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I believe you hit the nail on the head there - it really depends on what you are looking for and what your expectations are.  Sometimes I do believe that 'some' of the strategies that IPS implement are not fully thought through properly to give a level playing field to 'all' of their clients.  If you have a dozen highflyer corporate customers spending X number of dollars with you then you may perceive that they should be your priority.  That said, if you have ten thousand (arbitrary number) hobbyists who pay their dues on time and buy from the marketplace when they see something they either want or need, then you also have to give consideration to them as well.
We all pretty much understand that the days of forums are never going to be what they used to be, but we still add our dollars to the corporate pot to keep it running and I believe that people would have a much warmer feeling and approach if they were listened to as much as the big corporates are listened to.  After all, when IPS first started their software was free and it's only through the loyalty of the smaller hobbyists spending their dollars over the years that IPS has managed to break into higher levels of more profitable business.
At this juncture I'm not saying that clients need to be consulted on every level, but when something is decided that can have a profound effect on everyone, then some consultation would not go amiss - even if it were just a poll.  The whole point of this topic was never to be a platform for complaints or comparisons, rather it was to clarify a point that when someone buys something from the marketplace it should be up to the buyer whether they want to download it or install it from the ACP - but that option has been arbitrarily removed without consent. 

I'm sad to say this, but these recent decisions of Invision Power to make it harder for their customers just to prevent Piracy has given Xenforo a complete monopoly in paid forum software. 
Vbulleting and IPS are running further and further behind focusing on the wrong things.
For example my one big issue before 4.5 was IPS inability to create small thumbnails for every image attachment automatically like Xenforo does. you could argue that it does if you change the image size but you will never be able to choose between a tiny or large image, you will be stuck with small images then.

@onlyME is a great developer and one of the biggest reasons why I stayed on IPS so long, however his addon : https://invisioncommunity.com/files/file/7436-bim-topic-thumbnail/ BIM Topic Thumbnail needs to create his own thumbnails in order for your website to load in a couple of seconds.
Compare that to xenforo where the developer just can use the thumbnails from the inherent system. @onlyME had to make one himself.
In my opinion something like that should be a priority including a new text editor that apparently you'll add in 4.6, because the current editor takes a couple of seconds to load.
You have lost a customer with me, I and many others don't like a closed system where the creator tells you how to do things, and you can't do it any other way. 
In the long run you will financially lose more from this than piracy ever will, this includes 3rd party developers. 
I'm not defending piracy at all here, just your customer treatment in limiting their freedoms the way they use your products. I probably spend 1000+ dollars on custom development, plugins, themes, and the core products during my membership here.
I don't want to be rude or disrespectful just giving my honest opinion, I suspect a lot of other customers feel the same way.
 

 

Agree with You ( @Davyc and @xtech) 100 %. Wrote before that our paid files are stealed from us and got warning because of criticsm. Will never buy something from Donatorplace (Marketplace) and will never renew my paid files because my paid files will have on my computer and used when i need them (and also protect them on my way). IPS do not need protect my paid files because they can not protect their owns (allready you can download 4.5.2 whole package - nulled).
Will buy something only on developers site in future. Bought Ipsproarcade - on developers site and had never problems (you can not find nulled arcade) - developer protected his files = Bravo - teach lesson IPS.
@Lindyyou can give me another warning but i understand You - criticsm is not welcome here but kissing ass is ok!

if I buy milk in store want to take the milk home do not leave in the store and bring pancakes dough to the store to use my milk
If I buy tires for my car - do not need to show a driver's license - such visions do not like
Such rules can not be insert in the middle of the process (4.4.10 - 4.5)

Backups have nothing to do with this - my paid files can not make backup - not needed - paid for them.

Agree with You ( @Davyc and @xtech) 100 %. Wrote before that our paid files are stealed from us and got warning because of criticsm. Will never buy something from Donatorplace (Marketplace) and will never renew my paid files because my paid files will have on my computer and used when i need them (and also protect them on my way). IPS do not need protect my paid files because they can not protect their owns (allready you can download 4.5.2 whole package - nulled).
Will buy something only on developers site in future. Bought Ipsproarcade - on developers site and had never problems (you can not find nulled arcade) - developer protected his files = Bravo - teach lesson IPS.
@Lindyyou can give me another warning but i understand You - criticsm is not welcome here but kissing ass is ok!

