Matt

Great video, yes faces we know when we were all young, we all ageing now 🙂
Well done team.
I forgot to add, regarding blog, I wish we have a tools to convert our blog to page.

What I see being challenging for community leaders is the fact our communities quite likely start out serving a narrow age group and a particular geographic location but over time we find more and more of our new members are of vastly different ages and live in geographically dispersed locations.
Some members live their lives one tweet at a time and live for the “moment” whereas others like to build meaningful relationships with other members and contribute great content.
Those that live for the “moment” aren’t tied too closely with any site and will hop to another site at a moment’s notice. These members like new bright and shiny features, until they don’t.
Whereas members that like to engage in meaningful conversations prefer a sense of constancy in how a site operates.
One wonders if the desire to focus on a constant unfocused member expansion can have a detrimental effect on a site if it ends up that many of its new members joining a site are prone to rapidly consume content and leave while providing little to no financial support to the site. The adage, “Quality, over Quantity” comes to mind.
Please don’t spend a moment chasing after your competition, instead offer up solutions that slowly but surely leave them in the dust.  They may be able to outspend you, but I have confidence that you can outsmart them in meaningful ways if you put your collective minds to it.  With that being said, be ever mindful that your customer base has vast amounts of knowledge and experience you could readily tap into. Something you may struggle over may be as easy as tying one’s shoes to someone else.
Congratulations on your first 20 years, now go forth and conquer.

"Hot garbage" is a vibe.
The blog application is designed for community blogging more than one source blogging as we do in our news blog. As you can see, Pages is more than capable of powering a block with a few custom templates. In terms of the community blog, what would you like to see added?
Appreciate the kind words, thank you!

What would I do differently? I honestly don't know. I'm pretty happy where we ended up and making changes to decision making may have taken us elsewhere. There's some wasted time in pursuing a 'social' element to the software in response to the birth of Facebook that I'd not bother doing again. I'm pretty happy with all the big decisions we made.

In terms of challenges starting out; just keeping the lights on honestly. We barely covered costs and a small wage for ourselves for years. Turns out there's not a lot of money made when you give away software. 😀

As for the photos? Never say never but probably not. 😇

"Hot garbage" is a vibe.
The blog application is designed for community blogging more than one source blogging as we do in our news blog. As you can see, Pages is more than capable of powering a block with a few custom templates. In terms of the community blog, what would you like to see added?
Appreciate the kind words, thank you!

What would I do differently? I honestly don't know. I'm pretty happy where we ended up and making changes to decision making may have taken us elsewhere. There's some wasted time in pursuing a 'social' element to the software in response to the birth of Facebook that I'd not bother doing again. I'm pretty happy with all the big decisions we made.

In terms of challenges starting out; just keeping the lights on honestly. We barely covered costs and a small wage for ourselves for years. Turns out there's not a lot of money made when you give away software. 😀

As for the photos? Never say never but probably not. 😇

"Hot garbage" is a vibe.
The blog application is designed for community blogging more than one source blogging as we do in our news blog. As you can see, Pages is more than capable of powering a block with a few custom templates. In terms of the community blog, what would you like to see added?
Appreciate the kind words, thank you!

What would I do differently? I honestly don't know. I'm pretty happy where we ended up and making changes to decision making may have taken us elsewhere. There's some wasted time in pursuing a 'social' element to the software in response to the birth of Facebook that I'd not bother doing again. I'm pretty happy with all the big decisions we made.

In terms of challenges starting out; just keeping the lights on honestly. We barely covered costs and a small wage for ourselves for years. Turns out there's not a lot of money made when you give away software. 😀

As for the photos? Never say never but probably not. 😇

Great video! One thing I find odd is how very little the blog software has "adapted" or "evolved" over the years. Are there any plans for it? Let's be honest the blog app is hot garbage that even IPS doesn't bother using. It would be nice to see that get some attention at some point.
Moreover, it kind of blows my mind that even after the major success blogs have gotten over the years, it was never a priority for IPS. Even now blogs are still popular yet we're left with a very interior and out of touch app. I'm very interested to know why?

A very interesting interview. It was nice to put a face to the name. Matt looks a bit like Patrick Dempsy to me. 
I wanted to congratulate all the Ips staff again on their 20 year anniversary and to many more years to come. You guys have done an amazing work. I know that I have said this before, but Ipb is amazing and it keeps getting better and better. It is truly the best and the leading software in the forum world. With the latest version, you took the game to a whole new level. My hat goes off to you.
If you guys were to do this over again, was there anything that you would do differently now? What was the greatest challenge that you had to overcome when you started out?
Any chance of posting a few photos of those hungover days in London and Virginia 😄

Good news: it already works for categories. 😀
Good ideas, I'll make a note.
Maaaaaybe.

