Invision Power Board

Invision Power Board (abbreviated IPB or IP.Board) is an Internet forum software produced by Invision Power Services, Inc. Written in PHP and primarily using MySQL (other database engines are available), it is comparable to other forum software.

While Invision Power Board is a commercially sold product, there is a large modding community and many of these modifications are free. In addition, many groups offer the download or design of free and paid-for skins.

Latest Releases

1.3.x (obsolete) - 1.3.1
2.0.x (obsolete) - 2.0.4: May 4, 2005
2.1.x (stable) - 2.1.7: July 13, 2006

History

Invision Power Services (IPS) was begun by Matt Mecham and Charles Warner in 2002, after the pair left Jarvis Entertainment Group (who produced Ikonboard). Their first product was IPB, another forum package, which quickly gathered a community of former Ikonboard users.

Although the software developers originally maintained that it would remain a free package, in 2004 IPB ended its free releases for non-commercial uses. A downloadable trial version of Invision Power Board 2.0.0 PFPre-Final, aka a Release Candidate made available for use before the final code is released for public consumption. versions 1 and 2 were made available, but were discontinued on September 27, 2004. It was replaced with a free demo with restrictions of 5000 posts, 1000 threads, 200 members and other restrictions, thus ending its claims that IPB will be free forever. On July 1, 2005, IPS changed the demo timeframe from 15 days to 5 days, and a few months later, it was again reduced to 24 hours.

IPB 2.1 was released on September 13, 2005. The administrator's control panel was completely redesigned, and the posting options were renovated to feature viewable text properties (Rich Text Editor), such as bold, italics, underline, etc. The viewing styles were also redone, and a number of various other changes were made including the use of Ajax in many new features.

Version 1.3

Version 1.3 was the last "totally free" version, and IPS still permits it to be used, but does not offer a download or support. Regardless of the lack of help, many users still use the older version, even though it has known security holes. Up until 2005, IPS offered security fixes, but with the advent of version 2.1, these have ceased. The website IBForen offers a download with security patches for the 1.3.1 version, as well as a compatability fix for PHP5, however use of these fixes are not supported by IPS.

Version 2.0

The look of Invision Power Board 2.0 is similar to the version 2.1. This was the last version which could be downloaded for free from Invision Power Board servers. Just as with IPB 1.3, some users still using the unrestricted trial versions of the 2.0 PFpre final footnote versions but again, contain a lot of security holes and are no longer supported. However, no modifications exist which make IPB 2.0 secure, and users are encouraged to upgrade to version 2.1.

Version 2.1

Invision Power Board 2.1 is the current version of IPB. IPB 2.1 offers significant improvements over older versions, including security updates, a rich text editor for making posts, and improvements to moderation tools. IPB 2.1 also has a redesigned Administration Control Panel. All versions of IPB 2.1 are commercial software, no downloadable demo version is available.

Version 2.2

Invision Power Board 2.2 is currently in development. Planned features include the following: captcha for guest posting, virus scan and account locking. ^*

External links

Official

Invision Power Board Homepage - Official IPB homepage
Invision Power Forums - Official IPB forums
IPSBeyond - Official IPS resource site

Other

Invisionize - Unofficial IPB resource site

Notes

Internet forum software

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