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Why is Invision so popular?

Asked by Trix.Neo,

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Grand Master

Tomi

Posted
Posted

No, it's true. Go to any version 2.0.x IPB site and type index.php?ipscheck=1 to the end of the address and you will get their license key.

eg: http://www.getpaidforum.com/forums/index.php?ipscheck=1

I'll agree with primexx. That's not a backdoor at all. They can't take over your board at all.

You probably have NO clue at all how 'ipscheck' even works. It doesn't even fall under the category of backdoor, as 'ipscheck' doesn't give you access to the board. If there's no license, it returns 0, otherwise it returns a number generated somehow by the license key that you inserted. That used to be how 2.0 worked, now in 2.1 they have a different method of doing it. And also, if I remember correctly, your downloads in the customer centre include your key automatically [don't ask me how, some kind of script they have].

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Collaborator

kingkong118

Posted
Posted

For me IPB has always been the greatest, it looks good, handles well, it can be skinned and modded easily. It has great features too.

I've tried phpbb for example, and the database messes up all the time, it looks crappy, doesn't have alot of features, the admin side is wierd.

:devil:

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Grand Master

chconline Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

They have backdoors to 2.1.x AFAIK. I've seen them actually SHUT DOWN a forum by deleting all posts and creating a single section with a post that says "BLAH BLAH who resides at BLAH BLAH is pending legal action" and at the bottom where it says Licenced to: says "This board isnt licenced" etc.

Back on topic, IPB is nice. Ive used it since 1.2 :D Fully licenced here too.

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Grand Master

Tomi

Posted
Posted

They have backdoors to 2.1.x AFAIK. I've seen them actually SHUT DOWN a forum by deleting all posts and creating a single section with a post that says "BLAH BLAH who resides at BLAH BLAH is pending legal action" and at the bottom where it says Licenced to: says "This board isnt licenced" etc.

Back on topic, IPB is nice. Ive used it since 1.2 :D Fully licenced here too.

I think you're talking about William Hook's forum [as that's the only place I heard of it happening]? If so, I remember it being said a fake.

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Grand Master

Tomi

Posted
Posted

how can an there be back doors when you can look at the code. wouldn't it be stupid for them to have back doors when everybody can see it?

Yeah, there are quite a few coders who've looked through the code and know it from the back of their hand, no one's seen any kind of backdoor.

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Grand Master

TruBD

Posted
Posted

No, it's true. Go to any version 2.0.x IPB site and type index.php?ipscheck=1 to the end of the address and you will get their license key.

eg: http://www.getpaidforum.com/forums/index.php?ipscheck=1

i just tried that out with my forum and i get this:

<result>0</result>

You do not have permission to view this page.

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Grand Master

Tomi

Posted
Posted

No, it's true. Go to any version 2.0.x IPB site and type index.php?ipscheck=1 to the end of the address and you will get their license key.

eg: http://www.getpaidforum.com/forums/index.php?ipscheck=1

Wait, I just re-read your post. Oh man, I'm laughing pretty hard right now. I guess you've never seen a license key before, as I know it's not xxxxx,yyyyy format, instead: xxxxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxx-xxxxx-LIFE

i just tried that out with my forum and i get this:

IPS changed how the ipscheck tool works, now they have some kind of different unknown method.

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Experienced

cbosdell

Posted
Posted

I'm not faulting their product. IPB is really good software. But it's the fact that the company were stringing users along right thoughout the version 2.0 beta and those few days which version 2.0 final was free, that 2.0 was going to always remain free. Right until the very end. I can understand wanted to release a pay product to be a business, but it' the way that they did it was deceptive. Those that didn't download 2.0 final in the first day or so were left high and dry because distributing 2.0 final from somewhere other than IPS was illegal. And even if you got 2.0 final for free, you wouldn't be able to get security updates for that.

In addition to that, they made a complete cover up of what they did by deleting posts and threads on their forums that made a mention of what they did, deleted posts that quoted that "IPB will always be free" from the past (posts dating back before they were even considering making it pay only), and BANNED PAYING CUSTOMERS that questioned it. That's right! BANNED CUSTOMERS that PAID for the privlege to be a member on their board. Highly illegal because they had their licenses revoked without violating any license agreements, and were asking questions on the forums that they paid to be on, which they are quite entitled to do.

