AtariAge

As Josh already pointed out in another thread, this functionality will be back with 3.0.2.

@Speed Racer - no need to ask (or tell) us to listen to our customers. We always listen. :) That doesn't mean we can always do what someone wants when they want it, but I assure you, we always listen.

Well, there you've stated it. The older license type has "added value" which you are not willing to let it go. To be honest, you can't have everything. Your older license has other values while the current one has its another (and unproven) values.

Though I find that some people here are really overreacting to this. This sort of thing happens all the time with my cellular phone company and ISP.

It wouldn't be difficult for us to do that. It could join in the email address quite simply.

Perpetual license holders currently pay $30 for 12 months access to support and downloads whereas standard license holders pay $25 every 6 months. For those perpetual license holders who wish to use the service then converting the license is probably cheaper than paying for the service independently (if we chose to do that). It's only an extra $20 a year or $1.67 a month.

Lifetime license holders continue to get support and downloads for free.

We have no desire to break apart the software and offer a tiered version to different license holders. There is no desire to withhold features from anyone and this is an important distinction as the new spam service is a service, not a feature. We're going to have to maintain several servers, pay for the bandwidth, run and maintain back-ups, deal with IP removal requests, etc, which all incurs cost.

Ultimately, it is not an essential service for some and no compunction to use it. It does show, however, that we are committed to tackling the spam issue that plagues many customers.

May I also add that the IP.Board 3.0.2 download zip will be the same for standard, perpetual and lifetime license holders. We're not removing code for anyone.

It will be listed as a core feature on our web site soon and also will show, quite prominently, in the client area. It's in everyone's best interest to encourage use of course :)

Yes we will have support for things like that as it gets going :)

Will probably require that requests for removal are only from active customers who have been a customer for greater than X days. That way you don't get spammers stealing a credit card, buying an IPB, and requesting removal.

Hey guys,
So I'm not an expert (in anything), but I've been running a few pretty active forums for almost 8 years now (most of these years were IP.Board!). I've had to endure several server moves. I wanted to write a brief outline of my experience, since moving an active forum to a new server isn't the easiest thing in the world.

The dilemma with moving an active forum is that:
a) because it's active, you don't want your many users to tolerate any downtime.
b) because it's active, chances are your DB is huge and so this increases the time required to move over, and the potential downtime.

Moving a forum entails a few things:
1) Getting the code up and running on your new server
2) Getting the database moved over to your new server
3) Pointing your users at the new server. I'll assume you're sticking with the same domain so this will be just a DNS flick.

Solution #1: You could blindly do these three steps, but you'll be faced with a bunch of issues. The main one is that you will have two servers running off of different DB's, and there's no way to guarantee that the DNS change propagates at the same time for all your users. You'll have people posting and browsing the old forum, and people posting and browsing the new forum. Any changes to the "old" forum will disappear once everyone has propagated over to the new forum. Unacceptable.
Downtime: None.
Discrepancy: Yes.

Solution #2: To prevent the discrepancy between having and old and new forums running, you could just turn your board "offline" during the propagation period. The procedure would be:
a) turn the board offline on the old server
b) move the code/DB over
c) wait for propagation period
d) turn the board online again on the new server.
This will prevent your users from wondering where their posts went, but you have to remain offline for the DNS propagation period (which is on the order of hours, and reportedly can be even more). Again, unacceptable, because you don't want to be down for hours.
Downtime: Several hours, but you can post a nice message.
Discrepancy: None

Solution #3: Point both servers at one DB (DB-copy). The procedure is:
a) Setup/copy all code to the new server
b) Turn your forum offline.
c) Copy your DB over to the new forum
d) Point both servers code to the DB on the new server
e) Turn your forum online.
f) Flip the DNS switch and wait for propagation.
By pointing both servers at one database, you guarantee no discrepancy. That way, whether users are accessing the old or new server when DNS propagates, they will see the same things. You only need turn your forum off for the duration of DB copy, which you can probably pull-off in less than an hour, depending on the size of the DB.
Downtime: Probably on the order of minutes, and you get to post a nice message.
Discrepancy: None

