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Charles

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Everything posted by Charles

  1. I understand that you are after the final release but the fact that RC is nearing is actually quite important :) It shows that the product is very nearly stable and goes toward your original question of an approximate release date of 3.0 final. Some seem to think that we purposely withhold release dates for fun and excitement when the reality is that, although we have internal dates in mind, announcing them just brings on confusion. For example, we can say "IPB Beta will be out by X date" but others would forget about the "beta" part and then flip out that IPB is not 100% done by that date. It's just safer for all if we give general ideas, like announcing RC stage, than specific dates.
  2. I posted a blog entry just now to clarify things for everyone :)
  3. We released IP.Board 3.0.0 Beta 5 last week and the release has gone very well so we are preparing to enter the Release Candidate phase of development. Thanks to everyone who has downloaded the various beta releases and posted bug reports. Please continue to do so! The more we can fix before final release the better for all. A release candidate is a version of the software between the beta phase and a final release. Once we post the first release candidate of IP.Board 3.0.0 you can safely assume that we consider the software stable enough to use on your live community. Everyone here at IPS is very excited to reach this milestone of development. Keep in mind this will not be the final, supported version. There will probably be bugs but hopefully nothing that will cause any major issues. So, although it's not a beta anymore, still consider this information before you upgrade your live community. If you cannot stomach a few bugs or areas not working perfectly you may want to wait before upgrading. :) The upcoming release candidate for IP.Board 3.0.0 will also be the first release that is not encoded. We hope that our community developers will jump right in and start writing hooks and alternate skins. We have quite a bit of developer documentation already written and we will get that out for everyone as soon as possible. For the sanity of our support department, keep in mind that release candidates do not come with technical support service. Once IP.Board 3.0.0 is released as a final version then support services will be offered. Expect the first release candidate of IP.Board 3.0.0 in the next two weeks or so. Thank you again!
  4. As we get closer to the final release of IP.Board 3.0.0 we have seen a huge increase in the number of clients converting to our software and services from other community software platforms. Of course we are always very excited to help anyone move to IP.Board and this is the best time to do the conversion. You can start getting familiar with IP.Board on the current 2.3.6 version and our staff can easily upgrade you to version 3.0.0 when it is available at no extra charge. In addition to converting customers we have also seen an increase in IPB Standard License sales as new customers buy IPB now who are excited about the upcoming 3.0.0 release and want to get familiar with IPB now. IP.Board Standard License Sale Starting 9:00 am EST January 5, 2009 and ending 5:00 pm EST January 9, 2009 the price of an IP.Board Standard License will be reduced from $149.99 to $129.00 to allow everyone a chance to purchase IPB at this special, reduced price. The 6-month renewal price will remain the same. Free Conversion Service Our staff will convert your database to IPB at no cost to you. This is a savings off the normal $60.00 conversion fee! This applies to all software listed on the conversion information page. To take advantage of this offer, just email accounts@invisionpower.com by January 9th and our conversion team will take care of your database conversion for you. You will need to have an active IPB license to take advantage of this offer. Please email sales@invisionpower.com if you have any questions. Thank you!
