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Please provide a list of all of the features that were in 3.X, but have now been removed in 4.0

openfire

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bigPaws Enthusiast

bigPaws

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but nothing was removed just for the fun of it.

  • ​Search by topic title only
  • Quick edit of topic titles (rather than having to open thread?)
  • Post numbers (useful for old communities, where users have mentioned "see post 43" etc.)

These appear to have been removed @Charles and threads have been started already on them.

Thanks

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Greenman Explorer

Greenman

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​Yes the can coexist. Here is the short version:

  1. Friend system in 3.x was pointless. It didn't really do much of anything but show a list of people.
  2. In a community system like ours content-discovery is important so being able to Follow someone you are interested in to be notified of what they're up to is way more useful.
  3. We have plans for a "friends" system in 4.1 that is actually useful and does some cool stuff very different from the Follow system.

Going back to point #2: really a Follow system makes the most sense for the majority of our clients. It allows for content discovery which is important to most any community. A Friends system is more niche but we think we have come up with some interesting ideas for that in a future version.

​Adding my thoughts to this discussion and in particular, point 1 (above). We can't upgrade to IP4 without it, although we would love to as IP4 is fantastic in all other areas - kudos to the team.

The friends system (or whatever you want to call it) is vital to IP.Gallery where our community only wants to share albums with their friends. Followers isn't part of IP.Gallery but there does need to be a system like an address book (as someone else mentioned) where you can tag an album to a group of people with designated privacy settings rather than adding one by one. If I have 5 albums and want to share them with 50 people, I have to click 250 times and this clearly isn't a good piece of UX.

To point 3, do you have any information as to what that may involve? We are looking at different platforms and moving away from IP4 for this very reason, so if there is a definite roadmap to introduce this feature, we will definitely be staying as it is the best piece of forum software on the market.

Many thanks

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CheersnGears Experienced

CheersnGears

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​Adding my thoughts to this discussion and in particular, point 1 (above). We can't upgrade to IP4 without it, although we would love to as IP4 is fantastic in all other areas - kudos to the team.

The friends system (or whatever you want to call it) is vital to IP.Gallery where our community only wants to share albums with their friends. Followers isn't part of IP.Gallery but there does need to be a system like an address book (as someone else mentioned) where you can tag an album to a group of people with designated privacy settings rather than adding one by one. If I have 5 albums and want to share them with 50 people, I have to click 250 times and this clearly isn't a good piece of UX.

To point 3, do you have any information as to what that may involve? We are looking at different platforms and moving away from IP4 for this very reason, so if there is a definite roadmap to introduce this feature, we will definitely be staying as it is the best piece of forum software on the market.

Many thanks

​Greenman makes a very good point that I hadn't thought of with regards to the Friends and Gallery system.

It looks like I'll be forced to wait until 4.1 as well because I do not want the current friends lists to be erased.

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esquire Enthusiast

esquire

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​Greenman makes a very good point that I hadn't thought of with regards to the Friends and Gallery system.

It looks like I'll be forced to wait until 4.1 as well because I do not want the current friends lists to be erased.

This was discussed often, with the explanation of the goal of moving users away from creating private content and pushing public, search engine indexible content. It only seems to make sense for sites where people don't care about any type of private content (e.g. sports leagues forums). But I don't think you will ever be successful trying to surf against the tide to try to change the inherent nature of certain personal niches. You can't simply direct them towards being a public content creation monster. Social, family and more adult niches are all about the above - and they are big niches.

​This relates to the same challenge I have had about why the suite works inconsistently between modules. Every module should feature a consistent set of features. Create it just once, apply across the suite. Friends creates one-click permission groups that virtually every user understands easily. Don't limit the application to gallery but apply it across the board for files, etc. (Same with categories, etc. - every app should have it, but blogs don't need it?) Anyway, good luck with the effort guys. I think IPS3 was great and only needed to nail down hitting the basic things that were missing and an enhancement in SEO and restructure of Pages/IP.C. No need to reinvent the wheel, just enhance it. When I have time again to look, I'm looking forward to seeing great strides made with IPS 4.

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xtech Proficient

xtech

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To be honest, from what i've seen there is nothing critical that is missing, in my view.

Streamlining things up is the way to go. Have you realized how easy is to post something in any social network, which are competing with forums? Type, drag and drop media and it's done. People nowadays do not care about things that take long to figure out, or are complicated by nature. They want ease of use and speed.

 

I do not expect (and don't want) 4.0 to have all the intricate features of 3.4.x, as some of them are not used by anyone. I just want easyness, consistency, speed and intelligence to avoid tiring users with system details. Let the users spend time in creating content and spare them to intricate technology details.

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esquire Enthusiast

esquire

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What I don't understand is why the current friends list has to be removed during an upgrade.  If it "does nothing" like Charles says... let us just keep it for now so we're not prevented from upgrading to 4.0

​The thought was that Follow made a "better" use of the relationship between users and that you should easily be able to convert them. Follow is the new Friend. Try explaining that to your community, lol. So imagine you're a pretty girl and all your "friends" were the result of careful approvals. Now everyone is free to follow/stalk, like it or not. And if you're going to implement some member approval, then you're better off just sticking with friends and make Follow what it should have been all along -- an ehanced "subscribe" system. I liked the ease of IPB 3.x where you could follow/unfollow at the click of a button and done. Good luck. I feel for you and have a social community myself that I wanted to move from another script but it would mean the loss of all those "friends" relationships that mean a lot to the users, whether or not they do anything (and they do.) Good luck with the effort.

To be honest, from what i've seen there is nothing critical that is missing, in my view.

