IPS announces first full preview of Invision Community 5

[JoelR]

Focus on this preview:

• Sidebar Menu
• Forum Index: Feed View 
• Topic pages: Compact view

Some questions:

• Has anybody noticed a trend, or even updated their forum index, to be simpler?  The trend at IPS for the last several years in context of their forum views such as fluid forum and grid view are fewer and simpler categories, with more emphasis on surfacing the topics.  
• Does the Sidebar Menu seem evocative of the Opera or Edge browser?
• What do you think about hiding all of the user information from the postbit in the new Compact view?  That significantly removes profile information to focus on the content.  

Also, I should add, for an IPS fan site, I am remarkably slow at posting this news.  Kudos to @dismalbliss and @Aerodynamic for being much faster than me in sharing the news on other forum administration sites!  

[JoeyM]

This makes me want to upgrade the moment v5 is dropped, but it's not practical for me. Ehren has done a great job with the design, as have the developers with building it up. It looks a lot more modern too.

[JoelR]

Don't all of the updates make you want to upgrade right away??  

Keep in mind that IPS is just getting started on their IPS 5 announcements.  Hopefully we should see several more in-depth announcements over the next couple of weeks.

[Cedric]

I'm really excited with the new announced features. I honestly can't wait to see more and it makes me question my future on XenForo. The development on IC compared to XenForo is miles better and has way more innovative features where as XenForo is adding features to their core that are already available due 3rd party add ons. 

 

Let me be clear: I prefer XenForo for one reason: that is the diverse possibilities due to the 3rd part developers. If it wasn't for them, I'd go Invision instantly. I have always had a love for IC since I used it over 20 years ago. Despite the higher price on IC and the innovation behind the software, my preference could easily be changed in the near future.

[dismalbliss]

Invision new what they were doing years ago when they dropped the name "IPBoard" and changed their domain from invisionpower to invisioncommunity.com. They clearly don't see other forum scripts, free nor paid, to be the competition anymore. They are taking their cues from modern cloud community platforms that are escalating in popularity, taking what they are doing and making it even better.

[JoelR]

8 hours ago, Cedric said:

I'm really excited with the new announced features. I honestly can't wait to see more and it makes me question my future on XenForo. The development on IC compared to XenForo is miles better and has way more innovative features where as XenForo is adding features to their core that are already available due 3rd party add ons. 

 

Let me be clear: I prefer XenForo for one reason: that is the diverse possibilities due to the 3rd part developers. If it wasn't for them, I'd go Invision instantly. I have always had a love for IC since I used it over 20 years ago. Despite the higher price on IC and the innovation behind the software, my preference could easily be changed in the near future.

IPS definitely packs more - and releases more often - into each release.  The only other competitor that I see even come close is WBB.  

There are definitely some pros and cons though if you like third party development.  The rapid development cycle of IPS means mods and themes need to be updated more often. This puts a lot of pressure on developers, and a lot of casual developers get "shaken out" very quickly. The slow development cycle of XF means mods and themes don't need to be updated for years and years, so there's a lot more opportunity for new and casual developers.  IPS clients who run large production sites have learned (sometimes the hard way) to rely on less third party mods or bring the development private.  

I think there's an awesome community and a more vibrant development scene around XF, but part of that is absolutely helped by their slow release cycle.  I know many XF clients have complained about the slow release cycle, but there is also stability and maturity.  In return, you get a very active development scene, and lots of plugin options at very cheap prices. 

[JoelR]

4 hours ago, dismalbliss said:

Invision new what they were doing years ago when they dropped the name "IPBoard" and changed their domain from invisionpower to invisioncommunity.com. They clearly don't see other forum scripts, free nor paid, to be the competition anymore. They are taking their cues from modern cloud community platforms that are escalating in popularity, taking what they are doing and making it even better.

I'm actually really curious at the branding and would love to hear more behind those chamges.  When you do searches on the internet, the software is still referred to as IP.Board. 

This is entirely a personal assessment, but I personally believe that IPS has sharpened its vision in a way that some of its legacy competitors haven't. IPS clearly has a hypothesis for - and have built strong features around - support communities.  What I'm waiting to see is how they empower social communities and content creator communities.  

[JoeyM]

On 10/5/2023 at 2:50 AM, JoelR said:

Don't all of the updates make you want to upgrade right away??  

There are many things I use, such as physical products that are being removed with counteracts the usefulness of upgrading. I make money selling things, I can't without having a store with physical products.

That news felt like a massive blow to me.

[JoelR]

1 hour ago, JoeyM said:

There are many things I use, such as physical products that are being removed with counteracts the usefulness of upgrading. I make money selling things, I can't without having a store with physical products.

That news felt like a massive blow to me.

What are you thinking about to replace physical products, or you are you planning on staying on v4 for awhile?  

[dismalbliss]

5 hours ago, JoelR said:

I personally believe that IPS has sharpened its vision in a way that some of its legacy competitors haven't

Invision has embraced "community" instead of "forums". With the Cloud packages featuring Lessons and LiveStreams, they are realizing that it's not Xenforo, Woltlab, or VBulletin that's the competition. The real competition is community platforms like Kajabi, Mighty Networks, Podia, and LearnWorlds. The v5 feed layout reminds me of these other platforms.

32 minutes ago, JoelR said:

What are you thinking about to replace physical products, or you are you planning on staying on v4 for awhile?

Hopefully an app developer can bring back physical products in v5 now that there are no more restrictions.

[JoeyM]

15 hours ago, JoelR said:

What are you thinking about to replace physical products, or you are you planning on staying on v4 for awhile?  

I'll be hiring a trustworthy dev to make an application to return the feature, hopefully. Yet, I was planning to stay on v4, until I was hacked. Now I am not sure.