Invision Community v5

[kensonplays]

We offer lots of options for a reason. Everyone has a different approach.

I love the ACP and features, but on the basic plan, I'd love to have like 3 pages, and I wouldn't really need more than that tbh. Home, About, and one other.

I think a 5 page limit on the starter plan would help, with a lot more access on the others.

 

[CharlesW]

I love the ACP and features, but on the basic plan, I'd love to have like 3 pages, and I wouldn't really need more than that tbh. Home, About, and one other.

I think a 5 page limit on the starter plan would help, with a lot more access on the others.

We can certainly look into that.

 

[kensonplays]

We can certainly look into that.

Yea, cause the 'crucial pages' like Home, About, and depending on the niche, a couple others that would be set up for that, would certainly give the starter plan a better pull for me, once I have the income available.

 

[Tracy]

There is a lot that I like with what is being shown for IC5. For someone who has a hobbyist site, the current pricing on the self-hosted plan (Classic) works out perfectly.

I guess $1048 a year compared to $403 a year is simply small potatoes to some...

 

[Cedric]

It all really depends what your technical background is. People like us who have spent decades on forums have a good technical background. We know how the software, web hosting, pointing a domain, etc. works. Then you have people who don't. And the latter group is increasing every year. So it's logical most community companies focus on their cloud services. It's where the most revenue comes from. If you don't evolve and stay in the past, you're lost.

 

[Dismal_Bliss]

With the last few years of Invision 4 and now with what is coming in Invision 5, I think it's becoming increasingly clear that they don't even consider Xenforo, VBulletin, or WoltLab to be the competition anymore.

 

[szalikdev]

I am excited to see and test new version, I'm more interested in what changed code wise rather than UI changes although it does look good, dark mode built-in is also finally there, it only took them 5 versions

Can't wait for more updates and beta release date

 

[joelr]

A very broad and high level observation on this first feature update from IPS on Invision Community 5:

It isn't often, and you really need to parse through some of the comments by IPS leadership, but they sometimes give a glimpse on why they're doing things in some of their commentary around Invision Community 5.

Usually these blog updates are, "hey, here's a new feature!" and it's a focus on the feature. The reason for the features is usually self evident, so companies don't talk about the broader theme or outlook behind why they're building these sets of features, and you need to intuit their broader thesis yourself.

You can see IPS mention more about their philosophy and strategy behind certain things, and I think that's incredibly important to community admins for a lot of reasons: from understanding when and how we should apply a feature (just because IPS builds a feature doesn't mean you should always use it!) to where IPS views the future of independent online communities.

The founder of Discourse was very vocal about his philosophy around community discussions, which is partly why I think discourse is as popular as it is today - there was a loud narrative around building an improved, better version of online discussion that the legacy forums developers have never articulated. VB, XF, WBB are all building features, which is all nice and great, but they're not building a vision of how they're building better online communities. IPS is ... kind of talking about it.

 

[Aussie]

Actually... it's a little more if using ALL their 1st party add-ons. Mine is $95... but I do have ES now.
Now, let's not forget... with IPS, you get
a VERY decent calendar (comparable XF add-on $40 base cost and questionable support but apparently no renewals)
Pages (which can somewhat emulate many of the third party add-ons I use, the renewal of which is roughly $140 a year for me but worth it)
Social Groups ($50 initial cost, $29 a year renewal)
ES support included in the base script and no 1st party add-on required

So, that's putting me in the $250 a year range compared to $199 (under their new Community Classic offering of $499 initial for all packages then $199 yearly).

In reality... you can't simply look at the base script cost to compare.. the admin needs to look at what they require (including 3rd party extensions) to meet the needs of their site and THEN compare the costs inclusive of those 3rd party add-ons.

Now, I DO have an issue with their "comparison" they have in their self-hosted script offering when comparing to their SaaS offering.

View attachment 1681

This sure as HELL looks like they are saying that you don't get email and community support if you are self-hosted, only for cloud clients... I got a feeling what they mean is email/ticket is not included but community is... but that's clearly not what they are saying.

Do you get Clubs on self host as I swear when I was looking the other day it wasnt there which would be the main reason id switch to it..

 

[Cedric]

Do you get Clubs on self host as I swear when I was looking the other day it wasnt there which would be the main reason id switch to it..

Clubs are only part of the Creator package and upwards:

 

[Aussie]

Ahh yes that's right which blows the cost out of the water for me at this stage!

 

[Tracy]

Clubs are only part of the Creator package and upwards:

Correction... Clubs is a part of the Creator package if you choose the SaaS offering. Pretty sure it's still included in the standalone package (yet one more reason to choose it instead of SaaS offering). I remember asking about "clubs" on the classic offering... and was told it was simply "left off" the list, but they were there for the standalone script. Now... how much weight do you put on IPS staff telling factual information.... that is up to you.
My 6 month renewal would be $105... and I'm probably going to jump on that as I don't need their new "classic" package... especially if I decide to use it on the servinglinux.com that I was "forced" to register. I'm just waiting to see if I "win" the IPS offering, and if I do, if it can be converted to a standalone script to bring my old site that was on WBB (but was nowservinglinux.com) back up.

 

[Dismal_Bliss]

Do you get Clubs on self host as I swear when I was looking the other day it wasnt there which would be the main reason id switch to it.

Yes, Clubs are part of the self-hosted option

 

[joelr]

Do you get Clubs on self host as I swear when I was looking the other day it wasnt there which would be the main reason id switch to it..

Clubs is definitely available on self-hosted. Clubs is a module of the main System application, which bundles Clubs + Calendar + a bunch of other core components.

