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In addition to many bug fixes and performance improvements, some specifics include: New Features & Settings Legacy PayPal gateway to allow for older PayPal Subscriptions to still be recognised.Attachment Type Restrictions: You can now choose from three options for file attachments in any post content: No files, Images only (this will actually check to make sure an uploaded file is a valid image) or All files (this is default) - If you choose "All files" you have the option to provide a list of allowed file extensions.Merge Concurrent Posts: If a user makes a post or comment and then makes another post or comment on the same item before any other user, the posts will be merged. There is a setting to disable or set the time limit for this to happen. There is a clear, visual indication when a merge happens to avoid confusion to the end user.Moderators can click and hold on topic and other item titles to quickly edit.New setting to optionally set products in Commerce to have a grace period to remain active for a period of time after expiration.New setting to specify domains to exclude from having rel='nofollow' added to links.The "+ Create" menu at the top of the page now has an option to create an announcement.New button to post a status within the status updates widgetYou can now embed Pages database entries by pasting their link.New widgets for blog entry, gallery images and downloads files feeds.Widgets displaying content feeds can now be given a custom title.Other Improvements The subject lines for emails sent about new content have been changed slightly so email clients can group them better.Some widgets providing duplicate functionality have been merged. For example, "Latest Topics" has been merged into "Topic Feed".Announcements now show on every page by default (but can still be removed).When upgrading, if you have a large database you are presented with an option to run queries manually. You can now opt to run them anyway.Disabling Applications New ability to disable but not uninstall an app.IPS apps that are not up to date will be disabled on upgrade to prevent things breaking.The Support system in the AdminCP will now disable non-IPS apps in addition to all plugins as part of its diagnostics. It will also show you a list if what it is disabling to help you find problems.Notes for translators The public-facing navigation tabs now have language strings separate from the application title (this means translators will need to re-translate the application tabs upon upgrade). Update 4.0.9.1 was released to fix: Making a post might not work on older versions of PHPEditing permissions for a module may not workIssues with widgets after upgradingSome clients seeing apps turning offline on upgrade4.0.9.2 was released to fix: Fixes an issue where comments on Blog entries may not workFixes an issue where custom drop down fields in Pages databases may not work

This is the first fully supported release of IPS Community Suite 4!

IP.Board 3.4.8 is now available in the client area This is a maintenance release to consolidate security updates released since 3.4.7, release additional security updates, and fix some minor bugs impacting many clients. We recommend you upgrade to ensure you have all security updates in place. You can download in the client area and upgrade as normal. Support Notes IPS will no longer provide upgrade services for self-hosted licenses on the 3.x series. You can do the upgrade yourself (it's very easy) but our support will only do upgrades for you to IPS Community Suite 4. If you are a IPS Cloud client we will still do the upgrades for you. IP.Board 3.3.x and related apps will no longer receive any support or security updates after 1 January 2016. IP.Board 3.4.x and related apps will no longer receive security updates after 1 April 2017.

Release Candidate of IPS Community Suite 4.0.0 now Available This means we have left the beta stage where things are unsupported and known to be broken and enter the period between that and final. The Release Candidate phase allows us to partially support the Suite without committing our full resources to it. This step also means that there will still be some bugs in the system but they should not be major issues any longer. You can download IPS Community Suite 4.0.0 RC in your client area. IPS Community in the Cloud clients can request upgrades through support. If you are using our Chat product please note that it is not yet available for version 4.0.0 so please do not upgrade if Chat is required. Important Support Note Release Candidates are partially supported only. There will be bugs in the Release Candidates. Do not use Release Candidates if any sort of issues will impact your ability to enjoy your site. We will assist you in support with any major problems in installing or upgrading from 3.4.7 to make sure your install is online. However, once the site is online and functional, other less critical bugs may be deferred until the next release to fix those issues. We do plan on a fast update schedule but it does mean you may not get fixes for several days. To reiterate: we will assist with major problems that make your Suite not function (install issues, upgrade issues, major problems) but you may have to wait for update releases for other issues. Please keep these support limitations in mind when choosing to use a Release Candidate. Release Candidate Schedule We plan on having several RCs that will be released every few days over the next couple weeks. By doing a rapid release schedule it will allow us to get fixes out to you very quickly and ensure things are as stable as possible for the final, fully supported release. Beta Testers Everyone at IPS greatly appreciates those of you who participated in the beta testing phase. If you did you use beta releases you can upgrade from Beta 8 to RC1 however you may wish to consider a fresh upgrade from 3.4.7 just to ensure you are not carrying over any beta quirks through to RC and final. Our Thanks IPS Community Suite 4.0 took at lot longer than we thought it would as we changed the focus of the Suite and were forced to extend our workload and therefore timeline. We are sorry for these delays and we do hope that you see it will be worth it in the end. IPS4 is a great platform and we are very excited to start adding lots of fun features throughout this year. Upgrading IP.Content to Pages When upgrading from IP.Content to Pages, it is worth noting that because the underlying code has changed, custom templates and custom blocks are not upgradable. Custom templates are removed from the system after the upgrade, and any custom blocks are retained, but left disabled as a reference point for recreating manually. This release of Pages does not have external blocks (this feature allows you use IP.Content blocks on another website or page) and neither does it have relational database field functionality. Both these features will be available in a near-future release.

We are happy to release the sixth beta of IPS Community Suite 4.0! IPS welcomes any clients who enjoy testing beta software to participate and post bugs in our bug tracker. These beta releases help us to provide a more stable final release and the more people who participate in testing the better it is for all. This release makes available: ForumsBlogGalleryDownloadsCalendarCommercePages The upgrade system is now available and you can upgrade from IP.Board 3.4.7 to test this system However: do not upgrade your live community! IPS does not provide technical support or services for beta releases. You can append "-TESTINSTALL" on to the end of your license key to allow to a separate install for test purposes. More information on license keys... Downloading You can download IPS Community Suite 4.0.0 Beta 6 in the client area. Go to your Purchases section, select your license, and click the download link. IPS Community in the Cloud clients do not yet have access to the beta. You will be able to upgrade from Beta 6 to the first supported release of IPS Community Suite 4.0 when it is released. Unless major issues present themselves, we anticipate that Beta 6 is the final beta and next release will be supported. Please do help us test and report bugs. Thank you! Note: If you are already running Beta 5 you can upgrade in your AdminCP. You will see a notice on your Dashboard. If you do not see it: go to Applications and click check for update.

We are happy to release the fifth beta of IPS Community Suite 4.0! IPS welcomes any clients who enjoy testing beta software to participate and post bugs in our bug tracker. These beta releases help us to provide a more stable final release and the more people who participate in testing the better it is for all. This release makes available: ForumsBlogGalleryDownloadsCalendarCommercePages The upgrade system is now available and you can upgrade from IP.Board 3.4.7 to test this system However: do not upgrade your live community! IPS does not provide technical support or services for beta releases. You can append "-TESTINSTALL" on to the end of your license key to allow to a separate install for test purposes. More information on license keys... Downloading You can download IPS Community Suite 4.0.0 Beta 5 in the client area. Go to your Purchases section, select your license, and click the download link. IPS Community in the Cloud clients do not yet have access to the beta. You will be able to upgrade from Beta 5 to Beta 6 when it is released and to all future betas through final release. Depending on how this Beta 5 goes we may not actually have a Beta 6 so please do help us test and report bugs. Thank you! Note: If you are already running Beta 4 you can upgrade in your AdminCP. You will see a notice on your Dashboard. If you do not see it: go to Applications and click check for update.

We are happy to release the fourth beta of IPS Community Suite 4.0! IPS welcomes any clients who enjoy testing beta software to participate and post bugs in our bug tracker. These beta releases help us to provide a more stable final release and the more people who participate in testing the better it is for all. This release makes available: ForumsBlogGalleryDownloadsCalendarCommerce (formerly IP.Nexus)Pages (formerly IP.Content) The upgrade system is now available and you can upgrade from IP.Board 3.4.7 to test this system However: do not upgrade your live community! IPS does not provide technical support or services for beta releases. You can append "-TESTINSTALL" on to the end of your license key to allow to a separate install for test purposes. More information on license keys... Downloading You can download IPS Community Suite 4.0.0 Beta 4 in the client area. Go to your Purchases section, select your license, and click the download link. IPS Community in the Cloud clients do not yet have access to the beta. You will be able to upgrade from Beta 4 to Beta 5 when it is released and to all future betas through final release. Note: If you are already running Beta 3 you can upgrade in your AdminCP. You will see a notice on your Dashboard. If you do not see it go to Applications and click check for update.

We are happy to release the third beta of IPS Community Suite 4.0! IPS welcomes any clients who enjoy testing beta software to participate and post bugs in our bug tracker. These beta releases help us to provide a more stable final release and the more people who participate in testing the better it is for all. This release makes available: ForumsBlogGalleryDownloadsCalendarThis release does not contain Commerce (formerly IP.Nexus), Pages (formerly IP.content), or Chat. These three apps will be released soon as a separate download in a pre-release state. Both are nearly ready to go to full beta. The upgrade system is now available and you can upgrade from IP.Board 3.4.7 to test this system However: do not upgrade your live community! IPS does not provide technical support or services for beta releases. You can append "-TESTINSTALL" on to the end of your license key to allow to a separate install for test purposes. More information on license keys... Downloading You can download IPS Community Suite 4.0.0 Beta 3 in the client area. Go to your Purchases section, select your license, and click the download link. IPS Community in the Cloud clients do not yet have access to the beta. You will be able to upgrade from Beta 3 to Beta 4 when it is released and to all future betas through final release. Note: If you are already running Beta 2 you can upgrade in your AdminCP. You will see a notice on your Dashboard. If you do not see it go to Applications and click check for update.

IPS is investigating a possible security exploit reported to us a few hours ago. We are developing a fix for this issue now and anticipate its release tomorrow. Until the fix is released, clients are advised to delete the following file from their community: interface/ipsconnect/ipsconnect.php This will disable the IPS Connect service which is our system to allow for multiple sites to share one login. Most clients will not need this service but if you do use it then we still suggest you temporarily disable until a fix is released tomorrow. IPS Community in the Cloud clients: we have already disabled this feature for you so you are not impacted by this exploit. Update: Patches are now available.

We are happy to release the second beta of IPS Community Suite 4.0! IPS welcomes any clients who enjoy testing beta software to participate and post bugs in our bug tracker. These beta releases help us to provide a more stable final release and the more people who participate in testing the better it is for all. This release makes available: Forums Blog Gallery Downloads Calendar This release does not contain Commerce (formerly IP.Nexus), Pages (formerly IP.content), or Chat. These three apps will be released soon as a separate download. The upgrade system is now available and you can upgrade from IP.Board 3.4.7 to test this system However: do not upgrade your live community! IPS does not provide technical support or services for beta releases. You can append "-TESTINSTALL" on to the end of your license key to allow to a separate install for test purposes. Downloading You can download IPS Community Suite 4.0.0 Beta 2 in the client area. Go to your Purchases section, select your license, and click the download link. IPS Community in the Cloud clients do not yet have access to the beta. That will be coming soon. You will be able to upgrade from Beta 2 to Beta 3 when it is released and to all future betas through final release. If you are not interested in downloading our beta releases you can still check out our IPS Community Suite 4.0 preview site to see the new version in action. Note: If you are already running Beta 1 you can upgrade in your AdminCP. You will see a notice on your Dashboard. Discussion Please post in our special Beta Releases forum on the preview site for anything about Beta 2. Enjoy! We will be upgrading our own site next week. Stay tuned! Update: Pages pre-release now available.

We are happy to release the first beta of IPS Community Suite 4.0! IPS welcomes any clients who enjoy testing beta software to participate and post bugs in our bug tracker. These beta releases help us to provide a more stable final release and the more people who participate in testing the better it is for all. This release makes available: Forums Blog Gallery Downloads Calendar This release does not contain Commerce (formerly IP.Nexus), Pages (formerly IP.content), or Chat. These three apps will be released soon as a separate download. The upgrade system is now available and you can upgrade from IP.Board 3.4.7 to test this system However: do not upgrade your live community! IPS does not provide technical support or services for beta releases. You can append "-TESTINSTALL" on to the end of your license key to allow to a separate install for test purposes. Downloading You can download IPS Community Suite 4.0.0 Beta 1 in the client area. Go to your Purchases section, select your license, and click the download link. IPS Community in the Cloud clients do not yet have access to the beta. That will be coming soon. You will be able to upgrade from Beta 1 to Beta 2 when it is released and to all future betas through final release. If you are not interested in downloading our beta releases you can still check out our IPS Community Suite 4.0 preview site to see the new version in action. Discussion Please post in our special Beta Releases forum on the preview site for anything about Beta 1. Enjoy!

If you like living on the edge and testing new products we would love your help in testing IPS Community Suite 4.0! We now have pre-release versions available for download if you are an active Community Suite license holder. Pre-Release vs. Beta This is a pre-release which means we are not quite done adding/changing some areas of the Suite. It also means that you cannot upgrade between each pre-release. Once we reach Beta stage you will be able to upgrade from Beta 1 to Beta 2 and so on. Important Information This is a preview of unfinished software. Do not install this on a live server or attempt to upgrade your current community. Please. You cannot upgrade between pre-release builds so you will have do a clean install each time we update this package. This will change when we reach proper beta stage. Only download this preview if you are comfortable testing software with known issues and want to provide bug reports and feedback. We provide no support for these pre-release builds. Please post any bugs you find in the bug tracker and feedback/questions on the preview site. We are getting close to a public beta and the final, supported release of IPS Community Suite 4.0 and appreciate your help getting there! Download Pre-Release Now Note that Nexus, Content, and Chat are not yet available for download but will show up on our preview site soon.

The IPS Community Suite 4.0 preview site is open and ready for you to start browsing our new software! We have had the site quietly open for a few weeks now getting feedback and addressing issues. We want to make sure everyone is aware so you get a chance to look at what's new. Register and have a look around at what's new. Read our updates forum to check out videos demoing the system. Get involved in feedback and bug testing. Everyone at IPS is very proud of 4.0 and really hope you enjoy it. Public beta releases of 4.0 are not yet available but are just around the corner so take this opportunity to become familiar with IPS 4.0 so your community is ready when it's released. See you on the preview site! Please keep all feedback about 4.0 on the preview site so we can keep things organized. Thanks!

The site eGullet.org was literally the first client of Invision Power Services when our company was founded over 12 years ago. Steven Shaw, along with his partner, stepped up and supported IPS in its first days and stayed with us all these years. They were our first paying client, our first hosting client, and often the first to get early betas of our releases. It was with great sadness that I read today of the passing of Steven Shaw. Steven was a friend and mentor to me personally. He advised me as IPS grew, provided valuable feedback, was our first attorney (he actually registered the first code copyright of IPB), and was always on board to hear out ideas. My first trip to New York City, my first cruise, and many great dining ideas (the man who convinced me to try wine) were all based around his friendly advice. He honored me with a copy of his book when it was released. And of course he introduced me to the joys of Julia Child by shipping me some old recordings of her show. Steven Shaw will be missed. I personally am in debt to his generosity and advice over the years as is IPS as a company. For other great tributes please Google his name.

We have seen a huge increase in people switching to us over the last year or two and want to take advantage of this momentum and offer an exciting conversion promotion. But first some information... Our Pre-Packaged Converters Our conversion scripts make it very easy to convert your existing community to the IPS Community Suite. The process is very simple: just install IPS, upload the converters, and then tell the converters what software you're coming from. It will ask you a few questions and then copy over your data to our format. For many systems we even include scripts to 301 redirect your old links so internal references and search engines don't get lost! Our converters are free to use and well-tested with thousands of successful conversions. Of course converting is not an exact science and things change all the time so we are always releasing updates to make them better and faster. Need some help? But some clients really do not have the desire to take on the process of converting data themselves. In this case we do offer professional services for a fee to have us do it for you. Normally these fees range from $500 - $1000 but for the month of December we are offering a flat-rate fee of $350 to convert your community to IPS if it is on the list of one of our pre-made converters. Just contact [email protected] to get started. Even better news: if you're converting to IPS Community in the Cloud we will convert your existing database at no cost! Contact [email protected] for full information. Converting from something else? If your software is not listed on our pre-made converter list we can still assist in converting. Maybe you're using something that's old, niche, or even custom. We have a lot of experience converting people to our platform and would love to assist you. Contact [email protected] with questions. What about 4.0? If you follow our blog entries you know we are hard at work on the next version of our software: IPS Social Suite 4.0. When version 4.0 is released if you have an active license you will of course get access at no extra charge! Upgrading from 3.4 to 4.0 will be very easy and our staff can even do it for you if you like. vBulletin Converter Update Over the last several months we have seen a huge increase in interest from vBulletin users wanting to convert to IPS. As we are asked so often, we want to highlight some of the key reasons to switch to us. We do not make you re-buy with each new major version release. So long as your IPS license is active you get access to new versions. We do not limit your support ticket access or charge extra fees. With an active license you get private access to our support staff. Our staff will install our software on your server at no extra charge. Our staff will even install major upgrades on your server at no extra charge. We have a whole community suite: forums, blog, gallery, CMS, chat, ecommerce, support, and with the flexibility of our platform the possibilities are endless. The IPS Marketplace is a great resource for our clients to get enhancements for their community. Think Apple's AppStore but for IPS products. IPS makes community software and services. That's all we do and our focus is helping you succeed not working against you. Ready to convert? Have Questions? You can download our free converters to give them a try. If you have questions about IPS before purchasing please email [email protected] and we would be happy to assist. And as a reward for reading through the end there's one more thing: use the coupon code SWITCH through the end of December for 10% off your order.

IPS is happy to offer 15% off starting now through Monday on all new purchases for both new and existing clients! This includes all software licenses and Community in the Cloud hosting. This is a great time to add on those extra Suite applications you're missing or to go ahead and try out IPS if you have always been considering us. Just use the coupon code HOLIDAY2013 at checkout. Conversion Promotion Coming Soon... Are you using another community software and thinking of switching to IPS? We will be posting a great conversion promotion on Tuesday for those wanting help in converting their community data to our format. So take advantage of the 15% coupon above to order your licenses or hosting services now and then stay tuned for our conversion promotion next week!

We have a few updates to our services to share with you. Community in the Cloud For over 11 years IPS has provided hosting services for clients that want a turn-key approach to their online community. Over time we have become more and more focused on community hosting solutions so it seemed like a good time to drop the older "hosting" term and adopt a new name for our service: Community in the Cloud. Granted it's the buzzword of the day but we were in the cloud before the cloud was a term :smile:. Right now it's all that you had before but presented in a much easier to understand format. Check out our new information page: http://www.invisionpower.com/cloud-pricing This name and presentation change is just step one. We will soon be increasing our storage quotas and have some other great changes on the way! New Support Package We often get clients who are looking for a higher level of support beyond just tickets. They want training, schedule upgrade service, consultations, and more. Of course offering that level of support is intensive and in the past we have always custom-quoted such services. Now to streamline we we have created a new Premium Support package that includes: Implementation Scheduled installation time Initial training & consultation by phone or live chat Post-deployment best practices training Custom migration from other platforms* Custom skin design* Custom single sign on (SSO)* SupportSame business day ticket response Scheduled upgrade times Custom skin upgrades between versions* Security updates applied before public release Monthly MaintenanceLogs checked for signs of problems Advise and schedule if upgrades are available Database maintenance Settings reviewed for optimal performance Best practices reviews * Custom services may incur additional fees The new Premium Support package is $500 every 6 months and is available for purchase or upgrade today. If you have any questions feel free to email [email protected] and we will be happy to help. Transfer Promotion If you are interested in moving to IPS Community in the Cloud we are offering a promotion that should make now the best time to make the switch. From now until 1 September 2013 we will offer free transfers and free conversions. This means if you are already using IPS Community Suite on your own servers but want to switch to the CiC we will move your data for you. It also means that if you are using a different community software provider and are ready to upgrade to CiC we will both transfer your data and convert it using one of our pre-made converters.

