Lindy

IPS is pleased to offer 15% off starting now through Monday on all new purchases for both new and existing clients! This includes all self-hosted software licenses as well as Community in the Cloud packages. Whether you've been wanting to add a new component to your current IPS Community Suite license or are considering IPS for the first time, simply use the coupon code HOLIDAY2014 at checkout to take advantage of this offer. Get started now!

** We have enough applications to fill this position. Thank you for your interest! ** Piracy is something that all software companies face and IPS is no exception. Our losses due to credit card fraud and software piracy are significant and to minimize passing along costs to customers, we are seeking to expand our piracy department and take a harder stance against piracy and pursue those who engage in it. The position entails: - Identifying customers, using internal tools, that have inactive licenses and are using later versions of the software than their license allows and report to customer service for license termination. - Identifying customers, using internal tools, that have shared IPS products or marketplace purchases with illegal download sites and report to customer service for license termination. - Following up on usage piracy complaints. - Vigorously pursuing distribution hubs. - Working with web hosts, ISPs and law enforcement. To qualify you MUST: - Be at least 18 years old (for legal reasons, no exceptions to this policy can be made.) - Have excellent written communication skills. English is a must. - Be familiar with identifying the owner and host of a website (i.e.: Using WHOIS and other similar tools.) - Be familiar with the DMCA and associated procedures. - Reside in the United States. ** We have enough applications to fill this position. Thank you for your interest! ** Thank you for your interest!

IPS is seeking a knowledgeable and experienced individual to join its support team in an advanced support capacity. Successful applicants will be responsible for answering general support tickets, including providing customers with information, troubleshooting issues not resolved as part of the general product support process and performing maintenance. You would be expected where appropriate to interact with other technicians and developers to resolve issues. Requirements: * Must be familiar with IPS applications. * Must have advanced knowledge of PHP and MySQL. * Must be able to effectively work remotely. * English must be your primary language and you must possess strong verbal and written communication skills. Preferable, but not required: * Knowledge of server administration and experience working for a web hosting company. * Knowledge of additional web technologies such as JavaScript, CSS, XML, etc. * Experience of working in customer support. * Experience working with the codebase or creating hooks/apps in the IPS Suite Working hours are flexible and pay will be based on knowledge and experience. Due to the nature of the position, we require all applicants to be physically located in the United States. No exceptions to United States residency requirements. Please contact [email protected] for more information on this position. Please include your salary requirements, availability and an overview of your experience. We look forward to hearing from you!

There has been much confusion over the recent exploit reported to us and subsequently patched. I would like to personally apologize for any confusion and inconvenience caused. We have conducted a review and made appropriate changes to our policies to ensure a smoother release and notification schedule for any future incidents. With that said, it is very important to note that while an IP.Board vulnerability did exist, its impact would have been minimal, if not non-existent on servers that have their PHP installations properly secured. I would like to touch on a couple of basics to minimize the effects of future vulnerabilities not only in IP.Board, but any other PHP application you may be using on your website. open_basedir It's very important that you (if you manage your own web hosting server) or your web host enable open_basedir. In a shared hosting environment without open_basedir, an attacker has the ability to exploit a vulnerability, perhaps on another customer's account, then use that vulnerability to scan for other customers on the server. From there, they could gain access to config files containing database details, write malicious files to world-writeable directories and a host of other ill-willed activities. Enabling open_basedir "locks" all internal PHP functions such as readfile() to the specified path, which is generally a temporary directory and your home directory. disable_functions While open_basedir is a very positive step in securing your PHP scripts, there are unfortunately instances in which it can be bypassed and this is how the recent IP.Board vulnerability gained ground so quickly. For example, the exec(), system() and passthru() functions allow a command to be issued directly to the operating system to view key system files, navigate through other users' web root directories, install 'remote shell' scripts into other users' directories, etc. without any regard to other restrictions such as open_basedir. For this reason, disable_functions should be set to disable system level functions. For example, this is a recommended disable_functions: disable_functions = escapeshellarg,escapeshellcmd,exec,ini_alter,parse_ini_file,passthru,pcntl_exec,popen,proc_close,proc_get_status,proc_nice,proc_open,proc_terminate,show_source,shell_exec,symlink,system You or your host may need to tweak to suit, but at a minimum, execution commands should be disabled. Following the above, you will not necessarily create a fool-proof environment, but you will have additional reassurances that you or your host have taken appropriate measures to better secure your PHP applications. For those that run a cPanel/WHM server you may enable open_basedir by visiting WHM and clicking the "PHP open_basedir Tweak" link under "Security Center" then clicking enable. You may modify the disable_functions line by visiting WHM and clicking "PHP Configuration Editor" under "Service Configuration" then clicking "advanced" and searching for "disable_functions" If you are unsure or do not have the necessary permissions to carry out these tasks, please do contact your host. You are free to link them to this blog entry as well. I hope this helps better explain the recent security concern and what you can do to help protect yourself and your users in the future. As always, please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns you might have. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

