Ryan H.

Better yet, contact Blizzard Entertainment since that is who the copyright holder would be.

i'm gonna say it str8 out... community seo is soo friggin buggy.. and their support sucks.. really really really really really really badly.. sometimes i wished i was still with vb because vbseo was awesome, and so was their support and community.. now i'm just waiting for ips to finish furl'ing the rest of their apps, before i go live.

Quite frankly I think too many people underestimate Google. It's not like this is year 1 of their attempt at indexing web sites. They know pretty well how to handle the indexing by now. ;)

Not against the canonical tag and it's not that hard to do, just saying I don't think it's likely to make a huge amount of difference in the end.

I was a long time vbulletin user. Watched and participated in the discussions on EZBoard when John first started to develop vbulletin and was the first install on a large active site converting from UBB. I was the first to test the converter, John sent me many variations until it was right, and use it to convert the site I owned at the time. I never really thought I would ever use any other software. A couple months ago I decided having all my eggs in one basket wasn't a good idea. Many of the things that were going on with IB looked eerily similar to what was happening with UBB years ago. I bought my first IPB license for a new site. Since then IB decided that long time, loyal customers like me had no place with them and basically kicked us to the curb. I have since bought 2 more forum licenses and one suite license and converted 2 of my sites. I have 5 sites left. More licenses will be bought over the course of the next month or so I will convert the rest of my communities.

I am thoroughly impressed the software and the support. It says a lot when the owner, Matt, offers help via twitter. It used to be that way with John. It helps to build loyalty and trust. The software itself runs far better than vbulletin. I will be here for a long time and want to say thanks for opening my eyes. If I didn't buy my first license I would never have seen how powerful IPB is.

OK guys, here is my view of IPB now I have had a chance to play with it properly on my own licence etc and what I think it is missing in comparison to vbulletin. To me these would be the key areas that should be concentrated on in order to pull vbulletin apart at the seams ;)

Search functionality - Yep, I can see this has been mentioned over and over so not gonna go into it. You guys know what it needs and I can see your working with it.

Modification area - This needs to be easily viewable to a new customer even if they cannot download. I had to go looking for it and this shouldnt be the case. This is of most importance to a lot of people. It also doesnt seem to have the 'flashyness' of the main website and looks to me as it needs a bit of overhall in order to make it more friendly. Things like people becoming coders/designers etc once they have given so much back to the comunity are a big thing over at vb.org in my opinion and would be a great idea for here. We all know coding is competition to be the best, so give the guys something to compete with. Mod of the month, coder tags, feedback etc (yes I know some of this is there however its not visible enough to a new user)

wysiwyg editor - When I make a piece of text bold, I want to see it bold. Im not interested in the bbcode tags as a user (however I should have the option to view them if I so wish). This to a none technical user of IPB is a massive massive issue which to you or me looks like nothing. However we are the admins not the registered users who struggle to shutdown their pc without a manual.


Will add more as I find them, as its clear your aim is to beat the biggest and you are in a possition at present to do so with ease ;) .. And personally I hope you do

On another note, if I can only find these three annoyances at present, you guys are doin damned well lol

Agreed. Considering that a vBulletin "suite" costs $235 now and comparable later, current vBulletin owners would unfortunately have little incentive to pay more AND have the pain of migrating all their data to a new platform. If there was a competitive upgrade solution upon providing valid vBulletin license number (keep track of these numbers in the database along with domain), you'd have an incredible landslide of converts, each paying a price around the cost of your IPB board for the full suite that will bring in tremendous current and future revenues.

Help us help you - this is an incredible opportunity for IPB. Unlike hardware, there aren't such 'fixed' costs with software. IPB has the power to provide a competitive upgrade. vBulletin became what it was because of vBulletin.org, a tremendous user community providing free hacks. Imagine being able to migrate away a tremendous number of those developers, all of whom would pay and sell your software. Then you immediately migrate away the current vB owners, many of whom would begin that path immediately. My guess is you will see an exponential increase in current revenues and new sales that you would otherwise not see.

If it costs $130 to upgrade to the "vaporware vBulletin publishing suite" then think about a $1xx upgrade for the IPB publishing suite. Current vBulletin owners will migrate. It will be worth it to go through the pain and never look back. People... this is an incredible opportunity to capture the market. Think quickly. Don't think about how much of the sales you will "lose" by the discount - you wouldn't have them. Think about how many addition sales you will generate WITH the discount and the HUGE influx of "free mod" developers and new users by capturing the majority of the market share almost overnight.