Streamlining things up is the way to go. Have you realized how easy is to post something in any social network, which are competing with forums? Type, drag and drop media and it's done. People nowadays do not care about things that take long to figure out, or are complicated by nature. They want ease of use and speed.

I do not expect (and don't want) 4.0 to have all the intricate features of 3.4.x, as some of them are not used by anyone. I just want easyness, consistency, speed and intelligence to avoid tiring users with system details. Let the users spend time in creating content and spare them to intricate technology details.

There are very few "social networks" without a "friends" concept. That's the whole point. LinkedIn - your Links are Friends in the same fashion. And on these sites, nobody cares how easy it is to post content if they don't understand easily how to limit visibility to Friends or "trusted group of members." They won't post the content and will go elsewhere. Friends could have just been left it in, as is, no harm by keeping it there. It could have been extended by third party plugins and IPS could have eventually extended functionality to every app if desired. 

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Greenman Explorer

Greenman

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I think the issue is not whether friends are better than followers or vice versa. There is no comparison to make - they are completely different pieces of functionality serving 2 different purposes. 'Followers' is open, 'Friends' is private and both are equally valid.

Every forum is different as it depends on the audience and how the technology is being used. For a community that does use the 'friends' function, there is now a huge hole that prevents the possibility of upgrading. For those companies who are running a business on the back of a forum, it's a difficult decision (especially on paid software).

I would like to see the friends function kept as per IP3. It doesn't need to be expanded upon or even improved. If Invision want to take IP.Boards in a different direction, that's all good and I welcome change and innovation. However, it would seem to make sense to keep a piece of functionality that is so important to certain communities and with IP4, there is no real workaround (except not upgrading).

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OctoDev Proficient

OctoDev

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Too sad that they removed so much, when I think of "4.0" i was hoping and expecting to see all same features, and even more. I am having hard time liking my new community, i can't even view my members and let my members view the members list..

Where is the friends feature? Followers and friends is two different things, my members like friends system.

Why can I not customize, whether my members should be able to upload with REMOTE URL's or NOT? This is a security issue for many forums, and for some reason the option to disable it was REMOVED..

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esquire Enthusiast

esquire

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I think the issue is not whether friends are better than followers or vice versa. There is no comparison to make - they are completely different pieces of functionality serving 2 different purposes. 'Followers' is open, 'Friends' is private and both are equally valid.

Every forum is different as it depends on the audience and how the technology is being used. For a community that does use the 'friends' function, there is now a huge hole that prevents the possibility of upgrading. For those companies who are running a business on the back of a forum, it's a difficult decision (especially on paid software).

​I agree with you completely. I'm just giving you the response I call receiving. I think they have two different functions. Follow is more appropriate in some circumstances but it's definitely not a replacement in others, especially on my communities that have a very large social component. It takes the friendship concept out of the community. I was surprised find Friends removed. At this late date difficult to know what is possible to reintroduce into the software. I'll check in with you guys periodically as I'm focused on projects beginning tomorrow. Good luck with the effort.

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Mark Grand Master

Mark

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Why can I not customize, whether my members should be able to upload with REMOTE URL's or NOT? This is a security issue for many forums, and for some reason the option to disable it was REMOVED..

​What is the 3.x setting you're referring to?

just realized that i cant make sectional moderators neither make my members close their own topics, GRR..

​You can still make sectional moderators. When creating a moderator (ACP -> Members -> Staff -> Moderators)  uncheck the options under the "Content" tab (which are the global permissions) which will make the sectional permissions appear.

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ZakRhyno Experienced

ZakRhyno

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@openfire I agree that the removal of features is something that ought to be explored more by the developers, managers, and the community.  But righteous indignation over the removal of features would have been appropriate last June / July when the betas were being released and there was time to make compelling arguments such as demanding feature parity with 3.0.  

At such a late stage and before imminent release, arguing over feature parity is almost a lost cause.  Let them ship the damn product first.  It's been 2 years of renewals for most of us without anything to show for it, 2 years of pausing and waiting and waylaid plans, and 2 years of waiting for a definitive vision and feature set that still aren't fully realized.  At this point, let them fix the bugs so the broader - and more critical - goal of releasing IPS 4 can be achieved first.  

Two more thoughts:

1. While I agree that this topic can serve as useful discussion, maybe instead of just expressing your emotions, actually compile the features in a definitive reference list?  Because ... you know ... a reference list might be useful for IPS and  the community.  How you feel, on the other hand, is astoundingly not useful.  You get my point.  

2.  And while you're compiling that list, you need to also justify why you think those features are still needed.  (For example, the current debate over numbered posts.)  We have individual post sharing, we have multi-quotes and quotes, and all other sorts of new ways of filtering and sorting posts that weren't available back in the original bulletin boards.  Thus, I find that people complaining over the lack of numbered posts are forgetting that while the feature of numbered posts is gone, the method of referencing posts is still available in ways that are better than ever before.  

 

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OctoDev Proficient

OctoDev

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​What is the 3.x setting you're referring to?

​You can still make sectional moderators. When creating a moderator (ACP -> Members -> Staff -> Moderators)  uncheck the options under the "Content" tab (which are the global permissions) which will make the sectional permissions appear.

 

 

 

also i cant find any setting to disable images in certain places, in 3,4 we could do this in bbcode, also security concern for members that don't want their ip address grabbed via pms

 

also option to proxy all images (ssl/http) would fix that, that would be good if you want your forum in https.. then you can just rewrite all links with https (proxy it through my server, or remote server)

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opentype Grand Master

opentype

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​You are both right: Andy is right that it is not a bug and the output is correct, but you are completely right that this display is confusing, especially when jumping between different areas of the site. So it should be improved. I reported that problem before and one staff member acknowledged it, so I assumed that will be improved at some point. 

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