EDIT: Posted this in wrong section, please remove.

Status updates have been removed in v5.
Signing in with a Display Name has been removed in v5, email addresses must be used instead.
Open tagging has been replaced with a new system in v5.
Pages: You are using custom PHP blocks. These will no longer function in v5.

Why on earth are we losing features that we have had access to up until this point?
I understand iterating on features but the complete removal of Status updates, Display Name login and PHP blocks is a baffling decision.
Please reconsider and let us keep the product that we have been paying for, or at the very least make the patch an optional one.
We are people with a hobby and not developers, losing functionality or finding additional ways of making things work due to patches like this is a nightmare scenario.

All we ask is to maintain a semblance of backwards compatibility, as paying customers -- is such a thing really too much to ask for?

Edited February 1Feb 1 by Aldro

Maybe this app would help people missing status update:

ustatus

@Matt

I completely understand that change is necessary, and part of evolving software means retiring outdated features, I get it. But I believe removing status updates isn’t a step forward, it’s actually a step back, especially considering how critical this feature is for communities like mine. I really believe we should consider an upgrade to address your aforementioned specific concerns versus a removal. Perhaps there are ways to tackle the "conversation drain" etc.

Status updates aren’t just a feature on my site, they’re the feature. It’s literally the homepage, the heartbeat of user interaction, and the primary driver of engagement. My Gen Z audience, which makes up a significant portion of my user base, has grown up on platforms where quick, dynamic," feed based" content is the norm. They won’t engage with traditional forums the same way older generations did. For them, status updates aren’t a relic, they’re familiar ground. Removing them strips away the one thing that keeps my community feeling current, vibrant, and aligned with how younger audiences interact online today.

I understand that for some communities, status updates might have become stagnant, but that’s not a flaw of the feature itself, it’s about how it’s integrated and supported. That's why I say, instead of removing it, why not focus on improving it? Imagine status updates with better moderation tools, richer content options, smarter algorithms to surface popular posts, or even tighter integration with forum content to create a more cohesive experience. That’s not looking backward, that’s pushing the software into the future.

Removing status updates aligns Invision Community with the past, not the future. No matter how pretty, and organized we make the forums they, in a sense are still passé. Social media style features are still the standard for online engagement. If the goal is to make Invision Community competitive and relevant for the next generation, enhancing features that mimic successful social platforms should be part of that vision, not something to retire. I'm honestly shocked it's slated for deletion instead of massive improvements and much better integration into all parts of the software. Even options to monetize it, sell rotating ad's etc could be considered. But I would be happy with simply not killing it and preserving the current functionality.

I hope you’ll reconsider. There’s a huge opportunity here to modernize status updates rather than abandon them, or to at least not kill something great.

Thanks for hearing me out.

 

The reason is its not just the admin, I have lots of active members that registered well over a decade ago using emails no longer in use, and inactive members who may return sometime but won't be able to log in

I think with the amount of time you've wasted on this community over the last couple of years moaning about the change of login, you could have probably written a hand written letter to every one of your members advising them of the change. 🤐

Edited February 4Feb 4 by Dll

 

Finally, a reminder that v4 will remain a viable platform for quite a while yet so there is no urgent rush to upgrade to v5 if you need more time to plan your upgrade and find solutions to deprecated features.

How about letting us stay on V4 indefinitely?
Otherwise this just reads as a ticking bomb for many of us as we eventually won't have a choice but to upgrade.

We understand the reasons but the frustration comes from a lack of choice being offered to us, you're essentially cutting off a part of what is important to us.
Now we have to find ways to pick up the pieces and god knows what else goes missing in a future V6, it is very disheartening and concerning to be frank.

Can anyone please confirm if posting directly with HTML in posts is also being removed? That was a highly used feature too, sigh...

Edited February 4Feb 4 by Aldro

 

How about letting us stay on V4 indefinitely?
Otherwise this just reads as a ticking bomb for many of us as we eventually won't have a choice but to upgrade.

v4 will not operate "indefinitely" neither as a cloud customer (which you are) or a self-hosted customer. The technology within the infrastructure will eventually outgrow v4, rendering it unusable and it would be entirely impractical to continue its development for the long-term.

With that said, we are going to monitor the adaptation rate of v5 before determining the final lifecycle timeline of v4 and we will announce that timeline as soon as we develop it. I assure you, v4 maintenance will continue at least through 2025.