Also IPS were chums with the Neowin staff at the time. IPS has previously been a Neowin sponsor to provide the Neowin servers at a time when Neowin were on the brink of shutting down for good (Neowin's previous hosting was too expensive for the Neowin admins to afford. In fact, IPS' sponsorship was the reason why Neowin converted from vB to IPB at the start of their sponsorship). IPS were a great company when they were generous enough to sponsor such a large hosting requirements. Because Neowin had a this good rapport with IPS (even though they were no longer sponsors at the time), the Neowin staff did a moderate amount of censorship on the issue themselves (Not nearly to the extent of IPS, no bans, just forbidding any new topics on the issue).

I don't know if this is still true or not, but IPS even built a backdoor in version 2 so that they could remotely access(and then disable or deface) boards that were not legally licensed. They could check the license keys remotely by adding ?ipscheck=1 to the end of the index.php.

To answer your statement, they could of announced that they were going to make it pay-only before they did it so users had a chance to understand that "IPB will always be free" is not true and whether they want to purchase it or not. I'm not comparing it to vB, I don't know about vB's business practices but in any case I wasn't recommending/comparing vB. I was making a statement about IPS on their own merits. And yes I would agree that phpBB is an inferior product, but that wasn't the point. As lazy as phpBB are, at least they arn't going to screw you.

In short, I'ld say that IPS is definately NOT a company to be trusted, and not the kind of people I would want to ever give my money to.

Too true. IPS are lying scum and so is Matt Mecham who in particular is a liar to never be trusted!

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Mentor

low

Posted
Posted

1. Build a relatively good product or at least equal to competition.

2. Release it for free.

3. Wait until it has gathered enough people so it becomes 'critical' to them.

4. Go fully commercial, drop all support for existing 'customers' and leave them hanging unless they pay you cashola!

5. ...

6. PROFIT!

But that's not priceless, priceless is having fanboiz roam forums defending their actions for you! :yes:

Every buisness is about making money... i think invision did not expect to get so popular and when they did they saw this as a chance to still be popluar and also make a nice profit off their well known product... and i don't think people were too turned off by this because i don't think their is another board program out their that is better than invision... it has just about everything you need... so paying for it i don't see would a huge problem to exsisting customers of their program...

low

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Experienced

cbosdell

Posted
Posted

Every buisness is about making money... i think invision did not expect to get so popular and when they did they saw this as a chance to still be popluar and also make a nice profit off their well known product... and i don't think people were too turned off by this because i don't think their is another board program out their that is better than invision... it has just about everything you need... so paying for it i don't see would a huge problem to exsisting customers of their program...

low

it wouldn't have been such a big deal if they had said for example 1.* is going to be free still but 2.0 and all future releases are paid only and the only 1.* updated will be any critical sercurity fixes. But no they are decietful and released 2.0 for free for a bit (which yes I have) and then take it down and say its paid only.

the issue is even if people depend on it a lot of people dont have the $60 or so a year to spare.

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Grand Master

Tomi

Posted
Posted

it wouldn't have been such a big deal if they had said for example 1.* is going to be free still but 2.0 and all future releases are paid only and the only 1.* updated will be any critical sercurity fixes. But no they are decietful and released 2.0 for free for a bit (which yes I have) and then take it down and say its paid only.

the issue is even if people depend on it a lot of people dont have the $60 or so a year to spare.

So, if you were a programmer, and your software was at version 3.0, would you still work on the 1.x version of your program? No, because it'd be taking away from your time to be working on 3.1, and it's also saying "Hey customers, look - the free version is still being worked on, why even bother buying the newer version? Even if the free version isn't as good, it's still as useable and safe as the paid version, screw buying it!".

And they even gave you a chance to download the final version for a day, most companies would NOT do that. Consider yourselves lucky to even have a chance; it's rare.

