Hexsplosions

Literally one reason I wouldn't look at Cloud... Cost. It's far too expensive. I looked at moving to Cloud and worked out my yearly costs would be 400% what they are now, including the license fees for the IPS software. I would love to move to Cloud for the simplicity, but it's far too expensive to be able to justify it.

Posting. 😎

That would be a literal dystopian future. I would certainly welcome a regulation of its activities and a reduction of its influence. I'm really not up for giving Facebook more control or influence over my life.

@Matt @Lindy @Charles @Jordan Miller I would like to acknowledge and thank you for the compromise re 6-month renewal. It's fair to say that I was vocal and extremely critical (and negative) in my reactions to this situation. I'm glad there has been an acknowledgement of the failings and a compromise to ease the impact on smaller communities like mine. While the price increase still respresents a challenge for my site, being on the smaller hobbyist side of the spectrum, the reintroduction of the 6-monthly renewals does at least give us some breathing room to try to accommodate the new prices by reducing the short-term burden on us. I'd like to add my tuppence worth now that things have calmed down. I'd ask, as others have done, that any changes to pricing or service offerings be communicated in a timely fashion in the future to give us time to deal with said changes. I would also suggest that a consultation process with a core user group would be beneficial, for any proposed changes to services. If this was broadly representative of your customer base, and used to test and vet ideas in advance of implementation, issues such as the ones debated in this thread could be identified and solved in advance. We're here and we're vocal, and I personally would be only too happy to form a part of that. I've been an advocate of your team and services for so long, and it was truly upsetting to suddenly find that trust shattered. I believe the community being more engaged would have alleviated much of this situation. Finally, I don't expect IPS to hold its prices, even for a short period, which I've said numerous times in this thread. I'd absolutely support smaller incremental price increases inline with inflation to help maintain development of the product and services. These smaller increases would be far easier to plan for and to absorb. P.S. I apologise for any typos, the spellchecker in Firefox does not seem to recognise this as an editor. 🤔 P.P.S. I am not switching to Chrome. 🤮

100% agree with this. It's a two-way street. None of my concerns have been addressed and I didn't get a response to most of what I said. I may have well just shouted into the wind for all the good it did me to post my views. "We're sorry" - fine, you're sorry. "We're sorry, we should have given more notice. We'll apply discounts for any renewals within X months to allow you time to plan." - much better, and means a mistake has been owned. As it stands, the only thing keeping me from immediately leaving is the tight integration between two cruical apps - forums and commerce. That's a sad state of affairs, because prior to this I would have been staying because I believed in the product and the team. That belief has been shattered.

I don't believe that to be the case, Matt. I do not expect IPS to hold its prices, but this is not just a pricing issue. There are a number of issues: It's a big price increase (46% for me), in one fell swoop, on an unsuspecting customer. That introduces a shock factor to the equation. That is entirely of IPS's making. Smaller incremental adjustments to pricing, inline with inflation, are easier to absorb and to plan for. This increase is not. It was not communicated. I cannot tell you how furious I was to find a new price on the website, with a changed renewal term, without so much as a word from IPS. I therefore have little time to absorb, reflect or plan for it, and being on the smaller hobbyist side of your userbase, I now have serious doubts about being able to continue to be a customer. That is a shame after a decade of being a loyal customer, but I guess that's part of the game. It benefits your cash flow and hurts ours. You get a chunk of cash in one go, whereas you would have previously accepted it in two. It's stated that this is in part for simplicity, yet I can see no justifable reason for this claim. How hard is it to set 6-monthly renewals? You've done it for years. Bringing it inline with industry standards isn't a compelling reason - IPS is now just as inflexible as other industry players. The communication, when it did arrive, was completely tone-deaf. "Don't worry, it's not bad news"... Yes, it is. It's not only an unexpectedly large price increase with little notice, but it's changing the frequency too. Neither of those things are good news for me. The costs were communicated in monthly terms when the renewal is now collected annually, which screams of smoke and mirrors.

I honestly think I'm done here.

Yes there was. The email should have landed first. Logging into a refreshed website to find out the prices have increased without so much as a whisper, especially when increasing as much as they have, is quite frankly appalling. If customers in the sector I work in found out about prices like that, we'd be fined by a regulator for treating customers unfairly. In the years I've been an IPS customer I can count on one hand, with fingers to spare, how many times I have been upset about something IPS has done. I have truly been an advocate of IPS in all that time. This is a time I am really quite upset, because the feeling I am left with is simply that IPS no longer values me as a customer. If it did, it would have taken steps to communicate with me in a more proactive way. An email landing tomorrow is like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted... Pointless. I've gone from a $140 renewal split across two 6-month periods to a single $205.00 renewal every year. Firstly, that's a 68% price increase in one go and it's an inflation-busting one at that. I do not expect a business to holds its prices forever, but I do expect to have price increases communicated before they're made effective, and I do expect them to be reasonable. Secondly, and this is leaves a far more bitter taste in my mouth, it's a great way of increasing IPS's cash flow whilst simultaneously hurting mine. IPS benefits from a big chunk of renewal cost all in one go, while I'm left trying to desperately plug a short-term financial gap that was not planned for. Thirdly, it's due in November so I am left with little time to deal with this situation. It may not be as short notice as some, and I really feel for those people, but a small hobbyist website like mine can't just muster those kind of funds in that short space of time. This entire fiasco really is a piss-poor show towards a long-time loyal customer. I'm afraid that suggestion falls flat as soon as this happens: To not renew, and risk running unpatched software, simply puts my users' data at risk. That is the reason I renew religiously every 6 months, and have always done so. I know that technically we can do this, but I do not believe it to be sensible to do so.

Works perfectly!

I got a response to my ticket: So it'll be fixed. 👍 Thanks to @Daniel F for his patience in actually getting access to my server. #UpdateAccessInformation

I have no plugins that affect the topic view or forum view, so I can confirm the error occurred on the default theme with no plugins affecting it. The only 3rd party application/plugin I use is Chatbox, and that isn't on any of the affected pages. The ticket I raised for this has been passed to the advanced support team.

No, I only use custom themes from Ehren and the default theme is left completely alone. The error occurs on the default theme with in forum view or topic view.

It does it on my default theme and on both custom themes. I've raised a ticket for it.

Out of curiosity, what version do you have? I'm on 8.0.7.

Cheers I'll keep trying as well, and share if I figure it out. It's most annoying.

Did you manage to figure out what was causing the error on PHP 8? I'm getting the same, but it works flawlessly on PHP 7.4.

You'd be more angry if it wasn't ready when it was given to you. 🙂 Your patience will be rewarded. 👍