Fast Lane!

1 minute ago, Joel R said:

Thoughts:

1.  IPS Search is bad.  Just accept that it's horribly, horribly bad. 

2.  Use Advanced Search, so you can filter by app:

https://invisioncommunity.com/search/

Will our users ever understand the Advanced Search?  No.  See Point #1.  

3.  As an alternative to translating Downloads in the langstrings, they could also simply used the Word Expansion to explain that Marketplace is the Downloads app (eg. you can see the Word Expansion feature in action on the word "ACP")

4.  Ironically, IPS did used to search the app by default.  

I remembered arguing that where you search from shouldn't dictate where you're trying to search to.  This is one of my Great Mistakes in feedback to IPS.  

I just use google custom search engine for our site as default.  And basically hide the built in search except for a tiny link that calls it "advanced search".

10 hours ago, Noble~ said:

I think it makes the site very neat and clean, going to a site all jammed up with ads and a crammed side bar is an instant (leave the site) for me.

How do you monetize your site without ads?

Pagespeed is a big area of work for IPB.  The overhead is HUGE for each page load.  Css and js for the entire site is loaded for every page (but can be cached). DOM structure is massive.

For ads did you have the same number per page? 

As far as technical issues like rewrites I would strongly recommend google search tools and dig in there...   Search.google.com

I would also not use the default IPB ad placement locations. Custom insert in skins.  You can set up ads every x posts that way for example.  You can also limit ads to more senior members based on group or post count.  

I hope so.  I'll probably won't be upgrading in Feb/March.  Need a tad more stability and plugin support. 

Here is past precedent:

Last I head IPS was supposed to support security patches for the last .x version after a new release.  This was true in the past for last least a year.  So I hope so...

Precedent and predictability matter to businesses so I hope things like thing don't get changed without notice. 

42 minutes ago, FabioPaz said:

 

 

75% of sessions on my forum are from non serious users.

Damn kids with those new things called smartphones, right?

Reading text using a small screen?? ABSURD! 

Believe me, It wont take long until they start reading books that aren't made from paper. What kindle of world is that?

 

Yeah I agree.  The trend is obvious that mobile is becoming the majority of users.  Like it or not.  Google even has "mobile first" indexing that prioritizes that as a factor.  They saw the trend years ago.  Some legacy power users may be desktop only but there is a HUGE # of mobile power users that exist too...

Bottom line... I LOVE desktop for all the "stuff" I can see at once.  It's faster.  It's better at displaying content.  BUT... It's not how the large MAJORITY of people consume information anymore.  We must adapt.

Why not just use Google AdManager to do this?

Use header bidding for the best of all world's. 

3 hours ago, Zone Plate said:

WAG on that improvement? 2x RPM? More less? 

I have been running adsense for 10-15 years without issue. 

20%?

1 minute ago, Fast Lane! said:

20%?

Others pay 50% or more.  But their fill is less.  So my bet increase is overall. 

6 hours ago, Zone Plate said:

What sorts of improvements do you see using these techniques over running straight adsense?

Lots.  Also, if you ever have AdSense cut off (a million reasons why it can happen with a user gen content site) you will want that network in place to take up the slack while you resolve things. 

Have you guys considered just editing the skin to add loading=lazy to the image tags?  It's supported by most browsers these days.  

Do you have any experience on what a good cache time would be for guests on a busy site?  I was thinking 1-2 minutes to keep things fresh but curious on your experience.

8 minutes ago, Ryan Ashbrook said:

They are not.

In the case of sessions - those are always temporary even when using the database, so them being "lost" is not an issue. If the user associated with the session has opted to have their login remembered, then it will just create a new one. Otherwise, they would just need to login again.

For views - a task runs through these and updates content items view counts accordingly. If these are lost for some reason before they are applied by the task, then they will not be processed.

Cool ok.  Do you know how often that task runs so topic views on the forums reflect the most recent values?

Out of curiosity is this a big mysql load savings?  Thanks!

It sounds like "sessions and topic view counters" are stored in Redis, however my question is if these are periodically copied back to the database?  What frequency if so.  Asking because inevitably services and even servers get reset.  Storing in memory forever seems unlikely.  

3 hours ago, SC36DC said:

Are you currently using it with 4.5?

4.4.10 still.  Was waiting for loose ends like this to get fixed first. It looks like an exciting upgrade tho overall. 

9 hours ago, SC36DC said:

Mail Bouncer app hasn't been updated for 4.5, does it still work? This would be great to be able to use this as well.

Oh wow.  I didn't realize it wasn't upgraded. 

I'm fairly certain the sidebars on the site are delayed when loaded causing CLS issues, largely on the desktop view.  

For ads just put a DIV around them with the size of the ad. That will fix the CLS issue. 

Will this work with the mail bouncer app?  Not sending emails to dead inboxes is huge. 

Btw, cheers to the IPB support staff and management.  They took care of me!!  Wonderful folks and in this case were willing to go a little out of the way for a long time customer.  This is the type of support that won me over when I started using IPB 1.x 17-18 years ago.  Wheew!!

Pulled a screen shot from the "original skin" below, from the way back machine!  hahah!  version 1.3 in 2003!

Title says it all.  How do I change the Blogs default from "/blogs" to "/news"?  It's not clear if a custom friendly url is the right way to go...

16 hours ago, Adriano Faria said:

Client Area will always deliver latest version. Your best bet is submit a ticket and ask for the old version. They might give it to you.

No luck so far :(.  I have a major client asking to start a guest blog.  I don't want to turn them away.

Does anyone know how I can get access to these after purchase?  I want to purchase Blog but I am not ready to upgrade to 4.5.  I get it... the easy answer is "upgrade" but we have a large site and need to let 4.5.x stabilize and then test upgrade.  This will take another month or so.

This should be an easy thing if the files in the applications folder exist somewhere.  I messaged IPB support for help but I'm hoping someone else may know.  The download feature in the client area only lets me download 4.5 (not even 4.4 legacy).

Thanks!

1 hour ago, Daniel Wolf said:

Hi there,

I recently upgraded my test-install to version 4.5.4 and started installing my previously purchased apps and plugins. If I understood correctly, starting with version 4.5 there are no manual downloads from the marketplace from this site, I have to use the marketplace-integration in the acp of my forum.

But how can I review the code that is now running on my server? I have to know what it does to the server and to the data of the users. Somebody has to be responsible in the end and IPS states clearly that they are not responsible for any damages. A quote from the acp: "IPS IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR AND YOU AGREE TO HOLD IPS HARMLESS FOR ANY POSSIBLE ISSUES CAUSED BY FILES DOWNLOADED FROM IPS MARKETPLACE. ?

Well - that is okay. But someone has to be responsible. In the end, it's me. How can I bring myself into a position where I can say "yes, I have seen all the files from that extension and I will take the responsibility" ? I have found new sub-folders in "/applications/" and "/plugins/". Is it guaranteed that all the files from apps and plugins are there and nowhere else?

What are your guidelines/recommendations for code-reviews of plugins and apps?

Best regards,
  Dany

This is a very fair point.  Very fair.

I love Pages but WP is FAR more seo optimized.  I can't compete with my competitions site on SEO. Also, they due AMP via a plugin which gives them extra Google love on mobile search. Pages is also SUPER heavy on page resources (not needed JavaScript and css) which kills the pagespeed scores lowering things further.  

Again I use Pages but would suggest IP developers take heed if they ever want to woo people away from WordPress.