Josh Bond

The 4.1.14 update was one of the most disruptive updates to my site in the last year or two. Immediately after updating I got tons of complains about members not being able to login and other issues. 
I have been running Easy Pages for quite a long time. I also experienced some of the same issues noted above. It didn't stop with the Easy Pages app either. There were many other problems - all of which worked fine before 4.1.14.
At first, I was able to partially work around the new login url problem  by doing some server based rewrites / redirects.
Ultimately, more problems surfaced and I gave up and converted what Easy Pages I had to the regular Pages app. It seems over time, the Pages app has added much of the Easy Pages functionality to it anyway.
This was still hard because many of the features I used it for I had to change or get rid of completely during the migration.
After this, I had to uninstall Easy Pages. Then I also had to reset my Furls to defaults. Then recached the site. 
This fixed most of the problems. User logins were now working properly rather than retuning error pages. 
However there were still problems unrelated to Easy Pages. It seems after resetting Furls to defaults, there were a few native IPS calls still using the old format that were not reflected in the new default Furls. So I had to go into the source code and work around those. 
And second to last of my problems, a number of url formats I used for custom theme changes previously were now broken - such as calling a topic with just a dash after it and nothing else now required two dashes. 
And the last present of 4.1.14 was some type of IPS search index task update that caused my sql server to nearly lock up so bad it caused my website to timeout while it was running. After a few days, I was able to isolate this as the problem and just set my site to only index 3 days of data so it would calm down this problem. There is a thread about this problem elsewhere on the forum.
So what went from a seemingly routine IPS incremental update, turned out to be the nightmare of the year for me. All told it probably took me a week to sort out the mess.
I will certainly take all updates very seriously from now on with full backups done immediately before so I can immediate roll back and research when this type of thing happens again. I will also likely skip many of the updates since they can cause so many problems.
As it is, it has become more common to find an increasing number of plugins and updates and template changes and urls breaking on each IPS update. I can see why the cost to develop modifications for IPS 4 has gone up. Their shelf life may be only as long as a few weeks until the next update. At the same time, the number of modifications and functionality / performance of the forum software itself are a mere fraction of what used to be available in the IPB 3 days.
For crying out loud, to this day I still have to rely on using a Google search for indexing my forum rather than the built in high performance Sphinx searching of days gone by.

Hi,
Before I complain, I want to start off with a nice note. Since joining IPB my users have loved the website, commented on how nice it works compared to VB & I have loved your support. When ever I have a bug or problem you guys usually reply pretty fast, sometimes during the night!
But here is where I am confused, angry & very, seriously sad.
I love IPB. I think it is one of the most solid products in the market, I think it is also the most professional both company wise (how you guys release things when it's ready & not before) and also product wise, it's very professional.
For over a year now, I have STRUGGLED to get to grips with pages. I look at the documentation & it's longer than the bible & not very user friendly at all!
For over a year now I have messaged support asking how to do things in pages & they say I have to come to the forums as it requires custom code! For simple things like adding the article image in the listing page!
For over a year now I have Tried pages, given up... Tried again, given up. There is so much potential in pages - I have seen it on professional website (websites with coders & budget!) but people like me CANT use it.
 
Why.... WHY can't IPB make pages easier. Why can't there be a wizard or Pre made templates!
Front page templates... Do you wanna display articles like a blog (photo to the side with description beside), or like a polariod (image with description below), or like a grid. 1 main article & then smaller articles below etc. Joomla asks you things like... Display title, date, time, author. Main article: 0-10, Secondary Articles 0-10. Its so easy!
Listing pages... Do you want to display the first image in the article, do you want to display article rating, do you want to display article sorting bar.
Article pages... Have a page builder, similar to what you do with blocks. Where you can create fields on a preview page & move them around/edit them. Currently if I want an image uploaded in an article and displayed to the right of the content, I have to custom format it, look up HTML guides on Google etc.
 
I just wish IPB could make pages & frontpage more like Joomla. Joomla frontpage is so easy. Then also keep the difficult custom options for people who are more pro & who know what they are doing.
I am so annoyed by the fact I can't easilly create a beautiful looking frontpage & article area, that I am considering going back to another software. Your forum software is so easy to use, but pages is rocket science.
 
Support won't help me, I have seen users here struggle to create things even when working together and helping eachother, and the only other option is to pay someone tons of money... Please consider making pages easier for noobs. PLEASE
Danny