Myr

Thanks. Having some capabilities on the front-end would make it more consistent with the rest of the software. 

Will it be possible to get color settings in the theme for the Section title/Categories?

If they are currently, there, they aren't blatantly obvious.
Thanks
 

@Charles Any chance of getting MailChimp API integration built in for people interested in paying for the service?  We already use it for our Newsletter and being able to do transnational, and especially follow up emails for purchases, would be very handy.

@stoo2000 I also thank you for the help you provided.  Our site is running great with this app. I also highly recommend it!

@stoo2000 I also thank you for the help you provided.  Our site is running great with this app. I also highly recommend it!

@stoo2000 I also thank you for the help you provided.  Our site is running great with this app. I also highly recommend it!

@Charles Any chance of getting MailChimp API integration built in for people interested in paying for the service?  We already use it for our Newsletter and being able to do transnational, and especially follow up emails for purchases, would be very handy.

Guys, C'mon...?!
Why don’t you guys build your own, or integrate with some of the top email marketing solutions?  We have all these “enhanced” features that integrate with other services, but the one that seems to be the most obvious is strangely missing. IPB community owners need a proper email marketing solution! 
With all due respect, because I love your platform other than this issue..., I don’t get how you can offer a COMMUNITY platform with, so many brilliant ways to monetize… without a proper email marketing solution available to your community owners to use.
For that matter, why are you guys not sending out regular newsletters to your customers? That would seem to be evidence that you are totally missing the necessity for email marketing for any online community system, be it yours, or your customers. Peculiarly strange?
 
The bulk mail system is NOT a proper email marketing system. It has limited design capabilities. It has no metrics/stats. It caps your emails out to about 200-400 a day, if you have thousands of subscribers, this is entirely impractical. It offers no ability to make forms to capture sign-ups.
 
Do an integration with:
- www.campaignmonitor.com
- www.getresponse.com
- www.mailchimp.com
- www.mailpoet.com
( this is a plugin for wordpress that is SUPER light and simple. But it does everything anyone needs. It covers the basics. Something like this would be perfect ). 
... or build your own.
 
Any email marketing system DOES NOT have to be fancy!... All we really need are the following features:
- A decent design interface.
- Metrics.
- The ability to send out thousands of emails in one send.
- Mailing Lists.
- The ability to make forms that can capture sign-ups in the HTML widgets that will then go straight into a mailing list.

This chat bites. After uploading the files to the directories required, there is no option to install this in the ACP. There are no settings in ACP. And nowhere to enter in the chat key. This was just a waste of time.

We are investigating the possibility of offering a chat service for IPB directly from IPS.

This chat service would run inside of your IPB install much like Gallery or Blog however the actual exchange of chat messages would be handled by IPS servers. The high volume of transactions needed for a chat room would probably get you banned from most web hosting providers and, even if you have high-end hosting, it requires a specially tuned server to perform well. You can forget that headache and let us handle the transactions. Chat room statistics and access to log archives will of course be available for owners.

Testing

For the time being, we will only have the chat room open here on our company forums when an IPS staff member opens it. We are looking to test both the interface you use for chatting and the back-end server performance so we need online staff to monitor both sides of the exchange. So keep an eye for the chat link to appear in the top navigation or a "who's chatting" area to show up on the home page under statistics. When you see this then you know the room is available for testing :)

Please post bugs in the bug tracker under the IP.Chat category. You can post feedback here in the feedback forum or just reply to this topic. Please keep in mind this would be a version 1.0.0 so, although we can add all sorts of cool stuff over time, we are focusing on a nice, stable chat room right now. Things like private conversations, multiple rooms, and more are on our list but we must perfect the base chat room before adding on all the extras.

Please note that this is the first test of many users in the chat room so there will probably be issues. We will also be doing server-level testing so you might get kicked out now and again or the service may abruptly close so don't take it personally ;). Your feedback on all areas of the chat from features through usability down to speed of chat responses is appreciated.

Pricing

The pricing of the chat service is yet to be announced and will be based on how many people you have in your chat room at one time. Details of the package levels and pricing will be made available at a later date. The good news is that the first chat package level will be free for active IPB license holders. We hope you enjoy that extra benefit to being a license holder.

Currently if you go to someone's profile and try to send them a PM, if you decide you need all the editor options you don't have them, and there isn't a way to get to them short of copying what you typed so far, going to your messenger, typing in the name of the member, and pasting what you had written...

There really needs to be a link on the "Quick PM" popup like their is on the fast reply, "Use Full Editor" which keeps what you'd written, who you're sending it to, and takes you to your messenger to send a PM with access to all the editor options.

if talking optiopns
how about
adding as well as above
options to choose random or latest, number of images, which category images from (one, multi,or all)

Oh! So Matt says it and you listen! I see how it is...

I shall go pout in the corner now. Woe is me, etc.
:(

if you re-read the thread there are a number of people including myself who WANT to be charged extra for those "future services" including the spam system.

Our only request is that we not have to terminate our rights as perpetual/lifetime licenseholders.

But as Charles stated. IPS is looking at solutions. So, we'll see what happens.

As an active Lifetime License holder.