I have been hanging around here for days now and have given myself quite a headache trying to decide how to move forward. It is going to cost us at least $130 each site to 'upgrade' each of our VB licences but it's not that actual amount that I am especially objecting to but the very different way they want to handle support and upgrades. I don't feel at all comfortable with placing the future of our forums with IB/VB anymore - a simple trust thing (or lack of trust in fact).

I also am uncomfortable spending such an amount with no demo to see and especially no timescale in place.

Offsetting that 'problem' I also am not in a position to spend 3 lots of $250 to change to IPB and set my mind at rest. I suspect the change would create a huge amount of work for me but at least I might sleep a little easier in the long run.

If I could change to IPB for the same cost as my VB upgrade would cost then I think it's a no brainer for me and many in my situation.

As if the deadline that VB have placed on us wasn't bad enough I need to be out of the country for 10 days ( I leave in 2 days ) so my time is running out VERY rapidly and that's just adding to an already stressful situation.

If you think you can do a deal for us VB'ers that want to get some trust back in our lives can you make it quick please :thumbsup:

Thanks for the information. While it's a good price to entice new users, people are looking not to lose the entire value of their forum investment. That's why crossgrades are popular, a way of bridging the gap and convincing people to drop their current license and start to invest in something new.

Right now vBulletin owners can "upgrade" existing licenses for $130 and $190 for expired for their cms and forum and blog package. Paying $250 might sound good for new customers but for current vBulletin owners it's still too high. Currently customers will begrudgingly bite the bullet, pay Internet Brands the $130 or $190 and go without dinner for a few weeks. If there was a special offer that discounted that offer for current licenseholders of vBulletin, I'll bet you'll see many converts who will never go back to vBulletin or Internet Brands once switched over here.

Once again, thank you for your consideration and extremely quick replies.

Due to the increased interest in our products from vBulletin users over the past few days, I thought it would be convenient to collect pertinent information in one place and give you an overview of who we are and what we do.

About Invision Power Services
We've been creating forum software for over seven years. We work closely with our community and we're very [url=" about our development and we're all very active on this forum. Our customers range from small focused communities through to Skype, Vodafone, EMI, Sony and more. We take pride in our customer service and treat all feedback equally.

Our Products
We offer many community products and services:
IP.Board
IP.Board has come on leaps and bounds since the early days of 1.3 and 2.0. We've invested heavily into development and the result is on your screen now. A feature set overview is available. It has a built in report center, reputation system and warning system. It also extends the classic PM system into personal conversations that enable you to host private topics rather than a simple email-like PM conversation. It is very extensible with its new hooks system and applications framework. Not forgetting it's incredibly easy to write your own single sign on code or log in module to allow single sign on with your existing website or systems. It also ships with log in integration for OpenID, LDAP, Windows Live and Facebook.

IP.Board also has many SEO tools built in. It allows for customizable 'friendly URLs' with proper 301 redirect headers is tampering is attempted. It also offers meta keywords and descriptions automatically populated based on post content. 301 redirects from standard 'old' URLS (showtopic=xxx) and more.

IP.Board is available for $149.99. This entitles you to run the board indefinitely (for life). You get six months access to technical support, services (Spam monitoring) and to download the latest version of the software. Once that six months is up you can optionally renew for another six months for $25.00. You can allow your renewal to lapse without penalty and renew at any time.

Licenses are not tied to versions so, for example, if you purchased IP.Board in 2006 and now want to renew for $25; you'll be able to download IP.Board 3.0.

We offer one installation completely free and we can upgrade the board for you when requested. 30 days telephone support is also included free of charge. You will also get access to our peer-to-peer customer only forums. It's worth noting though that all our feedback from customers is in this public forum. We don't try and hide it, good or bad.

We also offer a "Business License" - the main difference being that phone support is included while your license is active (not just for the first 30 days). The Business License is $349 and renewals are $50 per 6 months. As with the Standard license, it is not tied to a version and you can let it lapse and renew whenever you like.

IP.Board and its applications require PHP 5.1+ (although we recommend 5.2+) and MySQL 4.1+ or MSSQL 2003+ (MSSQL driver available for an additional $60). IP.Board is just as happy on apache as it is in IIS.

