Clover13

Well that explains why you became a coder I guess. 

If you only choose a state (no city) perhaps we could swap out an image of the state instead of picking some random point on a map. 
Also setting it to an Online event once you set a location it should reset the location to remove the map since its online
Or put a picture of  Planet Earth. 🌎

Nice looking Event system!  I track dates for various events on my site and members always enjoy the countdown timers I set up for them.  Something I didn't notice above, but maybe a nice enhancement to get the visual appeal and engagement.  I use a custom Pages block to display mine.  Hopefully there's a similar Upcoming Events block or the like to add to a given page! 👍

Nice looking Event system!  I track dates for various events on my site and members always enjoy the countdown timers I set up for them.  Something I didn't notice above, but maybe a nice enhancement to get the visual appeal and engagement.  I use a custom Pages block to display mine.  Hopefully there's a similar Upcoming Events block or the like to add to a given page! 👍

Love the functionality! We'd love to see how clients and the community react to Events. If there's a lot of momentum, I imagine we'd further develop it 😀

Nice looking Event system!  I track dates for various events on my site and members always enjoy the countdown timers I set up for them.  Something I didn't notice above, but maybe a nice enhancement to get the visual appeal and engagement.  I use a custom Pages block to display mine.  Hopefully there's a similar Upcoming Events block or the like to add to a given page! 👍

Nice looking Event system!  I track dates for various events on my site and members always enjoy the countdown timers I set up for them.  Something I didn't notice above, but maybe a nice enhancement to get the visual appeal and engagement.  I use a custom Pages block to display mine.  Hopefully there's a similar Upcoming Events block or the like to add to a given page! 👍

Would be curious to know what complexity is involved in the setup on Cloud that makes offering this to self hosted unviable?  Again this would seem like an example of allowing for optional feature enabling AND a setup guide for what's required even on a self hosting solution versus offering it ONLY on Cloud.  Just a bad look and approach, at some point it's going to start snowballing against IPS.  Choice vs no choice...IPS is forcing the latter for its own customers.
This reminds of the employer/employee relationship.  Employers should ensure they're fairly compensating their employees.   Once there's signs to the contrary, employees will start to interview and out of shear principle, when they find even an "equal" option, they're likely to leave for it.  Then the company will try to make good ONLY when they are given the letter of resignation, but by then it's too late.  

Huh?  Why would I leave IPS because a competitor has a feature that isn't of high value to me and would introduce unnecessary costs/overhead?  I'm happy with IPS, I'm not happy with the direction IPS is headed with "cloud only" options.  That's the trend I'm pushing to change because it will inevitably cause attrition once competitors do offer enough value to offset IPS.  Makes sense no?
Who said a competitor was better?  I merely highlighted server side solutions are possible and cost effective and performant.  I also noted any solution that is cloud only or cloud coupled (i.e. AWS only/specific) is IMHO not an optimal solution for a wide variety of reasons.  It's not to say the premise of their solution's use case isn't good, but the implementation choice and limitations are.  Again, makes sense no?
You're missing the point and benefits of being cloud agnostic.  It has nothing to do with self hosting, literally zero and again, obviously so.  However there is an even bigger benefit and value and revenue projection for software that is both cloud and self-hosting compatible.  As I've mentioned in other topics around this very subject, perhaps IPS has done the ROI and "Cloud Only" features somehow worked out mathematically in their favor.  IMHO, I don't see how that's the case unless they are majority corporate based on the cloud and their finances reflect self hosting being marginally viable or simply low value in comparison.  Beyond that, having options, flexibility, and portability are the cornerstones of software marketability.  Why open the door to your competitors by doing anything other than meeting and maximizing those goals?  Unless of course your market analysis and client base have strong indicators otherwise, maybe theirs does and maybe they're ok with losing clients outright to a continual loss/lack of features who would otherwise stay with them and perhaps even pay a little more to support the development compatibility required for self hosting solutions.
I will say you are right, I don't understand their solution.  How do you?  Do you have access to their CF/TF scripts, infrastructure setup and cloud application code to determine what and how they are using it?  How are competitor add-ons doing all this AI magic on self hosted clients without having the power of AWS AI products?  My guess is they aren't.  If we are talking about the "Live" features related to this very topic, it's a polling and notification implementation.  If there's AI involved in it, I wouldn't understand why it would be.  There's no AI required to determine who is typing or who is actively looking at a topic.
Again, we aren't talking about IPS providing Cloud installation and setup documentation.  They own that portion of it as a service benefit at an elevated cost.  There's no value to anyone to go and setup a replication of their Cloud infrastructure unless IPS had some insane markup to their pricing.  I don't think that's the case, I think their pricing likely aligns with the inherent AWS costs incurred as well as the development and DEV/OPS support required to run things there.
I agree these features aren't make or break for a community site.  However, they are nice to haves, as you said, and they do offer other subtle benefits that do translate to increased activity which further translates to revenue.  IPS is in a great place with their offerings, I think those of us who are self hosted simply don't want to see it take a turn for the worse and get forced onto the cloud if that's not where we want to be.

