Support for Test sites

[Storyteller]

This post from @McLouis as a "reference": http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/415442-upgrade-error-test-to-4061/
I can not really understand why there is no support for "IPS 4 test installations". If someone has a test installation without any reference to the original website, okay. "With abdominal pain all right", even if it's just from 4.x to 4.x. But if someone uses a one to one copy for testing the upgrade from 3.x to IPS 4 before doing it with the original website there should be support in my opinion. We can always read don't upgrade your live website, try first a test installation. So if someone tries a test installation and runs into trouble there is no support. And now? Upgrade the live website just to get support even knowing there was a problem with the test installation. Just a big quandary for the customer, or not?.
So why not support test installations if it's a one to one copy from the original website and a test to upgrade the live website from 3 to 4?

[Tom_K]

Could not agree more. I don't understand it either.

I asked through a support ticket how I could get support for a test v4 installation and didn't get a reply. Going by this logic you would have to buy another licencse and install v4 on that 2nd license as your main installation so you could receive support. Sounds stupid but I guess that's the only way.

[opentype]

Maybe you shouldn’t call it a test site when asking for support. ;-)

I reported plenty of bugs for test installs and I was never turned down because of that. 

[不中用]

.

What if you flip your license for your live site you use TESTINSTALL and for the test site you use the default license key ..

Nobody is going to see the difference ..

And change your DNS with some other domain name ..

 

.

[Storyteller]

Okay, it seems there are ways to get around this "limitation". However, I find further that in principle there should be support from IPS for testinstallations as described above without the need to use any "tricks".  

[Nathan Explosion]

Maybe you shouldn’t call it a test site when asking for support. ;-)

I reported plenty of bugs for test installs and I was never turned down because of that. 

​Same here - reported bugs in the tracker and was requested to open support tickets on several.

Been getting support for issues on all my test installations since the first 4.0 beta as a result.

[Daniel F]

AFAIK we're not providing general support, but we'll help if you use your test site to test the upgrade process and you run into troubles.
We'll also help if you think you've found a bug and we ask for access to reproduce it.

 

 

 

 

[Shariq Ansari]

I had something written up on the software's support for test sites, but this thread was about the vendor's support for test sites, so it wasn't relevant

[Tom_K]

AFAIK we're not providing general support, but we'll help if you use your test site to test the upgrade process and you run into troubles.
We'll also help if you think you've found a bug and we ask for access to reproduce it.

​In my experience practice is somewhat different and it doesn't matter if it is a bug or not since you are dismissed before anyone even reads what your ticket is about, if support thinks your site is a test installation. Also this site https://www.invisionpower.com/support/guides/_/advanced-and-developers/miscellaneous/development-site-license-key-r148 mentions you receive no support whatsoever for your test installation.

I think it is a strange limitation. If you allow one test installation, why not support it? I'm the same user having problems with the main installation or test installation.

If anything I would think you are more likely to stumble upon a problem when starting to use the product. After a while you know your way around and require less support.

Let's be honest why this restriction is in place. It's to limit the amount of support IPS receives and makes the customer jump an extra hoop to get support in hope he gives up and doesn't bother them anymore.

The correct approach (IMO) would be to have good documentation and FAQ section so support agents can redirect the client to the online tutorial/help. That way the support agent could already reply using a pre-defined reply for that specific issue. Or better yet place some kind of a search feature for the help section so the user can search for the error he receives and encourage the users to do that before posting the support ticket. That way support would be able to support test installations and spend less time replying to tickets that can be solved with good documentation while having more time to focus on support tickets that actually let IPS know of new bugs.

At the moment my impression is support is not very well organised or maybe a better word would be optimized. I don't mean that they don't have the knowledge because they absolutely do and have resolved all my issues so far but the fact that I often get asked questions about the issue I have already written in the support ticket itself tells me they must be overwhelmed with support requests.

Making use of IPS's programming skills to offer a solution that would minimze the amount of support seems like a logical idea to me.

IPS offers a great product but there are a few things that seem to stay a certain way in spite of clients giving them feedback that it should be handled in a different way. I can think of IP.Content as a good example. It's a great product that allows you to do a lot but it just lacks a few more default example blocks out of the box to make it more user friendly. I can't count the number of times it has been suggested to make it friendlier for newbies but nothing was done about it. This is again a part of the user experience that would greatly improve with a better tutorial/documentations section with more hands-on (real life) examples.

