BankFodder

Let me ask you the same question, then :-

Yes, let's hope so – but I'd like to ask you one question – which is do you have a copy of this sticky notes add-on and do you have it working on the new version of Invision 4.5 – and if so, how did you manage it? Did you buy a copy from the developers and website? If you did, having installed it, has installed correctly and are all the features of it available?

I'm not after a refund. I'm not trying to get something for free. I'm afraid you've completely missed the point. The point really is about being a customer and being kept in the loop. I don't know how long the add-on has been on the developer's own website, but for as long as it has been, I – and others have been deprived of its use. Had we known that there was an up-to-date version available then at least we would have been in a position to make choices. As it is, even that possibility was not made available to us because nobody knew until it was accidentally disclosed on this thread. I don't see what's wrong with transparency

You are assuming that everybody bought it three years ago and they've all had three years use out of it. I'm not sure that you have any basis for that assumption. Of course I have no idea either but it is entirely possible that somebody bought the add-on only a few months or even a few weeks before the big Invision upgrade. They will be in exactly the same position as the rest of us. And even for customers of three years standing, I don't see any problem or any cost to the developer of simply making a little announcement so people knew where they stood. And once again, the app that we are all looking for is actually on his own website and available if you want to pay extra – which I did.

I agree that it is maybe not realistic to expect it from everyone, but here we have a developer who is online, producing other add-ons, and now we have discovered that he actually has an updated version – the one we are all looking for – on his own website which is available for an extra payment of money – which I have actually paid. I think if you produce an add-on then I think it comes at least with a commitment that you will place an announcement saying that in so many days or so many months, there will be no further support for this add-on. If the developer wants to change his pricing structure so that it is renewable, then that's fine – but it seems to me that people should be informed in advance so they can make their own purchasing decisions. I really don't see what is wrong with any of this. I can imagine that if the developer was treated in this way by somebody, he wouldn't be pleased

Yes I understand that now and of course it is quite obvious. However, when you pay for a third party add-on then there are certain expectations that it will be kept up-to-date especially if the developer is still active and online. I think there is also a certain expectation that existing customers will at least be informed if support is coming to an end. It's very disappointing to discover that not only is the add-on not necessarily being updated, but one is left in the dark – and then eventually one is led to understand that what is happening is that existing customers are effectively being sidelined because of the original pricing decision made by the developer. I understand very well indeed the economics involved – but I also understand very well about transparency, good information, and a certain amount of loyalty to existing customers. Are these kinds of expectations so unreasonable?

Maybe I misunderstood something, But I understood from this that it was Invision which prioritised third-party add-ons which had renewable fees. Did I get this wrong? Am I hearing that it is the developer who is prioritising renewable-fee add-ons over the interests of customers who have paid a one-off fee? This really doesn't make me feel very comfortable at all.

The screenshot I posted is a screenshot of your application on the default theme – just with a colour change. The announcement is part of the standard Invision platform. I accept completely that you wouldn't be responsible for your application working on a non-default theme – and in fact we don't use any. The Christmas theme is the first one ever. However, many people do use non-standard themes and so I was flagging that up to them. The fact that the sticky notes are covered by standard Invision announcements is a problem. I would certainly be grateful for reimbursement of the purchase price – and eventually have it configured so that we can update it through the marketplace. Thanks for the offer of something extra – but that really isn't necessary. I'm only trying to get what I paid for – no more no less. I think that's what other people here want as well. My username on your site is exactly the same as here. Please don't refund me the extra. I'm not looking for it – and if you think you have something left over then find some homeless people on these cold nights and I'm sure they'll be very grateful.

Frankly I don't understand why I need to buy another one either except that the support for the version on the marketplace here seems to have dried up completely and it's an extremely useful add-on and so I figured that I would go ahead and buy a copy anyway – and maybe at some point the developer might refund me. But at least we have a version on the forum which is working – subject to the glitches I've outlined. So I'm taking a pragmatic view

Well it's very disappointing because the developer @TheJackal84 seems to come online here quite regularly and quite recently and yet isn't dealing with this thread. So I bit the bullet and went to his own site and bought another copy – a second copy – of the sticky notes application. I should say right now that we don't make any profits from our website and we simply give a lot of free help to tens of thousands of people who have difficulty with their banks and debt collectors and bailiffs and retailers and so forth – so this money is really hard to come by I do hope it's a genuine one because last time I went and bought a copy away from this site, apparently it was a counterfeit. Anyway I installed it on our site www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk and it seems to be pretty glitchy. First of all, if you want to go to the settings page for the "global" sticky notes, is going to a error page 500. Secondly, in the previous correctly working version it placed a very useful sticky notes link at the bottom of each topic post and when you click that, it was automatically addressed to the owner of that post. Excellent. On the new version which I have just installed, although it allows you to configure that to happen, the link is not appearing. Over the festive period we installed a Christmas theme and the sticky notices do not appear with that theme and only with the default Invision theme. Given that many people use a third-party add-on theme, you should be cautious about purchasing this application without an assurance that it will work with a third party theme. Finally, even on the default theme, where there is an announcement, the announcement displays over the sticky so that you can't see the contents of the sticky if it is displayed at the top right hand corner and in fact you can't even dismiss the sticky unless you dismiss the announcement I'm sorry to say that this used to be an excellent plug-in/application but now considering the glitches and also the lack of support, I think people need to be careful. I'm sure that if the developer decided to become engaged with it again then it could be excellent once again. I wonder if there is someone else you might want to take over and to bring it up to scratch – with the approval, of course, of the developer

A bit of a shame if we've already paid for it though. Also, the last time that I bought one of this developers plug-ins away from this website, it turned out that I had bought a pirated version and it led to a big argument between me and the developer @TheJackal84 So is this one genuine?