If I want to add the IP.Blog,IP.Gallery,IP.Downloads systems I pay a yearly fee for them (I have active blog/gallery licenses).

If I want to remove the footer copyright I make a one-off payment (currently considering).

If I want to use the new spam service... my "Lifetime License" is effectively ruled null and void?

I would happily pay a small additional fee (as I do with the other add-ons), but essentially I'm being asked to pay for another full license. Hello, I have one.

Am I missing something or is this a financially motivated drive to force Lifetime License holders into regular payments.

It may be unacceptable (and it is) but there's nothing we can do about it. IPS are keeping their promise to legacy customers... and just making them feel second class to newer customers by withholding a new 'service' from us if we don't play along and give up our licenses.

What a total disgrace... and what a shabby way to treat me. I've been a loyal customer and saw a future in IPB so I forked out for the Perpetual. I also continue paying support fees and participate actively in Beta testing... yet I'm still excluded. Explain why you won't make it available for a fee equivalent to the difference in cost (over and above my annual support fee)?

Make a new "service and support" plan available to lifetime and perpetual customers and charge $50/yr ($25 / 6 months) for it. Then those who want the additional services can simply renew the more expensive plan. Why force us to give up our licenses?

Yes, you are not 'stripping features' for legacy licensed customers. Instead, you are forcing the 'legacy' customers to give up their licenses in order to use a new service. Unacceptable.

Right... it's not about the money, an extra 20 bucks a year is nothing... but I shelled out considerably more than that for a Perpetual license AND I'm still paying a support fee...
So, as there is no option to use this new service as an addon for a small extra fee, the only conclusion is that I am being forced to give up my Perpetual license... i.e. the goal posts have been moved.

I'm not the type of customer to complain. I am a businessman too and I recognise a business has to move forward, evolve and make money... but I feel shafted enough to complain about this and I guarantee there will be more Perpetual licence holders that feel the same when they log in and read your announcement.

Sorry for opening the other topic, didn't notice this one.

For me, it's not about the money. It's about principle and respecting the core of your customer base that made you what you are today. I've been keeping an active support license pretty much since I got the perpetual license and in all that time I'm not sure if I put in more than 1-2 tickets (we're talking years here). The only reason I've kept it going is to support IPS and their products. I don't really need the support part (both the perpetual and lifetime license have lifetime downloads anyway). I can understand your point of view on this, but for me it just seems you're money hungry. I can understand not offering it to people without active support but this is just not very well thought out.

The costs you mentioned are there and I understand that. However, I doubt the cost is so large that you have to force your old time customers who supported you in the beginning out of their licenses for an additional $20/yr. Without us old customers you would not be where you are today. Also, these old licenses haven't been available for purchase for a very long time now. You should be treating our support licenses the same as you treat regular support licenses. We're getting the shaft here because we support you earlier than other people did.

Alternatively (if it was really about the money), you could have simply given us an option to keep our licenses but pay $50/yr instead of $30/yr for these additional benefits. Call it an "extended support level" or something. You haven't done that either. The only conclusion one can be make is that you want to force people out of their old licenses and get even more money out of them. I find this incredibly disappointing.

You've seriously tarnished your reputation here in my eyes.

I will not be renewing my support this year.

Looking at the quote from the first post, a Lifetime license holder qualifies for this:



However like I said, if it were worded to say "Standard IP.Board License" or something to that effect, that would be different. Also, as I'm aware that IPS is trying to boost its revenue (while also covering expenses), why not offer the service to Lifetime/Perp license holders for like $10/year? That would give the option to keep the current license but still generate additional revenue for IPS. Win-Win situation.

What about my other question? Does their Spam-Monitoring end when their status goes to inactive or does it continue?

I don't like that. Yes I'm a little biased since I have a Lifetime license, but I think that the Lifetime license shouldn't be excluded because the terms of it are the same as a standard license except that it's "forever" instead of limited to 6 month windows.

With Perpetual, the license holder should be allowed to get it when they are in +Active status (ie, paid $30/year).

I know that IPS wants to convert those into standard licenses, but I think that's a bit shameful to try to reword or reclassify things just to do it.

When it's Ready

We will be providing more information on this soon. Our priorities have been with IPB and getting it fixed up and stable for as many customers as possible first. :)

Rolling out 3.0.1 with the current fixes would be nice, as I have time to do the updates this weekend. :)

I run a Colostomy support message board where patients help each other with support and advice of dealing with a colostomy, be it for a few weeks temporarily, of permanently due to cancer etc. My board also has a pretty large off topic posting community contained within it.

I would very much like to be able to disable post reputation in the off-topic forums, so that reputation is based on supportive posts to users needing support in our ostomy-support forums, rather than from posting cute pics of the dog with a toy in the off topic forums.

So, that's my suggestion for a future build of IP Board. It would really make my community better. I did ask in peer to peer if this was possible with current settings etc, and was told it was worthwhile posting a request in here. :)

Another possible feature, which would be useful in cases of the reputation system being abused is a setting that lets ONLY the Original Poster being able to vote as to which replies/posts have been useful to them.

Many thanks for reading this. I hope those ideas are useful to you. :)

Best wishes to all,

Jason Dale.
West Yorkshire, UK.