Clover13

Not to derail this, but I agree with your sentiments @ufshane.  IPS must be aware of the impact to their self hosting clients and the viability/affordability aspect will become the litmus test for their chosen approach, and client attrition will be the proof of it.  The math is the math when it comes to cost and if clients are priced out, suddenly IPS becomes non-competitive compared to other products.  To effectively force cloud hosting pigeonholes clients who may have needs beyond what IPS offers in cloud hosting.  I'd imagine they have awareness around that, otherwise they'd be sabotaging their own business, which is why I can't get my head around this assumed path of eliminating self hosting.  Just seems like a terrible business decision, but IPS has access to data I don't (in terms of their customer base, profit margins, support overhead of self hosting vs ROI on self hosting support within the product, etc).  In that regard, if they somehow identify an opportunity whereas they'd make more money from cloud hosting by eliminating self hosting, then that's simply a strategic business decision on their part that improves their bottom line.  But they also can't be penny wise and dollar foolish, having MORE of IPS out there (ala self hosting) is free advertising and exposure for them to acquire more clients.  A similar analogy is Amazon eating shipping costs for loss on smaller products to gain in the bigger business of getting eyes on higher priced items and selling those too.  Even if the math shows you're losing money in one area, that loss may be gaining you more in another facet of your business.  Exposing that between cloud vs self hosting is a difficult connection for them, but again the "common sense" (opinion) side of me believes simply ending self hosting would be a terrible decision and just push your existing self hosting clients to your competition and then propagate your competitions products to the forefront of the market's visibility.  Guess only time will tell, but just as IPS offers conversion services, so do their competitors and their competitors will see the trend and ensure they offer conversion paths (even for those clients who have a lot of customization).

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.

AWS, or any pay by usage services is not the smartest of choices for individual sites. It's fantastic if you need scalability but not when you're managing a few sites. I'll leave their analytics below so you can gauge for yourself what my "needs" are.
My monthly costs is exactly $69. That includes the server machine (OVH) and a cPanel license. One of these sites is a marketplace with thousands of files and thousands of daily active users. My machine's average load is 5% CPU and 40% memory. So to put it in perspective, even if you have a busy site, you don't need anything fancy. My page speeds are incredibly fast thanks to caching and MySQL optimizations. No RDS, ALB, LMNOP, etc.
So in the nicest way possible, I think he's spending that much because he has an overly complicated setup with diminishing returns. Though to be fair he could just have a disgusting amount of traffic and dynamic content to handle.
Full disclaimer, I don't know how these stats stack up to yours, or Randy's but I know for me personally switching to cloud is just not an option. I'd be paying quite literally 1,000% more. Not to mention you'd be at the mercy of IPS to keep your services online.
Site #1

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Site #3

How is this different than the "Popular Now" block available for Pages?  "Popular Now" merely looks at topic views or replies but not reactions?
It seems like this would be similar, except maybe it has enhanced weighting of various factors (replies, reactions, etc) to gauge what is "Trending".  Not sure why you'd reserve this for the highest level of pricing, conceptually I would think someone could code a custom add-on/widget that applies configurable weights to classify their own definition of "Trending" (site owner defined) relative to topics and likewise embeds that where desired.
Like the idea, just not fan of the restriction, unless there's a lot more going on here that I could be overlooking and is enterprise level complexity.

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.

How is this different than the "Popular Now" block available for Pages?  "Popular Now" merely looks at topic views or replies but not reactions?
It seems like this would be similar, except maybe it has enhanced weighting of various factors (replies, reactions, etc) to gauge what is "Trending".  Not sure why you'd reserve this for the highest level of pricing, conceptually I would think someone could code a custom add-on/widget that applies configurable weights to classify their own definition of "Trending" (site owner defined) relative to topics and likewise embeds that where desired.
Like the idea, just not fan of the restriction, unless there's a lot more going on here that I could be overlooking and is enterprise level complexity.

Not to derail this, but I agree with your sentiments @ufshane.  IPS must be aware of the impact to their self hosting clients and the viability/affordability aspect will become the litmus test for their chosen approach, and client attrition will be the proof of it.  The math is the math when it comes to cost and if clients are priced out, suddenly IPS becomes non-competitive compared to other products.  To effectively force cloud hosting pigeonholes clients who may have needs beyond what IPS offers in cloud hosting.  I'd imagine they have awareness around that, otherwise they'd be sabotaging their own business, which is why I can't get my head around this assumed path of eliminating self hosting.  Just seems like a terrible business decision, but IPS has access to data I don't (in terms of their customer base, profit margins, support overhead of self hosting vs ROI on self hosting support within the product, etc).  In that regard, if they somehow identify an opportunity whereas they'd make more money from cloud hosting by eliminating self hosting, then that's simply a strategic business decision on their part that improves their bottom line.  But they also can't be penny wise and dollar foolish, having MORE of IPS out there (ala self hosting) is free advertising and exposure for them to acquire more clients.  A similar analogy is Amazon eating shipping costs for loss on smaller products to gain in the bigger business of getting eyes on higher priced items and selling those too.  Even if the math shows you're losing money in one area, that loss may be gaining you more in another facet of your business.  Exposing that between cloud vs self hosting is a difficult connection for them, but again the "common sense" (opinion) side of me believes simply ending self hosting would be a terrible decision and just push your existing self hosting clients to your competition and then propagate your competitions products to the forefront of the market's visibility.  Guess only time will tell, but just as IPS offers conversion services, so do their competitors and their competitors will see the trend and ensure they offer conversion paths (even for those clients who have a lot of customization).