  5. For complete information on the IP.Board 3.0.0 Beta 1 release please read the full announcement. We have refreshed the download of IP.Board 3.0.0 Beta 1 to address a few critical bugs that were reported yesterday. The refresh is as of the time of this blog entry. We focused on installation bugs and core usability bugs for this small refresh so more people could install IP.Board 3.0.0 Beta 1 before the end of the year. Note that not all bugs marked as fixed in the bug tracker will be fixed in this build of the beta. You can download the beta again from the client area and reinstall it as you did before. There is no need to download the beta again if you downloaded it after the time of this entry for the first time. Also, hosting customers can now download the beta in the "development tools" category in their download area. Ioncube Encoding IP.Board betas are Ioncube encoded so we can ensure that reported bugs are directly related to the code and not to modifications. While we do not mind people modifying, you can imagine how frustrating it can be trying to track down a bug that turns out is not even related to IP.Board's code. Some have reported problems with installing using Ioncube. There are a few topics in the IPB3 preview forum which may help those unfamiliar with using Ioncube. The final version of IP.Board 3.0.0 will not be Ioncube encoded. PHP Version Compatibility Beta 1 requires PHP 5.2.1 or greater to operate. We will be working on changes in the next betas to lower the version of PHP required closer to 5.1 or possibly 5.0. We will provide more information on those changes as they are available. Reporting Bugs Please search the bug tracker for a description on the bug you have found before submitting the report. We appreciate bug reports but it does slow things down when duplicate reports are submitted. This will become more important as bugs are fixed in preparation for Beta 2 but the fixes not yet released as it will slow down development if we have to sort through duplicate reports. Thanks for searching before posting - it makes a huge difference. Thanks for all your help and happy bug hunting!
  6. The IP.Board 3.0 preview has been going quite well and we have received some good feedback and ideas for version 3.0 which we have already implemented. This blog entry will outline some of the changes that have been implemented in 3.0 since the preview was made available. Other than the changes listed here there have been lots of minor skin interface improvements and many bug fixes too numerous to go into. Search Index For a long time we have been looking at ways to solve a problem with global searching. Searching is very resource intensive and we are under pressure to deliver a comprehensive search that is both quick and light on the server. One solution we implemented on the preview board was a search index. This index contained the text from various sources such as posts, blogs and calendar events. The search index was successful in making global searching quick and efficient but it was limited by MySQL itself. While it worked well on smaller boards, there was an issue with scaling in that MySQL does not deal very well with large tables. While the posts table would often lock in normal searching, the search index table would lock in many more situations thereby eliminating any benefits it brought to IPB. Also, when upgrading to IPB 3 the search index needed to be built which could potentially take many hours. This is obviously undesirable. We also found that it limited what you could search for and how the results were displayed. For these reasons we have decided to remove the search index option in IPB 3.0. We will instead work on enhancing the normal search system (including some of the good ideas from the preview site) and large search solutions such as Sphinx. Removing the search index will not impact the overall ability to search and find content you are looking for and we will work on the normal search routines to make displaying the search results easier to work with. Gravatar Support Gravatar is as service that hosts your avatar so you can have the same avatar on the various communities you visit. It also allows you to centrally update your avatar and have it show up all over the web. You just sign up on their site and then enter your email address you registered with Gravatar in IPB 3.0's settings area. Warn Panel Updates The warn panel has been updated to allow for moderators to be able to better control troublesome members and posts without administrator intervention. Enhancements include: Option to "ban" a member permanently from the warn panelIncrease or decrease warn value by a custom value (rather than just +1 or -1) for super moderators onlyAbility to unapprove (hide) all member's posts and/or topics made with the last X days/hoursMember's current reputation and other general information now displayed on warn panel Mutual Friends Adding and removing friends is now a mutual option in that if you add someone as a friend you will also appear on their profile as a friend. The same goes for removing a friend: if you remove a friend you are also removed from their friend list. Reputation Logs Administrators can now edit a member's reputation points. They can also view the record of ratings that member has left for others and the ratings others have left for that member. Enhanced Watched Topics/Forums The listing of watched topics and forums in your user settings now displays the number of new topics or posts since your last visit. You can click this link to be taken to the forum listing showing only those new topics since your last visit. Filter Forum by New Topics You can now filter a forum using the filter options bar at the bottom of the page to show only new topics posted since your last visit. Public Polls The option to allow public polls is now in the admin area. Public polls are like normal polls but they show the name of the members who voted and what they voted for in the poll. Administrators can also optionally allow members to delete their vote and re-vote in polls. This new feature only functions with newly-created polls. Administrators can switch a poll from private to public only if the poll has had no votes. IP.Board 3.0.0 Release The preview testing and feedback has been going so well that we have decided to reevaluate our release schedule. We will still have a downloadable beta version of IP.Board 3.0.0 out by the end of this year but a final version will not be out by the end of this year. Because the preview site has become so useful, we are treating it as a "pseudo-beta" and using it to test various features and learn about how IPB 3.0 behaves in a production environment. Although this will delay our final release until early next year, it brings the benefit of a much shorter beta-release cycle since IPB is being so heavily tested now. This means that we will have fewer beta releases before moving on to the final release. It also means that the final release of IPB will be as good as it can be which is good for everyone. We believe that this short delay until the final release will be beneficial for all as the final version of IPB 3.0 will be as stable as it can be on day one. Thanks to everyone for your help and ideas. We will keep you updated on our progress in the coming weeks.
