Looks like I'm gonna give IPB a go!

Yes he the massive vB fan is going to give IPB a shot!

I've been spending a bit of time on their forums these last few days and I like what I see a LOT. Their take on UX is similar to my own. The devs post regular updates and get involved in discussions and pre-sales threads. And their IP.C seems to be just what I wanted - a solution to create my own fields/custom content types type areas on my site.

I'll try to report back on how I get on - hopefully it's as good as it appears but you never know until you try it.

I've been told that if you ask for a 'vB switcher discount' they give you one! I don't know how much it is yet but no harm in asking right!?

Anyone else considering it?

 

I read your presale questions : )

We opened up a hosted account with all add on products for evaluation purposes. $17.95 / month. It is a great way to try things out cheap before committing, at least I think so.

We have imported the database, but not sure it was done the best way as it was the first time for us. So we will try again.


Last I read they hinted they could throw in a free conversion ($60) if people mentioned they were converting from vb when buying a license. But I did not read where they would give an actual discount.

IPS buying up vb licenses would be a fun thing to watch. :ohi:

Buy them up, then scrap them. ; )

 

Welcome to the gray side.

 

This is a really great idea.

I put my conversion on ice until I can get to grips with coding some of the feature gaps I need. Also because of the great features coming in 3.1 which my gut says isn't that far off.

So I suspect that about a month or so after 3.1 goes gold I'll convet my site.

 

Thanks! I am learning much with the account. Using it 2 hours a day while reading the ip.com forums. Quietly making notes in the background on how to get things accomplished the IB way vs the vb way. if anyone is thinking about getting a hosted account you should be aware that they do not allow for a 2nd database or shell access of any kind. So simply uploading a backup of your database and running: "mysql -u dbusername -p databasename < backupname.sql" is not possible. There needs to be some database manipulation done that my tech person did. I don't quite understand the details.


Our members are fantastic, but some are *not* technical, just yesterday I walked someone through how to quote a post. So my thought was once the test site is up and running to use camcasta to make some 'this is how to use the software' videos.


My gut says 3.1 is not far off either, although I've no idea exactly when. Some of the features in the ip.com blogs look fairly interesting such as their version of thread preview (when mouse is over thread the first few lines of the first post is displayed).

 

I've decided to wait for 3.1 too - soft delete is a must!

It does make you wonder what other important features they might be missing, but I guess you'd only really be able to tell after using it for a while.

I'm still waiting for them to get back to me re the vB switcher discount. I also enquired whether they'd be willing to give me a refund if I wasn't happy (to save me the bother of selling it on if I wasn't) sales staff said they've referred it to Charles but it's been two days now, kinda slow!

I asked vB staff the same thing 5 or so years ago when I bought my first license and they said yes there and then - I remb thinking 'wow, they must be confident!'. I miss those days!

 

It has been stated many times their official policy is, once it is downloaded, there is no refund. And that makes sense to me.

Otherwise people would download it, then ask for a refund, and keep using the software. And keeping track of special situations/people gets old quick.

Invision Power - Community Forum, Blog, Gallery, CMS, and more - Frequently Asked Questions
Can I get a refund?

For hosting accounts, yes. You may cancel at any time, and if you pre-paid for a year, we will refund your unused months.

For purchases for downloadable products, such as software, we do not provide any refunds after the software has been downloaded. To ensure a product is right for you before purchasing, please try our demo, or contact us with any questions you may have.

 

although i didnt switch from vBulletin (although moved my license to server as a skin demo site) I moved the Design247 forums from MyBB to IPB and then purchases IP.Downloads the following day, And i have to say its extremely impressive and i would choose IPB over vB anyday.

 

See, your logic is a two way street and can be applied if you were coming from IPB to vB. Important features is a relative term.

Its your site and so YOU need to make that decision but IMO you can stay with a great "has been" or invest in a team that has the drive and determination to be the best by their customers. I will lay a fiver down on the fact that sooner or later you WILL make the switch.

The only difference will be how much (if at all) you will be kicking yourself when you do make the switch

Quilz said it best here

And how refreshing is it that soft delete was unveiled as a feature literally a couple weeks after customers were asking for it? Maybe it was just timing, however it did sem that as soon as a good case was put forward, they were all over it.

Finally, the money back guarantee thing; to be fair, after owning a 3rd party mod site I wouldn't EVER offer one in this industry either. I'm not saying this is you, however such a policy does radically increase the amount of hobbyist sites that will blindly convert (these are the types that went live with vB4 beta 2) until one of their members complain that the smilies are different or that the pets hack isn't the same and the admin freaks out, wants to revert their system to vB and demand their money back all the while shouting on the forums about it.

No one can take the net away Raza, only give you the info and the tools to make the best decision you can for your site at the end of the day it still requires you to have a leap of faith: Either stay with vB in the hopes it will magically get bettter or switch to IPB in hopes that you will be with the winning team.

