Charles

I think this boils down to understanding appropriate scope for services. Invision also does not support standing up and configuring apache, nginx, mysql, postfix, exim, iptables, or most fundamentally, PHP for stand-alone installs.
There are a lot of moving parts to self-hosting, and much of the responsibility of standing up an appropriate environment will come down to your team. That said, some general guides on configuration requirements (as an example, no assistance compiling or installing PHP, yet IPS gives a list of required PHP extensions) may be useful. In our implementation of Redis, we didn't need anything like that to get up and running.
You've identified a knowledge gap that you and your team have, that your hosting team can't fill in for you, and that IPS doesn't have an offering to assist with filling. Great news: Redis is an open source, highly utilized solution, and there are many resources online to help get you up and running and using Redis. A quick search found a number of guides, videos, podcasts, and walkthroughs to help you setup and use Redis.
If you don't want to fill this knowledge gap, you might be better served with finding a hosting company that will provide and maintain these things for you. The most obvious solution would be IPS' own hosted community offering. They'll take care of everything for you, and you're paying for that level of support.

This is one of those cases where you need to be sure you are aware of what you are doing when you are self-hosting. I do not believe our software should be in the business of helping you run your server. You should have the technical know how to check your S3 bucket size and your own server's disk space before starting a file storage move.
Keeping track of server disk space or S3 bucket size is not really up to our software - that is the job of the system administrator.

This is one of those cases where you need to be sure you are aware of what you are doing when you are self-hosting. I do not believe our software should be in the business of helping you run your server. You should have the technical know how to check your S3 bucket size and your own server's disk space before starting a file storage move.
Keeping track of server disk space or S3 bucket size is not really up to our software - that is the job of the system administrator.

BBcode is being phased out. So it would be best that you start to get your members to use the actual editors. It works with similar/same key presses for things like Word.

Yes, point #2 is valid but I guess I have never actually seen a case where what I typed was not WYSIWYG.

Mostly by not getting hung up on page speed score tests and worrying more about user experience, I expect.
 

This will be standard in 4.1.18.

Your support account should be fixed now. Sorry about that!

Your support account should be fixed now. Sorry about that!

This only happens if your server is having problems processing an upgrade action in a reasonable amount of time. If it happens, you can always exit your browser and restart the upgrader. It will remember where it left off and try the proper way again.

I don't think it's our responsibility to teach people how to install other software. Redis itself has documentation. If you are not able to install and configure Redis then you should not really be using it.

Yes, that's something we have considered. It's just an intensive operation to do a search and replace across a database. Imagine a site with millions of posts.
It's something we want to do but just need to work on the engineering side of it.

Yes, that's something we have considered. It's just an intensive operation to do a search and replace across a database. Imagine a site with millions of posts.
It's something we want to do but just need to work on the engineering side of it.

The Marketplace is a service. While you are of course acquiring third party resources, you are not obtaining them directly from third party authors and it is really no different than other app stores. Your transaction is conducted through IPS and the Marketplace is a remote service. The point here is just to dispel the silly notion that we're in "breach of contract." The EULA makes clear the fact that a renewal is required for all updates, services, etc.
To provide further clarification, an expired license does not shut off the software and you may continue its use in an "as-is" state (at time of expiration), but it does effectively render both the license and status as a customer as inactive. It is no secret that our company is based on the recurring investment model, so while we don't want anyone to feel held hostage to renewals and we try to reasonably accommodate all customers past and present, our decisions and prioritization of goals will ultimately be in the interest of those continuing along side of us, sharing our overall vision.
With all of that said, this topic has been discussed several times and ultimately, the Marketplace was moved to the AdminCP for what I hope are obvious reasons. A significantly improved and smooth experience for the majority of customers who want a point-and-click experience, consistent with most non-classic "forum" platforms. We want to take every reasonable measure possible to ensure that when you click to install something from the Marketplace, it will be a successful and safe experience for you. We've tightened the framework around that to ensure you're notified with seamless updates from authors and anything installed through the Marketplace framework has been reasonably reviewed by us. We made the decision to disallow manual downloads from the Marketplace as it is entirely counterproductive to the goal we set out to achieve in the first place.
I want to stress that you are welcome to contact an author for manual file provisions if you would like and we do not prohibit them from providing it. You may also purchase from some authors directly if you wish. The only caveat for both cases is, you would use the manual (old) framework to install and update these resources manually. A warning will also be generated because these are untested files - similar to Mac and Windows. Beyond that, we're not standing in your way of using the "old school" way - we are just not facilitating it as again, it is counterproductive to our goal of something that resembles more of a proper app store and not just a repository of "files."
I'm sorry for the disappointment to those find the previous method to work better for them. As you know, we try to take on board as much feedback as we can - after all, there's no point to any of this without customers. Nonetheless, while we've heard the feedback loud and clear, we do not intend on reversing course on downloads or policy changes, so at this juncture, I would very respectfully ask that we move on to other, more actionable feedback items.
Thank you as always for your continued business.
 