Nice feature but i join all what it was said, is should be a native feature on all plans, cloud or self.
+1 for the feature -1 for the restriction 

Not to derail this, but I agree with your sentiments @ufshane.  IPS must be aware of the impact to their self hosting clients and the viability/affordability aspect will become the litmus test for their chosen approach, and client attrition will be the proof of it.  The math is the math when it comes to cost and if clients are priced out, suddenly IPS becomes non-competitive compared to other products.  To effectively force cloud hosting pigeonholes clients who may have needs beyond what IPS offers in cloud hosting.  I'd imagine they have awareness around that, otherwise they'd be sabotaging their own business, which is why I can't get my head around this assumed path of eliminating self hosting.  Just seems like a terrible business decision, but IPS has access to data I don't (in terms of their customer base, profit margins, support overhead of self hosting vs ROI on self hosting support within the product, etc).  In that regard, if they somehow identify an opportunity whereas they'd make more money from cloud hosting by eliminating self hosting, then that's simply a strategic business decision on their part that improves their bottom line.  But they also can't be penny wise and dollar foolish, having MORE of IPS out there (ala self hosting) is free advertising and exposure for them to acquire more clients.  A similar analogy is Amazon eating shipping costs for loss on smaller products to gain in the bigger business of getting eyes on higher priced items and selling those too.  Even if the math shows you're losing money in one area, that loss may be gaining you more in another facet of your business.  Exposing that between cloud vs self hosting is a difficult connection for them, but again the "common sense" (opinion) side of me believes simply ending self hosting would be a terrible decision and just push your existing self hosting clients to your competition and then propagate your competitions products to the forefront of the market's visibility.  Guess only time will tell, but just as IPS offers conversion services, so do their competitors and their competitors will see the trend and ensure they offer conversion paths (even for those clients who have a lot of customization).

Not to derail this, but I agree with your sentiments @ufshane.  IPS must be aware of the impact to their self hosting clients and the viability/affordability aspect will become the litmus test for their chosen approach, and client attrition will be the proof of it.  The math is the math when it comes to cost and if clients are priced out, suddenly IPS becomes non-competitive compared to other products.  To effectively force cloud hosting pigeonholes clients who may have needs beyond what IPS offers in cloud hosting.  I'd imagine they have awareness around that, otherwise they'd be sabotaging their own business, which is why I can't get my head around this assumed path of eliminating self hosting.  Just seems like a terrible business decision, but IPS has access to data I don't (in terms of their customer base, profit margins, support overhead of self hosting vs ROI on self hosting support within the product, etc).  In that regard, if they somehow identify an opportunity whereas they'd make more money from cloud hosting by eliminating self hosting, then that's simply a strategic business decision on their part that improves their bottom line.  But they also can't be penny wise and dollar foolish, having MORE of IPS out there (ala self hosting) is free advertising and exposure for them to acquire more clients.  A similar analogy is Amazon eating shipping costs for loss on smaller products to gain in the bigger business of getting eyes on higher priced items and selling those too.  Even if the math shows you're losing money in one area, that loss may be gaining you more in another facet of your business.  Exposing that between cloud vs self hosting is a difficult connection for them, but again the "common sense" (opinion) side of me believes simply ending self hosting would be a terrible decision and just push your existing self hosting clients to your competition and then propagate your competitions products to the forefront of the market's visibility.  Guess only time will tell, but just as IPS offers conversion services, so do their competitors and their competitors will see the trend and ensure they offer conversion paths (even for those clients who have a lot of customization).

How is this different than the "Popular Now" block available for Pages?  "Popular Now" merely looks at topic views or replies but not reactions?
It seems like this would be similar, except maybe it has enhanced weighting of various factors (replies, reactions, etc) to gauge what is "Trending".  Not sure why you'd reserve this for the highest level of pricing, conceptually I would think someone could code a custom add-on/widget that applies configurable weights to classify their own definition of "Trending" (site owner defined) relative to topics and likewise embeds that where desired.
Like the idea, just not fan of the restriction, unless there's a lot more going on here that I could be overlooking and is enterprise level complexity.