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Experienced

cbosdell

Posted
Posted (edited)

So, if you were a programmer, and your software was at version 3.0, would you still work on the 1.x version of your program? No, because it'd be taking away from your time to be working on 3.1, and it's also saying "Hey customers, look - the free version is still being worked on, why even bother buying the newer version? Even if the free version isn't as good, it's still as useable and safe as the paid version, screw buying it!".

And they even gave you a chance to download the final version for a day, most companies would NOT do that. Consider yourselves lucky to even have a chance; it's rare.

You twisted my words. What I said was any major security holes that need fixing. Its only the right thing to do if you are going to for years say it'll ALWAYS be free but anyways thats not what happened so why dispute it?

Invision Board Through 1.2 I believe was completely free then with 1.3 they made it a free unlimited trial thing which was one step closer to paid. Then with 2.0 they spent months hyping its release and it was released and a few hours later the free unlimited trial download was taken down and it was announced they were going paid only and all the free people don't matter,

So Basically -- Matt Mecham and everyone at Invision Board are evil scum liars who try to cover up or ignore the fact that they are but -- Invision Board is simply the best product around. :no:

Edit: Oh yeah I Just found this little quote of his :D :

Yes, we're pushing our paid services harder, but we're still offering a free product that is fully functional. This has always been our vision and it's not going to change. "They" said 1.1 wouldn't be free, it was. "They" said 1.2 wouldn't be free, it was. "They" said 1.3 wouldn't be free, it was. "They" say 2.0 won't be free - and it will be.

How many times do we have to prove "them" wrong?

Edited by cbosdell
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Neowinian

Telemacus

Posted
Posted

First of all, I'd like to invite all the people who have written negative comments about Matt Mecham to do a thourough research (using google) of his career so that you can get your own personal and unbiased opinion. Mine is not unbiased...

Personally, I don't trust people who make defamatory comments on someone simply because they had one bad experience.

I'm an IPS customer and I've followed up Matt's work for years, and I can honestly say that he is one hell of an outstanding individual.

I think Matt has made an incredible contribution to the internet comunity since the early days of "Ikonboard", which, I remind you, was a perl based forum that he created from scratch. This forum was completely free throughout its history and, at the time, it was one of the most robust perl based forum systems that you could find.

He spent thousands of hours developing his software and I can confirm that he spent incredible amounts of time on it: I'm not sure whether Matt actually slept more than 5 hours a day in those days... but I doubt it.

At the time Matt used to tell people that Ikonboard would always be free, and he kept his word. Hundreds of thousands of people all over the planet were able to use his software and thousands of webmasters were able to build communities where communication, what a great word, was possible.

(It's somewhat ironic that his the software that he created can also be used to put him down with allegations which are so completely unfair.)

When Ikonboard grew more than was originally expected, some "unethical businessmen" took advantage of Matt's lack of experience in the business world, and basically stole all his work with a contract which he signed, but whose contents I'm not sure if Matt understood correctly: he lost Ikonboard and never made a cent out of it. Read my lips, I repeat: He was exploited, they stole his work and he never made a cent out of it.

Perhaps this experience changed Matt's outlook of life... maybe it made him realize what a business was all about and how nasty things can get when you find some unethical people in your way.

Matt had to start from scratch. He could have given up and nobody would have blamed him, but no... he was a fighter and came back with invisionboard.

The early versions of Invision were free. It is true that in those days "always free" was still part of Invision's motto, and one day it did change...

The allegations that Matt lied to everyone are a bit absurd. Ok, perhaps "always" was an ill chosen term in their motto, but Matt had been giving us, the community of people who used his software, more than we could ever have expected. It is completely unreasonable and unfair to expect someone who had given so much to others, to abide by a statement he had made a long time ago. Matt had evolved as a person and from a professional stand point, he had given up his job and invision was... well... his whole creation and his whole life.

What happened with the release of version 2 has not been explained correctly, but to claim that it was a machination to get people hooked on it and then tell them that it wasn't gonna be free, well... it's quite silly. Invision made a business decission, it wasn't popular and some people felt disappointed, but there was a huge comunity of coders who created mods and gave support and this made the last free version of invision a perfectly viable alternative to version 2: those people could still use the software if they wanted to.

Today Invision board is, in my opinion, the most robust, dynamic, professional forum software you can possibly get. It has been coded with an amazing logic which only exists in Matt's mind, and that's part of of the software's success.

