Community area access

[Robust]

8 hours ago, Charlie said:

If your license expires you will be able to browse the Marketplace but you won't be able to download.  You will still have access to some of our boards but not our peer to peer support forum.

I'm having some problems with your policies and ideology. I really believe this community is censored like Nazi propaganda methods, rather than an open community for customers to come together. I completely agree with customer only areas. I really don't like how censored the pre-sales forum is, but I can live with it - as a customer, I'll simply just avoid answering anyone's questions. Fine by me. What I literally do *not* understand is why someone who is paying quite a bit of money to your software:

• will lose access to community boards if the license expires
• will lose access to community based marketplace with community created add-ons, styles and other software

I like your software, but right now, that's the only thing I like about the whole thing.

I think I'm going to stay away from IPB for now. I like the software, but honestly the ideology is horrendous in my opinion. You're definitely a business and I could see that from the very first post I made here. I just thought you'd have some respect for your customers that have paid for your software, and still allow them to be involved in the community.

I know some staff really hate this, but I'm going to tag some of the IPS management team. You really need to deal with this. IPS can only do so much with their software. The real fun comes at the community, and quite frankly, this is not a community. I'm just not interested if I know I'm going to be booted out of the community with an expired license. What's the point of having it?

@Lindy @Charles

[Robust]

8 hours ago, Charlie said:

What's included?

• Ongoing access to new software versions, including major updates
• Technical support for the entire renewal period
• The IPS Spam Monitoring Service, to protect your community against spam
• Access to the IPS Marketplace for new themes and addons
• Free 5-user chatroom
• Customer-only peer-to-peer support forums

The rest of it makes sense. Ongoing access to new software versions is obviously a part of renewing. Technical support, also part of renewing, basic logic. The IPS spam monitoring service, well it's hosted somewhere and needs to be funded, I guess it makes sense to make it a subscription only service and include it as an extra benefit with renewal. The IPS marketplace being limited to active licenses only is plain ridiculous. A free 5-user chatroom is a nice selling point, I suppose. Not too sure why it's in the core but who says no to something free? It wouldn't make sense to revoke this on an expired license, but sure. And obviously, limiting access to customer-only peer-to-peer support forums is also a bit disturbing. I'd feel a bit more relaxed if you rename them to something else other than a community, you're not doing any justice to the word. Maybe something like "activecustomers.invisionpower.com" would be a bit more... appropriate?

I'll look into IPS again later and see if my mind changes at all. I'm somewhat impressed with the software, but the ideology of the team, not at all.

Thanks IPS staff (well, just @Charlie) for your support, as well as the community members who bothered to answer my questions despite the annoying pre-sales approval message process. I'm surprised anyone even bothers. Should just make this a private staff-only forum, instead. Nevertheless, thanks for taking your time to answer some of my questions.

[AndyF]

You have to bear in mind that part of the reasoning for limiting access to the Marketplace and the Peer-to-peer forums here is simply to ensure that only those who have purchased from IPS and not obtained it via another means aka a 'warez' site or suchlike have access to items from here.

[Robust]

1 hour ago, AndyF said:

You have to bear in mind that part of the reasoning for limiting access to the Marketplace and the Peer-to-peer forums here is simply to ensure that only those who have purchased from IPS and not obtained it via another means aka a 'warez' site or suchlike have access to items from here.

Right but... That justification makes no sense whatsoever. I'm not talking about warez at all. A pirated copy of IPB (I assume you refer to) wouldn't (and definitely shouldn't) give you access to the marketplace or customer-only areas. I'm simply saying customers that have shelled out anywhere from $175 to $375 (plus anything else) even once should have lifetime access to the COMMUNITY, CUSTOMER forums. The content here isn't all IPS. The (free) add-ons in the marketplace are generously created by (developing) customers, for customers. The support offered here is by the community, for the community. That has nothing to do with IPS? As far as IPS is concerned, only legitimate customers should be posting here. And if you open up this area to people who have purchased a valid license from you directly, or have an account with an IPB license in it even, then you know the people posting here are valid customers of you.

I don't really understand the reasoning behind this other than wanting more money, personally. I know you're a business and it's all about the money, that makes sense. Just the community should be... the community...? You can limit whatever you provide but the community shouldn't be limited to real customers.

Look at XF for example, or should I say the blue competitor. If you have one license in your account, expired or not, you have access to the community.

[Phaze]

3 hours ago, Robust said:

Right but... That justification makes no sense whatsoever. I'm not talking about warez at all. A pirated copy of IPB (I assume you refer to) wouldn't (and definitely shouldn't) give you access to the marketplace or customer-only areas. I'm simply saying customers that have shelled out anywhere from $175 to $375 (plus anything else) even once should have lifetime access to the COMMUNITY, CUSTOMER forums. The content here isn't all IPS. The (free) add-ons in the marketplace are generously created by (developing) customers, for customers. The support offered here is by the community, for the community. That has nothing to do with IPS? As far as IPS is concerned, only legitimate customers should be posting here. And if you open up this area to people who have purchased a valid license from you directly, or have an account with an IPB license in it even, then you know the people posting here are valid customers of you.

I don't really understand the reasoning behind this other than wanting more money, personally. I know you're a business and it's all about the money, that makes sense. Just the community should be... the community...? You can limit whatever you provide but the community shouldn't be limited to real customers.

Look at XF for example, or should I say the blue competitor. If you have one license in your account, expired or not, you have access to the community.

Agreed.

In all honesty, This is more or less why i made the switch to xF. I'll be keeping my IPS license as well but xF is simple, stable, responsive, doesn't have a ton of bugs and yadayada cause IPS staff won't like if i mention what i like about xF. Why? Because like you said, It's a censored community. I'm sure I'll probably hear about this post too.

I like IPS's Product, I don't too much care for the company itself. Like i said, in all honesty.

[AndyF]

From what I see in one forum section (the 3.4.x support forum) there are recent topics by 'Members' , this is a Client group without current support ie: 'expired'...

The situation may differ slightly for the 4x support forum as I've not noted a 'member' based topic of late there.

[Charles]

There is no reason to download things from the Marketplace or access the support areas if you do not have an active license. Without an active license you are running outdate software.

We do it the way we do it based on client feedback over years of getting that feedback. While I understand you personally really, really hate it to levels of aggressive ranting and fascist comparisons, we actually do it based on what our clients really like.

[Charles]

I am afraid I was giving everyone incorrect information here 

Ironically, my whole argument about "expired license holders cannot download from Marketplace based on feedback" used to be true. However, I did not recall that our Marketplace contributors had actually changed their mind and asked us to unlock access to the Marketplace. We of course did that.

To be clear: expired license holders can download from the Marketplace.

I am sorry for the confusion I created. IPS is very responsive to feedback and sometimes we change policies based on feedback and I honestly had forgotten we had done so in this case. It's a good thing that we react to feedback but sometimes even I lose track!

Again, sorry for my misinformation here