Nihonto

I definitely consider this not working as intended too and it's something I frequently deal with.
It frustrates my customers and me personally. I can't see why anyone would want it to work this way.
You have subscription options available monthly and annually, and once someone has opted for a monthly subscription, they can never let that subscription expire and opt for an annual one instead?
That makes absolutely zero sense whatsoever. I can't think of a single platform anywhere on the internet that operates this way.
IPS, I've said this many times before, I like you guys and all, but sometimes you are way too hardheaded when it comes to addressing things none of your customers actually want.

Hi,
Will this work ok with PHP8?

This ^
Nginx + PHP-FPM and Cloudflare will make wonders for your site. Moving uploads to S3 may help tremendously too. This must be done in combination with Cloudflare as most S3 providers doesn't have server locations in ZA, except for AWS. CF have two and these will cache your uploaded images for you. This will also free up space on your VPS and possibly lower the RAM usage as more than 50% of the requests will be handled by Cloudflare.
If you reach out to @ASTRAPI he may be able to do a one-time optimization for you. I can assist you with moving your uploads to S3 should you need that. 

The number of bad actors on the internet has exponentially increased after Russia invaded the Ukraine.  Attacks could be originating from all over the world and could impact internet routing between your members and your server. 
Sometimes data might flow as expected and sometimes the flow could be dramatically reduced for periods of time. Problems might exist within your very own server farm that they might not be detecting or willing to admit to. 
Something you might consider investigating is how large is your connection from your server to the internet. 
Your server might have a very high-capacity network card installed but the service provider may throttle the connection down to several hundred megabytes to support handling thousands of servers at a reasonable price point for one and all. 
Things you might want to look into:
What kind of connections does your service provider use to connect with the internet? Can they increase their overall bandwidth at a moment's notice and downgrade when the peak subsides? How intelligent are the routers they are using internally and to connect to their internet providers? Do they have employees well versed in network routing to garner every last bit of throughput and reduced latency the hardware can support at the network and server level? The internet providers contracted by your service provider might not have the infrastructure and support staff to consistently offer stellar performance for everyone globally connecting to them.  Internet traffic can travel down multiple paths to go from one country or countries to another and ultimately make it to your server.  A path taken this hour might not be the same path taken hours or days later.   You might consider seeing if there are any local network support forums with experience with your server provider. They may be able to help you better investigate the root causes of your problem (or at least eliminate possible causes) and guide you to a path to address it.
 

I don't know what your specific issue is all about, but I recommend you sign up for a free Cloudflare account regardless. You will need to move your domain's DNS to Cloudflare to put Cloudflare in between your users and your VPS. Cloudflare will really make a difference, even if you don't end up upgrading to a paid account. 

Just had a look myself and it loads fine for me! a little lag at times but nothing to worry about 

Been having a bit of a problem with subscriptions.
Forum has 6 month "Gold Membership" and 12 month Gold membership that allow for a few added features. No issue there.
However, I cannot pinpoint the exact problem, but it seems as though when the subscriptions expire, if the members don't renew in time, they get marked as inactive. At that point, some say they don't have the option in subscriptions to sign up again and lose the ability to renew.
I think there is also a tie in with subscribers who cancel their recurring Paypal payments and want to do them manually.
Some I granted manual subscriptions to, and when those are expired, they cannot sign up for a new subscription and are locked at inactive.
Looking at my inactive subscribers list, I cannot see a way to make them active again. I am not stupid I think....but this is making me feel stupid.
I've gone round and round the settings and looking for a way for a subscriber who has gone inactive to renew from that date again and become active.
I feel there needs to be more documentation around subscriptions.
One member I added to the 6 month subscriptions list, and he is now listed as a Gold member....but still listed as inactive??
Any help please...and thanks.

I don't know how much it differs from the way I have things set up, but basically, for a while, not sure if by defect or by design, members were able to buy different subscription packages at the same time (of course nobody did that as the only difference in my packages is the amount of time between them, so no point having two subscriptions running simultaneously). However, this had the advantage that, if they wanted to buy a different subscription, once the previous expired, they could, so they could switch from 1 month to 3 months, or 6 months or 1 year, and any way around too. Even for the same duration, if one subscription renewal had expired, they just got a new one.
However, after some upgrade, I can't recall if from 4.4 to 4.5 (though I think that was for me, despite IPS saying the above functionality was never the case for the 4 series, but as I said for me it was, whether it was intended or not, and it suited me fine).
But, after that upgrade, I noticed what you say, which apparently, it's the way it should work by design now. That does not suit me, so I asked @DawPi to create a plugin for me to revert things as they were before. So, you may want to discuss it with him, if you are open to using a third party plugin.