I hope after IP.Board v4 becomes a more mature product, more focus will be put on issues like these to improve the customer experience and in effect raise the product's popularity and IPS's sales and profits.

[HighlanderICT]

AFAIK we're not providing general support, but we'll help if you use your test site to test the upgrade process and you run into troubles. We'll also help if you think you've found a bug and we ask for access to reproduce it.

​simply untrue

I have a current ticket outstanding (917384) for what I hoped would be a final test to the upgrade process from 3.4.8 to 4.0.x.    As with previous tests, i ran into errors, and although the previous ones were seen as bugs and IPS helped me through it without saying they did not support test sites, this is the response I got for my latest issue which was signed by the "Hosting and Support Manager".

ISSUE
Upgrade from 3.4.8 to 4.0.7 performs without hitch. involves 3 or 4 manual sql queries that are provided but thats about all I had to do other than make sure my paths were adjusted before i started the process. Test site and admin back end are both operational. however when accessing the admin dashboard i get a message to say the queue task is locking frequently and the background processes to rebuild everything is frozen in time. When I setup a cron job - using the instructions provided - nothing happens, and when I try to run it manually the screen starts to do something then quickly errors out with a 503 error.  I figured this was a prime candidate to log a ticket, a showstopper if you will. I logged a ticket with IPS and also with my VPS provider. 

RESPONSE (from IPB)
Here is the response in full

Hello, If you hit this issue on your live site, please let us know, however we are unable to provide support for test site per our restrictions below.

To ensure that all customers receive fair and comparable support, I'm afraid we are unable to provide support for test or development installations via the client area. If, however, the issue persists with your live / production installation, please do let us know and we will be happy to investigate further. Alternatively, there are development support resources available at http://community.invisionpower.com . I am sorry we're unable to be of more assistance at this time.

Thank you for your understanding.

 

I expect this kind of response from a 2bit $10 a year shared host, but not from IPB, especially given that this restriction is not mentioned on their service standards page: https://www.invisionpower.com/legal/standards . Are you seriously saying that you will NOT support a customer who is trying to use best practices to test, test, and re-test the upgrade process from their current live site so they do not adversely affect their own customers/members by performing an untried upgrade on their live site?  Its almost as ludicrous as not being allowed to change the test url of your test site !

After some serious showstoppers (RC6 deleted all images from live site, early versions of 4.0 ignored - and continue to ignore - archived content, ip.content conversion adds html paragraph code to article titles, ip content continues to add additional spacing in all articles) and now this one do you seriously think anyone in their right mind should even consider doing an untested upgrade? You might be able to fix it if we do, but fixing it on a live site affects our members ... I have logged only 5 tickets in 2015 related to V4 upgrades and they have varied in severity and duration to resolve - 3 days, 8 days, 16 days, 2 days, and now the one I logged yesterday. My VPS provider replies within 30 minutes and now awaits the answer to a couple of questions related to my ticket, but it seems IPS does not want to know......

 

really bad show IPS. 

 

[Shariq Ansari]

Are you seriously saying that you will NOT support a customer who is trying to use best practices to test, test, and re-test the upgrade process from their current live site so they do not adversely affect their own customers/members by performing an untried upgrade on their live site?

​This right there is the key point.

Would love to see staff comment, because it **IS** a best practice to upgrade a DEV/TEST site before PROD, and if you run into issues as part of the upgrade that appear to be with the product, how can you get support? Not at all? NOPE?

Its almost as ludicrous as not being allowed to change the test url of your test site !

This policy desperately needs to be changed.

It's great to see IPS getting so many things right with IPS4 - hats off, truly.

I hope some of their business policies get improved to match all the technical improvements.

[Kevin Carwile]

Look at it from this point of view.

You are not committing to the actual upgrade... you are just testing it. But then you want the same commitment to support as if it was a live site.

If somebody were to spend a few hours getting a "test" installation to run flawlessly and then you turn around and wipe it. What was the point? You are going to submit the same support ticket for your live site and someone will have to do the work all over again.

[Storyteller]

Look at it from this point of view.

You are not committing to the actual upgrade... you are just testing it. But then you want the same commitment to support as if it was a live site.

If somebody were to spend a few hours getting a "test" installation to run flawlessly and then you turn around and wipe it. What was the point? You are going to submit the same support ticket for your live site and someone will have to do the work all over again.