I’m not sure where you heard this but we do not have plans to discontinue custom buttons. 

I’m not sure where you heard this but we do not have plans to discontinue custom buttons. 

I’m not sure where you heard this but we do not have plans to discontinue custom buttons. 

I’m not sure where you heard this but we do not have plans to discontinue custom buttons. 

I'll take this opportunity to give props to IPS and the community as well 👏 

I am onboard with IPS for long, and here is my positive feedback on the current state of the nation:
 
- I love the strategy of moving from Pure forum to communities, with a tightly integrantes set of apps. This was a crucial move that allowed IPS to escape from the fierce competitivo on a shrinking market. As everybody knows, fóruns are disappearing, yet people are still getting together. This is why i prefer IPS package Over XF ir VB because there is a whole set of tightly packed tools to get my people collaborating.
- I love the new theme. "Oh it's too white" "oh só much white space"... For me it is definitely a great step forward. Is ir perfect? No, but it was definitely a major step forward!
- Integrations! We are not alone in the cyberspace, and there are many great apps and services out there. Integration with Zapier will be a major leap um interoperability and would allow IPS users to extract more value of their communities. I am looking forward to see IPS on Zapier, it os just taking too long.
- Support. Has been great. Thanks!
 
 
There is also less positive aspects, most related to pricing, business and evolution of the compromise with customers through time,  but now it is not the time to talk about that.

We are fixing the issue with how this is implemented for Cloud sites in our next release.

For such a thing you can use the Follow system but choose not to notify you of activity or you can use your browser's built-in bookmark feature.

