IPB vs Facebook

[HighlanderX]

Well.

I am not sure if you guys have felt this but Facebook has been kicking the dedicated forum type community in the .... I believe the issues is that 1st no registration is "required" after you have logged in to facebook which almost everyone has, so no log in to go to the different sections inside facebook. Second, the easeness with which people can jump from one section to another, making it seamless and informational whoring.

I have seen a couple of communities go down in flames lately. Locally and it has been because of Facebook. Since anyone can open up their "own" type of forum and have their own place easily without hassles and permissions, that I believe it has taken a huge toll in the Forum Type Software.

The only places I see staying alive would be niches like Corvette Forum and GTRLife or whatever they are calling it these days.

What does IPB have planned for this? Better integration with facebook so people could jump from facebook to the community without a single hitch? No registration, no hassle.... no things to figure out. Maybe mimick facebook's menus so its all familiar...

For instance in facebook you can have a post and jump through all that section's photos with a single click and FAST. With our gallery its just not that intuitive or engaging to go by looking and commenting on photos... Everything is so separated that I think it is one of the reasons people spend so much time on facebook.

What is IPB doing to help out our communities? I am sure many are going through the same thing and we hate to see our communities go down under.

Thanks

[Jυra]

I've suggested making emails addresses optional.

I don't want everything separated. It should all be based around forum discussion.

[ADKGamers]

Where are the stats that show it's because of facebook and not the lack of content being provided by those websites?

[Michael R]

I didn't see this post when I posted the same thing last night. Mods please merge if you like.

I am frustrated as well. Not at IPS, I guess just in general I guess. I am losing members to Facebook and I am not sure what to do. My members find it too difficult to post and upload pictures on my site. I've done everything I can do to make it as simple as possible for them. But its easier for them to just create FB groups and post that way. The registration process seems too complicated for my members too. I just got a another "your site is too hard to join" email this morning.

In my case it is not a lack of content on my site. Sometimes I wonder i there is too much content and it is overwhelming them. I would welcome any suggestions.

I have a FB page and post content there to try to move them to the site. I also have a G+ page and a G+ community. I use YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, Pinterest, even a Zazzle store.

I would appreciate any feedback. You can view my site here: www.clausnet.com

[The Nomad]

I didn't see this post when I posted the same thing last night. Mods please merge if you like.

I am frustrated as well. Not at IPS, I guess just in general I guess. I am losing members to Facebook and I am not sure what to do. My members find it too difficult to post and upload pictures on my site. I've done everything I can do to make it as simple as possible for them. But its easier for them to just create FB groups and post that way. The registration process seems too complicated for my members too. I just got a another "your site is too hard to join" email this morning.

In my case it is not a lack of content on my site. Sometimes I wonder i there is too much content and it is overwhelming them. I would welcome any suggestions.

I have a FB page and post content there to try to move them to the site. I also have a G+ page and a G+ community. I use YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, Pinterest, even a Zazzle store.

I would appreciate any feedback. You can view my site here: www.clausnet.com

For your topic my first impression you have a very impressive forum.

My dealings in the past have been with much older and less 'savvy' members.

IMO IPB is a first class forum board, but as mentioned above FB and the likes are simplicity itself. I spent a lot of time with "how to" guides, even made videos to help guests and members to understand the the layout, use the message board, gallery (quite complicated to beginners) and the various apps that are available for members. I'm sure that when peeps understand, you become a more attractive alternative to FB. I love sport but because I did not understand the rules of some, I gave them a miss. Cricket was a good example. I took time to understand and now am glued to most TV games.

I have an adopted (very large) Mexican family. I know of only one who uses FB for anything else other than family and friends, so although only a small example I am not sure that FB will/or does stop those from joining a well thought out and easily explained forum.

I do notice that you have quite a few protected forums, there may be a good reason for that, however personally I would open the help desk, let guests begin to understand how the forum operates and (they may be there) add guides on how to use the forum.

Hasta luego :thumbsup:

[Michael R]

For your topic my first impression you have a very impressive forum.

My dealings in the past have been with much older and less 'savvy' members.

IMO IPB is a first class forum board, but as mentioned above FB and the likes are simplicity itself. I spent a lot of time with "how to" guides, even made videos to help guests and members to understand the the layout, use the message board, gallery (quite complicated to beginners) and the various apps that are available for members. I'm sure that when peeps understand, you become a more attractive alternative to FB. I love sport but because I did not understand the rules of some, I gave them a miss. Cricket was a good example. I took time to understand and now am glued to most TV games.

I have an adopted (very large) Mexican family. I know of only one who uses FB for anything else other than family and friends, so although only a small example I am not sure that FB will/or does stop those from joining a well thought out and easily explained forum.

I do notice that you have quite a few protected forums, there may be a good reason for that, however personally I would open the help desk, let guests begin to understand how the forum operates and (they may be there) add guides on how to use the forum.

Hasta luego :thumbsup:

Thanks for the feedback! I appreciate it. I have struggled with opening up all the forums. Part of the reason for the closed forums is we are trying to protect and preserve the secret of Santa Claus from younger children. The other sad reality is we've have multiple instances of plagiarism on the site. We have a lot of unique content - poems, stories, and historical information on the site. People were constantly stealing the content and claiming credit for it -- posting it on their own websites or worse, Facebook. Any thoughts on this? I am always interested in how others use IPS.