Do i have my own community... yes 😉 Its still there:
https://www.duken.nl/forums/home/
Just a little background in the past many many years.
2002 till 2004 - HTML code and some free offsite forum software: 

2004 till 2005 Joomla CMS and offsite forum:

2005 till 2006 Joomla CMS and own SMF forum:

2006 till 2007 Joomla CMS and SMF forum:

2007 till 2009 Joomla CMS and SMF forum:

2009 till 2011 Joomla CMS and SMF forum:

2011 tot 2017 Wordpress CMS and finally IPB forum instead of SMF!

And 2017, gone from wordpress and primairy Invision Communitypages with forum.

Good news: it already works for categories. 😀
Good ideas, I'll make a note.
Maaaaaybe.

Good news: it already works for categories. 😀
Good ideas, I'll make a note.
Maaaaaybe.

Good news: it already works for categories. 😀
Good ideas, I'll make a note.
Maaaaaybe.

Any plans, this could also see its way into Pages in the future?

I use this to STOP spammers.... Trust me it works....
I target common spammers posts (the target words that they use in their post) I take their website name or domain name and add to word filter....
Then they have to deal with a lot of work....
Thank you thank you thank you

Thanks for adding this. 😉 As I've discussed with @Matt, it's been a total game changer in communities I've managed in the past. In the right communities, it can drastically reduce the time needed to moderate around issues that members can simply take care of themselves.
For example, if a word or term is not allowed, some members will always try to circumvent it, so toss that to the side. For the rest, all well-meaning members or members trying to follow the guidelines, the process will be something like:
Member posts inappropriate word > other members must see it > moderator must see it > moderator must remove it > moderator must contact member > moderator must document removal > member must then read the message about how their post was removed, which will then elicit a reaction of some kind, positive or negative, and they may choose to add back the post in a modified form.
But with this feature, the process becomes: Member tries to post inappropriate word > member is notified it is not allowed > member adjusts their own post, so post is not taken down. We have almost completely stopped moderating for profanity in one of the communities I manage because of the introduction of this feature.
I should say, I don't see these matters in terms of "censorship" and "free speech" or being "nice," just in a sense of what practically happens with responsibly-managed online communities and what can make them work a little better, in some cases.
When folks talk about getting members involved in moderation and working collaboratively, this is one way to do it. And, of course, it's an option. I'd never recommend this be something that is forced on everyone, just like I wouldn't recommend a word censor list be forced on everyone. But for those working in specific communities, this could save them a lot of time, while creating a better overall member experience.

My 2c, if you do not like it, do not use it. 🙂

I just submitted a fix for April's release which should allow single quotes, etc in words and phrases.

I just submitted a fix for April's release which should allow single quotes, etc in words and phrases.

It currently only works in editors (so when you compose new content). It does not apply to custom profile fields, or content titles. The implementation is just a JSON list in HTML which is processed by javascript on submission, so it's not particularly intensive.

As Jordan noted, it's not meant to be a cast iron wall to prevent you from posting specific things, but more a nudge to reconsider. There's just too many ways to get around a word filter to even try stopping it. 
 
@Chris Anderson Nothing is ever feature complete. 🙂 

I just submitted a fix for April's release which should allow single quotes, etc in words and phrases.

Excellent, thank you!

I just submitted a fix for April's release which should allow single quotes, etc in words and phrases.

Anything that can help guide people to being more pleasant has to be a good thing.  It doesn't matter what kind of help or hint or rephrasing feature is added, there will always be ways to circumvent the ideology of the feature, but to that I would say do you really want people in your community that will make such an attempt when they know that it's there for a reason?  I like this feature and I hope community members everywhere will appreciate the thought that stands behind the idea.  Of course it, like any other kind of censorship, has to be measured and it will be up to each community administrator to make that determination; the key word there is 'measured' otherwise it could be seen as kind of totalitarian, which is not what it's meant to be.  Good call, good feature, far more intuitive than just word censorship 🙂
 

It currently only works in editors (so when you compose new content). It does not apply to custom profile fields, or content titles. The implementation is just a JSON list in HTML which is processed by javascript on submission, so it's not particularly intensive.

As Jordan noted, it's not meant to be a cast iron wall to prevent you from posting specific things, but more a nudge to reconsider. There's just too many ways to get around a word filter to even try stopping it. 
 
@Chris Anderson Nothing is ever feature complete. 🙂 

It currently only works in editors (so when you compose new content). It does not apply to custom profile fields, or content titles. The implementation is just a JSON list in HTML which is processed by javascript on submission, so it's not particularly intensive.

As Jordan noted, it's not meant to be a cast iron wall to prevent you from posting specific things, but more a nudge to reconsider. There's just too many ways to get around a word filter to even try stopping it. 
 
@Chris Anderson Nothing is ever feature complete. 🙂