Are bugs being fixed? Or no one reported these?

From what I've seen, many of the defects come from the forum software (Invision's IPS and IP.Board) itself. The issues get reported to the IP.Board and fixed according to their timetable. Invision's editor has a long list of known glitches, and the way the company did their rewrite a year ago did not help the attitudes of their user base.

The defects that are the result of customizations done by the staff tend to be sorted out very quickly.

Nexusmods forum also uses IP.Board and I never had an issue posting there : /

frob is correct: a lot of the issues are with the underlying software and unfortunately seem to fall in to a low priority for Invision.

We also have an extremely limited amount of developer time available and can't really afford to pay for additional help.


I can't promise if or when anything will come of it, but I've actually started a project in my spare time to rewrite the whole thing based on a lower level framework rather than a prepackaged forum software so that we can receive updates to basic functionality (the supposed advantage of Invision) but have a properly customised site that meets or needs and can actually be tweaked as we see fit.

As it is, we're currently stuck with a post editor that's horribly unsuitable and buggy, some other known but relatively minor bugs, and a LOT of usability issues. I generally think that our community is amazing, but the site software is pretty poor.

Unfortunately doing a full rewrite in 20-60 minutes roughly 5 days per week (sometimes less) is VERY slow going, and even then there's no guarantee the site's owners will be on board with it.


In the meantime, please do keep reporting problems and we'll pass on everything to Invision (they do fix some of it eventually) and fix what we can.


Thanks for your patience, and sorry for all of the issues.

frob is correct: a lot of the issues are with the underlying software and unfortunately seem to fall in to a low priority for Invision.
We also have an extremely limited amount of developer time available and can't really afford to pay for additional help.
I can't promise if or when anything will come of it, but I've actually started a project in my spare time to rewrite the whole thing based on a lower level framework rather than a prepackaged forum software so that we can receive updates to basic functionality (the supposed advantage of Invision) but have a properly customised site that meets or needs and can actually be tweaked as we see fit.
As it is, we're currently stuck with a post editor that's horribly unsuitable and buggy, some other known but relatively minor bugs, and a LOT of usability issues. I generally think that our community is amazing, but the site software is pretty poor.
Unfortunately doing a full rewrite in 20-60 minutes roughly 5 days per week (sometimes less) is VERY slow going, and even then there's no guarantee the site's owners will be on board with it.
In the meantime, please do keep reporting problems and we'll pass on everything to Invision (they do fix some of it eventually) and fix what we can.
Thanks for your patience, and sorry for all of the issues.

If you can get the site owners on board 100%, I'd love to help. Web development of big systems and sites is my bread and butter and I'm sure I could help out if you're interested...

I'll need at least a basic working proof of concept first, but I'll definitely keep that in mind, thanks.

If the owners are on board with it I actually think going open source so the community can contribute fixes and improvements might be a good idea; we often get offers of help, but frequently haven't been able to take advantage because of the current setup.

One of the biggest issues is that Invision moved to a radically different version that was essentially a complete and total rewrite of their software. So all the benefits of upgrades were lost. Moving to radically different site setups also can be very jarring to a community.. people get used to a certain look and feel I guess. The bad thing is that it leaves us a little stuck with our upgrade path.. ultimately we'll probably need to just continue to migrate to the new software BUT that's not something I wanted to put us on after they just essentially rewrote the whole software.. at least not until it's had been way more tested in production situations.

This is what the current version is like:

https://community.invisionpower.com/

This is what the current version is like:
https://community.invisionpower.com/

Ew, just Ew. And I still can't turn the mobile theme off :(

So... it's not a hobby made software? It's actually a professional grade software? And it has these basic bugs? Really, in such case I find the whole Invision company unreliable and untrustworthy, they could not even deliever up to par with the free software...

Questions:

- how strongly is the current forum integrated with the rest of the site (dev journals, etc)? Is it reasonably feasible to replace the forum software with some other one?

- what are the reasons of not using existing free software (like phpBB, machines forum, etc)? Couldn't these handle the traffic volume? Because "paid one being better & more polished & bug free" has proven incorrect.

Moving to radically different site setups also can be very jarring to a community.. people get used to a certain look and feel I guess.

Yes, very true. The white background, blue and the shade of the blue (don't dare to change the shade of the blue, we are used to it and we will riot if you do :D) and the post button must be black/dark greyish and the font size (very important!) and the font type/family. Also, we want to still have this blue star next to topics you posted on. All these can be done via trivial custom theme :)

People are used to the look & feel and colours, not to the technicalities inside (especially if these technicalities are broken).

how strongly is the current forum integrated with the rest of the site (dev journals, etc)? Is it reasonably feasible to replace the forum software with some other one?