  7. The IP.Board 3.0 preview has been going very well. Lots of bugs have been reported and, more importantly, fixed already. The feedback we have received has been very valuable and we have already implemented some of the good ideas our customers have presented us. Thanks again! We are now ready to open the preview up to the general public. You can visit the preview at http://ipb3preview.ipslink.com and login with the same email address and password you use in the IPS client area or company forums. A few things to keep in mind: This is a preview of alpha software. We are not quite to the beta stage so please keep in mind that there are some areas still being finished up. The preview has been open for a couple weeks now to our customer base so lots of feedback and bugs have been posted. Have a look around what is already there before posting new info. Thanks! As we have reviewed in previous blog entries, IP.Board 3.0.0 is very different from the version 1.x or 2.x series. So far the feedback from our private testing group has been great and everyone loves the new look and feel. We can never please everyone :) so please be civil if you do not like something that is purely a matter of opinion and offer a constructive suggestion we can consider if you feel something can be improved. IP.Board 3.0.0 is feature-frozen at this point. We will not be adding any new features but are happy to consider enhancements to those already included. We will always have version 3.1 for feature additions and one of the best parts of 3.0's architecture is adding new features along with upgrading is much easier than the 2.x series so upgrades can be developed and released much faster. We hope you enjoy!
  8. We are preparing the first public preview of IP.Board 3.0.0 alpha and look forward to everyone's feedback and help in testing. It is our current plan to preview IP.Board 3.0.0 alpha the second half of next week (around Nov 10 2008 +/- a day or two). As promised, those in the customer group on the IPS forums will receive the preview a bit earlier. Keep an eye on our company blog for updates. The public preview will be on a special web site and will not be available for download. You can use the same login as the IPS company forums to login. A few important notes... This will be a preview of alpha software. We are not quite to the beta stage so please keep in mind that there are some areas still being finished up. We believe all functionality should be working properly but there are parts of the software that need some skin work. Some of the newest areas, like the new PM system, could use some extensive testing. We ask that you help us test the functionality, click around the preview copy and report those issues that you find in the special area of our Bug Tracker for the IP.Board 3.0.0 alpha preview (will be available on preview day). When reporting please be careful to look over all already reported bugs to be sure not to submit duplicates. Do your best to try to break it... so we can then fix it. As we have reviewed in previous blog entries, IP.Board 3.0.0 is very different from the version 1.x or 2.x series. So far the feedback from our private testing group has been great and everyone loves the new look and feel. We can never please everyone :) so please be civil if you do not like something that is purely a matter of opinion and offer a constructive suggestion we can consider if you feel something can be improved. IP.Board 3.0.0 is feature-frozen at this point. We will not be adding any new features but are happy to consider enhancements to those already included. We will always have version 3.1 for feature additions and one of the best parts of 3.0's architecture is adding new features along with upgrading is much easier than the 2.x series so upgrades can be developed and released much faster. Upcoming Beta Releases We will use the public preview for our first round of testing and performance evaluation. Depending on how the public preview goes we will begin releasing downloadable betas. Expect updates on the beta release schedule in the week following the public preview. Components like Blog, Gallery, and Downloads will have their own testing phase so please keep and eye out for those. Thank you for your interest and everyone at IPS is looking forward to the public preview. We hope you are too and that you enjoy it!