Would be curious to know what complexity is involved in the setup on Cloud that makes offering this to self hosted unviable?  Again this would seem like an example of allowing for optional feature enabling AND a setup guide for what's required even on a self hosting solution versus offering it ONLY on Cloud.  Just a bad look and approach, at some point it's going to start snowballing against IPS.  Choice vs no choice...IPS is forcing the latter for its own customers.
This reminds of the employer/employee relationship.  Employers should ensure they're fairly compensating their employees.   Once there's signs to the contrary, employees will start to interview and out of shear principle, when they find even an "equal" option, they're likely to leave for it.  Then the company will try to make good ONLY when they are given the letter of resignation, but by then it's too late.  

Huh?  Why would I leave IPS because a competitor has a feature that isn't of high value to me and would introduce unnecessary costs/overhead?  I'm happy with IPS, I'm not happy with the direction IPS is headed with "cloud only" options.  That's the trend I'm pushing to change because it will inevitably cause attrition once competitors do offer enough value to offset IPS.  Makes sense no?
Who said a competitor was better?  I merely highlighted server side solutions are possible and cost effective and performant.  I also noted any solution that is cloud only or cloud coupled (i.e. AWS only/specific) is IMHO not an optimal solution for a wide variety of reasons.  It's not to say the premise of their solution's use case isn't good, but the implementation choice and limitations are.  Again, makes sense no?
You're missing the point and benefits of being cloud agnostic.  It has nothing to do with self hosting, literally zero and again, obviously so.  However there is an even bigger benefit and value and revenue projection for software that is both cloud and self-hosting compatible.  As I've mentioned in other topics around this very subject, perhaps IPS has done the ROI and "Cloud Only" features somehow worked out mathematically in their favor.  IMHO, I don't see how that's the case unless they are majority corporate based on the cloud and their finances reflect self hosting being marginally viable or simply low value in comparison.  Beyond that, having options, flexibility, and portability are the cornerstones of software marketability.  Why open the door to your competitors by doing anything other than meeting and maximizing those goals?  Unless of course your market analysis and client base have strong indicators otherwise, maybe theirs does and maybe they're ok with losing clients outright to a continual loss/lack of features who would otherwise stay with them and perhaps even pay a little more to support the development compatibility required for self hosting solutions.
I will say you are right, I don't understand their solution.  How do you?  Do you have access to their CF/TF scripts, infrastructure setup and cloud application code to determine what and how they are using it?  How are competitor add-ons doing all this AI magic on self hosted clients without having the power of AWS AI products?  My guess is they aren't.  If we are talking about the "Live" features related to this very topic, it's a polling and notification implementation.  If there's AI involved in it, I wouldn't understand why it would be.  There's no AI required to determine who is typing or who is actively looking at a topic.
Again, we aren't talking about IPS providing Cloud installation and setup documentation.  They own that portion of it as a service benefit at an elevated cost.  There's no value to anyone to go and setup a replication of their Cloud infrastructure unless IPS had some insane markup to their pricing.  I don't think that's the case, I think their pricing likely aligns with the inherent AWS costs incurred as well as the development and DEV/OPS support required to run things there.
I agree these features aren't make or break for a community site.  However, they are nice to haves, as you said, and they do offer other subtle benefits that do translate to increased activity which further translates to revenue.  IPS is in a great place with their offerings, I think those of us who are self hosted simply don't want to see it take a turn for the worse and get forced onto the cloud if that's not where we want to be.

I have to agree with this. Just too expensive with no discounts for multiple cloud licenses. As a self hosted user with 8 licenses, I have not added a new IPS license in a while because of this direction or lack of any major price changes, only increases. It’s much more beneficial for me to run my own server for all my licenses. They all share resources on my platform. Doing the math, if self hosted goes away, I’ll be forced to leave and switch platforms. No question about it.

Would be curious to know what complexity is involved in the setup on Cloud that makes offering this to self hosted unviable?  Again this would seem like an example of allowing for optional feature enabling AND a setup guide for what's required even on a self hosting solution versus offering it ONLY on Cloud.  Just a bad look and approach, at some point it's going to start snowballing against IPS.  Choice vs no choice...IPS is forcing the latter for its own customers.
This reminds of the employer/employee relationship.  Employers should ensure they're fairly compensating their employees.   Once there's signs to the contrary, employees will start to interview and out of shear principle, when they find even an "equal" option, they're likely to leave for it.  Then the company will try to make good ONLY when they are given the letter of resignation, but by then it's too late.  

