ravenstone

I noticed today that accessing prior stable versions of the IPS platform is not possible from the Client Area. We store previous revisions in our source code repository, however I imagine some folks, especially at this time of transition, may be wanting to install 4.4.10 and not 4.5.1 Beta 1, which is listed as the current stable release. We obviously have different definitions of stable, yet from past experience with vBulletin, as an example, one could download the latest version of the files from each major revision along with any beta branches.
Throwing out this suggestion for others, and providing a bit of a cautionary tale. What are the avenues available to a client that has a web server failure, and needs to grab the 4.4.x branch to restore/isn't wanting to upgrade to 4.5? Support request and files are provided or are those folks forced into upgrading?

I presume like many many others, I have a test/development copy installed on my local PC using xampp. Here I do all my testing and development of any changes to suit my live site first. I have this development/test environment for unit, system etc testing, I have a pre-production test environment on my live dedicated server for integration etc testing and then I have my live production environment. Nothing, I mean NO ADDONS, NO TEMPLATE CHANGES etc gets to a pre-prod environment until it is completely tested on my local PC first...this is the way I am sure even IPS do it. So why in hell can't I download and test addons etc in my development/test environment on my local PC...why has IPS stopped this with v4.5 especially when everyone is developing and testing v4.5:

It seems like as IPS progresses further it becomes even more frustrating to use...it seems along with other licensing things IPS is trying their hardest to drive people away from IPS and straight over to Xenforo who make it easy to create what you need and manage your installs.