Yea not happy

[Aiwa]

After many, many years I have my site just as I want it and I have loads of add-ons.

To me 4.0 upgrade is just another job I will have to do which really doesn't need to be done.

It will cost me time and money and deflect my time and money from using my site to make money.

At the moment I cannot see the benefit.

I will put it off as long as I can without risking my sites security or functionality.

​And that is a perfectly acceptable reason.  A major upgrade, like to IPS4, that requires 3rd party mods / themes to be rewritten is something that requires an investment from businesses to perform.  It's certainly something you need to plan rather than like some who use default everything that can quickly adopt. 

Only you can decide when your community is ready for the upgrade.  

[Seth Jones]

I kind of think that IP.Board 4 is better than 3 so far, but I hope that they fix some of the issues with theming. I never liked it in IP.Board 3. It's one of the things that has made me want to switch to myBB or even Xenforo mostly due to how customizable it appears to be. I feel like open-source software is usually better unless the paid software is backed by tons of skilled developers (Photoshop is a prime example) who are truly passionate which IP.Board developers are don't get me wrong, which is rare since money is more of a driving force rather than a passion for these people. I essentially can get myBB to do all I need, for no money. Paid suites like IP.Board/Xenforo really just for business people who aren't willing to customize their board.

[Ricw]

I'll take the switch ASAP! 

[MMXII]

Knocking the platform based on the default look is like saying I am not going to consider that car in any other color because I didn't like the red colored paint. There will be third party skins and if you have the skills you can certainly change it to something amazing. This has been discussed thousands of times here.

​While I agree with you, the default look is way more important than many people think. It is the first impression potential customers get and no matter how powerful or good the software is: If the presentation is not appealing, many will not even give it a try. Therefore I am always happy if the default theme itself looks good. It is important. The fact that you can change it – in this case – is not.

[D-rA]

As an observer and experimenter in this matter, which is my favorite hobby, say that IPS4 has 'two fine female breasts' before competition.
What disappointed me at the moment is that the developers more groping 'those breasts', and not hear the soul of his idea.

I think there is no better competitive functional product.

[CheersnGears]

The look and feel of it.

Its probably terrific for everyone, just not for us.

 

 

​Does your current board run on the default skin?  You'll be able to get other skins and layouts.

Personally, 3.4.7 is reliable, but feels very old in terms of how things work. Even with some of the more modern skins that are available, we can only do so much with the current software.  I really feel that IPS let 3.4 live too long before starting 4.0.

The framework that IPS4 is a launchpad for many more expansions.

[The Jimmo]

​While I agree with you, the default look is way more important than many people think. It is the first impression potential customers get and no matter how powerful or good the software is: If the presentation is not appealing, many will not even give it a try. Therefore I am always happy if the default theme itself looks good. It is important. The fact that you can change it – in this case – is not.

​A default look should show what the system is capable of and be attractive enough that people are encouraged to learn more about it. Both I feel are done here. IPS shouldn't diverge into some awesome, amazing skin design that only suits 5% of it's members and the other 95% have to spend hours converting it to something usable (or worse not use the product). 

This is kind of my point about the customization. Every little thing is not going to be to the customers desire so it is up to the customer to customize it. It is IPS' job to give us a framework and baseline to work around. If the customer has a glaring wrong item with the skin they can submit a suggestion but from what I've seen it's been "can it be red instead of blue?", "can we change the hue of white to be more cream colored?" things that can be done by the client. The individuals who have made legitimate claims, I appreciate and have liked 

[CheersnGears]

Smoothness, speed, ease of use, being bug-free and add-on availability are all far more important than the default look.  Default look can always be changed. 

 

The default look isn't even a consideration for me since I will be changing it anyway. 

[Hitori Bocchi]

​A default look should show what the system is capable of and be attractive enough that people are encouraged to learn more about it. Both I feel are done here.

​I can't clearly see that unread forums differ from read forums on index page, because the light grey is much too close to white. This was pointed out already on the preview board a lot... So the style does not show yet what it capable of 100 %. In fact the light grey does not only turn into a white just there without a clear difference. There are several areas where you barely see the border of a box or something because the grey looks just like white.

 

An example of what was really difficult to change, but you currently have now. The blue background to the titles on the sidebar. The image shows how it looked on the preview board, you nearly missed the titles every time you looked to the right and we had to keep up a good fight and long topic in order to change it, because many people said "everything is perfect, all works as it should". In fact they changed it several times back and we had to do the fight again...:

 

 

What a small change of colors can already do:

(Picture shows how it looks now. Outside #e9e9e9e9, inside #fafafa)

 

(Picture shows how it would look with inside #e9e9e9 aswell, also changed ipsFieldRow to #fff)

 

The small changes are what matters.

[The Jimmo]

​I can't clearly see that unread forums differ from read forums on index page, because the light grey is much too close to white. This was pointed out already on the preview board a lot...

​The light grey and white have nothing to do with unread vs read. They are alternating color rows, unless you are looking at something else. The blue icons to the left of the title indicate unread vs read. 

I was on the preview board and saw some of these conversations but again, IPS has the right to change to what they feel is best. You have the right to change it to what you feel is best on your own board. There is no "this is what it has to be" in this.

[Hitori Bocchi]

​The light grey and white have nothing to do with unread vs read. They are alternating color rows, unless you are looking at something else. The blue icons to the left of the title indicate unread vs read. 

​Sry on that. But the point with the color still remains.

