Haku2

I know how you feel. It is ridiculous to have to pay so much money just to access the marketplace files you have already paid for. You now have to renew all of your suite's app licenses just to access one marketplace update. And, if you try to get around paying for all of your suite's apps renewals by cancelling some, you then have to pay full price if you ever want them back. I've been holding off on renewing for this reason.

This is absurd.

Yes, there are at least several reasons actually:
Renewals can be expensive, especially if you own most of the official apps. Unfortunately, you can't select which ones you don't want to renew. If you try to get around this by cancelling some, you just lost a big chunk of your investment as you now have to pay full price if you ever want them back. Hopefully, the software maintains a good security record in which you don't have to perform full upgrades frequently to have the security holes patched. You shouldn't have to upgrade to every point release that gets put out. Additionally, a properly qualified administrator should have the knowledge to be able to patch the reported exploit himself/herself (or at least know/hire someone who can). Upgrading to any of the first few releases of a major release usually isn't a good idea. It's best to wait until most of the major bugs are ironed out first. Some of us perform development (this includes content) on a local environment first before opening the community to the public. In this case, there is no rush to upgrade if bugs or newly announced functionality isn't impacting you. As @Ptilly has said above, some of us are either running a community as a hobby or have a very small member base in which having the newest and greatest features all the time isn't necessary. Not everyone needs official support to run their community. Some us are very good at troubleshooting and fixing issues ourselves without submitting a support ticket.

Because not everyone has hundreds to thousands of members that can donate at every given moment. Some people are still trying to grow their forum the right way by not using freeware forums or cheaper alternatives. This also helps in the long run so you don't need to worry about converting over to a paid platform in the future...

The Marketplace now (we introduced this change a few months ago) requires an active license. I can see you've just renewed your license so you should have access to it now. If you're still seeing the issue, please submit a ticket and let us know.

This is very disappointing.  I suspect it will affect developers too.  That was one of the best parts of IPS for me, the active developer community.  It's not likely I will switch as I am pretty invested in IPS, but as others have pointed out, forums are dying a slow death, this is not helping.

I had an inactive license for over a year because there was nothing significant enough to warrant the extra $190 we would have spent.
I was able to purchase and download files from the marketplace the entire time right up until 4.5 Beta 1 came out. All of a sudden I was locked out of things I had just paid for or renewed. I sent in a ticket and was told that this was always the intended behavior and that if I had access to purchase, renew, and download files before with an inactive license, it was in error.
So.. which one is the truth?

Wrong. I've done it before changing the domain url. Running it on a different domain isn't a problem. You just get an error saying the license in use is not valid for that site, at worst usually that only admins see. 

You should be able to reset it, with some precautions, without having to pay anything extra. There simply is no tangible benefit to paying for a domain change. Period. It puts more money in IPBs pockets, and doesn't protect you from anything any more than if there was no fee. On top of that. if it really helps control piracy and running multiple copies on different domains, then why aren't the other forums doing it. It's not like they don't have a piracy problem too. 

The irony is I did a quick google search and found pirated copies of the current software and other plug-ins. So clearly someone wanting to change their domain once, twice, or multiple times in 6 months had zero benefit to stopping that from happening.
Again wrong. Not everyone is you. Everyone has different reasons, purposes, and desires. I can sit down and think of what I want to accomplish and still have it go bust numerous times in less than 6 months. The forum market right now isn't very lucrative and it's hard to compete against social media. So putting up reasons for people to NOT use them, or to price yourself out of the market isn't very smart either. It doesn't matter what their reasons are. What matters is the blatant nickel and dimeing for something that simply put has no reason to cost money. Period. 

All I have to do is look at the long list of forums people have promoted on this site in the last 6 months that are no longer there. That should tell you everything you need to know. Heck one recently promoted his IPB forum, and when I visited it, it had switched to Xenforo. Literally less than a week or so later. 

As well, if I wanted to download a nulled version of the current software and various plug-ins, while it's not encouraged, it completely bypasses all fees and costs. Including the domain change fee which is utterly pointless and useless. Again, why is IPB the ONLY one doing it in regards to forums and they aren't even as popular right now as say something like Xenforo? I prefer IPB, but there are times with things like this it's rather hindering and literally pricing me out of their market.

I could go to Xenforo, which I know has less in the terms of features right now, but pay 1 fee per year for upgrades and access to downloads (rather than twice with IPB) and change my domain name multiple times if I wanted to, with no extra cost. And it protected them and me just as much from piracy as paying for it with IPB has. 