​Is this really the "normal way" if someone is testing the upgrade from 3.x to 4.x and not just playing around without a goal.? Shouldn't the fix make the way into the next release or if it's site specific they won't leave an info what was wrong and so it couldn't be taken over to the live site? If IPS handles support like the way "fix a problem and that's it then" I think it's one more point to reconsider a conversion to IPS. 

[HighlanderICT]

Look at it from this point of view.

You are not committing to the actual upgrade... you are just testing it. But then you want the same commitment to support as if it was a live site.

If somebody were to spend a few hours getting a "test" installation to run flawlessly and then you turn around and wipe it. What was the point? You are going to submit the same support ticket for your live site and someone will have to do the work all over again.

I understand where you are coming from and I dont think I am being unreasonable. I waited 16 days for my last issue to be resolved and didnt complain too much even though it caused me to miss my target upgrade date of 30th May (there was a reason for choosing that date). I know they were busy with V4.0 issues on live sites so I sucked it up and have set myself a new target date (again, there is a reason for this date). 

I realise they are still busy with live sites and I have no problem with slipping down the priority list for a few days but that's not the case here. they are saying this will not be addressed because its a test site. I find that part to be ridiculous. 

To your other point ... if IPS could point me in the direction of a fix and all worked well I would actually use the 'fix' to commit to the upgrade so yes I do want the same level of support commitment. I view the testing process as a crucial part of the actual upgrade. I am an active member on another board that recently upgraded to 4.0 and it was down for nearly 2 weeks with technical issues when they upgraded. I am not prepared to risk the same issue affecting my users if I can help it !! 

As an illustration that even now I dont think I am being unreasonable, I sent a request to IPS at 6AM (EST) asking what scripts or pages are being called during the rebuild process? This would allow my VPS providers who are willing to troubleshoot on the server side and see exactly what is going on. I received a response from IPS at lunchtime (EST) today to say they "cannot work with test installs at this time". They did not address the question. So I asked it again and 11 hours later there is still no response despite the fact that the 2 minutes it would take to pass on the info would mean IPS could bodyswerve the whole ticket, and potentially receive a verified solution for anyone else who might experience the same problem. I have a feeling my long wait may be deliberate ........ (same thing happened last time I posted in open forum ! before my posts were deleted.)    

 

 

[Lindy]

I'm sorry for the confusion here as well as the frustration.

It's worth noting that test installations are permitted but unsupported and this is fairly standard practice. As per the terms of the purchase, a license is provided for one instance of the software (test licenses are a self-supported exemption and limited per the license agreement.) This is has always been the case, but we've been a bit more lax on it in the past. With IPS4, we've had to become more stringent as often, we are doubling our workload and providing support essentially for two licenses for the cost of one. Issues arise on test installations, which are often server related (which is quite possibly the cause of your issues, Highlander, as your ticket mentions a non-standard setup on a VPS) and/or requiring advanced support... a technician will spend time diagnosing it and in the meantime, the customer, because it's a test installation, also continues to try to resolve their issue on their own, often wiping the test installation in the middle of a connection between the server and the technician. All of this, often only to repeat the support provided once the customer goes live.

To be clear - whether a bug occurs on a live installation or a test installation, we welcome and encourage the reporting of it and this is evidenced by your ticket history for which we've gone above and beyond.  We're also going to try and fine-tune our policy to help provide general question/answer assistance and ensure critical software issues don't fall through the cracks, regardless of live or test status. If you require further assistance for staging/test environments, you would need to purchase a second license. We are also evaluating an add-on support option that would cover test installation support.

A couple of final points:

1) If bugs and issues cause you such frustration as they do for many, I'd highly recommend not being an "early adopter." Unfortunately, there will be issues with a new platform and things will move somewhat slower from a support standpoint. This is no different than any other company. I've seen even the giants such as Apple pull entire releases due to issues... and yes, I've been on the receiving end of such events, so I understand the frustration associated with being among the first to use a product.

2) If anyone has self-hosted issues, you may wish to consider switching to our Community in the Cloud service... we even handle upgrades for you on that platform and our environment is tailored specifically to the software. Further, we offer a pro-rated credit based on your most recent self-hosted renewal.

I certainly appreciate the feedback and again, we will continue to look at different ways to reach a happy medium so we can answer inquiries such as yours, while keeping in mind that supporting two sites for one license is not a  reasonable expectation.