IPS is growing and hiring new programmers and workers every year. New products are currently being developed and will be released over the next few months and will make a webmaster's life a lot easier...

Of course they'll make mistakes... sometimes they'll let you down, others they will surprise you with their assistance or the release of a new product... you have to put everything in the scale and decide if it's worth it. In my case, it is definitely worth it and I'm not surprised that amongst others, Neowin, with over 5 million posts on its database, still uses it... [ I'm sure Neowin has had a lot of offers from other forum developers... ;) ]

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Setup BIOS The F4-425 Pro includes an Aptio BIOS from American Megatrends [1, 2], and you can setup pretty much everything here including the boot order, which is locked to the UEFI OS, however above that choice you can enable or disable booting to the USB bootloader so this would still allow you to switch to a USB stick with an alternative bootloader and boot from it, or disable it to instead always start from the first disk with an OS installed on it. Initial Setup Setup is roughly the same as the F4-425 Plus, along with the new TOS 7 setup dialogs, so there will be no surprises here. Upon connecting to the LAN and booting up, the F4-425 Pro can be reached by navigating to http://tnas.local. If that doesn't work, you can use the local address assigned via DHCP, which you can find using the TNAS PC desktop application, which is essentially a TerraMaster NAS finder. The setup process is pretty straightforward, through a wizard, and in full below: TOS 7 Initialization As you can see, TOS 7 received a new coat of paint, and the initialization requires fewer interactions. Happily, TOS no longer decides to throw all disks into the same Storage Pool; 2.5-inch HDDs are allocated into Storage Pool 1. This is because two of the HDDs are allocated to hold system files. Previously (with TOS 5 and 6), if you pre-installed HDDs and SSDs, they were all placed into Storage Pool 1, even if you did not select the SSDs for inclusion during the onboarding. TOS 7 Setup On first boot, there is a tutorial and some steps to take to harden the TNAS (or not), which includes an immediate update from TOS 7.0.0616 to 7.0.0706, of which the changelog screenshot is also included in the above gallery. It must be noted that the Security Advisor still contains (in my opinion) a pretty major bug in that if you enable SPC and then do the required rebooting, the Security Advisor still says that SPC is disabled. TerraMaster provided the following statement about it: It is disappointing that TOS 7 has been in beta since December, and this OOBE issue is still there. Shutdown option has moved Instead of a Taskbar option to manage the NAS, all of these options have been moved to a "Start panel", initially I didn't see it and my contact had to show me how to power off the F4-425 Pro. To logout, reboot or power off you can find those controls at the top right of the Panel. It is also possible to power off through the TNAS mobile app beta. Storage setup Above, you can see the steps I took to create the Storage Pools and Volumes. I made a second Storage Pool using TRAID on two 4TB MP44Q SSDs (which, in this instance, is similar to RAID 5), and finally, I added the 250GB 970 Evo Plus drive as Hyper Cache on Storage Pool 1 in Balanced mode. Registering If you decide not to lock down the F4-425 Pro in Security Isolation Mode (blocking all external connections), then you could set up a TNAS device ID through the Remote Access setting in the Control Panel (which must be unique). This works in combination with an online TerraMaster account. TOS 7 TNAS Online Creating a TerraMaster account and linking the device online activates the warranty when you provide proof of purchase and the serial number, but it also gives you access through the TNAS mobile app, which allows you to complete certain operationsб including powering off and restarting the NAS remotely. A TNAS mobile update is required to gain access through TOS 7, and this is provided on the TerraMaster website, as it is not yet on Google Play. The app is evolving all the time and has made leaps and bounds since I first started reviewing TerraMaster devices almost three years ago. It is not quite there yet if you are comparing the likes of Synology, which, sadly, a lot of users online do all the time. OpenClaw setup One of the main selling points of the new F4-425 Pro is the inclusion of OpenClaw, with TerraMaster claiming that it is "powered by the world's first AI-native TOS 7 OS, supporting local-first smart workflows and independent data control." However, I immediately ran into problems trying to enable OpenClaw. After waiting 20 minutes at the "Enabling" message of the OpenClaw app following installation, I decided to do some searching online and discovered that it couldn't complete the installation process due to SPC being enabled, which is something TOS 7 immediately recommends to be enabled on first