Solution #4: Point both servers at one DB (DB-replication). The procedure is:
a) Setup/copy all code to the new server
b) Setup master->slave replication between the old and new DB's
c) Point both servers' code to the DB on the new server (which is the slave)
d) Cancel the master/slave replication on both servers
e) Flip the DNS switch and wait for propagation.
Essentially, this is the same as solution #3 but instead of having to turn the board off, you rely on MySQL's replication functionality, which lets your new DB mirror your old one. The one issue is that replication requires a bit of technical know-how. There's a good guide here. Also, that you will have a bit of cross-server traffic (for the DB replication, and from the old server's code to the new server's DB during propagation).
I just tried this on a site with several GB's worth of MySQL DB (forum, etc) with zero downtime as far as my users are concerned. A completely transparent move.
Downtime: None
Discrepancy: None


The devil is always in the details, and I didn't go into any of the technical ones. There's some good guides around about how to carry-out any of these steps, and they'd probably do a better job than I can. I just wanted to point out that there is a process whereby you can move a large, active forum in a way that's transparent to your users.

In IPB 2.3.6 we had an option to list active topics for "today", "past week", "past month" and so on. This feature seems to have been removed in 3.0.1 and our members are vouching for that feature. I don't know why that feature has been removed. The only option in IPB 3 is to list the active topics in the past 24 hours. The filter option to get the active topics beyond that is not available in the results page. I have attached a screenshot of that option from 2.3.6. I hope this feature will be added in the future release.

Yeah, I looked at that list as well, it is impressive (and I gave you kudos several days ago for all the bugs you've been fixing!) You have my blessing to push out 3.0.1 so I can work on it this weekend. ;)

..Al

To be fair, I did say "most", as I know not every bug can be fixed for any given version. I know you guys will pull the trigger at some point, even with 'x' number of outstanding bugs. I know many people are waiting for some of the bug fixes in 3.0.1 (including me), so if I had to guess it would be sooner than later. :)

..Al

Holy cow, that server load (86.71) is incredible!

..Al

To be fair, I did say "most", as I know not every bug can be fixed for any given version. I know you guys will pull the trigger at some point, even with 'x' number of outstanding bugs. I know many people are waiting for some of the bug fixes in 3.0.1 (including me), so if I had to guess it would be sooner than later. :)

..Al

Yeah, I looked at that list as well, it is impressive (and I gave you kudos several days ago for all the bugs you've been fixing!) You have my blessing to push out 3.0.1 so I can work on it this weekend. ;)

..Al

Whoa, that is funkarific. I have to remember that so I can use it to confuse people. :D

..Al

Some unicode symbols trigger browsers to display text as RTL. No big deal.

As for the discussion at hand, the top button serves no useful purpose at all. Not even a little. It lets you get to the top of the screen, that's it. Except there's about 10 different methods of accomplishing this, with or without a mouse button or keyboard, built into your operating system and browser already. It's clutter that serves no purpose, which we've avoided with 3.0 in an effort to streamline the user interface and make it easier for novices. Some users, when they see 15000 buttons on a row, tend to just ignore them all (guilty!). Now, you only have icons relevant to the data point (e.g. for posts, icons related to that post, of which "the top button" does not qualify).

Meh, this has been debated to death. Suffice it to say, Rikki has had no intentions of bringing it back, and I don't blame him. ;)

Sure, my members were furious with the update and the majority complained about the "view new content" feature. They wanted the old style back, and IPS has added this back. In addition, they wanted more information with the "view new content" such as who created the thread and which forum it was created in. This appears to be back as well. This is just off the top of my head. I am not sure if they will put the "back to top" link where is used to be, but my members also complained about this too. Of course I am not happy about all of the changes or customer support, but at least for me, this update will make a lot of my members happy.

Now that IPB is more and more "social network" oriented -even compatible with FB- it should be great if we could mimic some of the most usefull default behaviours of FaceBook, Myspace or Twitter.

IMHO, one little thing that contributed to these sites hughe success is the fact that when you register for the first time, all of the social network features and email notifications default to ON. Of course , if you dont like it, you can disable it, but for most users, theses features stay activated. As a result you receives a lot of email notifications driving you to come back again and again, until you often get totally addicted. :devil:

In IPB, we already have a lot of such features in member's settings: :rolleyes:
- "Notify me by e-mail when I get a new personal message"
- "Watch every topic I reply to" + "If enabled, ... notification type: Immediate Email Notification"
- "Enable Profile Comments" + "Comment Notification Type: Notify by email"
- "Show my friends in my profile" + "Friend Notification Type: Notify by email"
- similar features in IP.Blogs...

