Joshua Hina

So, to me, this is absolutely bonkers. 

IPS' team has noticed that their plugin community is a fraction of what it used to be, thinks this is because everyone has switched to bespoke work (You sure it's not the other way around? People using bespoke work /because/ the plugin community has a fraction of the size it did back when there was a free version and before IPS was trying to be everything for every person by default?). 

So they /murder/ pre-made plugins. No, we're not going to see thriving new marketplaces. Excited devs will start some, none of these will be as active as the current one, most if not all of these efforts will peter out quickly. Not having the marketplace in the panel, not having them vetted by IPS, not having people browse over them prior to purchasing IPS (and plan out a setup with plugins), not having their plugins listed on IPS' websites are all small cuts that together, cut deep. IPS' website was never a limiter on other marketplaces (they've always existed for themes and some plugins), but free advertisement to those who did have those. You're merely taking away an option and your stamp of approval. 

And you do this brilliant move in the middle of a version, announcing it to your costumers roughly a month up-front. 

Definitely not obvious you're springing it this way to ensure customers don't either, mass-hug a former major version to keep their plugins, or start planning migrations away from IPS between the time of announcement and release. 

Now, months after it happened, I google 'Invisionpower plugins marketplace' and find nothing on the first page. 

Sincerely, as someone who was a fan once of IPS, you people suck.

Marketplace was really good option to find everything in one spot. Now i need to register on 20 different sites and half I don't even remember. 
It's like Apple telling to it's customer, here take iPhone. You want apps? Go on developers site and install from their. Jeez, what a nightmare. 
Take care of your health. Rest everything will go on. 
PS I am one of the customers who is unhappy because support/ticket system is gone and have to deal with broken donation system in store. 

It is really starting to become more effort than it is worth. Not to mention costlier still. Useful feature after useful feature that makes a community a community slowly gets taken away eg chat and marketplace. So what is the point? Great for corporations sure.
 
What are the best modern alternatives to IPS now? Any that support easy conversions?

Hi Martin, 
I've really attempted to use IPS for my big gaming community but honestly, at this point, I have to agree. IPS seems to be moving to appeal to corporate websites with things like (courses) instead of focusing on what other forum sites do. It seems that awesome features I loved are being removed like the integrated support system and more. With the marketplace being removed it is removing a good and awesome opportunity for developers to make money. I am going to start to begin to move to another forum site. 

I’ve been using this software, and this company for many years and with recent changes to how support is offered it leaves something to be desired. There’s no means to directly reach IPS employees for technical matters; which there should be. Having to post in a community where potentially sensitive information can be gleaned out of a post. We are not supporting T-shirts or physical products. Here this is a piece of software that requires extensive knowledge and understanding to properly, maintain and run. It is the job of the software developer to provide at least a basic level of service with their software. Not rely upon their customers to do that for them. With add-ons this software can cost up to $300 a year and yet there’s no way to actually interface with a human employee for anything that involves the software being nonfunctional. Currently, Support is like and to that have an open source software product where you post on a message board, wait and hope that someone might eventually look at your post. That’s not acceptable for a paid product. In the past IPS had stated that the reasoning for their moving to community best support was that because so many issues were just very simple questions or extremely similar issues. There are people who only use support for actual systems level issues that require a technician with advanced knowledge of the software. These are not simple questions such as “how do I post a message” or “ what are the requirements of the software” these sorts of things are what a knowledge base is for. Issues with client specific set up, should not be a public matter, because that creates a major security vulnerability, especially if somebody provides access to their information or a link to their forum, which I have seen posted here many many many times. Even providing a link to an area where the server is miss configured, and the software is not functioning properly can cause nefarious people to be able to access a users sensitive information. The procedure needs to change, and there should be a means to reach a human should that be necessary… not post and hope an employee might see the request and look at it. Even massive corporations like a cPanel which get hundreds to thousands of service request a day provide a private means to reach a technical support representative in the event that a matter is not appropriate for support in there forum.

Sorry, seems as this was posted in the classic selfhosted forum, which is for server issues, that it would be outside our scope of support.
However, it sounds like you may have mod_security or something else security wise if you are receiving this permission error. I would suggest disabling this to test further.
These templates and CSS files are stored in the database so typically wouldn’t be a write issue to the server itself, it would be a processing issue on the server which is being blocked. 

@Matt Thank you for the care and concern. You guys and the support from IPS is amongst the best, if not the, best. I can't tell you how much it means. Having suffered through many years with support that didn't come close. While I may not agree with all direction taken (it's not my show), the effort and energy IPS continually displays with regard to it's customer base shows. 
I have asked a few, seen where others have asked for a file to be updated (hence, no need for me to add redundancy), and saw where others have said they have submitted updates that have been approved yet subsequent comments indicate that errors are still being thrown. This last was the impetus for my comment here:
 
Not to single anyone out here, and she does work that is amazing but I see where @HeadStand (and I do apologize here for the example, Esther) submitted an update that was apparently approved. I say apparently because if you venture to the file in question it says that it is compatible with 4.7 and a bit further down the page, under, 'What's New in Version 2.4.6', it states that it was, 'Updated for 4.7.2 compatibility.'
Now, if you read down from my linked content, 'submitted,' you will see that even though the file was approved for 4.7.2, customers are complaining that they are receiving errors and that the PHP8 Compatibility Scanner is flagging the file, even though it was approved as a compatible file.
To her credit, Esther checked the file even after it was approved by IPS, to be sure it was what it was supposed to be. After which she stated that it was correct. Subsequently, other customers indicated they too were getting flagged.
All of which reiterates my contention, how does one know if it works when there is so much confusion.
 
I don't want my site to break, I want to upgrade to remain current. I want to upgrade before I am forced to, but only want to do so when I am certain that the probability that things will break is next to zero. IPS could help with these concerns but I think sometimes that the minutiae some customers express gets lost in the hustle and bustle that (in this particular instance) PHP 8.x is causing. I expressed my concerns in a way I thought to be clear but, as I stated, sometimes, for whatever reason, things get lost in the shuffle. 
 
 

Thanks. I was not aware that that function sent out an email to the user as well. I created a ticket for her informing her that she should have a password reset email now.