I 💖 Invision!

[Morrigan]

I want to appreciate the Invision Community Staff and creators of the software.

Its been a pretty long journey for me with the software. I purchased my first license back in 2007 but loved the look and feel of the software even before that as I saw it on a site I frequented often. The smoothness, the well crafted forum posts. It had nothing on the free forum softwares that I had been using up until that point and it certainly was leaps and bounds better than vBulletin which I always found clunky and busy.

To put it extremely lightly, I was infatuated with this software from the first time I used it.

To say that I was absolutely flabbergasted when people bailed and went to Xenforo, but I was able to obtain 3 additional licenses for a reasonable price from one of those people, was also an understatement. This genuinely fueled my love and need to use IPS on all of my sites and projects, and I was. It was not long after I obtained those licenses that I upgraded what I consider my biggest site success to IPS and started to expand my network of IPS sites and obtaining a few more small licenses because Pages was quite literally a masterpiece addition and a game changer.

Its no small feat to say that I have a lot of licenses that I hold near and dear to me. I honestly can't actually think of a project that I have started for a website that I haven't used IPS for in over the past ten years.

I was proud to be able to contribute to the IPS team for the short time that I worked for them before moving onto other opportunities.

The staff have been nothing short of understanding and amazing! I don't think I've met more responsive and kind hearted people. I know that I've contacted support in tears because I broke something or something got broken somehow and it was resolved with a speed that I feel should be appreciated. This included times when I was using betas and my entire site was down after upgrades.

As such I want to appreciate you all.

I unfortunately won't be able to keep up with my licenses as I used to (Thank you Bidenomics) but this will still be my go-to software when things change in my situation. It will continue to be my recommendation for anyone that wants to create a site or community. I just wanted to send my love and appreciation for all that you do and tell you to keep up the good work.

[Gary]

Hi @Morrigan,

I too share those very same sentiments, almost to a tee having been part of the team myself.

It’s not often that users take time to post positive feedback not because they’re bad or negative people, it’s just human nature to raise things when they supposedly aren’t working. Invision Community and the team deserve a lot more praise for what they are doing, not just what they're not doing as there are nine times out of ten solid reasons for it. Features, inclusions, exclusions, deprecated items, you name it, there is always a thought process behind it all.

I’m sure this will bring a smile to the team’s face and it’s unfortunate to see you having to give up your licences. I’m sure a new project will come about and you’ll find yourself back in no time. 😉

[Matt]

Really appreciate this, thank you Morrigan!

[-----]

On 5/11/2024 at 8:02 AM, Morrigan said:

To say that I was absolutely flabbergasted when people bailed and went to Xenforo

• Marketplace removal.
• Community feel removal.
• Gathering to enterprise strategy.

Some feel that community scripts are losing out to social media giants slowly, and thus making a move towards big enterprise companies. Xenforo kinda still remains old school towards the script community, which makes THE difference for a majority. 

The biggest disappointment after coming back was, that it's even hard to find a simple working shoutbox addon for IPB these days. They have completely lost the scripting community. I am thinking of informing myself on IPB policy in regards to selling licenses. Because in this case, this is an up to date very expensive license in this regard, branding free, all addons, from way back when the community spirit was still in the right place. Valued around 1000 bucks on IPB these days.

Without the points above, the license is worth not even 1/4th the money for our use of it. I'd probably sell it for 250, which is a fair price in current policy. Sad for the money.

Edited August 23 by Sarah Joy Sokoloff

[Matt]

3 hours ago, Sarah Joy Sokoloff said:

Some feel that community scripts are losing out to social media giants slowly

For at least the past decade, there has been a recalibration in the need and purpose for forum communities. Social media is great for person to person contact and small groups, and forums are great for topic focused content, searchable knowledge bases and slightly more transactional conversations ("How do I?", "Can you recommend?") over what use to be more generic forums "Bob's Hangout!"

Likewise, we know that the purpose of this forum is for feedback and support more than a place to hang out and chat. The Marketplace was removed a year ago and discussed in great detail at the time. Instead of being the sole arbiter for the modification community, there is now freedom to run independent marketplace focused communities.

We have ensured that we are ahead of the trend and have worked on tools to professionalise forum communities. I understand the yearning for simpler times and simpler products but progress marches on and we either march with it or get left behind.