Huh?  Why would I leave IPS because a competitor has a feature that isn't of high value to me and would introduce unnecessary costs/overhead?  I'm happy with IPS, I'm not happy with the direction IPS is headed with "cloud only" options.  That's the trend I'm pushing to change because it will inevitably cause attrition once competitors do offer enough value to offset IPS.  Makes sense no?
Who said a competitor was better?  I merely highlighted server side solutions are possible and cost effective and performant.  I also noted any solution that is cloud only or cloud coupled (i.e. AWS only/specific) is IMHO not an optimal solution for a wide variety of reasons.  It's not to say the premise of their solution's use case isn't good, but the implementation choice and limitations are.  Again, makes sense no?
You're missing the point and benefits of being cloud agnostic.  It has nothing to do with self hosting, literally zero and again, obviously so.  However there is an even bigger benefit and value and revenue projection for software that is both cloud and self-hosting compatible.  As I've mentioned in other topics around this very subject, perhaps IPS has done the ROI and "Cloud Only" features somehow worked out mathematically in their favor.  IMHO, I don't see how that's the case unless they are majority corporate based on the cloud and their finances reflect self hosting being marginally viable or simply low value in comparison.  Beyond that, having options, flexibility, and portability are the cornerstones of software marketability.  Why open the door to your competitors by doing anything other than meeting and maximizing those goals?  Unless of course your market analysis and client base have strong indicators otherwise, maybe theirs does and maybe they're ok with losing clients outright to a continual loss/lack of features who would otherwise stay with them and perhaps even pay a little more to support the development compatibility required for self hosting solutions.
I will say you are right, I don't understand their solution.  How do you?  Do you have access to their CF/TF scripts, infrastructure setup and cloud application code to determine what and how they are using it?  How are competitor add-ons doing all this AI magic on self hosted clients without having the power of AWS AI products?  My guess is they aren't.  If we are talking about the "Live" features related to this very topic, it's a polling and notification implementation.  If there's AI involved in it, I wouldn't understand why it would be.  There's no AI required to determine who is typing or who is actively looking at a topic.
Again, we aren't talking about IPS providing Cloud installation and setup documentation.  They own that portion of it as a service benefit at an elevated cost.  There's no value to anyone to go and setup a replication of their Cloud infrastructure unless IPS had some insane markup to their pricing.  I don't think that's the case, I think their pricing likely aligns with the inherent AWS costs incurred as well as the development and DEV/OPS support required to run things there.
I agree these features aren't make or break for a community site.  However, they are nice to haves, as you said, and they do offer other subtle benefits that do translate to increased activity which further translates to revenue.  IPS is in a great place with their offerings, I think those of us who are self hosted simply don't want to see it take a turn for the worse and get forced onto the cloud if that's not where we want to be.

Redis isn't LAMP.
Elasticsearch isn't LAMP.
Redis and Elasticsearch aren't Cloud Only.
 

To be obvious, I'm clearly not advocating removing features.  I'm pointing out solutions are chosen to be hosting agnostic and compatible.  Even cloud solutions can be built in a manner that doesn't require cloud specific technologies.  In fact, I'd say building anything to be AWS specific is a bad choice (yet IPS has chosen to do precisely that, for example with the S3 externalized storage).  Would you want to be an AWS coupled company or would you want to be a cloud agnostic and compatible company?  Or better yet would you want to be environment agnostic and flexible to maximize your market?
I'll also add, and I'm assuming IPS has done deeper research to this effect, that competitors of theirs have add-ons to provide this exact functionality on the server side (starting as far back as 4-5 years ago now).  Performance is commensurate with server specifications from what I've researched (and admittedly have not tested personally) but I'd be quite confident a server sided solution and hosting and support for it (once the configuration required is well known and understood) would be cheaper than AWS cloud hosting.  AWS has one of the most complex pricing models I've ever seen in technology, and by design it is meant to get you entrenched and committed for LOW cost, only to leverage that commitment by coupling a fee to every imaginable action performed.
P.S. How much do you think a million requests of anything running on AWS costs?  Wonder why IPS Cloud hosting is high...there you have it.

Would be curious to know what complexity is involved in the setup on Cloud that makes offering this to self hosted unviable?  Again this would seem like an example of allowing for optional feature enabling AND a setup guide for what's required even on a self hosting solution versus offering it ONLY on Cloud.  Just a bad look and approach, at some point it's going to start snowballing against IPS.  Choice vs no choice...IPS is forcing the latter for its own customers.
This reminds of the employer/employee relationship.  Employers should ensure they're fairly compensating their employees.   Once there's signs to the contrary, employees will start to interview and out of shear principle, when they find even an "equal" option, they're likely to leave for it.  Then the company will try to make good ONLY when they are given the letter of resignation, but by then it's too late.  

