invisionfree.com

>> Invisionfree the company.

Invisionfree are undergoing quite a change at the moment, with new software being written to bring it up to date with a lot of other systems.
To help understand what is currently happening with the company, here is a brief history.

Invisionfree was set up by someone called Brandon and it began in September 2002, using licence to use a modified version of Invision Power Board ...
...problems in maintaining the software, which because it hasn’t been written specifically by Brandon or others at Invisionfree (IF from now on) does mean they have struggled to work out certain bugs and issues, but most importantly they have struggled to upgrade the software as needed.
Therefore, they currently are on open Beta Board testing of ZetaBoards that is designed from scratch. This is going to eventually be a direct replacement for ... more

>> Invisionfree the company.

Invisionfree are undergoing quite a change at the moment, with new software being written to bring it up to date with a lot of other systems.
To help understand what is currently happening with the company, here is a brief history.

Invisionfree was set up by someone called Brandon and it began in September 2002, using licence to use a modified version of Invision Power Board software.
However, as Invisionfree has grown, so have the problems in maintaining the software, which because it hasn’t been written specifically by Brandon or others at Invisionfree (IF from now on) does mean they have struggled to work out certain bugs and issues, but most importantly they have struggled to upgrade the software as needed.
Therefore, they currently are on open Beta Board testing of ZetaBoards that is designed from scratch. This is going to eventually be a direct replacement for IF boards.

However, for the moment I will be reviewing IF since Zetaboards is some way from completion and you will be able to maintain your IF board for a long time to come, even once Zetaboards is out of Beta and openly available.

IF is now one of the largest (if not the largest) suppliers of hosted board systems available. This means you only have to register a board and then design your ideas around it, rather than use a separate board software program and find hosting for yourself (as you have to with PHP and vBulletin software).
IF have over 19,500,000 customers registered, and 1,800,000 boards registered!

>> About the boards.

We moved to IF in 2005 after problems with a previous hosted message board company. We did find it a little strange initially compared to what we had been used to, but the first thing we noticed was there was a help forum that was populated by other IF board owners, all able to give help and advice quickly and easily to even the most basic of queries we might have had. Not once were we made to feel stupid by asking some of the more basic questions about how to do something, and on every occasion we always were able to get a reply and solve the issues we might have had within a day - Often a matter of minutes.
You also have a support ticket system available if needed through your Admin Control Panel (ACP), but so far we’ve not had to use it once in the whole time (now just over 2 years) we’ve been there, finding all our questions answered in the main help forum.

>> The look of your board.

IF boards need some understanding of CSS, although not completely since you can go to a number of forums that supply complete changes of style and colour to your board look, and all you have to do is copy and paste over following instructions given. This means it is usually a simple swap over from one CSS set of coding to another, rather than you having to alter it.
The logos and images are selectable separately, and therefore you can alter the top banner and other aspects of the board’s images, as you might want to. This is probably the easiest way to get a little of your own look to a board. Just make a banner up (if you know how) and change it from the default set IF logo. You can even change the size to a slightly larger one (although I would recommend you stick to no more than 750 pixels across, 200 depth).
As you become more used to the system, you can then look to venturing into making changes to the CSS, and really make the look your own.

You can also find some other codes (usually Javascript based) that you can add into areas known as the Board Wrappers – again you usually have instructions on where to add the code. These are often known as Cracks or Hacks, and allow you to put some additional features on your board if you wish to. This can vary from a news ticker table between your banner and the main board, a shoutbox, or simply having different colours for your membership groups (Admin, Moderators and general membership for example).

>> General board details.

The boards are free, which does mean you have Google Banner ad’s placed in the board. However they are often unobtrusive, and because they often pick up on keywords from your boards discussion, I’ve known board members actually clicking on adverts because they are of genuine interest to them! However, if you want no adverts you can pay for their removal via PayPal in your ACP. This cost currently is set at $0.15 per 1,000 page views, $5-00 minimum payment.

The limits on the board are as follows.
You have 16 MB of storage (this allows members to put picture attachments into posts for example, Avatars you might uploard etc). However, even after 2 years, we are still within our limit on our busiest board (although on Zetaboards they have said there is likely to be a higher or no limit at all). However, even if you did need to get a larger amount of space you can purchase it starting at 50 MB. $19.99 a year.

The boards are backed up and a frequent basis, and since 2002 they have had only one major server incident which did result in some data loss on one server only (no other server on the network was affected). For a company with the number of sites it now has, plus the time it has been running, its record is very good indeed, and far better than any other board hosting system I know of.

>> Using your ACP and the boards features.

First of all, your Admin Control Panel is fairly well laid out when you open it. I would say that if you really aren’t used to computers or the Internet then taking a step into something like running a message board really should be done with extreme care. I am assuming that most people will at least have some idea of what to do around any sort of control panel with an online feature (Like a Ciao account). If you don’t, I would say please make a test board first and play around with it until you feel comfortable. This also gives you a space where you can test out new features before putting it on your main board, so that if it doesn’t work you don’t screw it up where it matters, and you have plenty of time and space to try and work out what you’ve done.

As with any message board, you need to make up Forums. To do this you need to make Categories first. The menu on the left clearly shows the Forum section and you can see where you can make the category that you want your forum to then sit in, as well as the option to make the forums. I am not going to go through what is required, but it does stand out well in terms of look. My only word of advice is that you need to put some settings in as you make a forum, and the two that confuse or aren’t spotted by most people when first starting are as follows.
As you move down, you will have the following listed: Default date cut off for topic display.
This by default is set at 30 days, which means a topic can disappear from view. If you don’t want that to happen, set it to: Show All
And finally, you have Permission masks to tick at the end. The first is Admin, and you should tick all of them across.
Then if you allow guests to read the forum, but not post, tick the first box only (read) and leave the others as you look from left to right blank.
Finally, allow members to have all ticked across so they can read, reply, start and upload in a post.

So what does the board offer you?

Well you can show the following on the main page of the board.
· Birthdays
· Active users list
· Calendar Events
· Board Statistics

Within the forums you have the following:

· Topic sorting options
· Users browsing this forum
· Subscribe to forum; track new topics
· Sub-forums

In the topics you can:
· Topic subscription; track new posts
· Printable topics
· Sort topic by newest or oldest post
· Users reading this topic

When you post you have the options of:
· BBCode for formatting posts (Bold, italic, email, link, image, underline, color, size, font, quote, code, list, subscript, superscript, and horizontal rule)
· Guided BBCode mode
· Clickable Smilies
· Moderator options while posting
· Upload attachment file
· Post icons
· Polls

You have use of a personal message system, a calendar of events you can use, a full membership list available to search. And within moderation options you can:
· Move topic
· Close/lock topic
· Edit title
· Pin (Sticky) topic
· Bump topic
· Unsubscribe everyone from topic
· Merge two topics into one
· Split one topic into two
· View moderated history of topic
· Custom multi-moderation

So just about everything you need to start your own message board and community.

Now the only word of caution - because of the current push to get Zetaboards out of Beta, they aren't working on some issues on IF, except the most important. This means there are some known bugs which they aren't able to work on at the moment on the board system. The most notable of these is the search facility which they have moved across to Google, so while it helps it isn't ideal.

However, these are minor points in my opinion compared to the benefits you gain by using IF and the boards there, and I guess 19,500,000 customers is a pretty good indication of that. 

...less