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Really a bit of a "how we did this" would be great esp the documentation section with some example templates. I have always felt that pages as an app needs a lot of examples to get people going with it better as its very powerful.

Does the new site all run on a straight IPBv5 install or is it heavily modded? I am just thinking, like the docs section, a heres how we did this would be very welcome much like the older v4 software updates section.

At least I am not the only one that forgets the odd pages permission 😂

Is all the documentation gone!??! eeep! Please tell me there is a way to access it still.

I dont want this to be taken the wrong way but it would be useful to know why this extra has been gate-keeped behind SAAS only. I understood (although our setup could possibly do it) things like AI and even the Courses app/module as we didnt pay for it with self hosted but I am not sure if there is a proper technical reason or just a add value reason why it has been gate-kept?

Your dev is correct in one regard, there are no options in IPBv5 for custom ad locations (aka to use the built in ad system) like there was in IPBv4, I am not sure why it was removed to be honest.

Its more because 2.1 is supposed to be supported (cant remember which 4.X) but its bugged as far as I can see with the changes that came in 2.X so I am not sure if it ever worked.

/Hopes for Opensearch 2.X fixes in 4.7

The disposable filter is epic! nice work!

Yeah I know what you are saying. My biggest concern is wayward authors who cant deal with setting up their own system or cant meet the 2 month deadline. We (paid addon customers) lose and we lost before when we lost the ability to back up and download directly before. The irony is pirates never need to worry about this stuff, just paid customers who lose. I dont want to sound like I am just trying to beat you down, I am just very concerned and can see a lot of issues especially with the short timeline. Will we still be able to get keys/method of transferring you speak of after October but not download in suite?

So basically if the author doesnt put another way for us to get it up we lose our purchases. I mean the timeline and warning should have been a bit longer. Losing the ability (an ability we had in the past) to download a copy thus losing our purchases for good is a bit nuts. I dont know why foot keeps meeting mouth with some of these changes.

Until the end of October? I mean we are all paid customers.

I would have hoped for a 6 month notice period to be honest not 2 1/2 months. Considering we cant download addons any more other than through admincp we cant even back up for a wayward plugin dev who is sick or unable to handle the change in 2 months. Please at least let us download what we own to self install for now.

No offence but this is crazy. what will happen for people hosting in the cloud? No mods?

Automated search monitoring so a user can configure a stream with certain forums and search term and if any posts are created they get emailed out as a digest to help draw them in, or at least a search term AS with rss feed.

Search keyword based activity streams would be epic if they returned, it may be something that requires ElasticSearch but it would be so useful for so many.

Sadly I bet cloud customers get email support......

As Ballmer would say: It is one of the reason several of your competitors were not options for us, they are so so valuable to a platform even if a customer doesnt buy an addon, its the perception that they can and there is a diverse ecosystem of addons as options. Nearly all big platforms over the last decade have been powered by very strong developers adding value. iOS, Android, forum competitors all have got where they are because of developers. Windows Phone died because of the lack of developers. Keeping them onboard and happy is a huge deal, it wont necessarily affect huge enterprise customers but it has a big effect on your long tail customers.

I dont think devs need a free license as such, they should pay the initial fee for the licenses but I do think you can work some magic for renewals. I know you wont be able to move fast on this as it will require thought but I did suggest a few approaches earlier in this thread. You could get dev's apply for reduced renewals based on the agreement the install wont be used to run a non-related purpose. They can have a public site but its for marketing/demo the addons, testing and direct support, that would mean even though they are selling lots of addons its adding value to your platform and allowing them to continue. In addition (or as a different approach) to this you could tier the commission for sales, they get a big discount on renewals but they have a higher tier of sales commissions for addons sold. Then if they hit a certain sales point they can pony up full renewal but reduce the commission they are charged by yourselves. This approach would allow people who make a lot of free addons to continue and feel hopefully more valued and it would make the whole product stronger. I dont expect a big in depth reply to this, I am more throwing suggestions to you so that it can be discussed behind the scenes as losing developers is one of the huge concerns I have and is a major issue for us. Its very conerning when some of the best devs on here have voiced concerns and also said they will be removing ipb addons from their package removing the ability for them to develop and expand those addons. I am considering releasing a few addons I have made privately but they would be free and our license would be used for a full separate site so I would not be eligible for the discount above which I would have no issue with. Man this is sad to read, I love your work and to see you doing math about its future. IPB try harder to help developers, they may not be your bread and butter with commission profits but they are so so important to the platform. They should get a very generous discount to continue to make addons Also I still think you could have done the price increase, kept everyone's next period 6 months (aka yearly switch happens 7 months from this date, 7 months to allow people to find out) and kept email support while steering people to the forum more. The price increase + losing direct email support is a big deal.