I'm pushing half a century old, I like change less and less with each passing day and am set in my ways (no comments from IPS staff needed!), so I completely understand and relate to the anxiety and discontent with changes. Please understand that we do not take removal of features lightly and such changes are based not on internal personal preferences, but rather, a thorough analysis of actual usage statistics, trends, customer feedback and the alignment of development and business needs. In the case of status updates, for example, I completely understand this is a key feature for some, however, the majority of our customers did not use them. Facebook, Twitter and virtually every other medium is geared towards users and what's going on in their lives and inside their minds; the communities we encourage are (or should be) driven by content and a bit less about what's happening with specific users. Why not both, you might ask? The simple answer is, if we were to retain every feature forever and ever, the platform would fall over. We simply outgrow and shift away from things. BBCode comes to mind. When we removed that, there was hysteria and disdain and I would bet many here have no idea what BBCode is or was.

I would encourage you to simply give it time, avoid panic and explore all of the other ways you can add value to your community at-large. Pages, blogs, clubs, incentivizing active / contributing users, winbacks of infrequent visitors, and the countless new, modern features within v5 and beyond.

@Marco Junior Yes, I will not deny that Classic (self-hosted) -- or any downloadable software -- is not our (or most companies) future and Classic sales have frankly fallen near-flat the past 3 years. That's not at all to say we have plans to discontinue it, but as we continue towards more modern features, including those that require a more advanced infrastructure than the average web host can provide, you will indeed see more of these features appearing in our cloud platform and not necessarily Classic. With that said, I'd encourage you and anyone else interested in converting to cloud to contact our sales team (sales@invisionpower.com) to discuss your specific needs... you may be surprised and the costs may not necessarily be what you're thinking.

I'm extremely proud of what the team has created with v5 and after understandable knee jerk reactions and associated anxiety, I strongly feel most of you will see the out with the old, in with the new is in fact worthwhile. We truly appreciate your continued business, support, and feedback! Enjoy!

 

Removing features is never easy and it's something we don't take lightly.

I understand the argument that we could just leave everything the way it is, but that won't help us progress. And progress we must. We have finite development resources, this means that we have to focus on toolsets which are needed for the current age.

We announced the username log-in deprecation in 2022. It's not something new with v5. All we have done is followed up on the deprecation.

Status updates were put into Invision Community during the boom time for social media where we felt we needed to add social tools to remain competitive. However, on most communities these are unloved areas of the community full of throw away comments and unanswered questions. They also drain conversation away from the core of the community forums. I know that a small number of communities thrive on status updates which is why we've kept the data and our considering migration options. In the mean time, the third-party developers have stepped up with different solutions.

Finally, a reminder that v4 will remain a viable platform for quite a while yet so there is no urgent rush to upgrade to v5 if you need more time to plan your upgrade and find solutions to deprecated features.

So what's the point of depreciating an integration like the Sendgrid API then? It's an e-mail API, it can't be changing that often that it is requiring a lot of coding hours. PostMark is more expensive and has limitations on the number of domains you can use on the lower end plans. This is one of those things that is a viable service, it can't be costing a lot of your time, and loads of us already use it so removing it just makes more work for us and pisses us off.

 

This way, with V5, development time can be focused on all apps working together

Based on my experience with V3 and V4 -> I am telling you, IPS team will focus on certain apps and rest on need basis. IPS doesn't have infinite team, so I understand from prioritization perspective but if I want basics/bare bone, I would use phpBB, XF, vBulletin, etc. forums.

When the cost is increasing, we can't have less features. I am sorry but that's just how I see. I personally need full blown solution and let me choose, what I can enable/disable based on my needs.

As everyone said, IPS removing feature doesn't help but I understand IPS position as long as they provide path so that we admins/community, don't loose data.

It's one thing to render data in different format/location vs loosing it all together. I think, folks are bit grumpy at present because all status messages, tickets, etc. info is lost.

Now Matt has agreed to covert tickets to private topics.. and I am hoping he create another category to convert status messages to topics. This way their is no informational loss.

I moved away from 3rd party app because of same issue i.e. app not supported and suddenly their is data loss. If same thing happens from IPS Core apps, then folks will find start finding another solution because we can't take data hit on each major release.

If Windows XP to Windows 11 upgrade path involves loss of data, no one would update. However it doesn't and hence the people upgrade to latest versions.

Also it's beyond me, why IPS wouldn't integrate Amazon SES with Email mgmt system which is basic need for any forum to send email. It's cheapest, most reliable and just works consistently. But for something common, we are told, use 3rd party which IPS doesn't officially support 3rd party add-ons.

PS I am still grumpy a bit that IPS doesn't have official marketplace anymore, so people can at least list their addons on IPS site. I recently registered on another forum and they reloaded data and all my conversations are gone which happened in last month.

Edited March 4Mar 4 by AlexJ

 

I'm using this to create the Terms of Use & Privacy Policy. That is a downgrade compared to version 4. (Term of use generator, raw html)

If your generator produces fully marked up text like a Word doc, you should be able to just paste it into the editor.

Please add more editor permissions for each button, similar to how it was in v4, so we can disable the features we don't need.