Konrad Dąbek Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 4.0 brings new Admin CP, which is very nice and well organized, but... with less options My understanting is that IPS decided to simplify Admin CP, but I'm not sure is this the approach that admins really want... For example I see that Merge member's concurrent posts option is gone. Instead there is flood control, but much less powerfull. All cache rebuild tools are now only automatic, I got no control on them. One hanged for me (Rebuilding non-content editor content), cannot stop or restart it, so finally I got a lot of tasks waiting for that one hanged to complete (which will never occur, hope that it is just b5 bug and will be fixed). Whole System Tasks panel is now also gone (only there is access to cron), I see no cookies settings, etc. Simplicity is good, but advanced admins who used these less popular options will find 4.0 not as configurable as 3.4.x and maybe even lack of some options will lead to stick to 3.4.x line. I'm not sure what to do, I got mixed feelings about upgrade. Some things are much better like editor or advertisments settings, but I see also some showstoppers for me... I understand that 4.0 is in advanced phase of testing but maybe it should be considered to add some advanced options, maybe as hidden part by default, which could be enabled by some option. Simplicity would be still untouched, but advanced admins would be able to get into low level configuration just by enabling one option which would show additional tab? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Setsumi Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 I kind of miss the immediacy of IPB 3 options.I ran through a good couple of problems and months to finally understand how to deal with Background Processes. For example, merging a member in IPS4 is not as fast as IPB 3.4, neither is the forum handling. They don't take long to complete, but is not that quick either.Also, have a good beer if you don't have enough users, or just don't feel like setting up a cron job. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Management Lindy Posted January 21, 2015 Management Share Posted January 21, 2015 As always, we appreciate the feedback! I'll let a developer address the specifics regarding background tasks, but I'll try to address the concern in terms of overall feature and setting perception. IPS4 is a new platform and in some ways, a new beginning - it's the first complete rewrite in IPS history. With that, we wanted to take a step back, modernize and streamline the product. Some settings and features were felt to be rarely used and/or irrelevant and expensive to maintain, so they were removed altogether. Other settings targeting advanced users were moved from the AdminCP into "hidden" settings - these are editable via constants.php and I believe we're working on documenting those for release. There's already been several things that feedback has prompted us to reintroduce, so please be sure to let us know of specifics. Keep in mind, based on our typical demographic and userbase, most of our customers prefer the less-is-more approach and don't want pages of settings and confusing functionality to work through. So, we may not be able to take on every suggestion and obscure setting that once existed, but if it's a popular request, we'll certainly give it consideration. Balance is key. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Konrad Dąbek Posted January 21, 2015 Author Share Posted January 21, 2015 Thanks for answer Lindy, the best about IPS is that IPS is taking care about customers needs. It's nice to know that I'm not left alone in the dark and I don't need to deal with my problems by myself Good to know about constants.php - I need to look there. I got only one request about this - if there will be some advanced features - please separate settings available there from IPB updates so changes there won't be cleared when updating whole system. Of course such approach to hide some advanced options in file is absolutely sufficient Maybe my doubts are mainly because IPB 3.4.x is extremely polished and high quality product, so it is not easy to beat it If I will introduce some features to my community (like mentioned concurrent posts merging) and then take them back - it will be considered as step back. Maybe there will be addons/plugins that add this feature but I'm always afraid to lean on addons by 3rd party as support for them in one day exists, in next day - it disappears. My community got now 9 years. In meantime I went through hell of updating and dealing with addons that stopped to work. To avoid such troubles I'm trying to keep system as clean as possible with the least count of addons and even with basic skin/theme (hope that someone will make IPS 3.4.x theme for IPS 4.x IPS 4 theme is not bad at all, but I'm appreciating stability of user experience - to do not force user to learn everything from scratch more times than it need to be done). In fact my case is more complicated, but there's not enought space for so long story IPS 4 is still in beta phase, so still some things can change, I'm looking forward to next releases and I will follow releases to be in touch with new possibilities. Only please to do not forget that IPB is choosen also by advanced admins as it provides advanced features, which no other community software can provide Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LaCollision Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 Hi there,Thanks for all this feedback.Reading your post makes me wonder one thing, as I didn't test the new admin yet: is the system tasks scheduler gone?We now have to deal with an obscur cron process?Wow, I'm scared by reading this, as my admin sometimes have to relaunch some tasks we use (homemade tasks).Thanks, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 You can still see and run tasks manually. The setting to enable/disable cron has a "View Tasks" link in it's description or you can also type "task" into the ACP search bar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LaCollision Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 You can still see and run tasks manually. The setting to enable/disable cron has a "View Tasks" link in it's description or you can also type "task" into the ACP search bar. Thank you very much for that reassuring answer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bfarber Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 For example I see that Merge member's concurrent posts option is gone. Instead there is flood control, but much less powerfull. All cache rebuild tools are now only automatic, I got no control on them. One hanged for me (Rebuilding non-content editor content), cannot stop or restart it, so finally I got a lot of tasks waiting for that one hanged to complete (which will never occur, hope that it is just b5 bug and will be fixed). Whole System Tasks panel is now also gone (only there is access to cron), I see no cookies settings, etc.We found that the "Merge member's concurrent posts" option was confusing for most end users in practice and provided little value.You should not need to "manage" caches. If they are not being managed properly, please report your findings as a bug so we can investigate. The concept of caching is that it is automated. You can clear them if necessary by emptying the appropriate database table or folder, depending upon your configuration, but you should never need to.Rebuilding non-content editor content is not related to caching. This is a task and if it is hanging, that is a bug that we need to fix. Mark already addressed where you can manage tasks now, and this is admittedly intentionally "hidden" to limit confusing areas of the ACP for newer admins (but is available via live search in the ACP).Admins that adjust cookie settings often break their sites because they don't understand the settings and how they work. Subsequently, these are now adjusted by editing your constants.php file instead. It is still possible to change the settings and documentation will be available, but you have to edit a config file now to limit admins playing around with settings they don't truly understand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Management Charles Posted January 21, 2015 Management Share Posted January 21, 2015 As people start using IPS4 in real use we are certainly open to adding new features or re-adding things that may have been removed or modified from 3.x. I am sure there are things we forgot or good ideas that turned out not so good in real world use. We will certainly evolve the product based on how you use it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myr Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 That's good Charles. I suspect you're going to have some hollering.Is there going to be a blog post or something sometime to kind of put in one place your design philosophy and explain the changes? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Management Charles Posted January 21, 2015 Management Share Posted January 21, 2015 Not really as every little thing has its own reason. Like the merge posts thing mentioned in this topic. We saw tons of user confusion on that so we decided to remove it as it was more trouble than it was worth. Now of course if we find that lessening confusion is not as valuable as people found the feature we could certainly add it back. But that is something we learn with real world use over time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Feneroin Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 There is no "edit topic title" also on v4 when wieving a forum's topics. For me, this was very useful Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Management Charles Posted January 21, 2015 Management Share Posted January 21, 2015 You just edit the first post in the topic to also edit the title. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adriano Faria Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 There is no "edit topic title" also on v4 when wieving a forum's topics. For me, this was very useful Before you could do it on forum view, ajaxed. Today you have to enter the topic and edit the first post. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Feneroin Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 You just edit the first post in the topic to also edit the title.Before you could do it on forum view, ajaxed. Today you have to enter the topic and edit the first post.I know that but it was easier without entering in topic then editing first post... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alexander V Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 I know that but it was easier without entering in topic then editing first post...Agreed. While most usecases don't require fast topic editting, some communities use topic titles as a means of organization, those will be rather displeased with this change. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Konrad Dąbek Posted January 22, 2015 Author Share Posted January 22, 2015 Even some exotic options probably had some user base. I was using concurrent posts merging, somebody else - inline title editing. We all can manage our boards without these options, but we will have to do same actions manually, which will result more work for us... Of course I understand that when rewriting IPB some options were hard to re-implement or implementing them would cost too much time. The question is how many users used these not implemented options. As IPB is now in beta phase, we all there are probably advanced users - normal users are not interested in betatesting and will update their discussion boards when IPB 4.0 will be released as final version. Feedback from them - from real world usage - will maybe as Charles says give reasons to reimplement something Thanks for all answers and I will wait for releasing. PS: If they are not being managed properly, please report your findings as a bug so we can investigate. I will report my findings, just want to test my case properly to do not add unnecessary reports. My first report was my fault, not IPB, so now I'm testing more, to be sure that any problem I find is not my fault again Don't want to add You additional, not needed work Testing now 3 problems locally (cache rebuild stuck - got 21 background processes from few days, no progression, crash in ACP when entering to Members - similar to this: http://community.invisionpower.com/4bugtrack/member-management-in-ACP-results-in-error-ex2-r1727/ but I got EX0 and problem with save permissions to access forums for groups - I can add permissions to access all forums, none forum, but when trying to add access to some of them - I can add access to maximally 120 forums from overall count 165, next checkboxes after 120 are cleared, testing all that now). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bfarber Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 Even some exotic options probably had some user base. I was using concurrent posts merging, somebody else - inline title editing. We all can manage our boards without these options, but we will have to do same actions manually, which will result more work for us... Of course I understand that when rewriting IPB some options were hard to re-implement or implementing them would cost too much time. The question is how many users used these not implemented options. As IPB is now in beta phase, we all there are probably advanced users - normal users are not interested in betatesting and will update their discussion boards when IPB 4.0 will be released as final version. Feedback from them - from real world usage - will maybe as Charles says give reasons to reimplement something Thanks for all answers and I will wait for releasing. Realistially, no options were removed because they were too hard or would take too long. Every option was removed because we either felt it wasn't needed, we could do the same thing automatically without requiring a setting, or the setting was inappropriate for some other reason (i.e. a novice admin might adjust it incorrectly). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigPaws Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 Before you could do it on forum view, ajaxed. Today you have to enter the topic and edit the first post.This does seem like a strange step backwards. Where was the feedback from forum admins that we would like to have to enter a topic and edit the first post if and when we want to quickly fix a typo in a topic title! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TIPF Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 Until reading this topic I hadn't realised a topic title could be changed from the forum view So for me it's no great loss Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Feneroin Posted January 24, 2015 Share Posted January 24, 2015 Until reading this topic I hadn't realised a topic title could be changed from the forum view So you need a formation about "How using IP board 100%" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TIPF Posted January 24, 2015 Share Posted January 24, 2015 So you need a formation about "How using IP board 100%" In 8 years of using IPB I've never had the need to change a topic title Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Donkerrood Posted January 25, 2015 Share Posted January 25, 2015 Well, I do use the forum view title edit functionality quite often, so it is a pity if it is gone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Management Charles Posted January 25, 2015 Management Share Posted January 25, 2015 Well if that's the big worry - quick edit of topic title - I think we are just fine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigPaws Posted January 25, 2015 Share Posted January 25, 2015 Glad to hear you will add it back @Charles - I also couldn't see the benefit of making something like that harder than it was in v3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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