Just spit balling ideas for helping with devs but another option would be to tier commissions for addons potentially. I dont know what IPB charges right now as a % but say a dev gets a X% discount on renewal when the commission is higher for sales which would get the interest of smaller devs and help with free dev's. Then when they grow and sell more they can do the math and pay the full renewal cost to reduce the % because they have peaked over that. I know free addons have a staff cost but they really really help the ecosystem of IPB. This is a premium product but without dev's it becomes a niche product just like many many other tech examples out there. Also email support really really should be kept for the foreseeable, hell you could even do a discount for renew for no option to email support like inverse priority support although I know that may be a lesser option but it would help out smaller sites. I am not sure how much this was all dogfooded with 3rd party devs or smaller customers before these decisions were made but I am surprised this fallout was not better prepared for or handled.

I am not sure where to start with all this. I cant believe you guys did all this along with a site redesign at the same time and no notice period, I am speechless! I cant believe I will be losing email support while you increase the price at the same time. I paid for priority support and now that's an insane price per year for what is email support. It takes serious cahoonas to both increase the price and cripple email support at the same time. Email support pricing should be far far more reasonable, I honestly thought $1250 was a mistake when I saw the screenshot above, I could understand having an email support pricing tier and then a $1250 priority support tier but also renewals shouldnt be going up while we lose proper email support. Then if we dont pay for support we cant use the market place and cant even save our prior purchases so if we need to reinstall an addon we are out of luck. We are lucky, we can afford the support increase price wise but one of the HUGE reasons I liked IPB was the email support, it can be very curt at times but I valued it and if you had only increased the price and not removed email support I would have dealt with it as it has been a decade. I am strongly considering renewing our Xenforo license to have a play and test viability after this. Initial feedback: Build the knowledge base publicly first before removing support I understand the desire to have self support with a knowledge base, its a good thing for everyone if it gets populated but you should have been doing this months ago building the knowledge base publicly before doing any changes, that way you can point to the option and say its there and useful. Get a common ticket theme in, create a KB article then have the subject field for support request do a search as you type pointing you to articles that sounds similar before submitting the email request. We need a reported/acknowledged bugs area This needs to be along with the knowledge base really, a bug tracker would have cut your support requests because people would be able to see if it has been reported before, I know the support forum kinda does that but its not a bug tracker and its not clear if its an active bug with a fix pending or release or even workaround. When I hit an issue on other software I always check to see if it has been reported first on bug trackers but because of the strange mantra of open a ticket you guys have we are blind to upcoming fixes usually until release, Jordon has at least been mentioning them but its still not a proper solution. Both things above should have been done before these policy changes with support That way your customers would have become familiar with them and you could have iterated through any issues with them before removing email support and you could actually see if this type of support works well before causing big issues for your customers, it seems so rushed. You guys made the whole "tickets are similar" problem yourselves with the submit a ticket mantra that is here, you should have been correcting that before making sweeping changes to support. You have entered self support mantra with none of the real tools used by others to help aid people do this. You may have plans for these tools but you literally have not shown them to us which is crazy if they exist. Right now we have a sole forum for support, I have no idea why you have rushed this through. I have more to say but I thought I would shoot out first. Please get the knowledge base live and a bug tracker live asap to at least help and to be honest delay the email support changes past the renewal/January deadline until this mess is sorted and people are comfortable, this should be a much much slower transition. Also contributors/devs need a discount/special license to prevent the massive bleed that will happen. Its crazy you dont have a way of reducing their burden and its a major issue to the viability of the market place and IPB. Their are fewer addons here than other competitors and it will only get worse with dev's having to pay large amounts to renew AND customers of devs having to pay to even buy their addons or even install them. This is crazy crazy crazy and so hostile to developers. Its one of the main reasons no one wants a certain v5 of software out there, regularly people complain about the lack of addons. You could get them to apply with the proviso the license isnt used to sell addons not on the marketplace and not run a full site on. Aka they can have a public site showcasing with the options etc and even getting support there but it cant be a way for a serious site that has nothing to do with the developer to get a cheap license. Hell they could apply after they have published an addon and the large discount applies to the renewals side of it. I am really disappointed some of the best developers here are now looking at possibly removing addons to reduce their burden rather than developing for those addons and being able to test on those addons, its so opposite and harmful because of the increased costs. And there was me thinking things had improved a lot when @Jordan Miller with communications and community activity, I actually could see things improving a lot with better engagement with end customers then this whole chaos happens.

This is annoying: