Charles

The first release candidate of IP.Board 3.0.0 is coming very soon. Everyone here at IPS wants to thank all of our customers who took their time to test the various beta releases of IP.Board to date. We also want to thank those who participated in the IPB3 preview forum and gave their pre-beta feedback. IPS believes that the public beta process was an important part of this process. Although the process took longer than we originally anticipated, it is our firm belief that taking feedback and testing results from our customer base has created a great product we can all be proud of. Not only did we fix various bugs and issues but we also took the time to make certain changes to IPB3 when people pointed out areas we thought were great but turned out not so great. Granted it took time to make those changes but the end results are very good for all. That is the beauty of collaborating with our customers and are happy with the outcome. Frequently Asked Questions We are receiving various questions about the upcoming releases. Here are a few below. Some are repeats but good to review. What is a Release Candidate? 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. Note that technical support and service is not available until we reach the final, supported version. Keep in mind that, although this is a release candidate, there will probably still be some bugs and issues so make your decision to use the software carefully. Is there a cost to upgrade? So long as you have a current and active support/upgrade license there is no cost to upgrade to IPB3. Also, if you are on IPS Hosting, there is no cost to upgrade. If your Standard license is expired you can renew it for $25. If you need help just contact customer service. Can you upgrade my board for me? We will be happy to upgrade your board when IP.Board 3.0.0's final version is released. However, we do not provide support services for the release candidate stage. Keep in mind that all active IP.Board licenses come with free upgrade services so you can upgrade your install yourself or our staff would be happy to do it for you at no cost to you. What about IP.Blog/Gallery/Downloads? The release candidates for the applications will be available just a few days after IP.Board's release candidate. We are staggering the releases so bug reports can be confirmed that they are only regarding IP.Board itself. On the final release day, all applications will be released right along with IP.Board. Please note that the updates to the applications did not contain any major changes at this time but instead were updated to work with IP.Board 3.0.0's code. One of the very first updates made after IP.Board 3.0.0's final release will be major upgrades to the applications. Will IP.Board 3.0.0 be encoded? The beta releases were encoded so we could control the releases and how long they were in use. Starting with RC1, IP.Board 3.0.0 will not be encoded. IP.Board 3.0.0 RC 1 will be out very soon. We hope you all enjoy!

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!

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!

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!

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.

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!

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!

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!

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...

This video shows the ticket weighting functionality and how you can prioritize ticket listings. View Video

This next video shows the form manager functionality in the IP.Nexus content management application. View Video