. If you aren't an owner/runner of this software, I'm thinking you should just report the bugs to the site owners instead. I really wouldn't like random people coming here, saying that my site has "x, y, z problem" when all that had to be done was tell me about it and I could have resolved it on my own, simpler, faster, easier on everyone (no one sent in circles for work I was doing on my site). Then too reports don't look foolish and time-wasted.

It kind of be like, going to Yii or symfony (or whatever framework script IP is using here <-see I don't even know that, to even be accurate) and complaining to them that something doesn't work here on IPS4. How is that productive? Report the bugs to the website. Makes most sense

This is just my 2 cents anyway. 
 

[Lindy]

We don't want end users reporting bugs at this time. It sounds like a novel idea and we've allowed this in the past due to various reasons, but at the end of the day, the "bug" is usually caused by a third party modification or theme modification the site owner has performed that the end user would know nothing about.  Further, not having access to the site owner's ACP, we're not going to be able to obtain any useful information about the site's configuration and it just becomes (most of the time) a wild goose chase. As for Darkshine's piracy argument -- we definitely don't want to hear from anyone who are using an unlicensed product (likely full of hacks) regardless of how they've self-rationalized their actions to be for the benefit of paying customers.

There's enough usage of the product across so many different types of communities that it's not necessary to have the bug tracker as a free for all at this time. Thank you for the feedback, however.