IP.Content
IP.Content is our new community content system. We have avoided labeling it as a CMS as this gives certain expectation. IP.Content can do many things inlcuding pulling content from your forum to display on your home page. More information on IP.Content is available [url=" and [url=".

Charles put together two short videos to help illustrate what it can do:






It's worth mentioning those videos were taken during a beta of the first version. The next version adds much more functionality. Information available [url=".

IP.Content is on offer at $49.99 currently and includes 1 year technical support and access to download the latest version of the software. Renewal is $30 per year.
Just like with IP.Board, we'll be happy to install or upgrade it for you at no extra charge.

IP.Blog
This is our blog application for IP.Board. The best way to see what it does is to have a look at our [url=" blog.
IP.Blog allows your users to create their very own blog within your community, and because it's part of our Community Suite, it's fully integrated and easy to use!
IP.Blog is available for $49.99 and includes 1 year technical support and access to download the latest version of the software. Renewal is $20 per year.
Just like with everything else, we'll be happy to install or upgrade it for you at no extra charge.

IP.Gallery
This is our full gallery application for IP.Board. We have the gallery installed here.
IP.Gallery is our easy-to-use photo sharing application. Fully integrated with our other Community Suite applications, it allows your users to create albums and share their favorite snaps with others!
IP.Gallery is available for $64.99 and includes 1 year technical support and access to download the latest version of the software. Renewal is $30 per year.
Just like with everything else, we'll be happy to install or upgrade it for you at no extra charge.

IP.Downloads
This is our full download application for IP.Board. We use the download system here.
If you need to share files with your users, or want them to share amongst themselves, IP.Downloads makes it easy. Documents, updates, utilities, media - whatever you want to share!
IP.Downloads is available for $49.99 and includes 1 year technical support and access to download the latest version of the software. Renewal is $20 per year.
Just like with everything else, we'll be happy to install or upgrade it for you at no extra charge.

Other Products
We also offer the following:
IP.Converge
IP.Converge is our innovative authentication system that enables separate applications to centrally authenticate users, and optionally share data such as profiles. IP.Converge works with all IPS products, and third-party products such as Wordpress and Joomla. It effectively provides a central log in system that all your applications can use so that your members only need one username and password. It does not need to be on the same server, either so you can link up a dozen IP.Boards from all over the internet if you wished.
IP.Converge is free to all IPS customers.

IP.Subscriptions
This is an application for your IP.Board that allows you to sell subscriptions to your members. It is based on elevating permissions via the member group system. It works with PayPal, Sage and Authorize.net. PayPal allows for recurring payments.
IP.Subscriptions is a free application for all IPS customers.

Spam Service
Even with a good CAPTCHA, communities are seeing a rise in human spammers that can bypass all "anti-bot" systems. There is no real way to automate protection against these spammers other than to learn and block them and that's precisely what this system does.
Each IP.Board has a feature to "Flag a user as a spammer". This will unapprove all their recent posts and flag them as a spammer in the Admin CP. It also sends a ping back to us with their email address and IP address. If enough people report the same details, they are marked as a spammer. You can then set your board to not allow these users, or manually review them before validating the account.
It's an incredibly effective tool and it's caught many dozens of spammers on this site alone.

The spam service is free to all active standard license holders.

IP.Tracker
This is a community developed free application for IP.Board that adds project tracking to your forum. We use it ourselves here.

IP.Shoutbox
This is a community developed free application for IP.Board that adds a shoutbox to your forum.

Modifications and Skins
IP.Board has a very healthy modifications and skinning community. There are many independent skinning and modification websites dedicated to IP.Board. We also maintain a list of resources here. IP.Board 3 is a new product but the modification authors are gaining traction and making use of the new systems to product easy to install modifications. There are modifications for donating via PayPal, arcades and more.

Please list any modifications you have and we'll try and match them up with IP.Board equivalents.

Other Information
Volume Discounts
Please contact sales@invisionpower.com to discuss volume licensing.

Standards of Service
Our average support response time is less than two hours but, depending on the nature of your request, it may take up to two business days for your issue to be addressed. Our technicians will work to keep you updated on your request's progress.