That is true for the cloud version, but not to the on premise version.

Completely agree with this - if there is a security risk then there is a flaw in the code, and it should be fixed regardless; that's the ethical thing to do.
It's always, as far as I know, been a requirement to have an active license to access the Marketplace, but then it was always possible to download your purchases and use them whenever it suited.  Install, uninstall, some like the feature, some don't and so on. But now it appears that you MUST have an active license to access your purchases and no download option is available. I believe, rightly or wrongly, that this is not an acceptable way forward for people buying from third parties as you are buying from them and not from IPS but IPS removes that ability to download thereby, in some estranged way, holds you hostage to renewing your lPS license to access your purchases - this seems very wrong to me.  Of course, it is IPS's business and they can do what they like, but that doesn't necessarily make it right.
I'm sure that for most people this isn't a huge concern, but it is a strange way of conducting business.

This is for IPS software and services, nothing to do with third party applications.  The Marketplace is an optional addition supplied as a point for buying third party resources for which IPS takes a commission from each sale.  It has been stated elsewhere that IPS barely break even with the Marketplace in terms of server resources, space, administration etc., but that's between IPS and the third-party developers.  When we 'buy' a resource we are buying from the third party not IPS, so IPS should not have control over our ability to download that purchase whenever we feel like and for as long as IPS retains the Marketplace and we pay renewals to the third-party as part of the overall purchase for support and updates. 
As it stands right now, there is no visible way to download any third-party purchase we make as it must be installed from the ACP. For previous iterations of the IPS software before 4.5.x those resources purchased can be downloaded.
I understand the reasoning behind the ACP Marketplace, and it is handy to be able to install direct, but as in your quote above access to that resource is conditional on having an active license, so that obfuscates the ability to install your purchases and you have no recourse to pay for renewals of the IPS software to get access to what you have paid for, thereby preventing you from reinstalling from a downloaded copy.
As someone who will always have an active license I have no issue with this, but if ever there came a time when I could not afford a renewal fee and I hit an issue with my site and just wanted to do a refresh, I'd be stuck.  In many ways I'm playing Devil's Advocate for those who may come across this limitation.  Some clarification from IPS would be good to have so people understand what they are buying into. 

I didn't realize how much space was being utilized until I switched to 4.5. This is kind of a lot I agree 😂 
I would love to somehow simplify this so it's about 75% shorter in length. For instance, it says the author and time stamp twice.
 

+111

I do agree that disaster recovery plans should be part of everyone's routine, but it's not always that cut and dried and people are sometimes either lazy, blaze or just don't know how to do this, therefore if a reinstall is required the resources purchased should always be available whether an active license is in place or not.  This is not about backups or anything like so, it's about taking ownership of what has been purchased and that purchase is available whenever it is required; at present with 4.5.x that is not possible.  It's like buying a car and not being able to take it to who you want for a repair or service other than the dealership that sold it to you and they ask for a fee to ensure continued use of what you have already paid for.

Anybody know if 4.5 marketplace changes were accompanied with changes to the software licence and or, terms and conditions? I don't recall seeing anything when I downloaded 4.5 for standalone install. Maybe I missed it?

What about if some just wants to do a refresh and start again?  There will always be pros and cons and there will always be those who will provide an answer that is not necessarily something that others are prepared to carry out or have the ability to do so, for whatever reason.  The point here is that you have purchased something from a third party that is now conditional on having an active IPS license if you want to use it again
 
That is the point, there is no reason to deny downloading as well as using the Marketplace in the ACP - this is not an 'instead of' but an 'as well as'.  
That's severe and a little over the top, but I do understand the sentiment lol.

＋1
In this case require Protect customers right common sense, and this request don't affect no one negatively. 

Totally agree. You buy an APP, you retain the right to use it, regardless of having an active IPS licence.

