Davyc

If you really do care @Matt (which I believe you do, but maybe your hands are tied) and the rest of the team @Lindy and @Charles then you should rethink your strategy and listen to your clients who are feeling like they have had their faces pushed into the mud. What can you say? Well, perhaps 'we were wrong to do this so we have decided to roll out these price increases incrementally' which will give people some breathing space and allow them to recover from the shock. I'm sure that the right move now would be to roll back this mad decision and get onboard with your clients to retain their business and ensure that your business continues to flourish, impress and be known for great customer service, which it has been for the most part. Caring means thoughtfulness, consideration and being supportive towards the people who contribute to your cash pot. Listen to the cry of anguish that is felt throughout the whole of this topic and do something positive to reassure and re engage with your clients instead of looking for an ointment for every sore that doesn't exist and responding with meaningless soundbites that just do not justify what has occurred. I really do not want to leave, but I am being forced out (whether you believe that or not) because of this price hike. Had I known that this was coming I would not have bought a second license. Heaven knows what some of my ex-clients will be thinking after my recommending your software and they have gone on to buy licenses. This has been the mother of all cock-ups and it needn't have been that way if there was more warning, more transparency and a softer approach to upping prices with consideration given to whether it was something that your clients could digest more easily without all the horror that this topic has produced.

I have put up expiry notices on both my licenced sites and have already found one alternative at a one-time price of $59 with six months support and I can increase this to 18 months for an extra $20.25. I'm considering another alternative for my other site which is less expensive but has the same features, again for a price considerably less than the new IPS prices. I'm no penny pincher, but I am retired and living on a pension, I have rent and utilities to pay for so my hobby money is limited. I understand about the price increase, just not the way it blitzkrieged its way into our lives with no alternative payment options other than annually (with a not so generous offer of a one-time split bi-annually). I find some of the comments mildly amusing and often disturbing from IPS: Short and sweet and couldn't care less - definitely not good customer relations. This is not a 'Hump Day' it's a 'Sad Day'.

I would be more concerned about the clients who are keeping quiet than the ones making a noise. My mom was a fountain of wisdom right up until her demise at the grand old age of 89 years. She used to drum this into me: "It's OK to make mistakes, but always be sure to admit to them, take ownership and make sure that your mistakes never have a negative impact on others and if they do, then do something positive to make amends." There's also a saying that everyone will be familiar with "Act in haste, repent at leisure" Hindsight can be an awakening moment, but often it is too late when realisation hits home. It's not too late to do something positive and resolve this horrible situation, but you need to act now to enforce damage control - I can see your competitors rubbing their hands in glee just waiting for the torrent of new clients heading their way. I cannot get my head around the rationalisation of this move - it really does beggar belief.

Oh but you are forcing me out because in one fell swoop you have taken what was affordable to unaffordable. Instead of making excuses for the rest of the team (who are noticeable by their absence in this discussion) and just admit you all read the potential outcome wrongly and actually do something positive to mitigate the appalling mess that this huge error has caused (possibly damaging the reputation of IPS irreversibly), instead you are attempting to defend the indefensible. When I was running my own website development business (for 20 years until I retired last year) I wanted to be the cheapest so I could gain business from potential competitors, but I never lowered standards and had hundreds of highly satisfied clients over that period of time. When one of them asked me why I was so cheap compared to the rest my reply was two-fold: 1. I wanted their business so I offered them lower prices than my competitors 2. I wanted to be the best that I could be so that they would be happy with my endeavours and recommend me I also pointed out that 'something is better than nothing' if I wanted to pay my bills and live a comfortable life. Without that philosophy of giving good value for money I would not have survived for the 20 years I did and I gained clients who would otherwise have moved on and not had what they could afford. Cheap doesn't always equate to being crap, and expensive doesn't always equate to being great, or even the best. I often use this tactic when I negotiate with utilities and I ask them "would you rather have something, or nothing". When you're dealing with your clients you have to understand the affordability equation and if you price yourself out of a market that has sustained you throughout the early years, then it's understandable that you will lose them. You really should consider giving your clients some breathing room and not lumber them with a lump sum they had no time to plan for or even decide whether it was affordable or not. We all realise that prices rise, but your team decided not to implement yearly rises for a decade, and you survived and grew, but now it's all OK to just make sweeping changes without warning and you expect everything to be rosy and everyone will be happy campers. IPS made a huge blunder by leaving price increases for ten years or more and then just hit everyone out of the blue with patronising PR babble as a defence. You need to negotiate with your clients, not dictate. I've waded through the years of complaints railed against IPS for some blunders made in the past, this is not the first toxic topic, but man it has quickly become the one to beat.

@Matt When you break down a large amount into a monthly amount and base it on the lowest denominator, it looks trivial, but we're not talking about a monthly payment. To just drop this onto everyone without so much as mention is really bad karma. You just need to look at this topic and realise how toxic it is and there is no remorse, just excuses and rubbishy PR talk. Sorry mate, it just doesn't make sense and it doesn't sit well with your clients and that is something you need to address quickly before the floodgates open. I really don't like have to post these replies and I don't like being forced out of the door after such a long time, but if that is the intent and there is no relenting then out of the door I will go, with great sadness. The one solace is that there are alternatives out there that are more affordable.