  9. Our new resource site has been online for a few months now and the feedback has been great so we are going to enhance the offerings and further involve our community of resource authors. Some upcoming changes include: Forum Organization We will be reorganizing and adding new forums to the company forums resource section to make it easier to navigate and find information. You will also soon notice a feed from the resource site to the company forums featuring new activity, most popular resources, and more. Resource Spotlight Once a month, we will feature a resource and do a short interview with the author of that resource so you can get to know them and what they created. We hope that everyone enjoys these features and they help introduce our customer community to all the great resources that are available to them. Community Projects The IP.Tracker bug tracker community project has been very well received so we are looking at introducing more. If you are not aware, our community projects are projects that we sponsor but the community actually creates and are offered at no charge. IPS provides resources for programming, hosting, etc. and the customer community writes all the needed code for the project. We already have a new community project lined up and will be announcing that in the next week. More to come Also coming very soon is a ranking list of the most used resources, ability to list paid resources, better linking with our main site, and more. Keep an eye out for more updates. Please expect some downtime on the resources site over the next several days as we implement these new services. Thanks everyone!
  10. Your best bet is to email accounts@invisionpower.com so we can have a look at your specific account and let you know for sure :)
  11. We are moving rapidly on IP.Board 3.0 development along with its related IP.Blog, IP.Gallery, and IP.Downloads updates. As we approach being able to post these updates for a preview and an eventual release we think we are getting close enough that we can start talking about some of the new features we have planned. I will be purposely vague in this first blog entry about IP.Board 3.0's development and let our development staff get into detail in future blog entries. While not promising a set schedule, you can expect an update from a developer almost weekly going into detail about a specific change or new feature. Our full new feature list is very long but here is a sampling for everyone. Our development team will go into detail about each one in the coming weeks and also introduce all the other additions not mentioned in this introduction. Interface There will be a great focus on usability and streamlining functions. The introduction of a new template engine which allows for multiple default template sets, easier skin editing, and a brand new default skin is something we are very excited about. Search engine friendly URLs will not only make your community more interesting to search engine spiders but allow for more human-friendly linking. Control The overhauled BB Code manager along with moving all default BB Codes to the system so you can edit them will allow forum administrators greater control over how their users interact with the community. We are implementing greater configuration options including being able to turn off features you do not use and finer controls on current features. Finer tuning your user signatures, turning specific options off, or even removing entire sections such as the calendar will allow you to gain finer control of how you want your community to be presented. Features There will be quite a few new features but, for now, we will save those for our upcoming blog posts to reveal what's new. A quick sampling: user reputation system, more permission configuration options, moderator enhancements, and ... lots more. Integration We want you to integrate your community with the rest of your web site with minimal effort. To make this easier for you, we will be putting great focus on creating a new hooks system for developers, more advanced APIs, content syndication, login methods, and more. Our applications (IP.Blog, IP.Gallery, and IP.Downloads) more tightly integrated with each other and with IP.Board itself. Coding There will be a lot of low-level code improvements which will make working with our codebase much easier for our community of developers. Everything we do will be with an eye toward resource usage improvements to make our software lighter on servers. Server Requirements To take advantage of many new capabilities, we will be officially dropping support for PHP 4.x series and requiring a minimum of PHP 5.x for our software. The software will work on the MySQL 4.x database series but we will highly suggest using the MySQL 5.x version. Oracle Database Due to slowing demand over the past few years, we have decided to discontinue supporting Oracle database system. We will continue to support MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server. Subscriptions Manager Again, due to slowing demand, we have decided to stop updating the subscriptions manager in IP.Board. We will be fixing all current known bugs to make the system compatible with IP.Board 3.0 so those currently using the subscriptions manager will still be able to upgrade. Anyone currently using the subscriptions manager will still be able to upgrade and everything will work normally for you. From there, we will be looking for community developers to keep it up to date. We will be posting a blog entry when ready to ask for assistance in keeping the subscriptions manager up to date. Anyone wishing to use our new IP.Nexus commerce system when it's available will be able to migrate as well. Of course this is just the short version. Keep an eye on our blog for more detailed updates and new feature reveals in the coming weeks. And finally, when will it be released? Right now we are thinking the fourth quarter of 2008 (IP.Board, IP.Blog, IP.Gallery, and IP.Downloads will all receive a new version at the same time) but of course that's subject to change... it could very well be sooner...
