Wow IPS 4.2

Just Upgraded from 4.2 Beta 4 to 4.2 Beta 5a I video taped it, entire process took only 3 minutes !

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I revived an old site and upgraded it to the beta.

http://ipbwebmaster.com

I am impressed with it although since I've been away from IPB so long it's taking time to re-learn where everything is located in admin cp.

I don't think they are called IPB anymore , Its IPS "Invision Power Services" i figure its because they have first party addons making them more than just "Boards"
 
Until the moment you figure they are also in the forum and you can't turn them off...*oops*.

If you are referring to updates, Unless your running the developers build you are not notified of beta updates. you have to manually go to admincp/applications and click check for updates

I have 2 IPS boards one is running in Dev Mode and it had a nice message telling me an upgrade was available ... i clicked upgrade on my iPhone and 3 minutes later it was running on the new version, it was so smooth and easy that i video'd the upgrade on my other board

I can remember taking a days vacation from work to update my vb3 board ... and now IPS has made it to where i can update on my phone in 3 mins , amazing!
 
If you are referring to updates, Unless your running the developers build you are not notified of beta updates. you have to manually go to admincp/applications and click check for updates

I have 2 IPS boards one is running in Dev Mode and it had a nice message telling me an upgrade was available ... i clicked upgrade on my iPhone and 3 minutes later it was running on the new version, it was so smooth and easy that i video'd the upgrade on my other board

I can remember taking a days vacation from work to update my vb3 board ... and now IPS has made it to where i can update on my phone in 3 mins , amazing!
No matter whether what mode you are in... you (as an admin) WILL get a notice on your forum when signing in if there are updates available for the normal release. And if the upgrade is one that they deem critical, it will be a notice that you cannot dismiss. Anyone that basically has ACP access will also get the same warning on their visits to the forum. There was a lengthy discussion (and associated griping) about this but it's one of IPS's way of making sure that you know of the update (as most IPS admins are apparently lazy and don't check manually) and them guaranteeing an income stream since you have to have active support to perform any upgrade.
You also fail to mention that if you are running a custom style then you will have to re-install it after each upgrade if there are template changes since IPS currently has no reliable template merging system.

I do automated back ups server side
Still not the smartest move relying on the automated. I personally perform a manual backup of both DB and files prior to the upgrade of ANY of my scripts.
 
Only one of my sites had the notice, you have to physically upload special files if you want to be notified of new releases.

I have up to date back ups, in over 10 years of forum development and 50-100 software updates i have never lost or corrupted any data, maybe because i use Mac or maybe because I'm not an idiot , ill take my chances when my server backs up daily. you can be anal about backing up before updates that's your thing i have better things to do. Losing a days worth of content isn't going to make or break any of my communities and with a .000000000000000000001% chance of something going wrong that's a risk I'm willing to take.
 
Only one of my sites had the notice, you have to physically upload special files if you want to be notified of new releases.
You are specifically referring to the BETA version. I am talking about the official version. It WILL notify you that there are updates out for it no matter what "special files" you upload.
There was many a lengthy "discussion" (which at times became very heated) because when it's a security update there is a bright red banner displayed at the top of the forum that is not capable of being dismissed and will stay there until you upgrade. If you don't have an active license (because you are comfortable with where your site is currently) you will STILL get that banner. It can be done away with by some special coding but you get absolutely no support on how to do that over on the IPS site as it's a non-approved modification.

To keep the most current data it's simpler to take a snapshot of the sites... but if you aren't willing to take the few minutes that it takes that's your business.... but let me promise you one thing - there WILL be a time with IPS when you have to use the backup. I've had to a few times myself.... and I've been running it since 4.0 released in 2015.
Now, if you are running a plain jane, non-modified (style or add-on) site you may be OK. But how many people are honestly doing that compared to running a modified site.
 
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Built my first IPS site on July 29 2010 it is still running now on 4.2 Beta 5a

Moved servers 5 times , updated all along the way

never lost any data or content, not saying it can't happen, thats why i do daily back ups
 
when it's a security update there is a bright red banner displayed at the top of the forum that is not capable of being dismissed and will stay there until you upgrade. If you don't have an active license (because you are comfortable with where your site is currently) you will STILL get that banner.

Are you saying they won't issue the security update for free? If not, that sounds like pretty poor form, even if you're out of the upgrade cycle. It's in everyones best interest to make sure all installs are fully patched up.

If they are offering it for free, then what's the big deal with the notice? Even if you're happy with your install, you should still be applying the update if it's just a security patch.
 
When I had 7 years of forum experience and went to IPB I had a lot of first times.

- First time after 7 years being an admin using a support ticket
- First time I had to use google to search a forum (The search in IPB really sucks)
- First time finding better support on nulled forum sites for a forum software
- First time problems while upgrading
- First time having problems getting core products to run (that portal really makes your database throw up...slow querrys. Also JGS-Software back in the days of wbb 2.3 was much better compared to it and it was free...)
- First time failing getting AddOns to run (more than once...)
- First time to see such bad converters (I think I was the first moderate sized forum to jump from vB3 to IPB3, though I did it quite late (2013-2014). No tutorials, many issues with the converter...). When I bought Xf a year ago and tried the converter I nearly cried, so easy was it compared to the nightmare I had with IPB
- ...