Would be curious to know what complexity is involved in the setup on Cloud that makes offering this to self hosted unviable?  Again this would seem like an example of allowing for optional feature enabling AND a setup guide for what's required even on a self hosting solution versus offering it ONLY on Cloud.  Just a bad look and approach, at some point it's going to start snowballing against IPS.  Choice vs no choice...IPS is forcing the latter for its own customers.
This reminds of the employer/employee relationship.  Employers should ensure they're fairly compensating their employees.   Once there's signs to the contrary, employees will start to interview and out of shear principle, when they find even an "equal" option, they're likely to leave for it.  Then the company will try to make good ONLY when they are given the letter of resignation, but by then it's too late.  

Would be curious to know what complexity is involved in the setup on Cloud that makes offering this to self hosted unviable?  Again this would seem like an example of allowing for optional feature enabling AND a setup guide for what's required even on a self hosting solution versus offering it ONLY on Cloud.  Just a bad look and approach, at some point it's going to start snowballing against IPS.  Choice vs no choice...IPS is forcing the latter for its own customers.
This reminds of the employer/employee relationship.  Employers should ensure they're fairly compensating their employees.   Once there's signs to the contrary, employees will start to interview and out of shear principle, when they find even an "equal" option, they're likely to leave for it.  Then the company will try to make good ONLY when they are given the letter of resignation, but by then it's too late.  

Would be curious to know what complexity is involved in the setup on Cloud that makes offering this to self hosted unviable?  Again this would seem like an example of allowing for optional feature enabling AND a setup guide for what's required even on a self hosting solution versus offering it ONLY on Cloud.  Just a bad look and approach, at some point it's going to start snowballing against IPS.  Choice vs no choice...IPS is forcing the latter for its own customers.
This reminds of the employer/employee relationship.  Employers should ensure they're fairly compensating their employees.   Once there's signs to the contrary, employees will start to interview and out of shear principle, when they find even an "equal" option, they're likely to leave for it.  Then the company will try to make good ONLY when they are given the letter of resignation, but by then it's too late.  

Would be curious to know what complexity is involved in the setup on Cloud that makes offering this to self hosted unviable?  Again this would seem like an example of allowing for optional feature enabling AND a setup guide for what's required even on a self hosting solution versus offering it ONLY on Cloud.  Just a bad look and approach, at some point it's going to start snowballing against IPS.  Choice vs no choice...IPS is forcing the latter for its own customers.
This reminds of the employer/employee relationship.  Employers should ensure they're fairly compensating their employees.   Once there's signs to the contrary, employees will start to interview and out of shear principle, when they find even an "equal" option, they're likely to leave for it.  Then the company will try to make good ONLY when they are given the letter of resignation, but by then it's too late.  

Would be curious to know what complexity is involved in the setup on Cloud that makes offering this to self hosted unviable?  Again this would seem like an example of allowing for optional feature enabling AND a setup guide for what's required even on a self hosting solution versus offering it ONLY on Cloud.  Just a bad look and approach, at some point it's going to start snowballing against IPS.  Choice vs no choice...IPS is forcing the latter for its own customers.
This reminds of the employer/employee relationship.  Employers should ensure they're fairly compensating their employees.   Once there's signs to the contrary, employees will start to interview and out of shear principle, when they find even an "equal" option, they're likely to leave for it.  Then the company will try to make good ONLY when they are given the letter of resignation, but by then it's too late.  

Would be curious to know what complexity is involved in the setup on Cloud that makes offering this to self hosted unviable?  Again this would seem like an example of allowing for optional feature enabling AND a setup guide for what's required even on a self hosting solution versus offering it ONLY on Cloud.  Just a bad look and approach, at some point it's going to start snowballing against IPS.  Choice vs no choice...IPS is forcing the latter for its own customers.
This reminds of the employer/employee relationship.  Employers should ensure they're fairly compensating their employees.   Once there's signs to the contrary, employees will start to interview and out of shear principle, when they find even an "equal" option, they're likely to leave for it.  Then the company will try to make good ONLY when they are given the letter of resignation, but by then it's too late.  

Do you feel providing self hosted clients a "guide" to advanced IPS configuration of these features is too difficult/complex, too much work to document properly, or perhaps compromises IPS's level of IP in some way they simply don't want to expose for competitive reasons?  A lot of clients are capable of configuring their servers IF they know what it is they need to configure and how best to configure it to work with IPS, and likewise a lot of hosts are willing to help and support that effort (mine certainly is).  And many hosts are evolving to modernize their own offerings, i.e. offering NodeJS.
Beyond that, I think the general strategy would be to offer client enabling/disabling of features (even ones with complex setup/configuration) as opposed to outright removing them or reserving them for cloud-only, such that those who are capable of doing the work can and others who can't can simply disable them.  Redis is an example of this.  Granted the performance may not be optimal, but the client has to recognize that and IPS provides an alternate solution with their cloud hosting.