boot. SPC for NAS (TOS 7) is basically the same principle as UAC in Windows; it blocks executables from being launched by non-Super Users. After reaching out to my contact about these issues, I received the following response: Anyway, this only became clear when I closed the OpenClaw app screen and clicked on the OpenClaw icon in the taskbar; that is when I saw the message about disabling SPC. I think, due to the fact that this is a requirement, this should be a prompt during the installation process, not when closing the App Market and then trying to launch OpenClaw. There's also no 'Getting started' guide for people like me who have never used OpenClaw. I tried to add an LLM and discovered the tutorial led nowhere. That's when I started looking around the official TerraMaster forums, and I found a guide that helpfully explains that you won't get anywhere with OpenClaw unless you have a paid plan, which is disappointing because I imagined there would be an option to use a local LLM as I do in SubtitleEdit with Whisper-XXL. In addition, with the marketing imagery on the official site, it says that the OpenClaw feature is "all processed 100% locally for absolute privacy." which led me to believe that I could install a local LLM, not one that required paid tokens. In any case, TerraMaster does not provide guidance for this new feature, which was also a selling point of the F4-425 Pro! My contact also provided clarification about the above points I raised with TerraMaster Since it is not in the scope of the review to add paid services, I'll leave that to the people who are more qualified with OpenClaw. F4-425 Pro Surveillance App TOS also comes with a Surveillance app, which is not installed by default; it can be found in the App Market recommended section. In addition, after installing, it doesn't drop a shortcut on the Desktop or top taskbar, but you can "Send to Desktop" from the App Market listing for the app for a quick way to open it. Adding my Reolink POE doorbell camera was painless. TerraMaster doesn't appear to have a repository of preconfigured cameras; instead, the camera must be added using ONVIF or RTSP. No mobile Surveillance app TerraMaster still doesn't have a dedicated Surveillance app, although from searching online, Surveillance can be used and managed through the TNAS mobile app. I tried this with the updated TNAS mobile app beta in combination with TOS 7 and got a message that Surveillance was "Only accessible through web browser," so I reckon this must be limited to the stable versions of TOS 6 and the mobile app. More quirks In addition, whenever I minimized the Live View window in the browser Surveillance app, the feed appeared to switch to the Low-bandwidth stream, and there was no way to get the High-quality stream back. To get the High-quality stream back, I had to close Live View and then reopen it. Benchmarking A pretty cool feature of the TOS 7 is that it allows you to install directly to the NVMe M.2 SSD. In order to do that, you would have to leave out any HDDs during initialization, and even then, the system partitions are always written to two HDDs when they are eventually added. With three NVMe slots, this also gives an interesting scenario where you could build a TRAID storage Pool for installing all your apps and Docker on, and keep the third for SSD cache on the HDD pool. Limitless options! SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 A CrystalDiskMark test on a mapped network drive from within a Windows 11 25H2 PC (image above) connected over a 5 GbE hub was well within acceptable ranges. Although the read result on SATA was a little less than with the F4-425 Plus, for some reason, while writes were generally better. SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 I also ran the NAS Performance tester, which tests the link speed performance. As you can see, it pretty much maxes out the 5GbE connection. Of course, you can also opt to bond the two 5 GbE connections for a bit more umph, but I didn't do that. TOS 7, which, as of testing, is still in Beta, comes with an App Center that has a bunch of handy programs you can install right off the bat, such as Emby, Plex, Docker, as well as in-house Backup and Surveillance solutions. As you can imagine, any media streaming services you would want to host off the F4-425 Pro will work great, thanks to the Intel Core N350 CPU and its 16 GB of DDR5 memory. Accessing from mobile is only possible if Security Isolation Mode is disabled, which can put your NAS at risk from external sources, so there was no way to access it from the TNAS Mobile app. It's also quiet. I had this sat next to my computer on my work desk for the past week, and I did wonder if the noise I was accustomed to with NAS devices would annoy me, but all I could hear was a soft whirring of the rear fan (which was a little annoying) when the disks were not actively copying or reading data. Conclusion So what have I learned? Unfortunately, this release raises a few important questions and concerns that I feel haven't been adequately addressed. What I