BTW, none of this is a reflection on IPS in anyway. I have been a user and a fan of the product even before launching my own IPS site.

[jackflash]

Our sites are holding their own against FB, however, our submissions to our photo galleries are poor. Posting photos to FB are a snap, not so much on an IPB board. That frustration leads to people using FB too.

[TurboEd]

This is a problem. There is no denying it IMO. I am still the #1 auto forum on my area. Still, I am seeing less registrations and I keep seeing my users gravitating towards FB more and more. The # of users logging in daily is lower. The # of posts per user are lower.

Even GTR Life (IPB) (formerly NAGTROC) Supraforums (VB) and Corvette Forums (VB) are getting less hits. This is FB related.

We may need simpler way for our users to get notified of likes etc on a standalone IPB dedicated phone app. One of the reasons people use FB more is related to their more robust messenger (this is very powerful imo) and proprietary mobile apps.

[cmiller]

I've been saying it for years... the software needs to be easier to use - NOT more complex. People love Facebook because its simple. Forums are NOT. We ditched Vbulletin for this reason and now IPB is doing it too.

We're going in the wrong direction and it will only get worse if IPB doesn't listen to us.

[HighlanderX]

The easeness with the photos... For instance... Forum Media System does a good job on doing something similar to facebook but for videos. Something like this needs to be implemented .... were the picture is on the left and the forum post where the picture is is on the right. That way you can comment right then and there w/o jumping to a different page.

Pictures and uploading pictures that don't necessarily look like an attachemnt, but a picture that you click it and its RIGHT there, will help with the situation.

The easeness to which you jump from one place or another w/o having to go back, simply makes it more engaging and time consuming, which after all is what we want people to do; spend time on our sites.

[JensS]

The main problem is surfing to a website besides facebook.

Nearly everyone is on Facebook. They visit the site multiple times a day, some have it open all day long. For most people, everything happens there. To participate on your website, they have to click their way their first of all. That's the biggest hurdle. Secondly they have to log in there and then there are categories and "member ranks" and yet another member profile, no one will look at and other sh**, a user doesn't care about.

If you're not running a totally specialized forum – that hasn't been replaced with web2.0 services (like stackoverflow replace web dev forums) or fan sites have been replaced with facebook fanpages, you will lose in the long term.

My approach is currently to make our forum obsolete and build a custom webservice. Invision will only deliver the member functions. To get the users attention I will have to develop a facebook app, that notifies users on FACEBOOK via the facebook notifications about the notifications on my community. Also, one can only be a member if others accept the application of a new user (its a photography forum and we want to keep amateurs out)

Yes its sad that the internet is represented by facebook nowadays, but these nasty thousands of forums aren't an elegant user experience and now is the time that this has consequences.

>Also, the IP.Chat is like from the 1990s

[Michael R]

My apologies if this already exists, but is there a way to pull discussion threads from a FB page into a forum -- like I do with RSS?

[Joel R]

This is an incredibly interesting post with a lot of different thoughts going on and I'd like to offer some of my own:

1) Facebook, Google+, and Yahoo are all incredibly large social communities to begin with. Furthermore, their DNA is in social media networks, which means they are designed to attract and link to and connect to other people. So for them, offering Facebook Groups, Google Groups, and Yahoo Groups is an ancillary step that is secondary to their main goal. For us forum owners though, our entire discussion group IS the main goal. So I guess my point is that you're comparing two different classes of communities -- one is a forum-based community, the other is a social media network community. The operational processes underlying social media websites are fundamentally different than those of IPB, and I think it's an important distinction to make since IPB is just designed differently than Facebook.

With that said, however, I do think there are certain elements that social media networks do very well:

1. They're awesome at connecting people. You joined Facebook because your friend joined facebook.
2. They make it super easy to share stuff, and by sharing, to connect even more people! For example, Facebook and Google+ both have facial recognition technology so people know when they're tagged, for the sole purpose of connecting people. When you write a post, you @friend so your friend will be included in the conversation.
3. Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, and Twitter are all super light-weight when it comes to using.

2) Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, Twitter, Pinterest, and etc are all very lightweight user experiences. They're clean, simple, and very very fast. This is something that I must also strongly echo. IPS really needs to make all of IPS much more integrated, much cleaner and organized, and much more lightweight.

In any case, best of luck to all of you! The future is already here, and we either adapt or fade away.

[rbiss]

The Forum experience isn't much different to the end user than bulletin boards of 15 years ago. Forum software stood still and catered to admin-geekspeak while social networks created something fresh for end users.

[TurboEd]

The future is already here, and we either adapt or fade away.

Yep. I believe Facebook dilutes large special interest groups into smaller "tribes" if you will. We may be a dying breed after all.

[TurboEd]

We need to integrate MUCH better with Facebook and offer a near seamless but way superior and more customised experience to the particular community while on our environment.

[ADKGamers]

Where are the stats that show it's because of facebook and not the lack of content being provided by those websites?

