Hexsplosions

1 hour ago, Matt said:

I think any price rise is met with annoyance, no one wants to pay more than they did.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

1 hour ago, The Heff said:

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.

44 minutes ago, Jordan Miller said:

Btw just worth mentioning if you want to save up, you can pay into the account credit (in the client area) to help you budget for your site.

I honestly think I'm done here.

2 hours ago, Jordan Miller said:

There was no great way to share this news.

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.

53 minutes ago, Sonya* said:

You do not need to pay. You can just not renew. As long, as you like. You will not get any update, you will not get IPS support und you will not be able to use Marketplace. But your site would be still online. It does not depend on renewal.

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.

I dumped Facebook months ago and my users have not mentioned it once. It's just not worth the headaches IMO, with constantly changing requirements and demands made on our community.

This is why I dumped any form of Facebook integration. I got sick and tired of the constantly changing requirements and ongoing challenges I had to pass.

We flagged a user as a spammer shortly after he registered, based on his first-post content.

The user and content have been hidden as is expected, but the user still shows in this block:

This detracts from the purpose of the block because it can (and will) fill up with spammers during an attack.

3 hours ago, Umaar said:

Hi,

Any idea on this? This is still not achievable in 4.6? 👀

As you're a Cloud customer, I would suggest raising a ticket via the client area to ask for help.

https://invisioncommunity.com/clientarea/

You'll see a support popup in the lower right corner.

3 hours ago, Charles said:

We plan to add this feature but wanted to implement base Achievements first to see how people used them. But it will for sure be coming 🙂 

3 hours ago, Daniel F said:

We have released a patch to fix this issue:)

Works perfectly!

I got a response to my ticket:

Quote

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. I have investigated the issue you reported and the problem appears to be a bug in the current release of Invision Community.

I have submitted a potential solution for the issue described here and upon review by the development team the fix should be included in an upcoming release of Invision Community. Unfortunately, at this time I am unable to say exactly which release this fix will be included in.

So it'll be fixed. 👍

Thanks to @Daniel F for his patience in actually getting access to my server. #UpdateAccessInformation

7 hours ago, Davyc said:

but I don't for one minute assume that the plugin is at fault because I disabled it and the issue remained

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.

8 hours ago, Daniel F said:

Was the database theme customized?

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.

38 minutes ago, Davyc said:

I only have 8.0.5 available.  I haven't tried another theme as yet, so it could be the theme that's throwing it off, unless you have tried another theme and it's just the same; I'm using the default theme 🙂

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

I've upgraded to 4.6.1 and have rebuilt the achievements, largely using the defaults for now.

If I create a new badge, let's say for "1000th Reputation Received", would it automatically award it to anybody who already meets the criteria or would it be necessary to trigger another rebuild?

Thanks 🙂

6 hours ago, Davyc said:

higher version of PHP 8 than I have

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

4 hours ago, Davyc said:

No it still throws up errors - I find it somewhat annoying because the template and theme it refers to is the default theme lol.  It may have something to do with version number of PHP as someone else on here states that it works flawlessly but they have a higher version of PHP 8 than I have, it's not a huge difference but it may be enough, who knows?  I'll keep trying and let you know if I figure out what the issue is 🙂

Cheers

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

On 6/9/2021 at 7:04 PM, Davyc said:

Yeah errors still all over the forums and Pages apps:

This is the default theme not a third party theme.

And on pages: this part of the error report:

TypeError: count(): Argument #1 ($var) must be of type Countable|array, null given (0)
#0 /homepages/applications/cms/sources/Theme/Theme.php(610) : eval()'d code(538): IPS\Theme\class_cms_database_category_articles->entry(Object(IPS\cms\Records1), Object(IPS\cms\Databases))
#1 /homepages/applications/cms/modules/front/database/index.php(142): IPS\Theme\class_cms_database_category_articles->index(Object(IPS\cms\Databases), Object(IPS\Patterns\ActiveRecordIterator), Object(IPS\Http\Url\Friendly), Array)

I had one plugin which I disabled. Switched back to PHP 7.4 and everything works.

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.

It's a real shame because it used to be possible, but became difficult since renewal dates were all aligned. (Prior to that there may have been a different renewal date for gallery to the one for forums, which was confusing but was more flexible.)

Support have removed unused purchases for me in the past, to reduce the renewal cost for an existing license, but it meant I lost that purchase forever despite having paid for it. (I could not add it back on later.)

As a point of feedback for IPS, this led to me feature locking my community. I would previously have been willing to entertain a purchase of an application to test its use in my community, knowing that I could turn it off if not successful to save some money, and then back on again if there was a new demand for it, but I now won't entertain such ideas because paying a renewal fee for unused functionality or losing the purchase permanently if it's not required just isn't viable (it's essentially throwing away money).

7 hours ago, IP-Gamers said:

It's just that now I feel like a child to whom my dad promised to give a new computer, but after a couple of weeks ... This is very angry!

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

2 minutes ago, MEVi said:

The Ionos webhost does not offer it (Let's Encrypt), it's strange. It (Ionos) offers an SSL for the main domain name but not under the subdomain. 😕 Alternatively use PositiveSSL Wildcard for 32$/y it's very cheap.

If you use a control panel like Plesk you just install the addon for it, you can still get one. Are you going to use a control panel?

4 hours ago, MEVi said:

The Wildcard SSL Certificate any cheap company ?

You can get a free SSL cert from Let's Encrypt, so no need to pay for one. Depending on your need, that might do.

7 hours ago, MEVi said:

It's interesting https://www.ionos.com, which operating System would be best Debian or CentOS ?

I happen to use IONOS for my forum, using Debian and Plesk. It works very well for what I want. You can find the link to my forum in my signature if you want to test its speed.

1 hour ago, Matt said:

That's up to you. I am working on a 'rebuild' method. On upgrade you could choose to run it or not. I'm also seeing if it's viable to add in a time to start awarding from, so you could go back 6 or 12 months and apply awards from then, instead of reaching right back to the start of the site.

That sounds perfect. If I could make a request, could you please ensure that rebuilds do not trigger notifications? I'd like to avoid swamping members with notifications when it goes live.

Great job IPS team. 😄

Users would need to be notified that a reaction has taken place. I very rarely go back to a private message unless I'm notified of a new reply.

6 hours ago, ahc said:

With every change comes possible issues, I completely agree with that sentiment, but I don't think fearing hypotheticals should be the only strategy to approach this.  IPS is indeed a community software, but not everyone uses it in the same way.  What's true for one person is untrue for the next.  Forums themselves aren't even included in the core package, it's an add-on. 

Oh I'm not suggesting that my examples should be blockers, but in providing them I'm trying to help the debate flow in a more productive direction - such as possible solutions to the examples I posted or confirming that completely different use cases could be applied.

I for one would like a block feature, but my use case is one of privacy.  I don't care if content can be seen, but I would like the ability for users to block messages from, and disable access to view their profile for, specific individuals in a single button-click.