Best of luck either way

 

There are some things that I am very familiar on vbulletin which are not implemented: post history, attachment approval, style upgrading etc.

To get you an idea: Regarding their latest blog post, they just implemented the topic preview feature.

The most concerning part for me is that once I upgrade an IPB board to a newer release, I have to do all the styling once more. In vbulletin there is a "these 5 templates have changed". And you can change the stylevars (or in vbulletin 3 the css settings alone), and these settings are automatically done in the newer release. Not so with IPB. Here you have to take the css templates of the newer release and copy & paste all your settings from the old css template.

Because of this issue alone I do not switch to IPB alone. IPB is a step ahead from all its competitors now regarding their programming structure, and they do listen to their customers and potential vbulletin switchers. Maybe I'll convert later.

 

I'm beginning to change my mind on giving it a go now tbh.

I've been hanging around there for the last few days and liked what I saw. But then went back to my own site last night and kept thinking, gosh it feels much more alive and snappier here. Went back to IPB today and noticed they don't have ajax quick reply, don't have who's viewing each forum, or even a whos online page (always nice to see what your friends are reading!).

Funny thing is even before that I kept thinking the IPB boards were really quiet - but put that down to vB being the current leader with a lot more customers. But the bottom line is (or at least it feels like) people participate more on vB forums. IPB need to find out why that is.

One of the things I liked about IPB is their use of Ajax in the profile and a few other places here and there - but that's it. No ajax QR like I mentioned and it could be used in soooooo many more places too (like in the gallery 'set as avatar' etc). Why isn't it? It seems obvious to me they know it would be a good idea - so why haven't they?

Considering IPB over vB was never meant to be a forever solution, I know I am almost certainly leaving vB (unless they come up with a kick-ass CMS/CPP solution) but I wanted to update my oldest site as there are new sections I want to bring in before getting to work on a few other (custom) projects ...then coming back to it to build it from scratch.

However IP.C excited me and I thought perhaps well I may not need to go custom, but deep down I know an off-the-peg solution will always be limiting as your still forced by their ways in many areas. Hence why we're investing in learning new tech ourselves (we just have way too many projects and way too high standards to just get people in to do all of them).

Anyway - I do like how they get involved with discussions, although am beginning to sense they resent people asking for features that vB has. Nobody is asking them to clone vB, but they have to realise vB is the leader for very good reason. I also like some of the things they have done - like IP.C, IP.Converge (for people with multiple sites - although it could do with more features imo) and the gallery (although it's missing a few must-have/killer features). I'm still not 100% decided but am beginning to change my mind. If they really believed in their product they would have jumped at the chance to get me to even try it.

vB? While it still is the leader - the future is hazy. People just don't trust IB. I too didn't to begin with, then thought I'd give them a chance and now think they're only really interested in making money - on the cheap. There's no innovation there imo. And I don't think they know which direction to go in. Maybe they will impress us - but so far I very much dislike them not sticking to their promise of giving us a road map, 3 months since vB4 went gold!! just part of the reason why I have little faith in them - if I go back to using vB they're gonna have to win me over now and at the most I'll use it one last time for this site (but like I said it'd only be a temp solution).

So currently I just need a solution to upgrade my oldest site to - to add a few more sections and keep the members happy for a year or two. Shame IPB don't have a roadmap - knowing what they have planned would make it easier to consider them. If they further developed their IP.C to the point where you could create any type of site you want (bit like drupal) then I'd consider it even over a custom solution.

Re the refund thing - they should know I'm not just your average joe who's gonna nick their code (could just dl it from a warez site if I wanted to do that) and I'm pretty sure they keep track of what's posted on vB.com, which sites win BOTM and which are influential etc. There are a few of us they should be courting to get over - hope it doesn't sound arrogant but we're the type of adverts that money can't buy. (Seeing The Geek there for example, made me take them a LOT more seriously.)

 

They do have a Who's Online page:

Online Users

 

Ah right - thanks. I missed it - and I'd prob change the large text as a link and then have '(or view as)' next to it. Shame they don't have by location tho - it's nice to see which threads are busy - someone mentioned that just yesterday on one of my sites, that they often see a particular thread being read by a number of guests.

Still not 100% decided either way - I'm not shy changing my mind about things

 

Raza, there is no question it is a different crowd on the IPB forums than there is over on the vB forums. But that's really OK, because they are different sites and not meant to be the same.

I've really no idea of what kind of deal you might (or might not) be able to work out with IPS on prices, refunds, etc., but let me give you a hint -

I have worked wholesale/retail sales for the best part of 37 years. If someone walks into the store where others are shopping and starts begging discounts, the bottom line is they are going to walk back out the door feeling sorely disappointed. Do we have room on our profit margins? Yes, but it is tight. If you're going to drop a grand on product, then that gives me more room to play. Let's step off to the side here and see if we can hammer out a deal that puts a smile on everyone's face.

