Local test install address

[SvB]

The installation instructions below contain the following paragraph:

Quote

If you are installing on a test install, enter your license key with -TESTINSTALL on the end. If you are installing on localhost (it must be "localhost" specifically, not "127.0.0.1" or any other alias), this will not count towards either of your installations, however, if you are installing on any other domain, it will count as your test installation.

Since I'll be making a local IC test install for the first time soon, I'd like to clarify the bit in bold, above.

Does this mean that if I want to install it at my PC's local network address of 192.168.1.16 I can't, it must be localhost only?

 

The full installation instructions for reference:

 

[Randy Calvert]

Your local computer’s IP can still be 192.168.1.16 but when you call it via your browser, it needs to be localhost.  

Otherwise you could use the software for intranet sites without needing a valid license. Localhost ensures it is tied to only being accessible from the machine it’s installed on. 

[SvB]

I thought it was like that and it's a shame.

So, I might want to install it twice on the same machine and play around with different configurations and also for learning it. Will that be possible? I'll want to run just one at a time.

I can do this with XF by installing it in different folders. Is this possible with IC?

The overall reason for doing this is that I'm considering eventually migrating my forum to IC for its more advanced features, but I have to fully evaluate it first.

btw, I didn't spend $850 just to evaluate it. 😄 I bought the license for the full package cheaply off a friend waaay back in 2014 when he gave up on running his forum after it didn't go anywhere. It's taken me all this time to finally get around to using it, for various reasons, so I renewed it just the other day to get the latest version. In the meantime, I created my forum last year with XF as the renewals are so much cheaper, but I'm starting to think that maybe it's worth the higher price of IC for some of the extra functionality like proper article support and more.

Edited March 16, 2022 by SvB

[Randy Calvert]

Sure. 

http://localhost/install1
http://localhost/install2

Its still running off localhost. 

[SvB]

Wicked, thanks.

[Ilya Hoilik]

You can use .test domain as well. Point some .test domain to 192.168.1.16 or 127.0.0.1 in your hosts file. It is completely legal.

Edited March 16, 2022 by Ilya Hoilik

[SvB]

@Randy Calvert

Ok, so I finally got round to installing it locally as a test.

I initially set it to localhost/install1 in the installer settings, but the result was a corrupted installation with a totally messed up homepage and clicking on any link resulting in a 404 error.

If I just specified localhost then it worked just fine.

The official instructions don't say anything about using local folders, just localhost, so it looks like folders are not actually supported for localhost installs, despite the installer having the option to specify a folder. I did add -TESTINSTALL on the end of the product key, too. Although I don't like it, I can live with this limitation, but it should be explained better in the official documentation and also the option removed from the installer when doing a local install.

 

Regardless, I've just realised that there's a dealbreaking omission in IC which means that my potential migration from XenForo for the advanced features of IC will now not happen: no post numbers.

This is something incredibly basic that I use all the time when on forums and all other forum software has them, free and paid, so I can't understand the rationale for removing them and not even giving the forum owner the option of adding them back. Forcing a removal like this on customers of such expensive software is about as bad as it gets in my opinion and completely unacceptable. What other annoyances are in the product, I wonder?

When I used IPB years ago on someone else's site, v3.x had version numbers just like any other forum software. However, on Googling the issue, I see that they were removed at least a decade ago and there's no way to get them back, other than perhaps some third party add-on, if I can even find one, which isn't acceptable to me. Therefore, I must reluctantly say goodbye to IC. What a shame as it has many good qualities about it.

[Marc Stridgen]

Quote

 

I initially set it to localhost/install1 in the installer settings, but the result was a corrupted installation with a totally messed up homepage and clicking on any link resulting in a 404 error.

If I just specified localhost then it worked just fine.

The official instructions don't say anything about using local folders, just localhost, so it looks like folders are not actually supported for localhost installs, despite the installer having the option to specify a folder. I did add -TESTINSTALL on the end of the product key, too. Although I don't like it, I can live with this limitation, but it should be explained better in the official documentation and also the option removed from the installer when doing a local install.

 

Installing in a localhost environment is the same as installing in any other location, as long as the server is set up correctly. Both are simply webservers. If you are having issues with 404s when clicking in other locations it very much sounds like the htaccess you have set up when in that location is incorrect, so it would be worth checking that. Of course, being in localhost, there is very limited advice we are able to give as we cant see  the box ourselves.

 

Quote

Regardless, I've just realised that there's a dealbreaking omission in IC which means that my potential migration from XenForo for the advanced features of IC will now not happen: no post numbers.

It would be worth asking yourself the question as to why this is a deal breaker for yourself. What is in you are using these for? There are direct links to posts, as there are in any other platform. It may well simply be that you are not seeing what you are looking for. Its worth bearing mind mind there will be differences when you change platform. So if you let us know what the use case is, we can point out how you would go about what you are trying to do.

Quote

This is something incredibly basic that I use all the time when on forums and all other forum software has them, free and paid, so I can't understand the rationale for removing them and not even giving the forum owner the option of adding them back. Forcing a removal like this on customers of such expensive software is about as bad as it gets in my opinion and completely unacceptable. What other annoyances are in the product, I wonder?

This of course would be your own perspective, of course. It does however need to be pointed out that post number 5 (for example) for you, may not be post number 5 for someone else, as it depends on what that person can see. For example, there may be 2 hidden posts between that others cant see that you can. This is why it would be worth knowing your own use case, then we can advise accordingly.

[SvB]

@Marc Stridgen Thankyou for your reply.