  12. This video shows the ticket weighting functionality and how you can prioritize ticket listings. View Video
  13. This next video shows the form manager functionality in the IP.Nexus content management application. View Video
  14. This video focuses on the static page content section of IP.Nexus. View Video
  15. The first in our series of preview videos for the upcoming IP.Nexus. This video shows a quick overview of the dashboard and its widget capabilities. View Video
  16. For those of you who have been with IPS for some time you may have been aware of a previous announcement regarding the development of two separate products called Nexus and Dynamic. Nexus was to be an ecommerce billing system and Dynamic was to be a content management system. As we developed these products the Internet market had changed quite a bit so we have made the decision to totally discontinue Nexus and Dynamic production as they were. We know many of you were looking forward to either Nexus or Dynamic as they were first intended and we apologize if this disrupts your plans. Instead we have decided to create a new product that combines the previous goals of ecommerce and content management along with a host of features including customer management, support, business organization, and a modular structure in which features are only limited by our imagination. Since everyone at IPS loved the term "Nexus" to describe this system we decided to recycle that name and so IP.Nexus was born. IP.Nexus is a complete business management suite which includes many of the previously stated goals along with so many more. We look forward to releasing this new product line. It is worth noting that this time around the new product is nearly complete rather than an idea in development. Expect a lot more information including the first public betas in the coming weeks! Watch our announcements forum and this blog for more information.
  17. As many know, we are in the process of revamping IPS Beyond. Along with that, we will be offering many more supported resources from IPS. The first will be a new supported skin that will be offered as a secondary default skin to the board. This first skin will be designed as a very basic skin (no gradients for example) thereby allowing for much easier color changes and such when you want to match it to your site. As a supported skin it will be updated between versions of our software. We will be previewing the new skin on our company forums in the next few days and it will be available along with IP.Board's 2.3 release.
  18. Charles

    Food Good

    We just wanted to thank BoxerPals (http://www.boxerpals.org) for sending us that lovely box of cookies and fudge. You know how to go straight to our staffs' heart. We occasionaly get thank you gifts from customers and it's always appreciated.
  19. Everyone has actually been quite busy lately even with the lack of Blog and News announcements. We thought it time to post something here so you knew we had not all decided to take a month off or something. After any large release there is a lot of "clean up" work to do like starting on small updates to fix issues or going back to some neglected projects and finishing them up. Our staff has been working hard to do just that and are nearly done and ready to move on to more exciting things. As stated in a previous entry: we are working on the IPS Beyond enhancements and are quite excited about getting IPS Beyond upgraded. More on that in the coming weeks. Don't forget that we are hiring! See the job postings announcements for details. There is a lot of development resources being focused on the IPS Business product line. We will be posting the first official preview of this product line in the coming weeks. We are extremely excited about our approach to business services and are looking forward to releasing this entirely new product line. Thank you to everyone who has given feedback and noticed our recent customer service improvements. We have another round of customer service improvements that will be phased in soon so expect things to continue to improve. We will also be posting a survey next month for existing customers and hope you can give us ideas. That's all for this update - we will be posting again soon. Thanks!
