Will Munny

So why not offer the 'service' to your legacy customers for a fee?...

... It's because you want me to give up my Perpetual license.

If there's anyone still using IE6 (presently 12 or 13 percent of my visitors), I don't really want them on my site any way. Stupid people p!$$ me off.

As I'm totally reliant on organic search engine traffic, I've been keen to get my hands on the new IPB 3 and have been closely watching the development of it over the last year or so... and after some hiccups, IPS have put together a functional set of SEO measures. I initially had a few reservations when I got my hands on the Release Candidate and went live with it on my live board, such as the huge negative indents in the CSS... however, after observing the effects on my installation and my search ranking over the last couple of months, I only have positive things to say.

I tweaked my furlTemplate.php a little to change the name of/remove a couple of directories. I also removed a superfluous repetition of the board name in the h1 tag. I also had to add a few more instances in the robots.txt file to cover some dupe content issues. I'm still having to add code to generate a 404 header for error pages/deleted topics... but other than that, IPB's out of the box SEO is really quite good... and the skins are far easier to work with than they were in previous versions, and now seem to have pretty good semantic mark up.

It may be unacceptable (and it is) but there's nothing we can do about it. IPS are keeping their promise to legacy customers... and just making them feel second class to newer customers by withholding a new 'service' from us if we don't play along and give up our licenses.

What a total disgrace... and what a shabby way to treat me. I've been a loyal customer and saw a future in IPB so I forked out for the Perpetual. I also continue paying support fees and participate actively in Beta testing... yet I'm still excluded. Explain why you won't make it available for a fee equivalent to the difference in cost (over and above my annual support fee)?

That argument is on pretty shaky ground. You might, in that case, start charging extra for FURLs, AJAX skins, or any other progression in the software... as far as I'm concerned, my license entitles me to use IPB and it's features in all future versions, forever... You're moving the goal posts in order to sheppard legacy customers into your newer pricing bracket...

... and yes, I do pay my annual support fee already.

This is the way I see it:

You should have known full well you were going to piss a lot of people off by telling them that lifetime/perp license holders could not use this service, and that they could one-way convert their licenses to a standard license to use this service. Especially given the nature of the service: A way to stop spam, something that should be a stock feature available to everyone. I'm sure you talked about it for a while, but I can't believe it didn't cross someone's mind before posting the announcement. If you have retracted the statement and are working on it further, an ajustment to the annoucement needs to be made.

As I've said before, a license holder is a license holder. You can't discriminate one from the other, regardless of what the arrangement was. If you are extending the support fee for this, you should do it for the other licenses as well, regardless of who pays what. I also know that by giving it to the standard license holders, you are not increasing your revenue by any margin to cover the costs of the server required for this service. This leads me to believe that it is not about cost, but a way to get people to convert their licenses. If you still wish to honor them, honor them.

If this is about cost, charge for it. And if you do, charge everyone, not just perp and lifetime license holders. How ever you want to do it, I'm sure no one would complain. $10 per year provides an access key for every form license, $5 per year per access key, etc... what ever it is, I'm sure no one would mind. But if you want to have everyone use it, it has to be dirt cheap. You want everyone to use it, but excluding lifetime/perp license holders does not do that. It just pisses them off, and they refuse to use the service.

Be fair accross the board. That's all I ask.

Right... it's not about the money, an extra 20 bucks a year is nothing... but I shelled out considerably more than that for a Perpetual license AND I'm still paying a support fee...
So, as there is no option to use this new service as an addon for a small extra fee, the only conclusion is that I am being forced to give up my Perpetual license... i.e. the goal posts have been moved.

I'm not the type of customer to complain. I am a businessman too and I recognise a business has to move forward, evolve and make money... but I feel shafted enough to complain about this and I guarantee there will be more Perpetual licence holders that feel the same when they log in and read your announcement.

From where I'm standing, the outlay I made for the Lifetime/Perpetual license was a waste of money... because I'm still paying an annual support fee, and now I'm still excluded from ongoing developments...

So, I find myself wondering why I purchased that perpetual license in the first place... and wondering why I'm still paying the annual fee... because no matter how you word it, you're forcing me to give up my Perpetual license in order to continue benefiting from IPB developments.

And the key point I am making is that I'm already a 'regular' paying customer. I have the option to continue using IPB weather I pay for support or not... but I *DO* continue paying (and am happy to do so, no free lunch and all that).

So, as I am an +Active Customer, who pays his fees (even though I don't need to be to continue using IPB under my license terms), why am I excluded from this?

That argument is on pretty shaky ground. You might, in that case, start charging extra for FURLs, AJAX skins, or any other progression in the software... as far as I'm concerned, my license entitles me to use IPB and it's features in all future versions, forever... You're moving the goal posts in order to sheppard legacy customers into your newer pricing bracket...

... and yes, I do pay my annual support fee already.

