LiquidFractal

I've been with you since the days of Ikonboard, so you I love you. However, I'm starting to grow concerned after reading that IPS have made a specific, conscious decision to start restricting features (albeit with the first) to cloud-hosted SAAS customers. It's perhaps akin the to the controversial Marketplace changes. As a multi-license customer, I'm saddened that there is a visible "It's our way, or the highway" style approach that seems to be increasing these days.
This statement feels like it could be the start of a paradigm shift, and if so, one that I'm concerned is edging gradually towards a pretty slippery slope. I'm concerned that a moment of realisation will inevitably follow such a shift, where more of the latest, long awaited or most requested features could no longer be available to self-hosted clients.
I realise with SAAS you have more or even total overall control of the environment which is good from a support perspective, and it's been stated that if you could have a do-over with today's tech, SAAS would be the way to go from the outset.
SAAS certainly has its benefits, to both sides of the provider/customer fence, don't get me wrong, but I still find the cloud-hosted IPS on offer here (which as your main showcase, it should be super slick, speedier than The Flash using a bathroom and instantly responsive), to be more sluggish and generally slower than many self-hosted sites I come across; even though I'm using a 40Mbps fibre connection (thanks rip off, overselling BT, I'm still paying for that 80Mbps Infinity 2 connection, you know... yeah, that's right, you hear me!).
And then there's this risk, it does happen...

On the way to the point where more features are restricted, how many restricted features will it take before self-hosted clients begin to feel like they are getting the light version or feel less valued. The software is expensive (aside from a couple of the recurring add-ons which a fairly priced), self-hosted clients money is of course just as good as that of SAAS clients, and after all, wasn't it the self-hosted user base that helped get IPS to where it is today? So I would ask IPS to at least consider this approach and also, if you propose removing lesser used large features from products (like Commerce) that's fine but please don't forget to reduce the price accordingly.
Thanks for listening.

Agreed! Crippled software for faithful customers who prefer to self host...

This is a bit of a slap in the face to self hosted clients. Nothing to celebrate here. 👎

Interesting to see a community advocate that accuses people of being hostile because they have a conservative tone via text.  Good luck. 😏

I plan to expand my use of Clubs ("Spaces" on my site) so that clients who need tuition or mentoring over a longer period can have a private space with multimedia galleries, a writing blog, and a versioned file storage space for essays etc.
But because I also use Spaces for academic reading groups my only setback is that I really, REALLY need categories for Clubs so that I can organise things, as different classes of student use the same resources independently of each other.
So, yes....great additions, and I'm looking forward to them.  But hey - you wanna see me reach for a cigarette after upgrading (and I don't even smoke!)?  Clubs categories!!

(Come on...you even made me do a social media cat thing when I have Hegel to read!)

Great ideas which do lots to underscore the value that forums can bring in the age of quick-fix social media.
Thanks Invision! 👍

Great ideas which do lots to underscore the value that forums can bring in the age of quick-fix social media.
Thanks Invision! 👍

More great additions to the suite!
Not to make lives difficult or to sound ungrateful, but I wonder if opening from the top/going to newest comment/going to latest comments I haven't read shouldn't be a per-thread choice?  If I'm revisiting a thread I'm heavily engaged in, maybe I just want to see all the newest comments (kudos to whoever had the great idea of filtering for only unread posts!); if it's a new thread I don't know much about, maybe I want to start at the top.  Would this be possible using a quick filter button by the thread title or something?
Anyway, just thinking out loud.  Keep 'em coming! 👍
 

More great additions to the suite!
Not to make lives difficult or to sound ungrateful, but I wonder if opening from the top/going to newest comment/going to latest comments I haven't read shouldn't be a per-thread choice?  If I'm revisiting a thread I'm heavily engaged in, maybe I just want to see all the newest comments (kudos to whoever had the great idea of filtering for only unread posts!); if it's a new thread I don't know much about, maybe I want to start at the top.  Would this be possible using a quick filter button by the thread title or something?
Anyway, just thinking out loud.  Keep 'em coming! 👍
 

This is a great feature which makes it so much easier to add visual flavour to content.  Thank you, Invision 🤗

We could have even more privacy if we would have categories for clubs. E. g. by setting permission to category of who can view it and clubs inside the category. 

This is a great enhancement to Clubs - good to see the feature getting more love.

Yeah...not that I'm leaping to defend the ghetto that is social media, but that judge is completely out of it where social media is concerned.  But wouldn't it be nice if that precedent strangled social media content to the extent that people returned to independent communities which can (theoretically) offer higher quality content?

Yeah...not that I'm leaping to defend the ghetto that is social media, but that judge is completely out of it where social media is concerned.  But wouldn't it be nice if that precedent strangled social media content to the extent that people returned to independent communities which can (theoretically) offer higher quality content?

It's hard enough to find any sort of love in this world without worrying about plumbing, preference, or perception...congratulations on a happy partnership and best wishes for TrevorSpace in the future. 👍

It's hard enough to find any sort of love in this world without worrying about plumbing, preference, or perception...congratulations on a happy partnership and best wishes for TrevorSpace in the future. 👍

It's hard enough to find any sort of love in this world without worrying about plumbing, preference, or perception...congratulations on a happy partnership and best wishes for TrevorSpace in the future. 👍

It's hard enough to find any sort of love in this world without worrying about plumbing, preference, or perception...congratulations on a happy partnership and best wishes for TrevorSpace in the future. 👍

WoW, very good read!!

Congratulations to both The Trevor Project and Invision Community for finding happy partners in each other.  

Beautiful cause and project... 🙂
Peace and ...

It isn't truly politically correct until it acquires its own hashtag...😋
You can even change this if you want with Kevin Carwile's Advanced path Aliasing app.  There is a free version which supports IIRC up to 50 aliases, so you could use this to easily change the main URL from "forums" to "discussions."

My dream is that IPS grows enough that it can pay a dedicated developer team for each app. Pages, Commerce, Downloads … they all just get these “sweeps” after 1,5 years with a few improvements here and there. It clearly shows. Those app can’t keep up with standalone solutions by other providers who improve that one app all day every day.  

Bring me some free trade avocado toast while you step into my safe space 😀

My culture is academic and scholarly, so I've never had a problem with the concept of "forums"...especially since the discussions we have (when you can get academics together on a website long enough 🙄) could never be seriously carried on in Facebook groups or anything of the kind.
Likewise for teaching and tutoring academic writing, critical thinking and English - the ways in which forums allow you to excerpt ("quote") and analyse specific parts of an argument or debate win the day as far as collaboration goes.  Forums are key to creating meaningful exchanges which can be revisited and amplified by students and educators alike - especially when more recent functionality allows them to be appended to other content such as Articles.  Not one of my students or other clients has ever had a problem with "forums."