 

Regarding test URLs, there is no automated provision for that at this time, but you're certainly free to submit a request and we will change it for you provided there's not an installation at the existing URL.

[Shariq Ansari]

@Lindy Thanks for the detailed response. The explanation you provide does sound plausible and I'm sure it pops up all the time & chews up a lot of support time.

Whatever changes you can pursue to make IPS4 more developer-friendly with regard to test URLs would be great. I still don't find the policy intuitive relative to any other PHP software, commercial or FOSS, that I've used; hopefully you can streamline it in some fashion or rethink the implementation around something other than URLs.

[sobrenome]

AFAIK we're not providing general support, but we'll help if you use your test site to test the upgrade process and you run into troubles.
We'll also help if you think you've found a bug and we ask for access to reproduce it.

 

 

 

 

That's not true. I have opened 2 tickets to solve many bugs on a test install and they were closed under the argument that I should file a bug repport. So I have pointed that I will never be able to upgrade to IPS 4 if the bugs that ocurred on my test install were not fixed, as long as they will sure be present in the real website.

I agree that test installs should receive support to correct bugs that sometimes cannot be easyly reproduced by IPS. Test installs are much better for fixing errors. The bug is there, there is no need to try to reproduce.

And test installs don't need so fast support as real world installs, but certanly giving test installs support will make the software much better much faster then only by bug repports.

[HighlanderICT]

As a post-script to this, and in the interests of fairness, I should point out that IPS did help me, and so did my hosting provider. In the end IPS were not able to bodyswerve the ticket and between the three of us (me, host, IPS) we got it sorted. I believe both of them went beyond the official remit they provide so I have thanked both privately, and now publicly. 

the problem turned out to be something in the database that was neither the fault of the software or the hosting environment. The rebuild process got hung up on a couple of database entries that had either got corrupted or were malformed in some way and it killed the process stone dead. My host changed me from litespeed to apache for better (less generic) error reporting and we then had to take my live site offline for a little while to troubleshoot as we thought htaccess in root may have been affecting the development subdomain. This allowed IPS to identify the problem and hep me get over it. The rest of the rebuild process worked without a hitch and it looks like my test install is working as expected. All being well we do now intend to commit to the upgrade next week ! 

 

With regards to Lindy's comments, I do understand. I have worked as a global software asset manager / licensing administrator for the last 10 years buying and maintaining (mostly networked) software for a large multinational company and I tend to disagree about the nature of test installs. To me, to my company, and even the vendors to whom we pay our yearly maintenance fees, the test install is part of the overall software lifecycle for the customer and should not be regarded as a separate or second license. I need to test it in a development environment before I can put it into a production one. its common sense. IPS have always helped in this regard and if you were to look back on my tickets I would have to say that the vast majority of them have been logged either before or during an upgrade. Once the new version is up and running it is typically very stable and does not require much support (in my case anyway). I hear what you say about the test environment doubling your work, but would also question whether that is true or just anecdotal? In my case, we have had a few issues along the way with the tests, but the bugs have been worked out, so if my upgrade goes to plan and does not have a hitch I wont require support for the actual upgrade itself and I would hazard a guess that many users are the same. Even if I get the same issue as this week, I will be able to point support in the direction of the last ticket so checking if the database has made the process fall over would be the first item to check and resolvable very quickly ....   

I agree it is frustrating for IPS when your tech may be working on an issue on a test install and the customer blows it away from in front of their very eyes. I would go further and call it ignorant in fact. I could have done that with one of my tickets but did not ... thats why I ended up waiting 16 days for the ip.content fix with the html code as I know I need to get over this hurdle before I can move on and I wont get over it by blowing everything up and starting again. However, your suggestion that it is bugs that are causing the frustration and that should be a reason to not be an early adopter is wrong. It is not the bugs that are frustrating, but the reaction to them from our software provider. Regardless of the circumstance, I as a customer felt hung out to dry with the initial response which basically felt like a big middle finger, and as I have noted, it was not the first time.  

 

 

[HighlanderICT]

Even if I get the same issue as this week, I will be able to point support in the direction of the last ticket so checking if the database has made the process fall over would be the first item to check and resolvable very quickly ....   

unfortunately, the live upgrade encountered this same issue yesterday. Based on the past experience, once IPS have time to answer my ticket from early this morning I think we will finally complete our upgrade today .... (think it took about 6 hours from the fix on the test site to the completion of the rebuild). Other than that everything seems to be good at first glance.