IPS 4.1 killing activity?

[Elena-Viorica]

First of all, I want to say that I'm not usually the type of person who complains (I actually dislike complaining and prefer to calmly wait until things are sorted out), but I've reached a point where I simply don't know what to do anymore. Ever since I converted my current online community to IPS 4, the feedback I received from my members have been mostly negative.

The reason why I upgraded was because IPS announced that they will drop support for IPS 3.4 in the following months and I wanted to have my staff team get accustomed to IPS 4 right from the start of the new year. I've tried to paint IPS 4 in bright colors, to point out the positive aspects of the new version of the script, but it's quite difficult even for me to do this because the only improvement I can see is the mobile-friendly interface (but even that seems buggy on some devices, and there seem to be various issues when accessing it from iPhones).

Some of the issues that my members have pointed out (and I've noticed too) are:

- the forum loads a lot slower than it did on IPS 3.4 (despite having the same hosting environment)

- there are various errors that appear at random and only once in a while, so reporting them to IPS support doesn't lead to solutions because they can't be reproduced on their end (e.g.: uploading images to the gallery randomly gives out 505 errors, leads to duplicate content, doesn't work at all on iOS etc.)

- it's a lot more difficult to figure out the profile settings than it was on IPS 3.4 (e.g.: new members have to enable the status updates feature on their profile, which by the way is hidden behind several pages and requires, like, 4 clicks just to find it ((in order for the status updates box to appear in the sidebar after enabling them on your profile you have to log out and log in again)); members have to edit their new albums to allow comments -- both of these features should be set as enabled by default).

- the overall user interface / design seems bulkier and just not as elegant / fluid as IPS 4 was.

- important third party apps are missing (no gaming arcade for IPS 4? Seriously? The arcade was a central point of many gaming forums running on IPS 3.4; the only video chat app existing for IPS 3.4, AVchat, hasn't been updated for IPS 4 etc.).

So, the outcome of upgrading my community to IPS 4.1 has been a bit upsetting. Some of my staff members are close to resigning because they strongly dislike (hate is an ugly word, but they have actually used it) everything about the new version, and many of my regular members are posting less frequently than before, and a quarter of their posts are complaints about various bugs and issues that they encounter.

I used to run an active online community with members who enjoyed posting, and I can't help but feel that the upgrade to IPS 4.1 is rapidly killing my community.

And it doesn't seem to be a singular experience. I know at least two other communities that upgraded to IPS 4 and had a major decrease in activity and experience problems similar to mine.

From what I've read around these support forums, there seems to be a lot of not-so-positive feedback regarding IPS 4.1, so I sincerely hope that the IPS team will work hard to improve all these issues. There aren't really a lot of good alternatives out there (XenForo and Burning Board are decent, but converting and getting used to a new software is not something I would like to do).

I hope you won't take this the wrong way. I was just offering some honest feedback. Let me know what you think.

[SJ77]

I think the best thing to do is to focus on the benefits. Make a bullet list of benefits to your members and hit it hard. There is more than just mobile friendly 4.1 has to offer

[chilihead]

3 hours ago, Elena-Viorica said:

- it's a lot more difficult to figure out the profile settings than it was on IPS 3.4 (e.g.: new members have to enable the status updates feature on their profile, which by the way is hidden behind several pages and requires, like, 4 clicks just to find it ((in order for the status updates box to appear in the sidebar after enabling them on your profile you have to log out and log in again)); members have to edit their new albums to allow comments -- both of these features should be set as enabled by default).

I don't understand these 2 either.

• Why would statuses be disabled and the setting hidden on the profile page with no "Turn on?" setting visible until clicking edit (like recent visitors)? They should be on and turning on is not intuitive at all.
• You upload an image and create an album, comments are off. You don't even have the option to turn them on in album creation so the setting is not even known. Should be on and not intuitive at all. Can the settings seen in Edit (privacy/sort/comments/ratings/reviews) be shown in creation at least so they are known? And comments be on please? Making these settings visible upon creation should solve it all.
  This is all you see in album creation:
  Title
  Caption
  How would a user even know about the settings?

Thanks

There is a mod that covers the status update issue. I wonder if @Adriano Faria can add the "Album comments on" setting to this mod? That would be GREAT! Thanks!

[Adriano Faria]

2 hours ago, chilihead said:

There is a mod that covers the status update issue. I wonder if @Adriano Faria can add the "Album comments on" setting to this mod? That would be GREAT!

I'll take a look during the weekend.

[chilihead]

That would be awesome thanks!

[sound]

27 minutes ago, Adriano Faria said:

I'll take a look during the weekend.

 

3 minutes ago, chilihead said:

That would be awesome thanks!

surely this should be up to invision to sort ?

am weary of both paying and installing then maintaining all these 'mods' that are needed to cover invisions failings

[Ahmad E.]

I'll try to answer those points that I can answer.

5 hours ago, Elena-Viorica said:

- the forum loads a lot slower than it did on IPS 3.4 (despite having the same hosting environment)

I think there is still room for some improvement but IPS 4 is "heavier" than IPS 3 and naturally needs a better hosting environment.
A lot shared hosters don't update frequently or optimize etc., that's the main reason why I started doing VPS management for IPS users (link is in the signature).

5 hours ago, Elena-Viorica said:

- there are various errors that appear at random and only once in a while, so reporting them to IPS support doesn't lead to solutions because they can't be reproduced on their end (e.g.: uploading images to the gallery randomly gives out 505 errors, leads to duplicate content, doesn't work at all on iOS etc.)

Errors are logged in ./uploads/logs so looking there might give you (or IPS support) a hint on what's going wrong. I've never had gallery but 505 error means "HTTP version is not supported"; http://100pulse.com/http-statuscode/505.jsp there might be an error when sending the headers though, would need to take a look, just submit a ticket.

5 hours ago, Elena-Viorica said:

- important third party apps are missing (no gaming arcade for IPS 4? Seriously? The arcade was a central point of many gaming forums running on IPS 3.4; the only video chat app existing for IPS 3.4, AVchat, hasn't been updated for IPS 4 etc.).

That's nothing to do with IPS itself, as you said yourself those are 3rd party apps. Some developers quit, some are busy and didn't get a chance to upgrade yet, and some are still in the process of upgrading all of their apps.
IPS 4 was a re-code from scratch and all those 3rd party apps need to be re-coded from scratch too (they also need to learn the new IPS 4 framework first) and that takes time.

As for your other concerns I'll leave that for an IPS representative to answer.

[IveLeft...]

Your speed and 505 errors would point to your hosting server rather than an IPS problem in my opinion, but i could be wrong  

4.1.x is a newer product and you could probably do with updating your server software or getting a system admin to tune it for IPS4.

Not all hosts are equal by the way either and a lot wont help or refuse to accept its their problem.

[tnn]

8 hours ago, Elena-Viorica said:

So, the outcome of upgrading my community to IPS 4.1 has been a bit upsetting. Some of my staff members are close to resigning because they strongly dislike (hate is an ugly word, but they have actually used it) everything about the new version, and many of my regular members are posting less frequently than before, and a quarter of their posts are complaints about various bugs and issues that they encounter.

I used to run an active online community with members who enjoyed posting, and I can't help but feel that the upgrade to IPS 4.1 is rapidly killing my community.

And it doesn't seem to be a singular experience. I know at least two other communities that upgraded to IPS 4 and had a major decrease in activity and experience problems similar to mine.

I hope you won't take this the wrong way. I was just offering some honest feedback. Let me know what you think.

Thank you for the post @Elena-Viorica I too have had decreased visitor activity since the upgrade. Unfortunately, those stats are what counts the most.