1 reply to this topic

[Jura]

I've seen quite a few IPB Wordpress bridges come and go (all discontinued by their authors). I'd like to have some questions answered before purchasing considering the price tag of this product.

• I'd like to keep the blog area of my site open to guests along with the name, url, and email areas for commenting. I saw on this site a lot isn't available until you register or sign in. Is it for show or is this something that isn't easily changed? Or is http://ipbwi.com/ not fully bridged with this forum?
  
• How easy is it to install and then to set up? How much technical knowledge is required?
  
• If IPBWI is ever discontinued will there be any problems with removing the bridge or replacing the bridge if another developer ever creates one?
  
• How well does this work on shared hosting?
  
• Are there any conflicts with Gravatar (forum or WP) or social network created accounts from sites like Twitter/FB?
  
• How much transparency is there with bugs and/or is there any sort of bug tracker other than http://straightvisio...for-wordpress/ ?
  
• I'm really mainly concerned about sharing of accounts. This creates accounts for both WP and IPB instead of using a single database?
  
• One has to pay every so many months. Is there to be expected updates every so often? Will the bridge continue to work if someone decides to no longer pay or to renew at a later time?
  
• One thing that made me hesitant is that I've seen this product linked to several times on the official IPS forums, but I have never see any developers around on that site. Is there a reason or is it not seen as productive?
  
• Are there any issues with special characters or languages of usernames?
  
• Can you choose to have user sign into either WP or IPB and not both? Do they need to sign into both or just one to be logged into both?
  
• Do the developers care about what type of content is used with their product?
  
• Finally why should one choose this product as opposed to having something custom, waiting, or finding something that does not have encoded files?

Edited by Jura, 31 December 2011 - 06:04 AM.

[Matthias Reuter]

Hi Jura,

there are some quite good questions. Here are the Answers:

• I'd like to keep the blog area of my site open to guests along with the name, url, and email areas for commenting. I saw on this site a lot isn't available until you register or sign in. Is it for show or is this something that isn't easily changed? Or is http://ipbwi.com/ not fully bridged with this forum?
  
  • it's a question of permissions. E.g. IPBWI for WordPress fully respects forum permissions, so on IPBWI.com, I've decided to prevent guests posting new comments on the website. Of course, you can enable guests posting forum comments on your blog posts by giving guests write access to the comment forum on your board's admin area. Additionally, ipbwi.com has another secondlevel domain than straightvisions.com, that's the reason why there is no cookie sharing possible at the moment between the forum and ipbwi.com (Nevertheless, login with same credentials is possible).
• How easy is it to install and then to set up? How much technical knowledge is required?
  
  • it's quite easy, but some basic Hosting Administration skills are required. E.g. Ion Cube Loader in the latest version needs to be installed, you should be able to retrieve installed PHP version on your server (e.g. via phpinfo) and you should know how to set correct server-side-paths in the settings (retrieving with phpinfo). A HowTo install IPBWI for WordPress is published on http://ipbwi.com/howto-ipbwi4wp/ - you can try out installing the free Demo first or order my installation service.
• If IPBWI is ever discontinued will there be any problems with removing the bridge or replacing the bridge if another developer ever creates one?
  
  • No, There is no problem with deactivating or removing the bridge. If IPBWI for WordPress is ever discontinued, I'll make the code opensource and free.
• How well does this work on shared hosting?
  
  • it works well on shared hosting environment. Please note, that WordPress, IPBWI for WordPress and IP.board need to be installed on the same server / host account.
• Are there any conflicts with Gravatar (forum or WP) or social network created accounts from sites like Twitter/FB?
  
  • Please test this with the free Demo by your own, I can not give a guarantee for that at the moment.
• How much transparency is there with bugs and/or is there any sort of bug tracker other than http://straightvisio...for-wordpress/ ?
  
  • I have had setup a bugtracker for previous versions of IPBWI. Unfortunately, most user did ignore the bugtracker and just wrote bugs within the support forum. So with version 3, I've removed the bugtracker and use the supportforum as plattform for bugreports.
• I'm really mainly concerned about sharing of accounts. This creates accounts for both WP and IPB instead of using a single database?
  
  • IPBWI for WordPress duplicates accounts to make it easy to deactivate IPBWI for WordPress if needed. Both, WordPress and IP.board are keeped independent from each other. This improves compatibility with future updates of WordPress and IP.board, too.
• One has to pay every so many months. Is there to be expected updates every so often? Will the bridge continue to work if someone decides to no longer pay or to renew at a later time?
  
  • The buyed license has lifetime validity, but to get access to updates, you have to renewal the license. You don't need to renew every 6 months, it's up to you to decide wether it worths to renew or not for getting access to new updates.
• One thing that made me hesitant is that I've seen this product linked to several times on the official IPS forums, but I have never see any developers around on that site. Is there a reason or is it not seen as productive?
  
  • the official IPS forums are not the official IPBWI and IPBWI for WordPress support forums. Unfortunately, I have no time to search for "ipbwi" term on IPS official forums every day. I'm happy that so many users are discussing their about my product and ask questions, but to get in contact with me, you should use the official IPBWI support forum.
• Are there any issues with special characters or languages of usernames?
  
  • no, there aren't. Nevertheless, if you find any, I'll fix them instantly.
• Can you choose to have user sign into either WP or IPB and not both? Do they need to sign into both or just one to be logged into both?
  
  • yes, you can choose to use IPBWI for WordPress (including setting up redirects for login/logout/registration etc. from IP.board to WordPress), IP.board or both as possible sign-in/sign-on gate.
• Do the developers care about what type of content is used with their product?
  
  • no, I need the domain or IP address of the site to create a proper license file, but the content of the side does not bother me. Of course there are some law - and more important - morality borders, e.g. pedophilia will not be supported on any way.
• Finally why should one choose this product as opposed to having something custom, waiting, or finding something that does not have encoded files?
  
  • The effort to make IPBWI for WordPress to a proper plugin and not a dirty hack is immense. There are tons of tweaks to increase compatibility. I have years of knowledge about integration to IP.board. You can wait for another solution, but IPBWI for WordPress is the most updated, most compatible, most continued and most supported plugin with the biggest feature setup you can find in the web. I've seen many competitors the last years which all failed with continuing the product on a long period.
    
  • My target group are small and medium sized companies who know worth of a good service and support and don't need to get everything for free. Additionally, I'm offering enhancing IPBWI for WordPress with customer ordered features. I have had customers, who ordered me enhancing IPBWI for WordPress to fit their needs. I gave them a 50% discount on my hourly rate and released the ordered features within IPBWI for WordPress, so all customers had a benefit.
    
  • IPBWI for WordPress is encoded on it's core files only. You can customize all the widget's output code on PHP, HTML and CSS base, you can hook into encoded functions and you can use the whole IPBWI API through IPBWI for WordPress within your template to enhance WordPress with your own integration features.

If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask me.

Kind regards,
Matthias