Well it is certainly taking a long time and I have to say that I'm rather losing hope. I'm sorry to say that the lack of engagement from the developer doesn't help.

Any ideas on how long this might all take please?

I would have thought that if that was the case, that the developer would have told us. I'm sure nobody could be happy with all these customers who have invested money in this previously, simply to hang around waiting expectantly – and with vague promises and no news.

I think that there must be some other problem

And while you're about it, it would be very useful to configure some groups to reply to the thread by email. Clearly you want users to visit the site but for site team, it is most important to be able to respond quickly even if they are on a train.

Well I have finally managed to vacate the approval queue of all 17,000+ posts. Nothing sophisticated – nothing elegant – I simply downloaded a little macro and set it to work for nearly a full day clicking and deleting clicking and deleting clicking and deleting and eventually we have managed to get rid of all of those posts from our vBulletin days going back to 2006. I have to say that using such a brutish method of dealing with this problem is quite extraordinary. Once again I need to make the point that the lack of consistency in interfaces depending on what screen of data you are looking at is quite extraordinary and I would thought that it would be helpful for Invision themselves and also their clients to be able to have a standard interface. It seems to me to be axiomatic that when one is looking at any collection of data that there should at least be a sorting function, a bulk action function which includes bulk delete or selective delete with the ability to enter various criteria for deletion including posts by a particular user, by a particular date, containing particular keywords – et cetera. The variety of interfaces suggests to me that this part of the Invision platform was designed by committee – and not one committee, but several committees who by and large don't talk to each other very much. And now to turn to this post by @Morrigan I notice that in June you actually started a topic in the forum which you think is appropriate for putting feedback and suggestions and which apparently Invision pay attention to when considering future developments – and you broadly suggested what I am referring to above in this thread. However, it seems that your comments have had no effect at all. It seems that the feedback and suggestions forum is not all that it's cracked up to be. But thanks for your suggestion anyway In the meantime, I recommend that if people have this kind of problem, that they fall back on a little macro – we got ours from sourceForge. Very rudimentary – but it works very well

Thank you. I think that all people really want is some regular communication. That would make people feel calmer and give them more confidence

Well I agree that it's a bit worrying that there is no update so far – but for the couple of years before the recent 4.5 Invision version, it worked pretty well

Haven't you noticed this?

More suggested features: The keywords are listed in a broad alphabetical order. There is a kind of alphabetical directory listing at the top. However when you go into one of the letter categories, the listing is no longer alphabetical - but in order of creation. Might it be possible for them to display in alphabetical order? Second feature request: Might be possible to change the background colour of the pop-up squares and even the borders?*** Thanks *** on a per pop-up basis

Thanks. Yes you can set the size of the body but then if the image is smaller - there is lots of white space, I was wondering whether there was a way to allow the size of the image to dictate the size of the body. And also if it might be possible with a .png file to allow the underlying page to show through the transparent part of the .png background

Okay. I switched over to the editor and copied in an image – and it works. I can't imagine why I didn't understand this before. Thanks. Now here's the next ask – one thing leads to another – any way to get the pop-up to shrink down to the size of the image? Because at the moment, I have an image which is dwarfed by an expanse of the white pop-up. So I don't know if it's possible to add a "scale pop-up to fit image" button

Thanks for taking the trigger word search suggestion on board. That will be helpful. In respect of using images, it hadn't occurred to me that I might be able to put them up using the editor. I'll try. Thanks. In respect of the speed tweak, I'm not quite sure what you are saying. Sorry

I have to say that this keywords application is the most important application on our entire platform. When we moved from the bulletin, I looked everywhere to find a platform which had a keyword function. On the bulletin, we had built our own keyword system – called autolinker – which worked very well. Here are a couple of features which I would propose as enhancements for this application – when you get the time. Images. It would be great if one could have a hover text – which produced an image pop-up – maybe with accompanying caption. You Trigger word search. Where you have quite a large database of keywords such as we do with hundreds of trigger words, it can be a real pain to find the relevant keyword in order to edit it or even delete it. All If there was a search function in the keyword screen which allows you to "search trigger words" – which would then identify the particular keyword, that would be extremely helpful because at the moment if we have to make an edit it can be a nightmare. It's very nice that things can be arranged in alphabetical order, but that is only for the main trigger word/keyword title. The trigger words may well start with different letters and therefore are not searchable using the alphabetised list of keywords. And here is a request for a tweak: the hover text pop-ups take a long time to materialise. That means that people might hover over them and nothing happens and they don't realise that there is a pop-up and so they click the link and the effect of the pop-up is lost. Might it be possible to work on the speed of the pop-ups so that they become really fast. I don't know if this is a big ask – but it would make a huge difference to their effectiveness.