Can anybody answer this question? = /

[All Cars Online]

Thanks for the feedback! I appreciate it. I have struggled with opening up all the forums. Part of the reason for the closed forums is we are trying to protect and preserve the secret of Santa Claus from younger children. The other sad reality is we've have multiple instances of plagiarism on the site. We have a lot of unique content - poems, stories, and historical information on the site. People were constantly stealing the content and claiming credit for it -- posting it on their own websites or worse, Facebook. Any thoughts on this? I am always interested in how others use IPS.

BTW, none of this is a reflection on IPS in anyway. I have been a user and a fan of the product even before launching my own IPS site.

Hi Michael R, I might be able to offer some help where people can't copy the content directly. Open up your AdminCP -> Look & Feel -> Manage Skin Sets & Templates. Then click on your skin (try a one others don't use as much to test it out). It will open up the editor. You want to open up globalTemplate. Now copy and paste the following code just before </head>

<script language="JavaScript">
	var message = "Sorry. You do not have permission to copy our content or images."; 
	function rtclickcheck(keyp){ if (navigator.appName == "Netscape" && keyp.which == 3){ 	alert(message); return false; } 
	if (navigator.appVersion.indexOf("MSIE") != -1 && event.button == 2) { 	alert(message); 	return false; } } 
	document.onmousedown = rtclickcheck;
</script>

Change the message to whatever you want.

Then save. Refresh your forum page and test.I have been testing it on mine for a little while and all seems to be good :D

Of course there are ways round it (like screenshots), but it's more of a pain for these kind of people.

On another note, I'm not sure Forums are loosing members to Facebook. I think a lot of it is down to us - the forum admins - to build a forum that's easy to navigate and easy to use. I have tried to help members with tutorials and quick guides on how to integrate Facebook, post up pictures and a quick outline of what you can and can't do on the forum. It does help.

One area of concern I have is the Connect with Facebook feature. It seems to have some small bugs where members can't log in as it doesn't require a password so there is no back up. If the Facebook Connect fails to work, then the member can't log in. Could it not pull the password from Facebook so the member can use their Facebook password to log in if the connect feature doesn't work?

[EleganceReef]

I dont think ipb and facebook, google... can be compare at all, I mean we compare 150 $ of software plus our server /whatever they are/ with few bilions $ worth of facebook or google... What kind of server we will ned to have to alow upload 100 or 1000 of members videos daily?

FB, google... they are beast worth billions, is not only software.. is infrastucture behind them what we can not copy or have, well at least I can not.

Forums are differents niche, if you wont to imitate fb, google... interaction, conversation, general nonsense usualy with forums I dont think that will work.

99 % of content I see in fb I will bann imideatly, I mean most of content is someone dinner, his/her picture in mirror, and maximum 20 words of content, that made most of facebook content , for me that is BS what I do not wont to see in my site at all.

[cmiller]

The Forum experience isn't much different to the end user than bulletin boards of 15 years ago. Forum software stood still and catered to admin-geekspeak while social networks created something fresh for end users.

Amen! The forum developers left us in the dark. I jumped ship from UBB, then VB, and now I am with IPB and planning to ditch it too. These companies just don't get it apparently. It's all about user experience and all they want to do is take us backwards.

It's sad! :(

[Brian]

You haven't seen the newest version yet, though :).

[Invisiοnist]

That's a loaded post ^

Im way more interested now to see the newest version.

[Matt]

Amen! The forum developers left us in the dark. I jumped ship from UBB, then VB, and now I am with IPB and planning to ditch it too. These companies just don't get it apparently. It's all about user experience and all they want to do is take us backwards.

It's sad! :sad:

I would wait until you see 4.0. The interface has been designed from the ground up to be more intuitive and easier to use. We're still working heavily on it at the moment but it won't be too long before we have something to show you.

I recommend that you subscribe to the >developer's channel to get the latest IPS 4.0 news.

[Jυra]

You haven't seen the newest version yet, though :smile:.

WHO ARE YOU?!

[opentype]

These companies just don't get it apparently. It's all about user experience and all they want to do is take us backwards.

I don't agree. A website is about CONTENT. I join communities because I want to learn about a certain topic and discuss it with others. I go wherever that is possible. I don't go where there is the “coolest image upload function”.

Yes, forum software in its core works like it did in the 1990s. But that’s a good thing! I consider linear discussion threads still the perfect way to discuss special areas of interest. Social network sites are focussing on user engagement (likes, retweets and so on) thru short posts, which in turn creates page views and therefore ad revenue. But that is not the main goal of my community. I like to have elaborate discussions about certain topics — like in the 1990s. ;-)

I am happy about every usability improvement in IPS, but I don't like those dozens of threads here stating "forum software needs to be more like social networks“. If people choose to spend more time on social networks than on a forum site, they don't chose a “better software”, they choose a different concept (or “infrastructure” as EleganceReef put it) of how to interact with others online.

IPS shouln’t copy that. They would always draw the short straw. In fact, I would say they could even work in the opposite direction and strengthen anything that works differently than on social network sites. Those are the benefits that the software and we as admins can offer to the users.