The whole thing is Invision software with some customisations added here and there, and it's one big tangle of tight integration. If you were starting from scratch it would be possible (not necessarily easy) to pick and choose components whilst interoperating with other software, but with a big active site it would be a lot of work to switch.

Is it reasonably feasible to replace the forum software with some other one?

It would be a lot of work that we have minimal resources to carry out, and would also take substantial effort to minimise breaking of existing content. When upgrading from the previous custom software to Invision it took days (during which the site had to be completely offline) to migrate the database and do some minor translation of the format, and we still ended up with posts older than that difficult to read and unable to properly be edited. Given how integrated the whole Invision package is it would also probably be best to either move the whole site to a new platform or none of it rather than just parts.

what are the reasons of not using existing free software (like phpBB, machines forum, etc)?

Mike will know more about this, but I know when we initially moved to Invision it seemed like a very good match for our needs, and I believe the availability of proper support also played a role.

Obviously it hasn't turned out as suitable as it originally seemed, but at this point it will take major work to move away from it.

You can probably tell that I'm definitely in favour of making the effort to move away from Invision if and when we're able to do so, but it's not my decision to make, and with such a large site it's not a decision to be made lightly -- if we do put in the effort but don't move to the correct platform it would very likely mean the site going under.

The decision came down to an integrated suite of components more than anything (IP.Content for articles, the forums were quite good, blogs, etc). It provided a lot of flexibility and was more up-to-date than our old ASP technology. Migrating our custom database to this software took a ton of work figuring out what table was responsible for what.

At some point Invisionpower switched over to use CKEditor, an example of an open source editor coming to the rescue in lieu of their own in-house editor. What a total nightmare that has been and CKEditor still continues to not behave as well with IPB as we'd like. They tossed it for the newest version of their software.

To be honest, we looked for a total package rather than parts because cobbling together a system with a lot of parts that weren't originally intended to work together can get messy very very quickly. The editor is such a small example but the more parts you have that come from different vendors, the greater the potential problems that can creep up. There are certainly downsides to a single vendor (like when they completely rewrite the software from the ground up) however.. but the nice thing is that someone else goes through the tough job of making all the "stuff" work together.

I find the whole Invision company unreliable and untrustworthy

I wouldn't trust them either. I used to use them exclusively back when it was invision board forum (ibf), and was free.

One day they just went to a subscription model and told everyone if they wanted even security updates to their free board they had to pay.

We dropped it and never looked back...

This was mid 2000's. We purchased a vbulletin license and found it very powerful and cheaper too...

but I've actually started a project in my spare time to rewrite the whole thing based on a lower level framework rather than a prepackaged forum software

How about instead of rewriting everything write only a mod to the existing forum (to fix/upgrade of the editor, since it's the most annoying part)?

If the owners are on board with it I actually think going open source so the community can contribute fixes and improvements might be a good idea; we often get offers of help, but frequently haven't been able to take advantage because of the current setup.

Hmmm, I think with the community size it would actually make sense...

Also, considering the notorious & regular website going offline (like 3 times per month? :D) I don't think people would mind hickups and temporary site unavailability. The key here is if it can be done with minimum attention and workload of the owner required. Anyway, I'm for exploring this option.

Moving to radically different site setups also can be very jarring to a community.. people get used to a certain look and feel I guess.

Eh, I'd consider more jarring (in a forum of all things) not being able to post things properly, or not being able to use the journal editor safely because it might eat half the journal on a preview.

I'm not sure fi im alone in this...

but I've actually started a project in my spare time to rewrite the whole thing based on a lower level framework rather than a prepackaged forum software

How about instead of rewriting everything write only a mod to the existing forum (to fix/upgrade of the editor, since it's the most annoying part)?

If the owners are on board with it I actually think going open source so the community can contribute fixes and improvements might be a good idea; we often get offers of help, but frequently haven't been able to take advantage because of the current setup.

Hmmm, I think with the community size it would actually make sense...
Also, considering the notorious & regular website going offline (like 3 times per month? :D) I don't think people would mind hickups and temporary site unavailability. The key here is if it can be done with minimum attention and workload of the owner required. Anyway, I'm for exploring this option.

I'm not privy to the inner details of the site's administration, but I've been involved in web sites since the beginning, and other sites (like gopher sites) before that.