You can always view your existing tickets to see the progress of your request or what department your ticket has been assigned to. After a ticket has existed for 48 hours, you may use the management escalation feature to tag your ticket for management review if the issue is not being resolved properly. Billing, customer service, and special requests will only be answered during normal business hours.

Our full standards of service page is here.

A copy of our software license is attached below:
license.txt

Example Sites
Here is a list of some sites that make use of our software:
Skype - http://forums.skype.com/
Vodafone - http://forum.vodafone.co.uk/index.php?act=idx
O'Reilly - http://forums.oreilly.com/
nVidia - http://forums.nvidia.com/
Roxio - http://forums.support.roxio.com/
NBC - http://boards.nbc.com/nbc/index.php
Television Without Pity - http://forums.televisionwithoutpity.com/
Atlanta Falcons - http://life.atlantafalcons.com/index
American Idol Forums - http://idolforums.com/
Neowin - http://www.neowin.net/forum/

Conversions

We can convert your data from vBulletin, including converting vB Blog to IP.Blog, and the albums feature in vBulletin to IP.Gallery. If you use the popular Photopost gallery, we can convert that as well.
Almost every piece of data can be converted - and members will be able to log in with the same username and password they did on vBulletin.



You needn't worry about broken links after you convert either, we have some redirection scripts that will take users from your old vBulletin URLs to the new URLs on IP.Board - so if members follow links from search engines, they'll still be shown the right content on your community.

There are two ways to convert: firstly, you can download the free converter scripts on the conversions page and use them yourself, or you can purchase our conversion service and one of our technicians will handle everything for you.
The conversion service costs $120.
It's important to note that the free converters will only work with vBulletin version 3.8 - if you're not using 3.8 you should either first upgrade your vBulletin installation before converting, or if you purchase the conversion service we'll handle everything for you.

If you have any special requirements such as merging multiple forums - please contact sales@invisionpower.com and we'll do our best to accommodate.




Please feel free to reply. I'll maintain this post to add more information if required.

If we run a promotion it would be for anyone - not just vB converts. There are plenty of other products out there :)

Reputation needs some improvements.

First:

Members A can not gives more than X (X for example 3) plus or minus reputation points to the member B.

For example:

Member A likes Members B and gives him/her plus for EVERY post.

Member C hates Members D and gives him/her minus for EVERY post.

Solution: Members A can gives 3 points (for 3 different posts) to Members B but then he/she must gives points to X (X for example 2) other members.


Second:

Exclude or include categories where Reputation can be used. For example I need to exclude Test category. Every post which was send to this category should be reputated. It's silly.



Please include these two features to 3.0.5

Lot of my members sent me those two suggestions.

What is breaking about your skins? There shouldn't be anything that causes them to stop working properly outright.

I haven't seen abuse of it. The solution is to remove the avatars of those abusing it, not disable the entire feature for everyone.

Things don't work that way.

Things don't work that way.

Probably security hole in custom skin. I am not sure.

I can't see such a thing adding anything to a community but animosity and competition.

I can't see such a thing adding anything to a community but animosity and competition.

If the biggest mistake we've made was neglecting the post icons, I think we're doing pretty good myself. :)

I'd shoot someone if I had to scroll past this every time I wanted to post a topic:

Or its only acceptable if you kiss their arse :ermm:

Someone's a little short tempered.

Arguably your post is feedback, but it's obviously a bug in the software and would be more easily addressed in the bug tracker. And yeah, people read it, especially those who matter: people who actually fix the bugs. The very nature of the bug tracker will pretty much guarantee acknowledgement from a staff member. You posted in a public forum: expect public responses.

I guess being helpful is no longer acceptable.

Are you staff or just trying too hard?

CSS Expansion: I would suggest learning about advanced selector methods or alternate ways of identifying a particular part of the page. It can get messy, but I think you'll find that you can single out practically any element with the proper selector. That said, there are indeed a couple areas [none I can think of at the moment though] which would be much facilitated by an added ID.

Board logs: Absolutely yes. I made this for our board myself back in April when we were trying to track down a compromised staff account, and the logs have proved absolutely invaluable in numerous instances since then. IPs not being logged in the system at all if the person never posts, messages or votes is an extreme disadvantage of the system, and login logs solve that perfectly. It may be trivial when integrated with IPB, but I would also suggest logging their current member group and whether they logged in "anonymous" or not, along with the rest of the info.