Chris Anderson

As there isn't any kind of consensus as to whether or not there might be any issue to arbitrarily change third-party database fields then this posting still falls under "Help & Support". "If" such consensus should occur then "our" Community Advocate@Jordan Invision or other IPS employee should be the one to move this topic to the "Feature Suggestions" forum if they think it warranted.

If there is any doubt as to whether or not changing third-party database fields to InnoDB could cause problems then the ACP warning should "only" warn the administrator of the fact that IPS suite database fields could benefit from being changed to InnoDB and NOT for any database fields created by third-party apps.

I've gone ahead and changed all of the database tables to InnoDB for all of the IPS tables but the Support tool still complains that my third-party marketplace apps are still using MyISAM. After reviewing some of these tables I see that the developers use a combination of InnoDB and MyISAM in their apps. If you choose to change over to InnoDB for the IPS Suite should one also change all of the third-party database tables for consistency? Will there be any problems created by doing so?

@Mark HI was one of the early proponents for improving the Release Notes - Invision Community. An area that could benefit from improvement is to highlight "everything" that is deprecated and to give us some advanced warning so that we can take any necessary steps to mitigate their absences. Maybe you could create an entry for "Upcoming Deprecations". You list out any that will be made in the next 4.x.x release and those that might happen further down the road.

Could the above be related to your issue?

Maybe you live an exceptionally charmed life, and the rest of us, well...don't.

When I enable PHP version 7.4.16 on my site this app works fine when I click on the following: When I enable PHP version 8.0.3 on my site this app doesn't work: If I disable app while running PHP version 8.0.3 I am able to navigate to the Profiles Screen. This seems to indicate that this app isn't fully compatible with PHP 8.0.3. I cleared the system cache after switching between PHP versions. No errors being generated in System or Error Logs. Please investigate, Thanks...

After each major IPS release all of the developers are busy updating all of their existing marketplace and custom apps. This particular release is all the more challenging as IPS and the developers need to ensure their code works with PHP 7.x and 8.x which adds to the complexity of coding and testing. Most developers only have a few hours each week in which they can devote towards the marketplace as they have full-time jobs and many things that take up their time. Also a handful of developers have left the marketplace in the past year or have had to deal with various personal issues that have prevented them from being available. Most developers seem to be releasing updates with minimal additional functionality so I wouldn't be surprised if they will be busy again reviewing customer suggestions and releasing follow-up versions. Things will settle down some in a few months after which time "some" of the developers might entertain doing custom projects. The marketplace could benefit from a handful more developers but that's not such an easy thing as it requires a significant amount of time and effort to become sufficiently knowledgeable with the IPS codebase and programming environment as well as the cost of purchasing the suite and paying ongoing renewals. Selling 10 apps here and 20 apps there at 10 to 20 dollars isn't likely to be exceptionally enticing to join the marketplace. I would welcome the community and IPS to come together to make it more enticing for new marketplace developers and appreciating the efforts that the old-timers make on an ongoing basis.

You might consider reverting back to 4.5 using the full backup you made prior to attempting to upgrade to 4.6.3 and wait for the next release. If you put in a trouble ticket tonight it might take several days before IPS staff have an opportunity to help you troubleshoot.

I was "hoping" that all of your app's functionality had been natively included by IPS and as such this app was being retired. Alas, it doesn't sound like that happened, oh well... Looking forward to your releasing a 4.6 version.

What features would be included in a 4.6 version that 4.6 doesn't provide natively?

Searching for "top" works, although it does list 260 uses of the word so it's not too helpful. Here are two I found, there may be more in the other 9 pages:

The more details you provide as to your requirements and budget the more likely you will get a response. Many programmers don't respond to these kinds of postings preferring direct contact. Here is a list of all the programmers: https://invisioncommunity.com/third-party/providers/ Most programmers work part-time as such may not have the time to complete complex projects in a timely fashion or know how to create such an app. Good luck...

I applauded IPS hiring Jordan as a community advocate. But Jordan's advocacy for the community seems to have noticeably dwindled to next to nothing since 4.6 was soft launched to the community. The vast majority of his contributions here of late have been marketing related. This particular release seems much more complicated for IPS, the marketplace developers and your customers than prior releases, as such we could benefit from Jordan being noticeably more active advocating on our behalf.

Which PHP version are you on?

@Stuart Silvester Did you by chance update this site? I'm getting an PayPal Error: Is the problem being noted on this site related to the hotfix you just released? Did you include the hotfix in the upgrade script? With a three day weekend coming up have your customers been alerted to any problems they should be aware of and maybe advice folks not to update their site until next week? I hate to have people update their site and think everything is well with their site when it might not be and have only a skeleton support team to address any problems that might pop up.

PayPal Error when trying to renew Kitchen Sink in the marketplace here. I am not going to try again for the time being to see if it goes through. This is the link in my browser: https://www.paypal.com/auth/validatecaptcha

I would be happy to see a 4.6 compatible version without any new functionality and an update incorporating new ideas down the road. That seems to be the approach other developers are taking. Stratagem might fill the bill for you.

Restore from your backup you made just prior to starting an update.

@Stuart Silvester It appears that a site enabling PHP 8 TODAY "might" be problematic as some of the marketplace apps being released as well as your software might have some lines of code that need to be changed to be compatible. Maybe testing your software and approval of marketplace apps might need to be changed to better ferret out those elusive lines of code. How has your process and procedures changed to minimize the occurrences of non PHP 8 compatible code being included in your codebase and marketplace developer's submissions? What problems still lie undiscovered and what can we all do to help ferret out all of the potential problems as expeditiously as we can. This might best be addressed in a separate forum posting to include more of the community. Another thing I have to wonder is how compatible with PHP 8 are all of the third-party addons that the software suite utilizes. Jumping to PHP 8 TODAY might not be the most prudent course of action for everyone to take. I'm certainly going to hold off for a few months, maybe others should consider it as well...

I was totally unaware of the additional available constants that @Meddysongmentioned above as they are not listed in the constants.php Help Guide. @Stuart SilvesterThere may be value in creating an detailed Help Guide for setting up and utilizing test sites effectively. Especially considering you rely a great deal on your customers for testing each of your releases, and having fewer support requests benefits everyone. This could be a collaborative effort between your company and your most knowledgeable customers. Being an effective tester requires an entirely different mindset and knowledge base than being a community manager. That is something you have experience with, why not share your knowledge in an easily digestible fashion.

When using the 'NEXUS_TEST_GATEWAYS' constant TRUE or FALSE, why couldn't the commerce code be modified to switch between communicating with a payment processor or creating an entry in a Test Payment Logs file viewable in the Support Section of the ACP that a transaction was initiated? This way you could test the software suite with live data without the risk of double charging any customer.

I guess your best bet is to submit a trouble ticket and wait. Maybe support can get your site back online without any data loss. Please figure out a way to get reliable daily backups so you will only lose a day's worth of data if something ontoward goes wrong in the future.

You could restore from backup to get your community back online or submit a troubleticket and wait for support to help you sort out the problem.