IPB has some nice ideas, some things are even better than here (I prefer their CSS-System, cause it is easier to find the things you want to change), but in general the software is poorly made and the company is moderate in every sense. The only way for them to ever become market leader is for all competition to die. Woltlab is doing much better than them (they had their vB4-nightmare with wbb3 aswell, but they climbed up again) and I'm confident that in the future Woltlab will surpass IPB. Also they are the most inefficent company in terms of support, which makes them the most expensive forum software out there. Their mantra on the forum is: "Write a support ticket".

You might also find out the hard way that they don't support old x.X.x versions of the software. Shortly after they released 4.1 they released a security patch for 4.1 which they did not add to 4.0, so everyone was forced to upgrade, even with some design changes in 4.1. And IPB4 has lot of things missing out of IPB3 which were quite logical, e.g. you cannot delete pictures out of your album, unless you enable users to delete all their content (which idiot has such ideas...nobody wants their users to delete their posts, but letting them delete images is common sense...). The text editor...I hate it. When I changed from vB3 to IPB3, my users hated the software and I will certainly not upgrade to IPB4. I had enough from what I saw on my testboard... I'm through with them.
 
IPS 4 is far superior is IPB 3 not even close. If we are grading old softwares against each other vb3 was king

i ran into a myBB forum today and was like Whoa whats this....

IPS 4.2 is the best forum software I've ever seen front end and back end and coded and support too I know first hand.

IPB 3 left something to be desired , but it still better than vb4 , vb4 is the worst top to bottom platform I've ever had the displeasure of working with i even have a license that i just let die because the software is that bad, inside and out.

if xf don't make an obvious attempt to serve mobile users with 2.0 its going to be hard for it to move forward with the IPS goliath.

I love xf too don't get me wrong but we have to look at the future and right now IPS 4.2 is our greatest ally in the battle of social media
 
Are you saying they won't issue the security update for free? If not, that sounds like pretty poor form, even if you're out of the upgrade cycle. It's in everyones best interest to make sure all installs are fully patched up.

If they are offering it for free, then what's the big deal with the notice? Even if you're happy with your install, you should still be applying the update if it's just a security patch.
Exactly... even if it is a "security update" you must have an active license to obtain it. If your license is NOT active - no updates for you, even if they are critical.

Moved servers 5 times , updated all along the way
Then you have a pretty much base install without many modifications/add-ons/styles running most likely. I can think of 3 different times an upgrade caused issues (and frequently was due to an add-on and changes that IPs made to the standard functioning of their script) and the only way to get the site back up and running quickly was to restore from the backups I had created. Not to mention to often you have your upgrade and then a day or to later an important upgrade to the upgrade (the 4.1.x.Y updates that come out) because either their initial upgrade broke something or introduced other issues.

And IPB4 has lot of things missing out of IPB3 which were quite logical, e.g. you cannot delete pictures out of your album, unless you enable users to delete all their content (which idiot has such ideas...nobody wants their users to delete their posts, but letting them delete images is common sense...
Oh, there were several things removed from IPB 3.x in the IPS 4.x line.... but as for this type of stuff, I blame it on the lack of granularity in the user groups controls. I frequently find that IPS's attitude is to make it simple as they don't want to "confuse" to many of the admins that get overwhelmed by having to many options in the ACP.

The only way for them to ever become market leader is for all competition to die.
Actually with the 4.2 line they are going to give a strong run to anything that is out there now... including XF 2.0 when it comes out since it's basically a refactor of 1.X with a few "tweaks".

I'm confident that in the future Woltlab will surpass IPB
Unless they can DRASTICALLY improve their English speaking support (not necessarily from them but on the support forum) they are going to have some severe issues making inroads into a large use base. In fact, I'm seriously looking at pulling my Linux site off of WBB and switching it to IPS 4.2 when it is officially released.

I love xf too don't get me wrong but we have to look at the future and right now IPS 4.2 is our greatest ally in the battle of social media
Until they get a MUCH improved search engine that will search ALL content, it's still going to be sorely lacking. They've known of the issue since they removed Sphinx and finally admitted to it and are "hoping" to have some type of resolution in the 4.3 line. Hopefully it won't be another paid service like they have a tendency towards - especially considering they stripped something that was working just fine because they (at the time) thought the standard MySQL search would be adequate.
 
IPS 4.3 is due shortly with a pretty hefty feature list.

Some minor ones seem quite late to the party and I'm surprised to see on the list, but for all the others there are some pretty good ones.

Looks like they're really fleshing out the clubs functionality and expanding their REST API

This was interesting to see too

Setting so when someone is typing in an editor, other members will see a "Member X is typing..." status in the editor view.

https://invisioncommunity.com/news/product-updates/invision-community-43-r1055

What do you all think? Which features on this list do you want to see in XF?
 
Good thread. I think you guys brought up some good points for both IPS and XF. I just realized IPB changed names today too after looking at a sites code.

Diesel I didn’t know IPS came such a long way. The update seems like a WP easy type of update now.
 
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