Having the marketplace inside of the application in the ACP is a good idea, but - access to the marketplace is governed by having a current license renewal in place.  This means that if a license has expired and the user does not wish to renew at this point in time (for whatever reasons), if their site has a catastrophic failure and they need to reinstall from scratch, the applications they have purchase which need to be reinstalled, what happens to them?  Will they be available in the ACP or will they need to renew their license before they can access what they have paid for?
I believe that the option to install from the ACP should be retained as it's helpful, but the option to download what you have paid for should also be made available.  After all, it is we the users who have paid for this app or plugin.  Thoughts?

This is a complaint I made about IPB before the release of IPB 4.5.  It's really unacceptable in this day and age to have so much wasted space. Things really need to be pulled together tighter with more purpose served to those blank areas. So if there is no description then the white area for example shouldn't be there. 

I hate how the postbit also can make empty signatures into a ton of white space if there is a short response. Again, there's no reason for that to happen. Personally I would prefer a more uniform postbit. 

4.5 is an improvement, but I think more attention really needs to be paid to the things that stick out. Like how useless profiles have generally become, and all of that white space. As well as the removal of space below a post that is made with too much empty space. 

Today @Michael.J's Auto Welcome plugin was updated with 4.5 support. As a part of the upgrade process in 4.5, an incrementing process runs to presumably move data out of a Not Good Place(tm) in the database into a place deemed acceptable by IPS Marketplace guidelines. As we have many, many members, this process was slowly incrementing, 50 at a time, toward the very large number of members that we have. This must have met the IPS standards and must have been blessed by IPS' review process.
Unfortunately, my internet connection blipped out during the upgrade, causing the process to fail, and leaving the plugin in a state where it's not fully updated, it's trying to rerun SQL queries that were already run, and there's no way to move forward. I can't download the 4.5 resource to see what it's doing, nor can I restart or pickup the upgrade process. Maybe I could uninstall and lose all data associated with it through a reinstall, but that's ... less than ideal.
What's the plan, IPS, for this sort of stuff? Who supports this? You? Michael, the third party developer? I'm out of luck? Thankfully we test rigorously before doing things in production, yet it seems that these sorts of things (moving data within the database) should be required to be developed as background processes that continue to run and aren't dependent on the administrator's internet connection. Is that not possible for plugin/application development? Are you not thinking to check for this? Did this get overlooked? Where's the developer documentation for background processes even located?
No criticism of Michael here. He's doing good work, and making a good product. IPS needs to take ownership of this nonsense by making it impossible to see these issues in advance and locking out downloads from the Marketplace. This isn't the Apple experienced we were promised. And if there's a place where Michael could have learned about how to setup background tasks in the upgrade process for a plugin or application, then I should be able to find it when I look at the developer docs.

Some related problems:
 
 
 

Really?

 
Google Material Design Guidelines: Applying Density
 

It's Full HD. The main content is marked in green. More than half of the screen at the top is occupied by secondary useless information.

And if we use a logo with a large header, then the main content will generally be at the very bottom of the page.

Just compare this:

I don't have a problem with calling this aspect of the design "terrible" because it is.
The previous version had the follow button on the same level as the Forum title.
Somebody made the "terrible" decision to move this button into acres of precious vertical space, all on its own. What was wrong with leaving it where it was? Why is this necessary? If it had to be moved below the title as an essential button then why not place it beside the start topic button?
Or if a follow button is of such paramount importance to be a leading feature for the landing page, why not go full width?
You've probably all heard of the "hero image" ... welcome to its successor, the "hero button"

I said most of this in beta stage but it meant nothing

So standard installs of a forum only are not considered core business?
Sorry but this isn't open source software, we have paid subscriptions, and having already been told by Invision they don't want to discuss it, and seeing people being asked to dial down "criticism" here only makes customers feel unloved. Maybe developers don't want to put as much weight behind design issues as they do functionality but seeing so much white space looks very amateur. Not forgetting a topic list relegated down near the fold is going to impact engagement.
And if we are talking components (to cover multiple scenarios) then why can't we switch this section off?
I hope you can appreciate that members posting here probably represent multiple installs, and have to explain this to their clients too. If you can't handle the negative feedback from us then try dealing with it when it comes from the front line.
This isn't a political hot potato... just a straightforward design issue arising from an update... it can be fixed if someone is prepared to listen.