Not to derail this, but I agree with your sentiments @ufshane.  IPS must be aware of the impact to their self hosting clients and the viability/affordability aspect will become the litmus test for their chosen approach, and client attrition will be the proof of it.  The math is the math when it comes to cost and if clients are priced out, suddenly IPS becomes non-competitive compared to other products.  To effectively force cloud hosting pigeonholes clients who may have needs beyond what IPS offers in cloud hosting.  I'd imagine they have awareness around that, otherwise they'd be sabotaging their own business, which is why I can't get my head around this assumed path of eliminating self hosting.  Just seems like a terrible business decision, but IPS has access to data I don't (in terms of their customer base, profit margins, support overhead of self hosting vs ROI on self hosting support within the product, etc).  In that regard, if they somehow identify an opportunity whereas they'd make more money from cloud hosting by eliminating self hosting, then that's simply a strategic business decision on their part that improves their bottom line.  But they also can't be penny wise and dollar foolish, having MORE of IPS out there (ala self hosting) is free advertising and exposure for them to acquire more clients.  A similar analogy is Amazon eating shipping costs for loss on smaller products to gain in the bigger business of getting eyes on higher priced items and selling those too.  Even if the math shows you're losing money in one area, that loss may be gaining you more in another facet of your business.  Exposing that between cloud vs self hosting is a difficult connection for them, but again the "common sense" (opinion) side of me believes simply ending self hosting would be a terrible decision and just push your existing self hosting clients to your competition and then propagate your competitions products to the forefront of the market's visibility.  Guess only time will tell, but just as IPS offers conversion services, so do their competitors and their competitors will see the trend and ensure they offer conversion paths (even for those clients who have a lot of customization).

How is this different than the "Popular Now" block available for Pages?  "Popular Now" merely looks at topic views or replies but not reactions?
It seems like this would be similar, except maybe it has enhanced weighting of various factors (replies, reactions, etc) to gauge what is "Trending".  Not sure why you'd reserve this for the highest level of pricing, conceptually I would think someone could code a custom add-on/widget that applies configurable weights to classify their own definition of "Trending" (site owner defined) relative to topics and likewise embeds that where desired.
Like the idea, just not fan of the restriction, unless there's a lot more going on here that I could be overlooking and is enterprise level complexity.

Yes we will be preparing for the inevitability of this in the future sadly. I have been a big fan on Invision dating back our our DJ community forums, when we took over our current community it was VB and we switched to IPB not long after. 
The amount we are going to have to invest in development still does not offset the monthly cost for us to have the features we would want. Our community is only about 14k members.
We have a dedicated server that we use for more than just our community, so paying for another hosted service just does not make sense. Especially since we have full control of our environment.

How is this different than the "Popular Now" block available for Pages?  "Popular Now" merely looks at topic views or replies but not reactions?
It seems like this would be similar, except maybe it has enhanced weighting of various factors (replies, reactions, etc) to gauge what is "Trending".  Not sure why you'd reserve this for the highest level of pricing, conceptually I would think someone could code a custom add-on/widget that applies configurable weights to classify their own definition of "Trending" (site owner defined) relative to topics and likewise embeds that where desired.
Like the idea, just not fan of the restriction, unless there's a lot more going on here that I could be overlooking and is enterprise level complexity.

How is this different than the "Popular Now" block available for Pages?  "Popular Now" merely looks at topic views or replies but not reactions?
It seems like this would be similar, except maybe it has enhanced weighting of various factors (replies, reactions, etc) to gauge what is "Trending".  Not sure why you'd reserve this for the highest level of pricing, conceptually I would think someone could code a custom add-on/widget that applies configurable weights to classify their own definition of "Trending" (site owner defined) relative to topics and likewise embeds that where desired.
Like the idea, just not fan of the restriction, unless there's a lot more going on here that I could be overlooking and is enterprise level complexity.

I know. But, people will be people. 😂

Something I always wanted, but doesn't sound like it will work as I'd prefer - it would help if this was an option during the moving topic process, make it an option to create an alert for the topic starter whilst on the pop up for that.

This could be tremendously useful indeed!  Is it possible to set this at a per forum basis?  That would help channel discussions to be put in proper forums.  I move many posts a day, and a lot of them are political (not niche relevant but often discussed) and are required (but never honored by members) to be in a specific forum that isn't part of our main landing page's content.
I can only imagine (dream) of being able to put a filter on Biden, Trump, COVID, Fauci, etc and have it blocked from being submitted anywhere but it's target forum!

This could be tremendously useful indeed!  Is it possible to set this at a per forum basis?  That would help channel discussions to be put in proper forums.  I move many posts a day, and a lot of them are political (not niche relevant but often discussed) and are required (but never honored by members) to be in a specific forum that isn't part of our main landing page's content.
I can only imagine (dream) of being able to put a filter on Biden, Trump, COVID, Fauci, etc and have it blocked from being submitted anywhere but it's target forum!

There might be times when using a banned word <or phrase if that can be implemented> has legitimate and well-meaning purposes, as such, being able to target its usage to particular forums often populated with bad actors may prove useful in minimizing their negativity.

Any chance of adding more 2FA providers such as 1Password?

Any chance of adding more 2FA providers such as 1Password?

My first thought was you must not be from the Northeast US...in certain areas and crowds every other word is the F word.