Does IPB seem more appealing vb users?

You know, I'm glad I'm not the ONLY one that felt like that. My god, it's like they designed their software for IPB customers only, and had no intention of actually expanding their customer base. This is where a manual comes in handy, but, just as stubbornly as IB, they refuse to change and add something so simple

 

Yeah, I saw that. Thanks for posting it up.

I haven't really gotten that far in the process yet to be honest, but it looked helpful when I skimmed over it.

To me, the resources for IPB are just going to get stronger as their customer base grow bigger. And that's just one example.

Perhaps what we could do, is to create a thread with links to resource sites for IPS. When I looked for mod and skin sites, it seemed as if there was lots of really small sites kicking around, but even those were hard to find.

With vBulletin, all's you really needed for mods was .org.

 

There is an officially sanctioned IPS resource site:

IPS Community Resources

They allow commercial providers to post products there as well...something vB has been avoiding like the plague forever which is a huge mistake imho.

 

Yeah, they really need a manual similar to the quality of vB's. I'm sure the extra new customer's will just help to faciliate that faster - at least that's what I hope.

Perhaps someone could set up a help wiki and then the customer base could help write it. That's something I don't mind helping with if anyone is interested. On one of my sites I set up a MediaWiki, so we could make an encyclopedia of info that is related to the site's topic of discussion.

 

I wouldn't get your hopes up, they have very specifically said no to this:

Like I said, they had no intention of bringing in new users with 3.0, clearly.

 

I purchased an IPB suite and will be taking care of the install over the next couple of days.

I'm switching over my social networking site, WDBuddies.com, over to the new IPB suite. I can already see a little bit of the lack of documentation aspect of IPB, but their support has been great so far as they've responded in a timely manner

 

Well perhaps we as customers can just create help wiki and write it ourselves.

 

good luck with that. If you want to do the company's job for them then by all means, go for it. I gave my license up as I couldn't stand the customer's attitude, or the staff attitude in that forum.

 

Hi,

Just wanted to respond about documentation.

We used to have a manual online but we felt that it didn't provide enough detail. For example, many sections were like:

"To add a forum, click "Add Forum", complete the form and press "Submit Form".

We found that customers didn't really need an explanation of the ACP interface, they wanted more 'how to' guides. This is what we're focusing on.

It is worth noting that we have inline documentation in the ACP itself. Here's an example:

.

As you can see, if you click the "get help with this page" icon present on every page, it'll expand and query the documentation server for any matching pages. We can populate this and the new content is pushed out immediately.

We are also expanding our own 'official' resources, here: Official Resources from IPS

We have some getting started guides here: Getting Started

Information on skinning and templating: Skinning

General ACP Guide:
Administrator Control Panel

On most of these pages users can leave comments so we can continually clarify and update as required.

We know we've got a little work to do with regards to documentation, but we know that and are constantly working on it.

Brandon has been adding articles about our new IP.Content CMS-like system daily: IP.Content

As always, we welcome feedback and are always interested in your thoughts.

 

I'm not going to rehash the old thread here, because that's not what I'm about, and your company has seriously let me down in that respect. it's allright, it was a simple $20 license that I used for 2 weeks and abandoned, but ask yourself this, honestly.

How would you feel if you, as a new customer, purchased a product for $200+, and hand to spend hours just trying to find the most simple things, such as how to make a skin the default skin, or how to remove CAPCHA from registration, or how to enable certain plugins? This isn't really something deserving of a 'FAQ', and really not something that should be covered by any sort of 'inline documentation'.

Obviously, I'm not the only one that feels the same way here. IPB is seriously lacking a users manual and needs it. This was felt not only in my thread, but in the responses to me here as well.

Again, nobody wants a pdf documentation, and again I give the example of your competition's manual, a very clear and concise documentation page that provides, not only basic instructions, but a decent jumping off point for your customer, and if done right can be very, very easy to update. Now, I didn't link to the manual on your forum out of respect to your company (I would never advertise a company on another company's forum), but here, it's a different story, as this is an admin resources forum, not geared strictly towards any product.

I understand you think that it's too much work, and not warranted enough, but, again, instead of just assuming that it's not necessary, put yourself in the customer's shoes. How would you feel in my case? I literally wasted hours getting nowhwere, because no proper documentation was to be found, and the support "forums" treated me like utter garbage when pointing this out. Not exactly a warm welcome if I do say so myself.

 

First off, I'm sorry if you felt that we were being dismissive. If you have the inclination, please let me know where you were treated like utter garbage and I'll happily review the topic.

I don't wish to pick apart a competitor, but a cursory glance through that manual illustrates my point.

For example, forum management:

In all honesty, what does that actually tell you? It simply explains what the labels mean and the labels are fairly self-explanatory anyway. Do you really need "Add Moderator – allows you to specify a new moderator for this forum."?

After nearly 10 years in the industry, I can tell you that "how to skin a board" and "how to remove a CAPTCHA" are not commonly asked simple questions.

Even so, we have inline documentation on the look & feel page and we have more guides on how to skin. I linked to those in a previous reply.

Regarding how to remove a CAPTCHA, a simple live search for 'captcha' gives you the answer:

.

To reiterate, I'm not being dismissive of your suggestions, I'm just pointing out that most documentation I see consists of telling you what is immediately obvious and time would be better spent working on creative 'how to' guides rather than repeating what a form label says.

 

I've spoken with Matt, Rikki, Brandon, and former employee, Keith many times both for my personal forum reasons and just general chit-chat. I don't think I've ever had them turn me away and make me walk the plank.

In fact, in 2007, I made a suggestion for the software. Some people thought it wasn't needed, but I was told that they'd think about it. I was beyond surprised when my suggestion ended up being in 3.0, if not 2.3.