He most likely can but you won't get the positive answer you want. I've had time to sleep on this and my conclusion is this: You say you haven't increased prices in a decade. Who's fault is this? A small annual increase is easier to swallow than a massive increase in one fell swoop. Such a large increase for your corporate clients will be less than chicken feed and they will most likely offset this against tax. Us hobbyists can't do that and such an increase of these proportions is ridiculous if expect us to buy into it. In a declining hobbyist market you would be best placed to split your business into two - one catering for corporates who you can charge whatever big bucks they're willing to part with, and one more affordable option for hobbyists; the two are mutually incompatible and you can't expect hobbyists to pay corporate prices. You need to take a look at what your competition is charging and price yourselves competitively. You can argue that you have the better product, but when priced way above competitors it doesn't look so attractive from the ground up. A small number of your clients who are used to being on this (and I say this loosely) community platform have probably voiced the concerns of many and who are now leaving the fold. How big a number do you have to lose, silently, before you realise you made a huge blunder? A number 'we' will never know. It's like you have taken a big stick and beaten us with it and then in come the pacifiers with, "well, you know" as though that is some kind of ointment to soothe the pain. I just bought my second licence this year, that was bought with faith and trust in you as business, which incidentally has grown because of the grassroots support of your hobbyist clients over many years; that has flown the nest with this latest announcement. So you should be aware that whilst your costs are rising, just the same as ours, your income is about to take a dive. I am fully aware that prices rise constantly and it's a pain we all have to bear, but imagine if you went into your local grocery store and when you get through the checkout and have to pay the bill, you find that it's 50% more than last year. How happy would you be with that? Small increases over a period of time hurt less and it's YOUR fault that you didn't do this over the last decade and now you want us to swallow the sob story - no way. Am I angry, you bet - I wasted good money buying that second licence and there's no way I'm throwing any more at it. Your loss, my gain. You may be great at developing software, but you suck as looking after your clients, especially those who have walked this path with you since the beginning.

I've done it - removed my payment method and exploring other options. No one likes price rises, but when people are still recovering from the pandemic this is like a sledgehammer blow. It's also going to affect devs who supply much needed apps in the marketplace; if people start leaving then their revenue is going to slip and then they may leave too. It's a slippery slope IPS has ventured into and may be something to regret later. I just bought another license this year for another project, now that's on the bonfire until I find another solution. Talk about being hit between the eyes!

I've just been into my client area and removed my payment method. When the current sessions run out that's me done. I can't afford these prices for what I get in return in terms of engagement. There are other options I can explore and am doing so right now. I understand that the only thing that comes down is rain, but these price rises are chokingly high when the price was already on the expensive (but manageable) side 😞

WOW! Definitely NOT impressed with the new pricing structure - this is taking it out of the ballpark for a lot of people. I was looking forward to the revamped CIC and was considering it, but not now. Even self-hosted is now very pricy and I can see your competitors hoovering up the ones you've scared off. Not sure this was a wise move, but then it depends on who you want as clients. The general makeover is OK, nothing that makes me go WOW! (other than your prices lol). Whoah! I've just logged into the client area and I see my renewal price has gone from $40 every six months to this: Is this a mistake?

https://rockmachine.org Mission statement - Come on feel the noise. Rock, rock, rock until you drop. What do we do? Provide the best platform for people to come together and share their passion for rock music. How do we do it? We use Invision Community Software the best platform out there. Whom do we do it for? Any rock fans, old and new (including old fharts like me). What value are we bringing? We keep the idea of Rock Music alive for everyone who loves to rock.

Said this in an earlier post about flexible layouts 🙂

More flexibility in the possible layout options. For example the ability to drop rows and columns on a page and then populate them with blocks and databases. The flexibility to change column widths providing the mix of columns all add up to 100% - i.e. 40/20/40 or 50/25/25 or 40/60 or 50/50 you get the idea. That's my tuppence worth 🙂 I almost forgot pagination for long articles so they are not one long continuous run - add in the ability to determine at what length pagination occurs.

Updated with no issues - I did receive some warnings about outdated templates, but everything just went ahead with no problems encountered 🙂

Can we have these acronyms added to the list in Invision Community - you know the ones that are underlined with dots such as ACP - as an oldie I have to go and look them up to understand what they mean. You can tell I don't text a lot or use SM lol 🙂

Definitely: There are some apps in the suite that could definitely be given some TLC and make them outstanding as opposed to hmm. Let's see what the future brings, but in my lifetime would be a bonus lol 😉

Aye, same here no issues (so far lol). My new site will be launched tomorrow using 4.6.3 and the default theme - modified. https://spiritualvariations.com

The plugin is @opentype Supergrid, but I don't for one minute assume that the plugin is at fault because I disabled it and the issue remained, so it wasn't the plugin which is now validated for 4.6.x and nothing has changed other than the validation. The issue is either with the default theme, or the version of PHP being used 🙂 Just to be clear, I am self-hosted and not on the IPS cloud.

Same here and it also happens in pages but with a more elaborate error: see below. This is the default theme not a third party theme. And on pages: this part of the error report, trimmed down: 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.

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 🙂

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 🙂

The only way is when it shows in the marketplace as compatible with 4.6 For some developers with loads of apps it may take a while, others may decide that it's not worth the effort to update. That's the downside of relying on third party apps - the upside, of course, is that they give us what we want - but that's only for as long as they decide to support them. Just make sure that you have logged into the ACP marketplace and have checked the box in the marketplace here to be informed of updates.

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.

I switched to PHP 8.0.5 and there were loads of errors being thrown up, from template out of date errors to errors using Pages, switched back to PHP 7 and the errors disappeared. I cleared the caches both before and after switching.

Been using 4.6 since beta 1 through beta 4 and now upgraded to 4.6 official, no issues using or upgrading bar one and that is under investigation and it's not a deal breaker. Love the new features, now I just need to see how fast it is to use real time. Am I correct in saying that 4.6 works with PHP 8, as I have that version available to me? Fantastic work team, really fantastic work and I'm proud to be using the end result of all your efforts and will continue to do so for as long as I am able 🙂

I can confirm this does not happen in Firefox, but it does in Google Chrome. I don't use Firefox, generally, but downloaded it to test this out 🙂