When was the last time you paid for a domain name change with another forum provider like Xenforo, VB, Vanilla, Burning Board, etc.? Think about it. I've seen literally zero benefit for paying for a domain name change. None. Unless someone can give some examples that have happened to them where paying that $15 domain name change fee benefited them?

Such restrictions do not benefit the community. An open community is a very cheap, stable, and efficient way to product promotion and user retention. It's funny (and sad at the same time) what IPS still hasn't figured it out.
The client lounge could be read-only for not active clients. Contributors section, the same way, could be read-only for those who did not contribute yet, as it has some topics which are useful for those who are just on the way to contribute.

Yet another thing causing a big disappointment about IPS is the strange restrictions on the content on this website.


 
Thanks. I hope you will add a way to rebuild old content (including user profiles, signatures, etc.) and change existing images from HTTP to HTTPS where it possible.

It literally doesn't prevent anything. I can still have the one forum software using the one domain on several different domains if I wanted. The only thing it shows me is an error about the license. It doesn't cripple the forum or anything to any extent that makes it unusable. And for those smart enough, they could get rid of the error message too if they so wanted. It's not like there aren't pirated copies of it out there regardless. Or they could just leave the message about the license and not care. It's literally almost no different than if you let your license right out. 

And like I mentioned, no other forum software creator I've seen does this. Not VB. Not Xenforo. Not even the free ones. You can't tell me things are better for those forum makes in terms of piracy or preventing multiple installs because they don't charge that $15 fee.  It's not. 
I have. And all you have to do is look at the list of forums people have posted here that have started then stopped and they started something new.
As everyone knows the forum market is a b*tch to get into right now and actually have your forum go anywhere or do anything. So people try different things. Different names, themes, ideas, etc. in hopes of capturing something. Anything. I don't know of many people either that are willing to pay for a web host then keep a dead forum but keep paying for something no one is interested in using. So they change it up. Sometimes simply changing the domain and name of the site. 

And just because something doesn't apply to you, doesn't mean it doesn't apply to others. And the fact you think it's a preventative measure in piracy concerns, you're wrong. It's literally had ZERO effect on piracy. None. Period. No clue why you think it changes anything in regards to piracy. It doesn't. I can still easily find the latest versions of IPB on pirated forums. Although I have a legit license, I still look to see. And it's out there. 

Things like this hinder people wanting to use forum software. They literally dump more money into it than they will ever get out of it. Literally almost nickel and dimed to death. IPB charges you twice a year to be able to download and use certain forum functions.  Sure you don't have to pay to renew, then you lose the ability to download plug-ins and certain forum features on your forum on top of that. This is one reason social media has taken over. Very low overhead costs. Very low long term costs. With forums costs seem to be going up just to keep using the same software you used 20 years ago except now with a new coat of paint and a few new features. 

Then if you decide to change the domain because you found a better name, or want to try something different, within 6 months that's another $15. Let alone all of the money you may have to spend on plug-ins if you want to have a forum that has more features and functions. And let's not forget the cost of web hosting amongst other things. Only to have 5 people show up on your forum and if you're lucky 1 person even says much of anything. No matter how much work you put into it.
This is literally one of the most pointless charges by IPB. Literally. 

Explain how piracy is so bad with IPB they have to charge you to change your url if you want to change it for any reason in 6 months. But NO other forum software does that and has any less of a problem with piracy than IPB.  The fact piracy is used as an excuse for the charge is laughable at best. It's literally had zero effect.

So explain to me exactly how it's stopped IPB piracy. It hasn't. Explain to me how it does anything other than cost the forum owner more money if they choose to change the url for any reason in 6 months. 

Because until you can show me it's stopped piracy with IPB, the charge is a nickel and dime and serves zero benefit to the consumer. And until you can show me how it's made things better for the forum owner versus not getting charged for it on Xenforo, VB, and well, pretty much every other forum software maker and not getting charged for it on them has made things worse for the forum owner, your argument is no longer valid.

I'll be waiting for you to show me the benefit of it. Show actual examples of how it's better to be charged for it with IPB, and not any other forum software. It's nothing more than a domain change that's tied to that one domain. Not multiple ones. I can still download the software for that domain and use it across multiple domains. How did that stop piracy. How did that change anything? It didn't. Period.

So the latest version is still pirated, nulled, etc. I've seen it out there.

But I get charged to change a domain name within 6 months. Weird how for years there was no problem not charging for it. But then you're told it's for your benefit and you go along with it. 🤦‍♂️

I don't understand why there is a $15 domain name change fee and why you can only change it once every 6 months free. It doesn't cost IPB anything for me to change my domain name. To me this is the equivalent of an ATM fee when you withdraw money, except in this case from your own bank.