You could well be right about .htaccess. I'm using IIS on Windows 10 on my home PC and haven't had to fiddle around with .htaccess to set up my current XenForo forum, or the test XF forums, regardless of location, so it didn't occur to me that this could be a problem here. I'll have to look into it, thanks for the tip. Confession: I've not really properly looked into the funcionality of .htaccess since I didn't have to, so I have a bit of a learning curve here, but don't tell anyone! 😛

 

Re the post numbering: because it's a PITA that really irks me. I can't see a good reason for it and it would stop me running my current competition of the winner receiving a prize for making the 1000th post in the competition thread. If it ever takes off, I want to make bigger versions of this competition, with a thread of perhaps 10000 posts one day, which hopefully won't break the server, lol.

So, a bit more on why this bothers me so much.

Besides the forum competition, I personally find post numbers very useful for tracking up and down a thread of any length, especially when it goes over several pages as I'm always referring to previous posts as I read through a thread and make mental notes with the post numbers to refer back to. Without it it's hard to find the posts to refer back to and gets confusing, especially when a thread is several pages long. It's not just a matter of getting used to it as an important function for me is missing.

Yes, while soft or hard deleting posts does affect the numbering (just double checked it on my forum with a test thread in a private area) and also with visibility eg mods v regular users, this isn't a make or break deal and I haven't seen it be a problem on forums generally since people normally post a permalink to the post anyway, so I don't think this is a reason to remove post numbers, at least not in such a permanent way.

I'd be grateful for your rationale for removing post numbers and why you won't offer it as a switchable feature in the ACP. Googling this removal, there are clearly a lot of people who are missing them over the last decade or so, hence I can't understand why you won't give customers back something that they clearly want, is so easy to implement and was actually implemented in early versions anyway.

I get that the developers of IC may not want post numbers for their own reasons on this site and I don't have a problem with that, but why force this preference on your customers who are many and varied? That's the whole point of making fully featured software that caters to the widest audience.

I hope this discussion convinces IPS to bring post numbers back, but unfortunately, I'm not holding my breath as it's been gone a decade now.

To be fair to you, I find frustrating design decisions in just about every product, whether it's forum software, other software, CPUs, cars, buildings you name it, there's always some odd quirk that makes me scratch my head, so I'm not picking on you in particular. It's just life, lol.

 

I was using IP.B about a decade ago when I was an admin (not owner) at a now defunct site and in fact, I bought the license quite cheaply from the owner when he decided to quit running a forum (more phool him lol).

I don't remember exactly which IP.B version he was running at the time about a decade ago, but it had post numbers then, which was fine and I liked the ACP and general functionality of the software. I remember how fully featured and advanced it was even back then, especially all that fine grained permissions goodness, which is why I bought the license. I've been meaning to set up my own forum ever since, but alas it didn't happen until last year because of one thing or another.

In my case, I can just walk away from IC over this, because the forum solution that I have is pretty good as it is and I was just looking to improve the site further, especially when it comes to the implentation of articles / blogs which is a weak feature of XF, has bothered me from day one and increasingly so as time goes on.

 

Also, I'll be honest, part of the reason I settled on XF even though I just had to renew the IC license is simply the ongoing cost, since, while I can meet the twice yearly renewal costs of IC, it's still quite a lot of money for me and especially so now with the rising cost of living here in the UK.

However, recently I wanted to play around with IC on my home PC without spending any money to get a feel for the product and be able to compare that old version with the latest available via the demo, but as the original files I had (v3.4.6) got corrupted over the years, I bit the bullet and paid for a renewal or my license purchase would have been for nothing.

Big shout out to @Matt for giving me a one-time $50 renewal discount without me even having to ask for it when I private messaged him over at The Admin Zone a while back about these damaged files. It really helped me out and great marketing! 🙂

 

Finally, I find it fascinating how all this advanced functionality fits into a smallish 19MB archive. Very nice. If this was a Windows app with equivalent functionality, I'll bet it would be several hundreds of megabytes in size.

[Randy Calvert]

It comes up every year or so. That’s been something gone almost a decade. Ultimately it ain’t coming back. 

You’re welcome to create a plugin to create that functionality yourself but it won’t be in IPB. 

[SvB]

Yes I know, I said so myself in my post.

I'm not a programmer so a plug-in won't be happening.

Do you know the rationale for removing post numbers? That I'd be most interested in.

[Sonya*]

11 minutes ago, SvB said:

Do you know the rationale for removing post numbers?

 

22 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said:

It does however need to be pointed out that post number 5 (for example) for you, may not be post number 5 for someone else, as it depends on what that person can see. For example, there may be 2 hidden posts between that others cant see that you can.

 

[SvB]

That's not definitive though. I'll wait for Marc to get back to me.

[Marc Stridgen]

1 hour ago, SvB said:

That's not definitive though. I'll wait for Marc to get back to me.

Im not sure what you mean there. That is indeed definitive. Essentially however it was a design decision. Your use case there is very unique in nature. In most scenarios we find that its because people need to be able to link to posts to refer to them etc, which is still very much possible (you just click on the time in the post). 

[Matt]

We removed post numbers a long time ago because they are not a consistent metric.

Consider:

Post
Hidden Post
Hidden Post
Post
Post
Post

You will see:

Post A - #1
Hidden Post B- #2
Hidden Post C- #3
Post D - #4
Post E- #5
Post F - #6

"Post number 4 is the winner!" - you refer to Post D.

However, a member will see:

Post A - #1
Post D - #2
Post E- #3
Post F - #4

So to them Post F is the winner. Likewise when you delete a post or two after mentioning "See post 4", post 4 is actually post 6 when you delete two posts, etc.

It's just not a reliable number. If you leave gaps in the post number to skip hidden posts, it becomes obvious to members where there have been deleted posts or hidden posts.