didn't like Our variant shipped with TOS 7 beta, and it's advised not to use it in a production environment. I feel that's a bit limiting on an $800 device. The mobile app is also still in beta and does not support some of the first-party apps, like Surveillance, and it still has quite a few bugs. I am a bit confused about the OpenClaw marketing along with the F4-425 Pro. I feel like that if it's going to be a main selling point, then offer official guidance on how to get started with it. TerraMaster recommends enabling SPC, but then markets the NAS for use with OpenClaw, which requires disabling SPC to be able to use it, opening up genuine security concerns for the NAS; and that's before you get into the security concerns of OpenClaw itself. Of course, the above issues won't be a problem if you decide to install something else on it, or even go back to the stable TOS 6. I wish TerraMaster had just given TOS 7 as opt-in rather than shipping with it. TOS 7 has been available as a preview since December 2025 (so well before my last TerraMaster review), and according to a thread on Reddit where a user shared a screenshot from the TerraMaster Facebook page, it is scheduled to launch today, June 23, but there's nothing about that in the TerraMaster news blog. My contact confirmed over email that TOS 7 exits beta today. The rubber feet also deserve a mention as they continue to be a problem, with them coming unstuck the moment you shift the F4-425 Pro anywhere on your desk. What I liked What it comes down to, though, aside from what I already mentioned, you are still getting a quality, affordable device here, so recommending it will depend on the individual's use case. If you're just looking for a relatively small NAS device to manage virtual machines on, backup your files, and take care of your home theater streaming, then it is a great device that will certainly futureproof you for some time. It provides good performance, takes up little space, and is, on the whole, very quiet. Four bays afford proper redundancy using TRAID or RAID 5, and you can even expand on storage capacity by adding the 2-bay D5, or 4-bay D8 Hybrid DAS over a USB 3.2 (10Gbps) link. Considering the 2024 releases were more about power, with the likes of an Intel Core i5-1235U high-end laptop CPU under the hood, I asked my contact last time if we could expect more of the same in higher-end models and was told: It makes a lot of sense to use Intel's N350 chip inside a NAS; it is more than capable of doing what the F4-425 Pro is intended for, media streaming and backup. The only downside is still the clear lack of community and even staff support on the official forums. In the past, I have had topics go unanswered for days, or there would be generic-type "we've noted this and passed it onto our developer team" type responses. Along with the other things I mentioned, it all ends up costing it a couple of points. If you are comfortable with the command line, Docker, and setting up TrueNAS or Unraid, you'll be fine. You can do great things with this hardware. In TOS, the apps are a bit lacking, and things don't always work as expected.\ AI NAS?! What has become clear to me this year is that we are going to start seeing all kinds of "AI NAS" come to market, and while that might be good for us consumers, be diligent and research these claims. Although the F4-425 Pro technically comes with AI, it is really using a cloud service that is externally sourced off-device through the third party OpenClaw app. My colleague did review a newcomer to the NAS space earlier this year, and it includes a local AI assistant inside the Zettlab D4 NAS, and they do not even use AI in the product name, check out Chris' review here. Where to buy and a discount coupon However, it does not change the fact that this is truly a great entry-level home media-class NAS that you can buy right now. TerraMaster is having a 20% off launch discount, plus you can also still apply our unique 10% off coupon on checkout, which only works on the official website. So here is a breakdown of the pricing that is only valid on the official TerraMaster website. TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = $575.99 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = $503.99 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = £525.59 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = £460.79 Use NEOWIN coupon code during checkout for 10% discount Over on Amazon US and UK, the F4-425 Pro also gets a 20% launch discount, but here, the above 10% coupon cannot be applied. TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) for $639.99 at Amazon US (was $799.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) for $559.99 at Amazon US (was $699.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) for £583.99 at Amazon UK (was £729.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) for £511.99 at Amazon UK (was £639.99) As an Amazon Associate, when you purchase through links on our site, we earn from qualifying purchases.
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