For those worrying about fraud or anything else, as long as only one domain is tied to that license it shouldn't change anything. 

So yeah, this is one thing I don't understand, see it as nothing more than a money grab from IPB, and serves no real benefit to the consumer and serves no benefit to IPB other than financially. IPB is the only forum software that I see that does this. I may be missing one, but most don't charge to change the domain. 

Charging twice a year if you want to keep downloading things and keep certain features of your forum going is expensive enough. But if you decide to change your domain for any reason, now it costs you an extra $15 for literally no reason other than for the sake of changing it. If some are still worried about potential fraud or hijacking or something, other things could be put into place to prevent it. 

This I think is probably one reason people go more to Xenforo and others is because of this. Some people change domain names often while they struggle to find something that works for them. With them you don't get charged to change a domain. Period. You can renew today, then in 5 days or a month or 3 months if you choose to change your domain you simply change it. You don't get charged $15 every time you change it. 

This is a hindrance. It serves no tangible benefit other than to make money. IPB never did it for years with no problems. But in recent years started to. And considering how much people already pay for renewals, I don't think it's too much to ask to remove the $15 fee. Period. 

It's literally one of the most pointless fees I've seen on here. I love IPB, but that is one thing that absolutely needs to go. No one is handling the domain change other than the consumer. Unless customer service needs to handle it, there should be no fee for it. I'm literally getting charged just to change my domain. Absolutely insanity. 

And like I said prior, if some think it's a way to prevent fraudulent actions, there are plenty of other ways to do that. As well, after the 6 months your domain would be open to be changed anyways which changes nothing in regards to possible fraud. 

So yeah, it's really gotta go. It's just a pure money grab and is something no one else does. So what's the logical reason for it here? Costs keep going up, as forum popularity keeps going down. I don't think those 2 will go hand in hand very well. So we need to be mindful of things like that this are really pointless fees and serve to benefit no one other than IPB.

I agree with this, it is more convenient, but if you move such an important option, you could make a warning (link) in the login form. 🧒

I noticed today that accessing prior stable versions of the IPS platform is not possible from the Client Area. We store previous revisions in our source code repository, however I imagine some folks, especially at this time of transition, may be wanting to install 4.4.10 and not 4.5.1 Beta 1, which is listed as the current stable release. We obviously have different definitions of stable, yet from past experience with vBulletin, as an example, one could download the latest version of the files from each major revision along with any beta branches.
Throwing out this suggestion for others, and providing a bit of a cautionary tale. What are the avenues available to a client that has a web server failure, and needs to grab the 4.4.x branch to restore/isn't wanting to upgrade to 4.5? Support request and files are provided or are those folks forced into upgrading?

I REALLY hope there’s an error there!

Wanted to renewals Links Directory by Adriano and marketplace FORCE me to pay all renewals for all my apps plugins and themes over the years . force me to pay several hundreds of dollar , this must be bug or the method is crazy ..
Best Regads

With 4.5 you can access to install files only through your website ACP.

Hi
We have been doing test migrations and I noticed a huge amount of memory usage from Imagick on our install which reminded me that there is another option, GraphicsMagick which was a branch from Imagick a few years ago.
Generally it runs much faster and lighter than Imagick and also it seems to have less security issues. It does have some limitations over Imagick but most of them seem to be related to more advanced image processing so I *think* they would not be an issue for IPB.
If php was directly calling the Imagic binary rather than the php wrapper you used to be able to directly swap them out and it would mostly work if I recall.
Just a thought.

Since the new IPB 4.5 Marketplace pushes the user to do everything from the admin instead of switching from InvisionCommunity, in my opinion it's really important to have additional screen elements instead of being flooded with plugins/apps and translations.
It would be really useful to have a button/widget to display “My Purchases” so you have a list of everything one owns, from apps, skins and translations. It would also be useful to a wish list, to be able to monitor any offers and support of the developer and since lately they are increasingly publishing Applications with renewals it would be nice to get notifications about close renewals, plugins to renew etc...

When I add similar products I use the useful “Copy” function in the ACP. Problem is, that the new product with the name “[product name] copy” instantly becomes available in the shop, even though I haven’t actually configured it yet. 
I suggest that the copy function creates each copy with the default status “deactivated” instead of taking over the status from the copied product. 