The IPS Marketplace is the place to go for plugins, skins, language packs, full applications, and other resources provided by the IPS community. Some resources are free and some have a small fee. It's a great way to find ways to personalize your community and expand its functions. Some updates... I wanted to share some general statistics on the Marketplace (yes, I'm channeling Apple here). Yesterday we reached a great milestone: Since its inception, we have paid out over $250,000 to contributors. Yes over a quarter million dollars has been paid out to those that sell resources in the Marketplace! What's even more exciting is the growth we are seeing. In fact over 40% of that total payout was done just this year! Because I love any excuse to play with Excel here's a chart showing growth trend: We also now have over 500 individual contributors that are providing both free and paid resources in the Marketplace. Improvements coming soon We are in the process of doing some cleaning up to make resources easier to find. Expect to see new categories based on what things do (moderation tools, promotion, utilities, etc.) rather than what they are (hook, mod, app, etc.) which we think will make finding resources for your community even easier. A new ability to allow us to feature more than one resource at a time has already been launched. Take a moment to browse the IPS Marketplace and see if there are any resources that would benefit your community. If you find one don't forget to thank the contributor!

IPS is always looking for ways to assist our clients in monetization and promotion of their community traffic. After we saw so many clients successfully using VigLink on their community we decided to bundle it directly in the AdminCP under the Community Enhancements section. Since then many clients have reported success in using their service. Many clients have also since looked into other monetization options and have started to really grow. Information from VigLink: If you want to give it a try simply visit your AdminCP and click Community Enhancements to turn VigLink on and start earning. IPS does benefit from this relationship however we do not take any of your commission of course.

We have launched our new blog The Development Channel to allow our development staff to more frequently update our clients on everything that goes on behind the scenes. From the technical aspects, to fun insights, and new feature announcements you can follow The Development Channel to follow our software being made.

We are happy to report some really dramatic improvements to the IPS Converters. If you have been considering switching to IPS from another community software now is the time. Performance Improvements One area for improvement we focused on was the overall time it took to do a conversion. Doing a conversion is always going to be a time consuming process as it involves translating all of your data from your old format to IPS format. But we have made two big improvements: MySQL queries, where possible, now do one 'extended' query rather than thousands of smaller queries. This means your data is fetched in one, large batch and stored rather than many smaller batches. The member conversion routine has been sped up dramatically. Some test conversions are seeing an 80% speed increase on members alone. Example statistic: 15 million post community converted 1000 posts a second and about 800 topics a second. Converted completely in 4 hours. The old converter could take more than a day to do the same. That's a huge improvement! Software Specific Improvements vBulletin Subscriptions now directly import to IP.Nexus Gallery 5 support Photopost 8 support XenForo 'likes' converted. XenForo personal conversations converted. vBulletin conversions now use the same forum/topic/post/member IDs on IPS Community Suite. This is great for SEO. Feedback Appreciated We are continuing to work on improvements to our converters. If you perform a conversion please submit a ticket and let us know of any issues you might experience so we can assist you. Special Switch Promotion If you are considering switching to the IPS Community Suite we would welcome you as a new IPS client. We are happy to provide 10% discount on new license purchases using the coupon code SWITCH at checkout. This coupon code is valid until 15 December 2012. With the recent release of IP.Board 3.4 now is a great time to take another look at IPS!