As I'm totally reliant on organic search engine traffic, I've been keen to get my hands on the new IPB 3 and have been closely watching the development of it over the last year or so... and after some hiccups, IPS have put together a functional set of SEO measures. I initially had a few reservations when I got my hands on the Release Candidate and went live with it on my live board, such as the huge negative indents in the CSS... however, after observing the effects on my installation and my search ranking over the last couple of months, I only have positive things to say.

I tweaked my furlTemplate.php a little to change the name of/remove a couple of directories. I also removed a superfluous repetition of the board name in the h1 tag. I also had to add a few more instances in the robots.txt file to cover some dupe content issues. I'm still having to add code to generate a 404 header for error pages/deleted topics... but other than that, IPB's out of the box SEO is really quite good... and the skins are far easier to work with than they were in previous versions, and now seem to have pretty good semantic mark up.

As I'm totally reliant on organic search engine traffic, I've been keen to get my hands on the new IPB 3 and have been closely watching the development of it over the last year or so... and after some hiccups, IPS have put together a functional set of SEO measures. I initially had a few reservations when I got my hands on the Release Candidate and went live with it on my live board, such as the huge negative indents in the CSS... however, after observing the effects on my installation and my search ranking over the last couple of months, I only have positive things to say.

I tweaked my furlTemplate.php a little to change the name of/remove a couple of directories. I also removed a superfluous repetition of the board name in the h1 tag. I also had to add a few more instances in the robots.txt file to cover some dupe content issues. I'm still having to add code to generate a 404 header for error pages/deleted topics... but other than that, IPB's out of the box SEO is really quite good... and the skins are far easier to work with than they were in previous versions, and now seem to have pretty good semantic mark up.

It may be unacceptable (and it is) but there's nothing we can do about it. IPS are keeping their promise to legacy customers... and just making them feel second class to newer customers by withholding a new 'service' from us if we don't play along and give up our licenses.

What a total disgrace... and what a shabby way to treat me. I've been a loyal customer and saw a future in IPB so I forked out for the Perpetual. I also continue paying support fees and participate actively in Beta testing... yet I'm still excluded. Explain why you won't make it available for a fee equivalent to the difference in cost (over and above my annual support fee)?

Right... it's not about the money, an extra 20 bucks a year is nothing... but I shelled out considerably more than that for a Perpetual license AND I'm still paying a support fee...
So, as there is no option to use this new service as an addon for a small extra fee, the only conclusion is that I am being forced to give up my Perpetual license... i.e. the goal posts have been moved.

I'm not the type of customer to complain. I am a businessman too and I recognise a business has to move forward, evolve and make money... but I feel shafted enough to complain about this and I guarantee there will be more Perpetual licence holders that feel the same when they log in and read your announcement.

It may be unacceptable (and it is) but there's nothing we can do about it. IPS are keeping their promise to legacy customers... and just making them feel second class to newer customers by withholding a new 'service' from us if we don't play along and give up our licenses.

What a total disgrace... and what a shabby way to treat me. I've been a loyal customer and saw a future in IPB so I forked out for the Perpetual. I also continue paying support fees and participate actively in Beta testing... yet I'm still excluded. Explain why you won't make it available for a fee equivalent to the difference in cost (over and above my annual support fee)?

So why not offer the 'service' to your legacy customers for a fee?...

... It's because you want me to give up my Perpetual license.

So why not offer the 'service' to your legacy customers for a fee?...

... It's because you want me to give up my Perpetual license.

And the key point I am making is that I'm already a 'regular' paying customer. I have the option to continue using IPB weather I pay for support or not... but I *DO* continue paying (and am happy to do so, no free lunch and all that).

So, as I am an +Active Customer, who pays his fees (even though I don't need to be to continue using IPB under my license terms), why am I excluded from this?

That argument is on pretty shaky ground. You might, in that case, start charging extra for FURLs, AJAX skins, or any other progression in the software... as far as I'm concerned, my license entitles me to use IPB and it's features in all future versions, forever... You're moving the goal posts in order to sheppard legacy customers into your newer pricing bracket...

... and yes, I do pay my annual support fee already.

That argument is on pretty shaky ground. You might, in that case, start charging extra for FURLs, AJAX skins, or any other progression in the software... as far as I'm concerned, my license entitles me to use IPB and it's features in all future versions, forever... You're moving the goal posts in order to sheppard legacy customers into your newer pricing bracket...

... and yes, I do pay my annual support fee already.

That argument is on pretty shaky ground. You might, in that case, start charging extra for FURLs, AJAX skins, or any other progression in the software... as far as I'm concerned, my license entitles me to use IPB and it's features in all future versions, forever... You're moving the goal posts in order to sheppard legacy customers into your newer pricing bracket...

... and yes, I do pay my annual support fee already.

That argument is on pretty shaky ground. You might, in that case, start charging extra for FURLs, AJAX skins, or any other progression in the software... as far as I'm concerned, my license entitles me to use IPB and it's features in all future versions, forever... You're moving the goal posts in order to sheppard legacy customers into your newer pricing bracket...

... and yes, I do pay my annual support fee already.