For clarity, the Marketplace integration in 4.5 is available and works in a test installation, using the -TESTINSTALL license, so long as your installation is reachable from the Internet. In other words, IPS needs to be able to initiate a connection to your install. If your test install is on your local machine or inside a corporate network and you haven't made provisions with your firewall or router so that it is reachable from the public internet, the integration does not work. Remember, if you do this, you need to secure your test install behind additional HTTP authentication (i.e.  htpasswd).
@Stuart Silvester goes into that here:
What doesn't presently work is:
Adding plugins and applications from the IPS Marketplace to localhost installations (that don't have the -TESTLICENSE and aren't accessible to the Internet as above). These are typically used by developers to author themes, plugins, and applications and then redistribute them privately to test and production environments, or offer them from the IPS Marketplace to others for free or at a price. Prior to this unannounced change with 4.5, you could run multiple local virtualized installs for testing and development purposes and install third party applications and plugins from the Marketplace that live only on your local machine and are not accessible from the internet. You might want to test your own local changes against an install that has the various third-party integrations you've purchased from Marketplace present and ensure there aren't any compatibility issues or things that break due to conflicts, as an example, or to ensure a theme properly works with third-party integrations. Now, you cannot get these plugins and applications into a localhost install without obtaining the files from the developer directly. The ability to download, inspect, audit, or commit to backup file repository any marketplace applications and plugins prior to installing it in any environment. This is typically done to ensure compatibility with other modifications, perform code audits and ensure that best practices have been implemented by the developer, identify any potential issues, make backups of critical functionality, retain version history in a source control system (such as git), identify bugs, etc. If the things that aren't working in the two bullet points above are important to you, @Lindy and the IPS team welcome your feedback.
For us, we do local development on a local install that lives in virtual machines on our development computers. We commit our work into source control and then when we've reached a place that we're ready to do user acceptance testing, we promote those changes into our -TESTINSTALL license that our testers can access. Once we're confident things are working there, we promote to production.
This is probably not the sort of rigor most causal administrators would bother going through, and likely not done by IPS Cloud customers. I'm not even sure they have access to run a local environment without getting a self-hosted license.

Funny, I find most of my problems with IPS has been a result of IPS' code and (lack of) review. Your company seems to be constantly looking for new ways to screw over its existing customers (upgrades wont run without active support, can't download without active support, breaking or removing big features of a previous release, killing off IP content, random things not working with minor upgrades, oh and that whole dis-honoring the perpetual license thing). I was a customer, but you never listened to any issues I had or gave a dam about them, so I switched to Xenforo, its been fantastic since. I still have my IPS license, and I may one day use it for something else, but I find the attitude of your company to leave a bad taste and this latest move stinks.

Actually, I would expect quite the opposite. Just as with the movie industry who imposed non-skippable scenes on retail DVDs, or the gaming industry whose certain games impose constant Internet-based license validation for single-player mode under the guise of an "enhanced experience," the nulled/cracked/ripped version provides the best experience. It's only the paying, honest customers who get hurt and punished by these types of imposed restrictions.

This!!!!!! 👍

Correct, it has happened to me here on IPS...before purchasing an addon I asked if the addon can do x, developer says yes, purchased addon and found it doesn't, asked developer for refund and developer says he can't give refunds.
I have been bitten by so many developers over many many years on vBulletin, on IPS and on Xenforo...it's all the same. BUT, the biggest point I was making here is that I prefer to test addons on my own PC before testing them online. There is so much involved in testing them that I can't be doing it online...to begin with I need to take a current snapshot of my site every time and doing it online with the way my hosting is, is an extreme pain in the but compared to just downloading a copy, which also serves as a local offsite backup, and setting it up in my local xampp environment. There I can test everything without impacting my site and especially my hosting setup. By not being able to do this increases the cost of ownership of IPS dramatically for me especially in time and risk...why do you think my main site is still using Xenforo, because my main site deserves my attention the most and XF allows me to do things so much easier, quicker and better. Already the decision of comparing Xenforo vs IPS is an extremely hard decision to make, IPS are now making the decision much easier and that is not to IPS's favour in my own opinion and solution needs. The thing is, I will always speak up...but what about all those that don't and thus IPS never hear about their wrong decisions. Develop to what your customers tell you and you will always only have those customers, develop to what your non customers also want, and you may increase your customer base two-fold. In other words, If I didn't say something and just said oh stuff it and drop IPS, then you would never know how you could have had another customer...and I have 2 licenses (I have 3 XF licenses) so how many more licenses has IPS not sold??? Cost of ownership (time and inconvenience) has dramatically increased for me with IPS but at least I will say something about it...will you at least listen???