But sadly, most are disabled by default when a user register. To activate it, he would have (once registered and logedd-in) to walk thru all of the settings menu to activate a dozen switches. Guess what? Most of our members never do that, and they are not even aware that theses great features exist! Too Bad! :(

It would certainly be way better if all the features above could be ON by default, or better, if the admin would choose from the ACP, which of theses features should be ON by default or not. :whistle:


Doesn't it ring a bell to you?

I'd love to see it for the weekend so I can work on it and test it locally, but I would not expect it by then either. Next week is more realistic.

..Al

That old running thread on the Preview forum had quite a few posts in agreement with what I (and others) wrote, and my first post in that thread was quite upvoted. I would hazard a guess that the majority of people that regularly use the "View New Posts" function on 2.3.6 see the new "View New Content" results as a downgrade.


Some.


Yes, please do make the results tabular. Overall you guys have done a great job with 3.0, I'm quite confident that you are up to the challenge of properly remedying this issue. This is really the only major sticking point I have with 3.0 and it's a big one (the other being new topic markers, which is somewhat related).


It wasn't broken to begin with and did not need fixing at all.

1) Bring back the columnar format. It's easy to parse, and your eyes know right where to go for each bit of information once you're familiar with the format. The new format uses two "rows" of information for each "new" result and there is plenty of wasted white space. In this particular instance, adding white space for the sake of making the results appear "cleaner" simply doesn't work in my opinion. This goes against the grain "form follows function".

2) The topic title links to the first new post in the thread. Previously, the topic title linked to the first post in the thread and you used the "New Post" icon to go to the first new post. Now there is no way to go to the first post, which is useful if you want to catch up on a thread you haven't viewed in a while (among other reasons). This is completely inconsistent with how the title link works when viewing the topic list in a forum (which itself isn't consistent when viewing the forum index!!)

3) Number of "Views" was removed. Useful to see threads that are particularly active.

4) "Topic Starter" was removed. This is nice information to have, as you may be more interested in threads started by particular users than others. As a forum admin, this is also useful when you want to keep an eye on threads started by particular users (for instance, someone who may be a trouble starter).

5) You can no longer click on the number of "Replies" to get a popup showing the replies in a thread.

6) No attachments icon so you can see threads with attachments in them. This also includes the accompanying link that would give you a popup showing all the attachments (which I have used many times).

7) No means to get to the "Last Post". Currently in 2.3.6, the "Last post by" text links to the last post in the thread. Useful if you want to jump right to the end of a thread.

8) Page links were removed for threads spanning multiple pages. This includes the "Jump to page" link shown before the page links.

9) The "Get active topics for:" dropdown at the bottom of the "View New Post" results is gone. Functionality removed.

As you can see, even with the improvements you've made, there's still quite a bit missing from the original "View New Posts" results. Much of this functionality exists when viewing the topics in a forum. Link to first post in thread, topic starter, attachment link, replies link, link to last post, and number of views are all present, in a nice, columnar format. But the "View New Posts" results as it exists in 2.3, which is nearly identical in appearance, contains too much information? What?

Please bring back the functionality and appearance of the 2.3.6 "View New Posts" results.

..Al

Or you could hit home on your keyboard. :P

I've been thinking about this one while installing hooks but how about adding this option so that every member can manage which hooks they want to appear when they log into any message board using IPB 3: adding a Hooks Management section in "My Controls" and allowing members to toggle on or off whatever hooks are installed.

I never received any complaints about the search being too complicated. Why can't there be a simple and advanced mode like before? :( After all my suggestions to improve search, this is the outcome? :(

Can we add a option to match exact phrase? Its a pain when searching for something to see a bunch of stuff that has one or two words of the phrase even though its not what we were searching for.

Don't make me hunt down my response to your offer to write that saying I would definitely take advantage of it! Yes, I would prefer it be included with IP.Board 3.0 since I visit many Invision sites and it would be nice if they were consistent in this fashion. I don't remember anyone telling you don't bother with it, though! Please, save me the time of doing it myself as you are much better versed in these files than I am (I've only just started looking at them).

..Al

That's pretty much what Mark has been saying above (especially with his last post), although not with those exact words.


There are other changes about 3.0 I may not like, but they are not nearly as important or central as the search system and "View New Content" in particular. The whole search system has many problems and in my opinion mars what is an otherwise excellent release. That is why I have been so vocal about it. And this isn't something that just popped up with the release of 3.0.0, it's been discussed repeatedly since last year. IPS has been very slow to move on the issues that have been brought up repeatedly, which says to me they don't find them very important.


I would hope so, but I'm not too encouraged by what I've seen thus far.

..Al