Paul, the feedback truly is appreciated. With anything, there are inherent risks. You can buy anything and it can go unsupported, warranty denied, or any number of things you hadn't hoped for. The Marketplace is an inherent risk to IPS as well. Anytime there's a fraudulent purchase, a developer disappears and/or there are chargebacks, IPS bears the burden of such - financially and otherwise. When you are dealing with inexpensive resources at a 10% commission, one $15 chargeback it can take dozens of transactions to recoup the loss from that one previous transaction. The Marketplace, from a financial standpoint, is a loss leader for IPS, but it's something that adds value to the product and enhances the customer experience. So, yes, there are risks - for everyone. We've drastically improved the footprint and presence of the Marketplace for 4.5 and thus increased exposure - which ultimately, will be great for everyone. With that, however, necessitates the need to leverage tighter control of the Marketplace. If you buy an app in the App Store or Play, you don't get the source. If the developer disappears, that's the end of the app. That is the unfortunate reality that we all face virtually everywhere else. 99% of the time, the risk pays off.
I completely understand where you are coming from, Paul. Truly. You are fortunate to have the skills and desire to get your hands dirty. I do, however, have the advantage of knowing our customer base and  very respectfully - you are indeed the exception, not the norm. Most want to point, click and go. I understand the argument that has been raised: "why not have both?" - we effectively do, even if it's not quite what you had in mind. You can manually install resources and if you wish to purchase something in the Marketplace, there is nothing stopping you from contacting the author and asking for files and likewise, nothing preventing the author from providing it to you. The only caveat is it's installed through the unofficial installation side of the framework and thus unsupported. Beyond that, if the author agrees with your assessment that you should have the ability to view and alter their resources, what we've done in 4.5 should have no bearing on you. If you're asking to have it like it was, I'm afraid we have no intention of doing so, to be completely candid. Whether that changes in the future is unknown, but at this juncture, we will continue to improve the infrastructure, processes and work with the authors to create the best experience we possibly can. There will be bumps. There always is - as we speak, there's an app I can't open on my iPhone since an update - it just crashes. I've been doing this long enough to know things happen and I don't expect the developer or Apple to catch everything. Likewise, we can't predict the perfect storm in every circumstance and when we find something, we will all learn from it, do our best to ensure it doesn't happen again and rather than mask issues that bubble up outside of the Marketplace, they will be dealt to ensure other customers don't encounter the same thing.
Invision is moving in the direction that the majority of the Internet has already moved towards. Point. Click. Done. Fewer and fewer people have any interest in the nuts and bolts of things anymore. We used to have our own datacenter space long ago. I remember personally, in our earlier years, getting late night calls because a power supply failed, or one of the Cisco 6509's didn't come back after an update, or a processor failed. I know nothing about latest server hardware and I haven't had to telnet into a power strip in years... do you know why? Because I don't have or want to. 🙂 Our infrastructure is housed entirely within AWS these days. They do what they do, so we can do what we do and while they aren't perfect either... it works. That is what the overwhelming majority of customers want. Of course, if I wanted to get my hands dirty and rack a server, there are still colo providers available. If we wanted to download, hack up and mess with a collaboration and communication tool - we could, but why? That's what Slack does and I don't care what their code looks like, or what the third party developer's code looks like. It's point. Click. Done. If there's no done, they will work until there is. Again, it may not be your ideal outcome and I really do understand the mistrust, but we just can't be something to everyone and in this case, we're focusing on the things you shouldn't -have- to focus on vs carving out space for you to rack your own server. Others do that well, but we are moving away from that model and I do realize it's a big change for some. We hate to alienate or turn away anyone, we really do.
In short: I would encourage you to contact authors moving forward if you want a copy of a resource and see if that's an option, either as a courtesy or by purchasing from their site instead of the Marketplace. We are standing firm on our position with regards to how the Marketplace will function moving forward. You have my word and commitment to making that the best possible experience it can be. We will also improve communication for these types of things in the future. I think we just assumed everyone would welcome the change - who doesn't like simplicity, right? There's obviously a few that do care and we'll be more mindful of that.
Thanks again for taking the time to provide concise and constructive feedback, Paul. It's appreciated.

Aren't people who use IE11 used to most of the Internet not working correctly? I mean it's not like it's just us who have said no more to 2003 😉
Or maybe they don't realize most things either do not work right or are otherwise not 100% on IE11? Either way: we are moving forward not looking back and it's not really our responsibility to "warn" people that they are out of date.

Even Microsoft will not support IE11 (or legacy Edge) in any way from next year, including in its own products like Teams. Other major sites like Twitter are starting to drop any support too. It won't be long until you'll struggle to use the web on IE11. Technically we have not supported it for a long time, but because we held back on modern CSS features, it still mostly worked. For 4.5, we decided now was the time to press ahead with improvements and drop support ourselves.
By dropping support, we've been able to use newer CSS features that benefit designers (and therefore site owners), simplify our theme (with more improvements to come), and we'll also be able to begin the process of modernizing our javascript.
If your community has a significant percentage of IE11 users due to your audience, you may prefer to stay on 4.4 (though that, understandably, has drawbacks too). If you're just an individual IE11 user, I would strongly suggest using a newer browser - literally any of them would be a better choice.