 

If there is no "this is what it has to be" it cannot exist. It's that simple. Nobody buys something which does not meet atleast a certain amount of criteria he has for a certain thing. The less IPB 4 is "this is what is has to be" the less likely people will buy it. My money does not go out of its pocket for charity, when I buy a product I have certain expectations, it's unlikely that a product meets all, but the more of them it meets the more likely it is for me to buy THIS PRODUCT and not another one. So I completly disagree with you on this.

 

For you it might be simple to change this and that color (if it would be that simple in this case), but for another person it is a nightmare to even consider which color to choose.

[The Jimmo]

​Sry on that. But the point with the color still remains.

​You can't tell the difference between these two?:

Sorry, you may need an eye exam or a better monitor.

 

If there is no "this is what it has to be" it cannot exist. It's that simple. Nobody buys something which does not meet atleast a certain amount of criteria he has for a certain thing. The less IPB 4 is "this is what is has to be" the less likely people will buy it. My money does not go out of its pocket for charity, when I buy a product I have certain expectations, it's unlikely that a product meets all, but the more of them it meets the more likely it is for me to buy THIS PRODUCT and not another one. So I completly disagree with you on this.

 

For you it might be simple to change this and that color (if it would be that simple in this case), but for another person it is a nightmare to even consider which color to choose.

​Everyone buys products for different reasons, I buy IPS for the backend and frontend framework (I think they're brilliant). I also happen to like this design and with a few of my tweaks can make it shine for my use. I do not get your first statement, I think it is quite the opposite. If people didn't have the freedom to customize IPS the way they do, I don't think IPS would have the customer base they do. IPS doesn't hold your hand and say "you can't change that", they say "go ahead do what you want." They even have made it more simple to do so for people who have no coding experience.

Your final point on a nightmare to even consider a color to chose? Really? I don't think you've been in this game long enough to know that people WILL choose a color, it may not be a color a professional like you or I would choose but they will choose a color. Whether that is good or bad is up to the owner as it is their website. If they don't have the experience they can hire a professional. In the end, you are not up a creek without a paddle here there are plenty of options.

 IPS is not here to be our servant, they have to do what they think is best for all their customer base. 

[Hitori Bocchi]

​You can't tell the difference between these two?:

Sorry, you may need an eye exam or a better monitor.

​You missunderstood me on this one. I already applogized. I saw it before I read your post and quickly wanted to edit, but you already replied. The point I was talking about is that the light grey (#fafafa) is too much of a white, which still should be considered being changed. Its already difficult to see the difference on a monitor, but on the preview board people complained that on some mobile devices it appeares to be worse. I was not talking about those symbols

 

There are people who buy a car to customize the car and there are those who just want to drive it. VBulletin had many big boards which used the default skin, clearly those admins just wanted to use the software and take care of their content, nothing else. I agree with you, I think a good page needs a uniqe design, but if I would have to choose between uniqe design and good content, I would choose the content. Most people have quite the problems picking colors, small changes which to you and me are quite simple, even the choice (in terms of direction) is quite simple to us, while for others its a nightmare. If you've ever been in a company in which people do power points presentations, you know what simple problems they have (dark colored text on a dark background or light colored text on a light background, or placing text elements (title etc.) in a way they are easy to read, even chosing a size for the letters can be quite difficult).

If you look in areas like the search, and compare it to what it looked like on 3.4 you'll notice, even IPB Staff has problems with such things. The search is an area which in terms of clarity is quite messed up (too much sandwiched). The blog quirls over at the top with wastefull space fillers, which distract too much from the content and give too little benefit for the space they consume. The gallery has options "Set as my profile photo", which you'll use maybe once in a while on spots which should be reserved for things which are used more often (e.g. view full size)... If you've seen the early versions of the gallery it was quite worse, they've already went a long road due to our feedback, but a single individual can only go that far, thats why a software needs to collect the most klnowledge possible and give the person who buys it the best possible "out of the box" software it can produce. It might already fit your needs as an experienced admin, even I could do a lot of things with it, even though I don't want to spend so much time on things which should be made different to begin with, but those who can't are not always in a position to get help for it. And it's always bad to have too much AddOns/custom changes in your software, because they eventually drag you down. And I certainly do not claim that I know how to improve everything on my own forum. There are a lot of people here with ideas on how to improve things which I've never thought about and really like.

I think it is in IPBs best personal interest to not just do it this and that way, but to do it the best way they could possibly do it. If there is something to improve, improve it, not just say, as one of the staff said in the argument about the sidebar header "The style is ready as it is. Finished, no more changes". if you don't grow permanently in any way possible as a company or as an individual you'll necessarily fail in life. For an individual it means social and financial ruin, for a company it means bankruptcy. I don't mean IPB is near there, nor anywhere close to it, they are a stable middle class company, but since vbulletin left the race for the top there is so much room to gain. For the last 5 years the amount of forum softwares decreased by more than 50 % (IPB did not lose a single percent, nor gained anything, but vB did lose 80 % of its customers and statisticly only ~5 % went somewhere else). Theres a lot of potential customers out there, which currently avoid forum softwares. I don't think forums have become unappealing, it's just that there is no supply of decent forum softwares on the market yet. Even as an experienced admin (I have my forum for 8 years now, 6 years with vB, 2 with wbb and some months now with IPB) I think it's quite difficult to get used to IPB and many things here could need a change, because they are in best case moderate but not nearly as good as they could be.

 

Nobody should be anyones servant. I don't even think that doing what is best for your current customer base is a point which they should consider. I hope, they have their long term goals, which once in a while get a new revision, but pursuing those goals is most important at all. If those goals match our needs we stay as their customers, if they drift apart certain individuals go, others might come. All we can do is to give feedback, and if they don't accept it now to continue pursuing them, until they see the benefits of it which we see.