But I'm not going to announce to every shopper in the place that discounts are available, because the guy using up 20 minutes of my time to make a buying decision on a five dollar item simply isn't due a cut in price.

Contact Charles via Private Message and see if he can help you. Every customer's needs are different, so that makes every sale different too. And trying to back a salesman into a corner where he has to make a public statement on a ___% discount is doing either of you any good.

~IF~ Charles recognizes who you are, he's still not going to make generalized, public discount offers for everyone else to pick up on. You're doing nothing more than insisting he give up ___% across the board to expect otherwise.

Good luck in your decision-making process. I hope you pick the solution that will work out best for you in the long haul.

 

Yeah sure they are different crowds - I quite like some of them already they certainly seem friendly enough. My comment was about how active it appeared.

The only thing I enquired about off my own back was a possible refund if I wasn't happy. Just like I did with vB - although admittedly I was only half joking back then and was very surprised when Jake Bunce said yes there and then. It instilled a lot of confidence in the product and my purchasing decision I can tell ya.

Why did I ask? Purely because if I don't like it I don't have to mess around selling it on/wasting the money.

Re discounts, I think it was Rikki who mentioned it in a tweet when I cheekily asked if there were any incentives for ex-vB users - and that was after he started talking to me once I mentioned IPB to someone else (think it was in a convo with the Geek). I did also ask about the branding free fee which is $100 more expensive than vBs! And he said to mention that to sales to see what could be done. Either way the impression I got is you need to ask or you won't get

Discounts aside, the refund guarantee would have done 3 things:

1. Saved me the hassle (or the thought of) having to off-load it if I didn't like it.
2. Shown me they have so much confidence in their product that they highly doubt I'd want my money back.
3. Help make my choice for me in giving their product at go (remb I haven't even decided I am going to yet - it may never happen, and they could have ensured it did).

So, offering it would have pretty much made me give their product a very close look - as it stands that may not happen as I am still pondering over it (and as of my last post, less likely to give it a shot now given the features that I feel are missing - and without any ideas of when some of them will be added).

Ideally I'd want to live with it for 30 days, where I could do an import of my db, style at least 2 pages into our design and give IP.C a go to see if it will be able to handle what I want. I'm not keen on using their hosted package as a 'test' as I don't want to upload my DB to anyone else's server, or even edited templates for that matter - we're quite protective of our intellectual property! And of course it would be nice to know when we can expect the things they have said they'll include - we played the waiting game at vB for long enough thank you :lol:

 

Activity

of course IPB is less active than vb.com. Just by using the unscientific google for "powered by" method to determine market share, vB is 4x that of IPB. Logically there will be 4x more activity on vb.com. And look at all that wonderful vB activity the last 2months... Solid streams of "waaaaahhhhh" and little to no activity from v(BS) teams.

Discount thing.

Mike sort of hit the nail on the head regarding the discount thing. Posting discussions about it is going to force them to either:

1. Form a standard discount/returns policy for everyone
2. Give you a standard "no" as the answer

#2 will most likely be the case not because they wouldn't want to do something for you or not want you on board, but because you are forcing their hand. Discount/refund policies like that are a challenge to do and can backfire pretty easily. What do you think would happen if someone popped into vB and started demanding discounts and money back guarantees?

Feature suggestions

I do agree that at times it feels that if a vB user suggests a feature because vB had it it is dismissed. I even commented on this once in a slightly cheeky manner.
However I think at times it is the way in which it is suggested that can get peoples backs up. Just look at 3 of the new features in 3.1: Preview topics, Soft Delete and Profile Customisation. Those are features that were found in vB before IPB so they clearly aren't adverse to adding features that vB brought to market first.

My experience is that if you can give a good use case and examples there isn't much reason they would have to NOT consider it and they clearly do. Depending on your approach (like your Ajax suggestion), users and devs may initially be negative but at least there is a discussion! vB's suggestion threads were never replied to by the team.

Finally, for the umpteenth time, there are features that vB has that IPB doesn't. Some are nice features (post history I agree with). I like vB's template system better. I think vB is MUCH easier and faster to mod for. I also think .org is organised A LOT better.

But... Could you imagine trying to look at it from the other perspective? Like a convert moving from IPB to vB?

What? No gallery? No login integration? No Sphinx integration?!? How do I port my ip.content applications into vB (you can't)? No FB connect? No twitter integration? No status updates? ... and the list goes on. IMO its farrrr more traumatic in the feature loss department to try and convert from IPB to vB.

Is the grass greener on the other side? The grass is certainly a different shade of green right now. For me, the question is: Which side is the one that will continue to grow greener and which one is most likely to wither and die?