We are nearly ready to release the supported version of IP.Board 3.4 and are very excited to get this great new release out to you. Beta Testing We are currently doing a public beta test of IP.Board 3.4. If you are comfortable testing pre-release software please consider testing and letting us know any bugs you might find. You can find the pre-release on our forums but you will need to login as an active IPS Client to access. The more people who test our beta releases the better for everyone! What's New Please read these blog entries for a full list and explanation of what's new in this release. IP.SEO Removed (we have removed IP.SEO and merged all its functionality right into IP.Board!) Editor Improvements IPS Connect (please note that with the release of Connect our old Converge product will no longer function) SEO Improvements VigLink Integration Best Answer Feature AdminCP Interface Enhancements Bulk Mail with Mandrill Miscellaneous Enhancements IPS CDN Service In addition to the specifics in the blog entries we have fixed many issues and made many smaller improvements. New Backup Service Delayed We had announced a new Backup Service however this service will be not be available at release time. We want to be sure the service works reliably and would rather delay a bit than give you something that may not work properly. Obviously something as important as backups on your community is something we want to feel confident about offering. Depending on how our beta testing goes we hope to release IP.Board 3.4 by the end of November. If you are comfortable testing we encourage you to do so so we can be sure this release is as stable as possible. Thank you!

The new IPS Backup Service is our latest addition to our Community Enhancements services being introduced in IP.Board 3.4. This service allows for remote-backups of your community database processed constantly without any work on your part. How it Works The service works by logging all "write" queries to your database that are processed by the IPS Community Suite. What this means is that any time a database entry is inserted, updated, or deleted a log of that action is created. We ignore what we call transactional tables like sessions and topic markers that are updated often but if you were to lose those tables it does not really matter to your community. When you first activate the service it populates an entry in this log table for all existing items in your database to start the process fresh. The Suite then takes these logged queries and, every so often on a task, will collect a certain amount of the oldest queries and send them to the IPS Backup Service servers (over a secure connection of course). It limits how many it sends per-cycle to ensure we don't run out of memory or reach any post limits. Once those queries are successfully sent to the remote server it will delete them from the log. Using this method we do not have to create huge database dumps of your community which can cause all sorts of issues with timeouts, disk space, bandwidth requirements, and general hosting problems. Security and Protection When your data is sent to our servers it is stored on what we call our Internet gateway server. This server is a sort of dumb system that just accepts the incoming data and temporarily stores it for later processing. The "real" storage servers that permanently process and store your data are not even connected to the Internet. Of course we also implement other security measures that we will not get into but by starting with this very basic approach of not even being on the public Internet you can imagine that we take security seriously. Your data is stored in three states: active, archive, and snapshot. Active is your database that exists as it processes the incoming data. It's always the most recent copy. Of course the problem with this is if someone were to get into your community and prune all your posts that prune action is also sent to our backup servers meaning that your remote backup would also be pruned. Obviously that's an issue. To mitigate such risks we also automatically take a weekly archive of the active backup. We keep two of these archive backups (two weeks) at a time. This means that if someone were to do a prune of your topics or, for example, actually just shut off the backup services in your AdminCP you would still have a recent archive on our systems. The snapshot state is basically the same as an archive but it's one that you can manually request in the Client Area that's taken when you tell us. Failure Support At any time various things can happen that might make your remote backup no longer be of any use to you. Maybe there was an issue in your IPS Community Suite that caused an important query to not be logged. Perhaps you manually ran a query outside of the Suite. Maybe our remote servers suffered an issue. You never really know and that's why the system has two-way failure support. If the backup processing on your install has issues, or you manually do something, you can request a reset of the service in the AdminCP. This will basically start you from scratch and empty your remote backup to start from the beginning (note that archives are kept to keep this from being used maliciously). On the other hand, if our backup service has a fault (or it detects that there is some mis-match with your data) the service will do the reverse and self-delete then tell your Suite to restart from scratch. The idea here is to think ahead and recognize faults can happen and have the ability to both manually and automatically refresh a backup as needed. Accessing Data The last step in the process is of course accessing your backed up data whenever you may need it. We employ a dual authentication process to protect you: [*]Later when you might request to access your backup an email is first sent to the stored email address in step 1 with a download key. [*]Once the backup is ready a second email is sent to the current email address on record on your client account with a download link. [*]You need both the download key and the download link to access. So why do all that? The scenario we are concerned about is if someone were to gain access to your client area account on our site and change your email address to their email address. In that case they could download your whole database through our system. However, since we store your old email address that cannot be edited this makes it so they cannot access as they need to be able to check that email account too. If you lose access to one or both email addresses we will have alternate procedures in place. Of course this is not a 100% solution, nothing really is when dealing with account security, but we think it's a great extra level of protection for you. Pricing and Service As you can imagine this sort of service will require a lot of fine-tuning and will also become a mission-critical component of your community so we want to be sure we get it right. Therefore, we will initially be launching the IPS Backup Service as a beta service and there will be no cost to use it. The service will improve over time while in beta based on your feedback and, once we are comfortable that we can stand behind it and you can trust it, we will be able to announce pricing and full support. During the beta stage will be engaging our clients who are comfortable with database management to simulate failures and restores to confirm the viability of a backup. This service is very important so it's also important we check every angle possible. We are very excited and hopeful that the IPS Backup Service will be a welcomed addition to the IPS Community Suite. The service was created because of the sometimes heartbreaking situations we see in technical support from people who lose years of community data because their host fails. We really hope that this service will help people out in those horrible situations. Note that if you host your community with IPS we already perform backups for you. [*]When you first activate the IPS Backup Service your current client area email address is stored.