While that idea of the community running the software of the site is interesting, the logistics of that seem difficult. Consider the millions (billions?) of database entries that need to be migrated, who would do it and validate it and ensure it goes smoothly? Who would manage the day-to-day builds? Who would run and manage the QA effort for a site this size? Who would coordinate the integration of new features and ensure a consistent design?

While the forums are the main area, the site has an enormous range of features.

Back in the early days of the site, when it was all custom software, features were slow to develop and often took a long time to shake out the defects. While the Invision suite certainly has its drawbacks, the fact that it is already written, mostly debugged, gets updated regularly for both maintenance and security, and generally works okay is an enormously valuable set of benefits.

As a parallel, there are many things I hate about big suites of software, with MS Office being chief among them. But it would be foolish of me to think of cobbling together new versions of all that software on my own and imagining it could suitably replace it.

Unless the site is interested in entering the marketplace as a developer of its own suite of software (which I don't imagine is the case) I don't think that is a wise business decision. Far better with the present funding to stay to the core competency of a discussion board, education, and information site.


MAYBE we could crowdsource the efforts of building a replacement editor or tiny piece of the system, and maybe someone would want to get all the legal work done to collect copyright other IP assignments for the parts as they are built. But anything more than that is probably too much.

So this is a slightly(?) customized older version of Invision forum software - no wonder it's been falling apart. (I was guessing Wordpress with way too many plugins, lol)

I think GDnet is too big and long-term to entrust to any canned software suite. I would go for a modular architecture with a few custom modules, something like this:

- Divide into independent parts: Articles, Books, Forums/Journals, Gallery/Screenshots, Comments, Chat, Store, Stats/analytics...

- Throw away all the unused/useless parts (have no mercy .. for example, who needs emoji graphics? use friggin' ascii)

- Guideline: KEEP IT SIMPLE, oldschool, semi-fugly, not particularly mobile-friendly
- Goal: JSON APIs for all database access, with server-side templates for SEO and NoScript users
- Possibility: generate static HTML pages (like NeHe..) for Articles, Book lists, etc (anything not prone to rapid change or obsolesence)

- Goal: JS-based auth, comments, chat, stats (helps to minimize backend integration headaches)

- Goal: common user account/authentication system for all parts that require login

- Goal: use "de facto standard" components (eg. CKeditor?, Markdown?, PLupload, Jinja templates)

- Goal: 100% self-hosted open source code (to simplify maintenance & IP issues)

- Automate the migration process

- Redirect old article/forum/journal/user URLs to new structure

- Migrate, test, and repeat until all essential functionality works
- Cutover and stand by to debug

One thing to watch is the JSON API that Wordpress is rolling out. It's not ideal *but* it'll make it easy for people to write drop-in replacements for parts of WP, which unlike WP could actually be decent. So that could supply the missing pieces, for example, a standalone self-hosted comment system. It might be worth waiting like 6 months to see how all that develops.

I don't know about you guys, but I have very low expectations for web stuff. Makes it easier to build it "good enough", go live, and move on.

Guideline: KEEP IT SIMPLE, oldschool, semi-fugly, not particularly mobile-friendly

Probably the second most common request we get (after fixing the post editor) is a site that works well on mobile. Mobile accounts for such a huge portion of visitors that whatever we choose needs to make at least some improvement in that area; not particularly mobile-friendly just isn't a viable option.

Guideline: KEEP IT SIMPLE, oldschool, semi-fugly, not particularly mobile-friendly

Probably the second most common request we get (after fixing the post editor) is a site that works well on mobile. Mobile accounts for such a huge portion of visitors that whatever we choose needs to make at least some improvement in that area; not particularly mobile-friendly just isn't a viable option.

Oh ok, I'm only a little surprised. No big deal though.

1. Keep it simple, no frills, clean layout... a few CSS @media blocks
2. No battery-wasting JS bloat, CSS animations, or 3rd party tracking/sharing/ads/iframes

3. Minimize bandwidth usage & http requests... mainly, combine+minify js/css

No need for the cheesy "mobile friendly" look of the reviled new Invision https://community.invisionpower.com/. They haven't done a very good job of the above, either.

I just want a way to turn off the responsive mobile design.

My phone is capable of HD resolution so why does the site see fit to hide half the functionality with no way to turn it on, e g. The simplified profile view where I cant see my list of recent visitors or how I can't see someone's rep in their post... Ugh!

No need for the cheesy "mobile friendly" look of the reviled new Invision https://community.invisionpower.com/. They haven't done a very good job of the above, either.

I've been using it on my iPhone for another community and it's been perfectly straight-forward and easy to use. I'm pretty easy to please tho but I haven't come up with any serious complaints yet