- Joined
- Sep 9, 2013
- Messages
- 2,792
Kier, Mike, Chris, Jeremy P and NixFifty. And I don't know exactly when that happened - but it was some months ago now.
Yeah, with that many devs onboard, and considering how long since 2.2 was released, I'm thinking that we really should be able to count on some kind of announcement for 2.3 by the end of this year or very early next. I hope.Kier, Mike, Chris, Jeremy P and NixFifty. And I don't know exactly when that happened - but it was some months ago now.
I've seen Invision step outside of their t&cs before to help someone out but like all good deeds, it didn't go unpunished. The pitchfork waving crowd don't take kindly to their perception of someone getting preferential treatment.I wonder if IPS would do the same in that sort of situation.
Personally, I think if you purchase an add-on 3 months or less before renewal you should not be forced to pay for a full year renewal when you didn't actually get that benefit from it. There should be a way to pro-rate a renewal cost based upon time of purchase of the add-on.
Just to be totally clear as someone else mentioned it - we make this kind of exception when we’re asked and always have done. We don’t have separate renewal dates for the extras as we feel that ends up being a rather confusing mess of having to pay for different things at different times so it makes a lot of sense to tie it all to the main license.Fun fact I noticed https://xenforo.com/community/threads/xf-license-renewal.198793/#post-1539300 today which covers the exact issue discussed upthread about products in tied licences and XF making an exception if you make a ticket.
I wonder if IPS would do the same in that sort of situation.
100%The community support is what is totally laughable. Quite frankly, the company does not have a good history of effectively managing their support forums as demonstrated time and time again, so to ask customers to "trust" that they will manage it better in the future is a big leap. This is a company that literally told customers that the company forums should not expect company support because they couldn't properly investigate issues, and "you should send in a ticket". And now the client base is expected to believe that the company will provide great support all the time on forums, when they literally said they couldn't in the past?
Second - support. Right here on TAZ, people have repeatedly, for years, criticized IPS for not having any/enough/active support in their forums. IPS now announces plans to fully and formally have staffed support forums.
But nobody seems to want to give it a chance. Will it work? I have no idea. Maybe it won't. But everyone is burying the idea before it even has a chance.
But IPS has never made a formalized plan/commitment like this before. That is - a commitment to provide exactly what some of the same people complained about not having before and are now complaining about the commitment to provide it?
Maybe it won't work... But maybe it will?
Their target has never been the hobbyist. I've had a license with them for 4 1/2 years and during that entire time they acknowledged that they did not target the hobbyist market. They are primarily about the big bucks that a corporate account will bring in.
No amount of video PR with hugs and exploding hearts will change how you fundamentally communicate with your customer base.
When you have Charles himself telling you that their primary audience and target is the commercial crowd and the self-hosted hobbyist are a simple by-product it's pretty telling that they have no real concern for those self-same hobbyist. They consider their "bread & butter" the larger corporate style accounts.
As for 6 months vs 1 year, that is a non-issue for me and probably most others as it works out to be the same amount for the year.
I think one of the "big" issues was the removal of ticket support in the base price and a HEALTHY surcharge to continue receiving ticket support. With many of us, IPS's attitude towards providing support in their SUPPORT forum left a bad taste in our mouth. I have no issues with forum based support. It's where I received my assistance with XenForo. I think in the 9 1/2 years I've had that script I submitted two tickets with them and that was at the very start. You get quality assistance from both the developers AND other admins/owners on their support forum regularly. I've got a sneaking suspicion that IPS is going to find that their work load will drastically increase due to the"forum support" process, AND they will be severely slacking in providing efficient support. I know that there are not that many capable admins on the IPS site (most are what I classify as forum owners as they have minimal system admin abilities) to answer the more technical core level questions/issues so the weight at that level is going to fall upon a limited group that is using a format that is not effective for technical support as information may have to be released into their forum that has privacy concerns. I personally don't think this was well thought out as for the benefit of the license holders, but was processed more along the lines of "how can we increase our revenue stream", something IPS (and vBulletin) are well known for.
I think $1300 a year is rather pricy for ticket support. And honestly odds are the "upgrades performed by us" most likely only entails being a stock system. Custom styles, custom Pages with associated custom templates most likely are not included in that handy dandy service.
When you have Charles himself telling you that their primary audience and target is the commercial crowd and the self-hosted hobbyist are a simple by-product it's pretty telling that they have no real concern for those self-same hobbyist. They consider their "bread & butter" the larger corporate style accounts.
As for 6 months vs 1 year, that is a non-issue for me and probably most others as it works out to be the same amount for the year.
I think one of the "big" issues was the removal of ticket support in the base price and a HEALTHY surcharge to continue receiving ticket support. With many of us, IPS's attitude towards providing support in their SUPPORT forum left a bad taste in our mouth.
I am a customer (3 licenses) and for now will remain one. Too many ties to apps I'm currently using.If a community manager has concerns, they are welcome to come on to our site and speak to our customers. There is a topic with about 600 replies in that has had very little moderation and the end result is incredibly supportive and positive from most customers initially rattled by the changes. I welcome the scrutiny.
My sister works for a major company and they tasked her on how to improve their company's board. They currently use Invision and due to the changes they are looking at options. I suggested she look at The Admin Zone and read about the various boards talked about and she was shocked at what Invision did and now looking to move to another package. It won't be easy as their board has over a million posts and customised. They may lean towards Xenforo or maybe have a custom in house forum.
This site is predominately pro-xenForo and anti-Invision based on things that happened when I was in my twenties (I’m now 45). That’s fine, but it doesn’t exactly represent what most people think that use our platform.