  20. Just a quick note on support response times for those not on a guaranteed SLA: We recognize and apologize for the recent slower than normal response times to support tickets. The release of IP.Board 2.2.0 is causing a huge increase in volume. The influx of new tickets is starting to calm down and things should be returning to normal soon. To speed resolution for your support tickets please be sure to include your login information in your original ticket. If you do not, the tech support team is forced to move on to another ticket which slows down the whole process. Thanks for your understanding! We're working on catching up now. As an example: from the date of this post, in the last 24 hours the tech support team has sent out 731 replies.
  21. Charles

    IPS Beyond

    Now that IP.Board 2.2.0 is out and being well-received we are going to turn our focus to IPS Beyond. If you are not familiar with IPS Beyond already it is our official customer resource site. At IPS Beyond customers can enjoy an informal atmosphere in which they can receive customer-to-customer technical support, chat about the products, share tips and tricks, and more. There are also modifications available for download to extend the feature set of your boards. Many ask why they should use IPS Beyond when tickets are available and the short answer really is: it's up to you. You can certainly use our ticket system if you want the response times quoted under your license type or if you prefer your assistance made in private directly with our staff. IPS Beyond is great for people that want to take our products beyond (har har) what they would normally do or need help in areas not covered by our official support. Ok, definition done, now here are the upcoming plans: The web site will become... a web site, so not all the features are interlinked with the forumsComponents provided directly from IPS! Some free some low cost.Premade skins directly from IPS to start off your forum customizationsGreater recognition and rewards for those active members of our community who help others and provide modifcations/skins.Tighter integration between IPS Beyond and our company forums Work has already started on the revamp. We will keep you updated. There are lots of details we are still sorting out so give the IPS Beyond team time to get the pieces together... you should be quite pleased.
  22. After literally years of paperwork and waiting on the government's United States Patent and Trademark Office to do its thing we have, at long last, a registered trademark. While our logo and name were always a trademark in the ™ sense they are now a registered trademark in the full on always fun
  23. Already? Didn't we just release IP.Board 2.2.0? Yes and yes. Ah, the nature of product development. We knew we would have to do an IP.Board 2.2.1 release right after releasing 2.2.0 so it is no surprise. Although we tested IP.Board thoroughly before release there is never a way to know what will happen once a product is released out into the world. On the whole it's been very stable and we are quite pleased. Lots of odd little errors or issues specific to special server configurations. Some patches for specific conditions (like running on PHP 5.0.4) have already been added to our knowledge base. We are also going to add more clarification in 2.2.1 for frequently asked support questions that are not bugs but just confused areas. While 2.2.1 isn't exactly an emergency we will die if it isn't released sort of thing, we will probably release it sometime during the week of Dec 11 so those people with the "odd" issues can be sorted. Also, the technical support team would probably welcome some integrated help on areas that are confusing some users :) And speaking of support: the flood of requests with the release is starting to calm down so if you are waiting a bit longer than usual for ticket replies that should start to show improvement very soon.
  24. We had several meetings over the last couple months on improving the upgrade system for IP.Board 2.2 and it certainly has improved. The system is generally safer and warns you if something doesn't go right. Not to mention IP.Board itself will scan your database and report problems in the admin area. Now that IP.Board 2.2 is released we are finding that although the upgrade routine works there is still some confusion. Particularly the manual upgrade routine. So... note that if you check the manual upgrade option when running the upgrade system, the upgrade system will tell you what SQL queries to run. It will not run those queries for you as you told it you wanted to do them manually :) Keith from the tech support team and Brandon from the development team will be getting together tomorrow and work on better explanations of the difference between the manual and automatic upgrade modes. The current plan is to implement the changes to the upgrade as a hot fix to 2.2.0 as the changes will just be instructions (not code changes) so no bugs could be introduced. We always ask you to report bugs you find in our software but feel free to report things that work but are just a little confusing in our feedback forums. Part of making good software is also making it friendly to manage :)
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