At IPS, we pride ourselves on providing industry leading products and services, unsurpassed in quality, features and support. Much like any other company, we indeed have our strengths and weaknesses. One admitted weakness is clearly developing an independent mobile app platform that can meet your and our expectations. We have struggled over the past several years in securing a proficient mobile app development team and ultimately, the platform has not met our expectations. Our mantra has become: if we can't do it right, we simply will not do it. That is where we are at with the mobile app platform. Unfortunately, this means the Android app will not make its debut as we originally hoped. We do not wish to release something that we cannot provide proper support for. Instead, we would recommend Android users with an immediate need for a mobile app, visit a third party such as Tapatalk.com Please trust that we are just as disappointed as you in our failure to deliver this particular product as promised and I offer my sincerest apologies. With that, we will do our best to continue polishing the iOS mobile app (which will now be made available for free in the app store) in the short term. For the long-term, we will be incorporating a new mobile integration directly into the product beginning with 4.0. An integrated web app uses the latest standard web technologies such as CSS, Javascript and HTML combined with mobile extensions which will make the site render and feel like a native mobile application. This will allow far more flexibility and tighter integration across the IPS Community Suite (imagine approving orders, responding to support requests or publishing an article with IP.Content from the comfort of your mobile device) than an independent mobile app while being cross-platform compatible with all mobile operating systems. This is also something we have the existing internal expertise to carry out to our standards, alleviating the need to rely on third parties. As always, we welcome any constructive feedback and appreciate your continued business and support. Once again, I apologize for any inconvenience and rest assured - we will continue to do what we do best.

Recent advances in technology coupled with a tremendous increase in online awareness have had a profound effect on the growth of online communities. To better serve both present and future customers and in the interest of furthering our position as a leader in online community development, we are pleased to announce that we will immediately increase and refocus all development resources to the enhancement and expansion of our community offerings. While we will evaluate the position of IP.Nexus in the marketplace at a later date, we recognize that the core of IPS is our community product and solution line and as such, our priority lies with the continued growth and enhancement of that very core. We will be allowing the current beta of IP.Nexus to expire on July 31 and will revisit our content management and business services plans after our upcoming releases of our community software products including IP.Board, IP.Gallery, IP.Blog, and IP.Downloads. In coming weeks and months, please expect significant improvements to our existing community line as well as new components which compliment existing products. We're very excited about what the future holds and are confident that you will be equally pleased with the increased quality and speed at which we will be able to deliver new products and services. Thank you all for your continued support and stay tuned for further updates!

If you're like many readers, you likely think that now that the 2.2 and site launch is complete, we're going to simply sit in our cushy executive chairs, ending our hunger for world domination. Oh how wrong you are for we at IPS are never satisfied! To the contrary, we've been working on several new things behind the scenes. Some you may not immediately notice, such as the addition of new employees and behind the scenes planning, developing and testing of upcoming products and services. Others you will soon notice with the introduction of services tied to our new state-of-the-art datacenter. For many years we've leased rack-space, servers and equipment from various third-party providers and while, on the whole, this has served us well, we've simply outgrown the server leasing model. To that end, we've secured and built-out space in a facility not far from us in Reston, VA. We now own everything, from the rack to the core routers (Cisco 6500's for those techies that are interested) to the servers themselves. This has allowed us to offer much more flexible solutions across the board, which you will soon find more details about on this very blog. I'll refrain from boring you excessively, but suffice it to say we have a 10 meg, multi-homed redundant uplink to various transit providers including Level 3, AboveNet, BTN, GlobalCrossing and Cogent. If you've noticed, the IPS sites and forums have never been faster since we migrated our corporate servers to this new facility. That's just a brief overview of what we've done. Wait until you see what's next. VPS anyone?