You need to make sure it's enabled in the ACP, since by default it's turned off.

If you have any doubts, I'm sure you can reach out to IPS for more information on their packages.

 

[joelr]

My 6 month renewal would be $105

They're offering early upgrade to their new classic pricing, which is annual at $199. You can shave a few bucks by switching, and they usually throw in at least 2 months free extension to your license.

 

[Empire]

Do you get Clubs on self host as I swear when I was looking the other day it wasnt there which would be the main reason id switch to it..

Yeah, I do get clubs and I'm on self hosting ANd so it seems that those that have self hosting since the start and always keep it up able to keep the clubs

 

[Matt M]

You can see IPS mention more about their philosophy and strategy behind certain things, and I think that's incredibly important to community admins for a lot of reasons: from understanding when and how we should apply a feature (just because IPS builds a feature doesn't mean you should always use it!) to where IPS views the future of independent online communities.

Forums have long been viewed through the prism of code and features. I've been very guilty of this slightly myopic point of view in the past. I remember showcasing "Ajax" decades ago when javascript allowed you to send and receive data to the server. I raced to add features to use it and showcased the technology; which in many ways we're seeing again with "AI" prefixing new features (AI Summary, AI Assistant, etc ) and in a few years that'll be dropped.

It made sense when the primary audience were highly skilled and technical people. You could give customers goosebumps by talking about DB index optimisation and refactoring to shave 12ms off a page load. But those days are largely gone.

We've made a conscious move away from a developer led technology/feature led company. We won't talk at length about the technology that powers the features, and in most cases the we won't focus on the nuts and bolts of the features themselves. Features are just tools and tools are to be used to create something. Why try and explain CSS variables in your marketing, when you can just say "choose colours quickly and have them applied throughout the theme with contrast applied automatically". The benefit is what we should be talking about.

In terms of philosophy, we do have a strong vision for Invision Community Five. Modernisation of the UI, improve support forum functionality, reduce noise to optimise time spent on the forum, consider the long life cycle of topics and the types of people who visit them and democratise theming through simplicity. Theming doesn't have to be huge structural changes, it can be personalisation through a simple and beautiful interface with the ability to bring more character through with forum colours and a soon to be announced icon-picker. We want to close the gap between what people view as forum software and newer community platforms.

The truth is I don't really want our customers thinking about DB indexes, CSS variables, JS fetch APIs, jQuery, and so on. I want them to leave that worry to us, and they can focus on using the tools to build their community.

A fantastic side effect of modernising the UI is that we are able to leverage CSS variables better with a totally rewritten CSS framework, we've removed loads of JS, more widgets and UI elements are powered by pure CSS (no more JS for grid views, less JS for dialogs and carousels) but that isn't what we'll focus on when discussing the benefits.

 

[kensonplays]

Forums have long been viewed through the prism of code and features. I've been very guilty of this slightly myopic point of view in the past. I remember showcasing "Ajax" decades ago when javascript allowed you to send and receive data to the server. I raced to add features to use it and showcased the technology; which in many ways we're seeing again with "AI" prefixing new features (AI Summary, AI Assistant, etc ) and in a few years that'll be dropped.

It made sense when the primary audience were highly skilled and technical people. You could give customers goosebumps by talking about DB index optimisation and refactoring to shave 12ms off a page load. But those days are largely gone.

We've made a conscious move away from a developer led technology/feature led company. We won't talk at length about the technology that powers the features, and in most cases the we won't focus on the nuts and bolts of the features themselves. Features are just tools and tools are to be used to create something. Why try and explain CSS variables in your marketing, when you can just say "choose colours quickly and have them applied throughout the theme with contrast applied automatically". The benefit is what we should be talking about.

In terms of philosophy, we do have a strong vision for Invision Community Five. Modernisation of the UI, improve support forum functionality, reduce noise to optimise time spent on the forum, consider the long life cycle of topics and the types of people who visit them and democratise theming through simplicity. Theming doesn't have to be huge structural changes, it can be personalisation through a simple and beautiful interface with the ability to bring more character through with forum colours and a soon to be announced icon-picker. We want to close the gap between what people view as forum software and newer community platforms.

The truth is I don't really want our customers thinking about DB indexes, CSS variables, JS fetch APIs, jQuery, and so on. I want them to leave that worry to us, and they can focus on using the tools to build their community.

A fantastic side effect of modernising the UI is that we are able to leverage CSS variables better with a totally rewritten CSS framework, we've removed loads of JS, more widgets and UI elements are powered by pure CSS (no more JS for grid views, less JS for dialogs and carousels) but that isn't what we'll focus on when discussing the benefits.

Can you say if IC5 will allow multi-column blocks on pages?

Something like:

|   PAGE CONTENT HERE   |
| Compare 1 | Compare 2 |
|   PAGE CONTENT HERE   |

That is something I would like with pages. The ability to add like feature comparison charts and stuff like that. I don't see a way to do that with the current version.

 

[Tracy]

Pretty sure those are referred to as tables... and it's fairly easy to do in HTML already (which XF page nodes should be able to interpret). That ability goes back a bit (at least v1.3) but still should work since HTML is HTML.

 

[kensonplays]

Pretty sure those are referred to as tables... and it's fairly easy to do in HTML already (which XF page nodes should be able to interpret). That ability goes back a bit (at least v1.3) but still should work since HTML is HTML.

Not what I was asking. 99% of people will not want to learn HTML just for one thing. There needs to be a way to do it visually for those who are more visually-inclined vs technically-inclined.