And it's a unique little thing that I know isn't something someone else thought of. IPS is like a Big Brother that's always out there lending its hand to help others in need.

Thanks guys.

 

I didn't say it was perfect, but at some point, you have to realize that inline documentation and FAQs aren't going to cover everything. You need a manual, of some kind, with clear and concise instructions on how to do something. You, yourself admitted this, right here:

So, how DOES one get documentation that's not in the FAQs, inline guides, or other resources? They can't.

Again, I don't want to rehash that topic, as, quite honestly, I'm over it. Let me assure you though, that my experience with the IPB "community" was hardly friendly, and, despite having a very, very in depth blog geared towards helping vB users convert, I was called a troll in that blog, had to delete multiple profile comments, because of offensive, childish users. I won't say they all are, but a very strong majority of them are, and did nothing but give -rep because they wanted to.

And on that note, I'll let this be my last reply regarding documentation here. I have said my peace, I've proven my point, it's gone ignored, and yes, it was dismissed with "we won't do it" by the staff. You can't get any more dismissive than that, I'm afraid.

 

Absolutely understand Tom. I recall your topics and we just seemed to get off on the wrong foot from your very first topic about slow response times.

Anyway, sorry we couldn't do more for you.

 

+1

Matt, Charles, Rikki, heck, everyone at Invision has gone out of their way to help me get settled in. My questions have all been answered promptly and courteously. I have absolutely no complaint with the customer service I have received. Quite the opposite, actually. I find IPS customer service to be just one more improvement over the 'other' folks. I often felt their replies and responses to be dismissive. To the point where I ended up finding support in other communities.

 

Being a Technical Writer that has written manuals both online and print the first thing one has to understand is that manuals need to be written with the lowest common denominator in mind.

A good set of documentation should be able to take the novice and guide them through installation, setup and all functions, no matter how inane the function may be.

The manual will never be a best seller, will put some people to sleep and maybe even a coma but it needs to touch every aspect of the product. Manuals need to go beyond a FAQ and address every minute point and assume the user knows nothing.

While manuals are often the first item tossed aside when a new product is obtained it also is the first place many look when stumped. To dismiss an item just because in the past 10 years it not come up very often is a fallacy. This often happens when a developer is to close to the product. They assume the end user has some background and understanding of a function.

For example take a look at the guide found here RoamingThreads.com - How TO

Now take a look at the attached doc. The first one was written by the product developers, the doc by a technical writer that has the ability to translate developerese to English.

Proper documentation reduces support costs, instills confidence for the product in the user community and acts a silent sales tool. Poor or no documentation has the complete opposite effect.

 

Well over the years, I've utilized EZboard, Infopop Threads, Infopop Eve, vBulletin and now Invision software. So I've got a bit of history and experience using message board solutions other than vBulletin. And they all have their postives and negatives.

Now I agree with the point made that it's NOT just all about having "A" manual all on it's own. It's really about having a number of things which come together collectively, that then act as resources for a customer.

So I see some merit in the points that have been made by Matt in his posts. And I will agree with him in that the Invision Inline Documentation is far superior to what vBulletin have in version 3.0 - far superior - as the vBulletin inline help mainly consists of the little question mark icons, which when clicked on, pop up little explanations, some which are somewhat helpful and some of which are pretty useless.

But the bottom line from my point of view is, that at this time currently, there simply is less overall, in the way of total resources available for Invision customers, versus that which is available for vBulletin customers.

With vBulletin what you have is, a number of components which come together which collectively make it superior resource wise. And those components would be, a very detailed online manual, basic admin panel inline help and a very strong and active customer base and help community.

I think what might be being missed here is, that many vBulletin and other software manufacturer's customers are probably a lot like me, in that they tend to drill down for answers. So in many cases, you start by clicking on the admin panel help icon, if that doesn't answer your question, you then move to the official manual, if that doesn't help, you then move to the searching the official or third party support communities for help, if you can't find the answer then you post your question. And the truth is, that many times a simple search of these communities garners the answer(s) you're looking for. So that makes the process fairly simple and typically fast as you're not waiting for someone to respond to your question.

Now, unfortunately, in the case of Invision, yes the first part of that drill down process is superior to vBulletin's with the inline help, but the next two logical steps are really inferior and almost non-existent. I find the manual is pretty sparse and tends to approach things from a "macro" point of view versus a "micro" one. And then, (to me at least), the other piece of the puzzle, the help forum and community is simply less active and less helpful by way that it's smaller and also less detailed. So being that the other resources are weaker with Invision (as compared to vBulletin) that simply makes it harder to use as a product in that help is harder to find, or at least find quickly.

As one example, I'm currently working on a vBulletin import or conversion as the Invision community calls it. Now beyond the basic info supplied in the converter's text file and the admin panel inline help, I have had a tough time getting or finding any additional info. I couldn't find anything in the form of a manual, I couldn't find a specific forum dedicated to the topic on the support forums, so I have been left somewhat to guessing and of course trail and error.

That pales in comparison to the resources that vBulletin have available in this area. That being, the very detailed manual and also the dedicated import forum.

Hopefully all that, came across as being constructive feedback, rather then criticism, which is something it wasn't mean to be.

 

Since I have plenty of server resources and some vB licenses left over from the IPB conversions, I decided to take a stab at a different niche to see how things go. And I set it up with vB. If it shows signs of taking off, I will convert the site over to IPB.

As I was working along, getting the site ready to open, I realized a lot of things felt familiar to me. As they should, I suppose. But I also found myself grumbling about the vB Admin CP. The IPB Admin CP just has a cleaner, tighter and more professional 'feel' to it. IPB's Admin CP felt so alien to me a month ago, but now I really like it.