It’s unfortunately how payments in Commerce works. You get a specific time to renew, and once that time has expired, you cannot renew anymore, because the invoice has expired. But you also cannot purchase again, because there is already an invoice pending. But you cannot pay that invoice because it is expired …
Always reminds me of this:
 

Gottit thanks. Hadn't set anything up yet as I wanted to get everything clear in my head before starting.
Did purchase it, will give it a go. Looks good.

This uses permissions like any other app out there. Go to the categories you created and click in the padlock icon and remove the permission to add raffles from the groups you want.

Sure. Go to the Raffles settings -> Commerce or Integration tab and choose the payment method  there.

Download them too. It will keep old phpBB urls working.

@Adriano FariaPlease message me when it's working and I'll purchase it. Thanks.

Hi,
you can see the most common banner sizes e. g. here https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7031480 I would recommend to use common sizes as the most companies/advertisers would have those formats. 
While uploading you image ads you can check Upload smaller versions? in AdminCP.

The first link gives you also the hint what sizes should be used on what devices. As an idea, you can use two versions: 300x200 on mobile and 300x600 on the desktop and tablets. I usually do not differ between desktop and tablets.
The images are resized automatically in IPS, though I would not want to resize automatically an ad format 970x90. It would be extreme small without proper mobile version if resized. In this case I would use 970x90 on desktop, 728x90 on tablets and 300x100 on mobile. 
There is no tutorial on what banner sizes would be better. It depends on the banner content and location on the page, so that you have to figure out yourself what banner in what size placed in special ad location looks good/bad on different devices.

I may do that for you. Just PM me. I've made dozen od such upgrades in the past and.. still doing.. 🙂

Thanks Woodsman. But already getting confused with what would be installed on my own pc (nothing?) and what would be on the new host's space. Ideally I should try and get my working version of 3.4.8 onto a new host and have it up and running. Then try and get assistance to upgrade that to 4.x.x?
There isn't a way to install 4.x.x onto a new host and then do a conversion from my 3.4.8 installation, is there?
Don't even remember what script changes I did over the years, so hoping nothing complicates the upgrade.
That's aside from all the attachments which tend to drive upgrade scripts bonkers.
Phew...i can see why I have put this off every time I contemplate it.
And why I'd rather just pay an expert to do it. At this stage, the forum is too important worldwide to lose...lots of valuable info that cannot be found anywhere.

I tried to upgrade to 4.4.10 using 7.4 and couldn't do it. So I submitted a support ticket and was told to downgrade to PHP 7.3 because 7.4 wasn't supported for 4.4.10. It will be supported in 4.5, though.
So when upgrading your php version, keep that in mind. 

If you wanna move to 4.4.10 you need php 7.1 or higher but wit 7.1 its works great. Just copy the files of 4.4.10 in your forum directory ( do not copy conf_global ) and then go to /admin/upgrade and run the upgrade. But your theme will no longer work among with other plugins  / apps you have on the 3.4.8 ! I can do a video tutorial if you want.

Hello Brian,
As for installing your IPS Suite on to another domain as a test site yes this is possible. The only catch is it cannot be active to the public. In other words you as the administrator and those experts you referred to may have access to this domain/test board.
Another avenue you may consider would be to submit a ticket and have support do the upgrade for you.
As for a local host environment it is quite simple. To start with...
Here is a condensed set of directions
(1) Go t o your cPanel and backup a complete copy of your database to your pc. 
(2) If you haven't already, download Wamp or  Xampp to your computer and install it.
(3) Go to phpmyadmin and create and install a copy of your database backup.
(4) Come back here (IPS) to your Client Area and download the latest version of the suite and install it on your local host. To do this create a test site directory to install to. For Wamp you will put it in the WWW directory. For Xampp you will put it in the htdocs directory.
(5) Go to your newly installed suite and start your upgrade.
Good luck and have fun!
OH By the way....
Where it comes to your license key, make sure you add -TESTINSTALL after it.