OK guys,
I am currently running a vbulletin forum with a professional design set. My first and foremost worry about moving over to invision was the design of my forum. My thought behind this is that it is going to be a big enough move over to invision as it stands without the fact that the forum will look completely different.
NOW, bare in mind I only purchased invision less than 24 hours ago. I have almost managed to duplicate the look of my forum with only a very very basic knowledge of CSS and some knowledge of photoshop. How have I done this? I would seriously urge you to have a good read through the topic on this forum http://www.smartestcomputing.us.com/index.php?showtopic=37422
This tutorial, I would print out and have at the side of you throughout your transition. Its simple, and it works...... Dont worry about your skinning guys. IMO its easier than vbulletin 3.8 and at the end of the day, you would have to learn 4.0 anyways.
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.
Seriously, this has come up many times before and it all boils down to what kind of forum you run. What use would we have for large obtrusive topic icons here? I can't think of many to be honest that would contribute something useful to the display.
If you have a forum on tech, then I guess it makes some small sense but clear writing and an appropriate topic title should negate the need for imagery to reinforce the topic's point.
For example:
Apple releases updated iMac line New features spotted at Facebook
Where it seems a lot of people (and IPS developers) would like them.
You can feel free to install a hook (no file edit of .php files whatsoever - this is IPBoard 3, stop doing that, seriously) to put them back. There's no reason for IPS to continue supporting a feature almost no-one uses. To be honest, topic prefixes would be more useful (and often requested too).
Their biggest mistake sure as hell isn't hiding post icons away.
Yes we will have support for things like that as it gets going :)
Will probably require that requests for removal are only from active customers who have been a customer for greater than X days. That way you don't get spammers stealing a credit card, buying an IPB, and requesting removal.
This is the most devestated change Invision Power have made since the beginning of IPB3. First time I looked on the "Hosted Communities" I was speechless. All those limitations!
I've used the hosted feauture by IPS for a long time and I like it alot. Before the release of IPB3 I was planning to upgrade my existing site and had some more projects that I was going to launch. I was going to use the IP Hosted Communities for those but now it won't be possible.
I contacted the staff asking if my existing board was going to be affected by any change in their hosting plans. They told me that my board was going to remain the same, and I thank you for that!
I want to explain to you what would have happened to my existing board if I had to move to the new hosted plans. I'm going to go through each step.
My existing board uses the old Hosting: Basic Forum for $10/month. It's perfect for my site, some months I have to buy some extra bandwidth because my traffic is very dependent on what's happening.
This is what would have had happened if I had to change from the old Basic Forum for $10/month to the new Basic 10 for $10/month.
Average Online Users
What?! My forum is depending on what's happening daily. Some days I have 5 users online, some extreme days I have 300. If I had this limitation it would be a very serious problem for us. We wouldn't be able to have such a limitation, impossible! Period!
File Storage
Change from 100MB to 50MB! A 50% change!! I have IP.board and IP.Blog, occupying 60MB. Change won't be possible!
Maximum Posts
Change from unlimited to 10,000!!! What's going on IPS!! You can't be serious! When I go to a board, the first thing I'm looking for is how much posts the users have made. 10.000? I would probably close the page looking for another forum.
We have 150.000+ posts, does this mean I need to change to the Plus 35 for $29,99/month?! Now I pay $10/month and the change would be $29,99/month, 200% more expensive!!
And they suggest to delete the posts? This is irresponsible to do such thing to your lovely users! And as I mentioned before, many people chech the amount of posts on the board before registering!
In conclusion, if I want my existing board to be hosted by the new hosted plans by IPS, it would cost $29,99/month. And in some time we're going over 250,000+ posts and then I would have to pay $44,99/month for something I'm paying $10/month today! 350% more expensive!
This is just very sad to me and all the users. You make wonderful products and you have a great team but this is like a tumor that you have to take of. Your hosting plans was so healthy before!
Before upgrading to IPB3, there were some members in my community who would have problems with 2.3 such as logging in or other access problems. While I was unsure of how my community would take to IPB3, I have to say that the majority of members on my site have been pleased with the new version. Most of the problems that were associated with IPB 2.3 had been fixed with IPB3 and everyone seems happy with the new version including the new features. While some bugs have been corrected, I've been told, with 3.0.1, it's been the general consensus that my members like the new IPB.
The only issue I've heard so far is that some of my members would like to see a feature which would allow them to turn the smilies or emoticons "on or off" so that they don't have to view them. While there are some areas that IPB3 could stand improvement in, I can honestly report that the new software receives positive marks from my 700+ members.
Brandon has all the posts where someone compliments him or Charles bookmarked so whenever Charles starts ranting about something he can just dump them out to get him off his back :P
While I do thank you for the positive words, you know after pointing me out specifically, coupled with this topic from a couple days ago, I'm going to hear about this nonstop now right? lol.
Ditchmonkey, thanks for the positive feedback. It's great to know that we're able to provide you with a standard of service you're pleased with - we know how important these things are and we appreciate all the tickets, calls and topics like this from you guys telling us we're doing a good job.
Although, I really don't think it's appropriate to start making digs at Jelsoft here, they get enough of that on their own forums.
Vbulletin has moved all customer feedback threads to a non-public forum so I can't link any threads. But let me tell you what's going on in that private forum - VB users are very angry and are becoming more and more vocal about it. VB staff are becoming very heavy-handed in moderating that forum. Essentially, dissent is no longer tolerated and constructive discussions about customer needs are a thing of the past.
So IPB - keep it up with the great communication, friendly customer support, and great product offerings and you may just see a mass-exodus to your products.
Is it sad that the screenshot containing Rikki's photo is clicked more than the one containing the attractive woman on the right? :lol:I guess Rikki's photo coupled with the natural reading from left to right wins over attractive woman :P
Mert got a reaction from TheMac in Recent topics hook