 

As always, Sam's elocution is far better than my own. But he makes/raises interesting points.

First off, IPS is not vBSolutions. And IP.Board is not vBulletin.

Each has its own list of features, which the individual is going have to compare to determine what are strengths and what are weaknesses. I always chuckle when I see people mention forum options they cannot live without, because more often than not, they are features I never use. But that is why everyone needs to look at those feature lists, because their wants/needs are unique.

Just as you cannot walk into a Chinese restaurant and order a Big Mac with fries (or chips as the case may be ), expecting to walk into IPS and see vBSolutions employees, vBSolutions management and vB features is just being unrealistic.

An analogy I see often on the Ubuntu forums is that Linux isn't Windows, so don't go trying to make it so. Linux has its own strengths to stand on. Linux users don't want it to be Windows.

IP.Board isn't vBulletin. Speaking entirely for myself, I find IPB to be much better than vBulletin. And I don't want IPB to be vBulletin, either. I left vBulletin because I no longer cared for the script or the company behind it. I like IPB and I really like IPS.

No, the IPB user base isn't as large (yet). No, the IPB modding community isn't as big (yet). No, IPB doesn't offer the exact same feature set as vBulletin. If it did, it wouldn't be IPB, would it?

Raza, your individual needs are likely quite different from my own. That's OK, we're not meant to be clones of one another. And that is why there are options out there. vBulletin might be the best fit for you. That is something only you can decide.

I had doubts when I converted to IPB from vB. I had doubts when I converted to Ubuntu from Windows and from OS X. But when I could accept the fact that things were going to be different because I was the one wanting to make the change, I was suddenly able to embrace the changes for the improvements I have found them to be. And there is just no way I would even consider giving up IPB to go back to vBulletin.

Change isn't always bad.

 

IPB is a handful of strong and qualified 'modders' (is that a word? ) from taking another big step towards forum-script supremacy.

I'm a big fan of vBulletin because it was my first ever forum script. I learned the little that I know through using vBulletin. So, I'm comfortable with it and enjoy working with it.

On the other hand, I could absolutely see where if you learned from IPB's side of the fence, that you'd be completely disenchanted with the lack of certain features as Sam mentioned above.

The HUGE difference is the communication aspect of both. In this day and age where retaining customers is essential, vBulletin's downfall could be it's lack or poor communication. In reading how some moderators and forum leaders interact with customers on vbulletin.org or vbulletin.com, it's no doubt that they have dug themselves in a customer service hole. Couple that with the fact that you have the 'we're better so just pay us' mentality that vBulletin has/had been expressing over the last quarter of '09 until now and you've got a recipe for disaster.

I'm not going to re-hash the recent past discussions about vB because those could get very passionate. But, I definitely concur that IPB is MUCH more open to suggestions and actually takes customer commentary and feature requests seriously. That alone makes the perception of the company a customer-friendly (paramount nowadays) one and it allows you to easily 'give it a shot' as many former vBulletin-only webmasters have.

I love the fact that IPB is rising and that vBulletin has a competitor that is making strong advances because that obviously has raised the level of awareness and focus on the vBulletin side. We, the admins/webmasters, will be better off for it!

 

Who says I'm demanding anything? I don't give a toss about the discount, I only asked sales because Rikki told me to mention it.

And I'm not demanding a money back guarantee either - it's up to them how far they'd like to go to get people to try their product.

Will it have any impact on whether I try IPB or not? Yes of course - it's the difference between me trying it for sure, and just a chance I may try it. I don't fancy 'wasting' hundreds of pounds on something that I don't use - would much prefer to be able to try it before I buy/commit. Jake Bunce (vB) offered me it without even knowing who I was over 5 years ago - that said a lot to me.

So instead of jumping in I'm spending a bit of time there looking around. Like I mentioned already, at first it looked all new n nice, but once you get passed that initial excitement you see it is lacking a lot of features that my users are already used to. Sure we could live without some IF they had some killa feature like SGs that worked well - but they don't. I'm told even IP.C (which was something that got me looking at IPB more than anything else) has it's rival on vB.org (thanks for the link Adam!). Not to mention vB has promised custom content types too.

Mike - of course they are not the same but, they are both forums - and users will expect forums to have certain features beyond just threads and posts. The problem IPB has is vB has been a leader for so long that most people who have used forums will almost certainly have used a vB forum - thus become accustomed to many of it's features. They either need to catch up on the features count OR, come up with features that makes their package significantly better than vBs.

ArnyVee - Yep I like how they post on the boards too. There was certainly an air of pomposity at times over at vB. However, and I guess it's quite natural, they do seem to get a little defensive when an ex vB users posts a suggestion for a feature that vB has. But that's something they need to deal with because vB did a lot of things right - and has a lot of features people are used to.