IP.Board 3.4 is approaching and will be released soon with all sorts of great enhancements such as SEO improvements, upgraded editor, login enhancements, core performance improvements, lots of minor changes from feedback, and more still to be announced. This is a great time to take a look at IPS if your community might still be running another software. Perhaps you have a friend or a site you visit frequently using another software and you want to encourage them to switch to the IPS Community Suite. By starting the switch process now you can have your community ready to go, be familiar with IPS software and services, and have any questions answered so when IP.Board 3.4 is released you can jump right on this new version! Advantages of IPS IPS prides itself on a few key points that have driven our success for over 10 years making community software. While there are many points these are the key factors: Our staff is engaged in the community We use our own software Great customer service Active, responsive development Switching to IPS If you are using another software provider and are ready to switch to IPS please check out our converter page on our site. We offer a free converter script that supports many existing packages. If yours is not listed please contact us and we will do our best to assist you. The converter script is very easy to use and makes a copy of your old data so you are free to try a few test conversions before going live. That's a great way to be sure all is well as switching software can be disruptive to your community so the more careful you are the better. Depending on what software you're switching from, our converter scripts can convert various data in your community. For many software packages we also offer 301 redirection scripts so your old URLs will automatically redirect to their new location. This allows for as minimal an impact as possible to your SEO and search engine exposure. Of course changing software will always have a short and medium term impact to your visibility but these scripts are a great way to help mitigate that. Ask Us or our Clients If you have any questions, need some advice, or want to get first hand experience just email sales and we will be happy to help. You might also consider posting in our pre-sales forum where you can get first-hand information directly from IPS clients. By talking to IPS clients directly you will get a realistic view of what's involved from others who have done it. There's no better way to decide if IPS is best for you than to talk to clients who use our software and services. Special Promotion We are running a special promotion now through 1 October 2012 for anyone wanting to switch to IPS Community Suite. Use the coupon code SWITCH at checkout to receive 10% off your entire order. This is in addition to the existing bundle discounts you get when purchasing multiple IPS apps! Take this great opportunity to have a look at IPS Community Suite. Tell a friend or convince a web site you visit to have a look. Try our free demo to experiment with our Suite for a few days. Ask our sales team questions or post in our pre-sales forum to get information from existing IPS clients. Our community and staff are welcoming and here to help! Current IPS clients can also use our SWITCH coupon code. It's a great time to get another license... We talk to clients, joke with clients, and listen to feedback. Sometimes we cannot implement every bit of feedback we receive (image the chaos if we tried!) so we try to spot trends to pick out what is clearly a must have change. Both on our company forums and our own web site we use what we make. Nearly all of our staff comes from a background where they also ran their own community giving us a unique perspective as both creators and consumers of our services. The technical support services we offer are second to none and any IPS client will tell you that we always do our best to help a client out with technical problems as quickly as we can. Perhaps our biggest advantage and difference is our continual development and improvements. You will never see us sitting around idle. There is always something new in development or something old getting improved. Sometimes these are big changes and sometimes they're small but we are always doing something behind the scenes. We never abandon our clients and allow our software to stagnate.