Customization Invisioneer

[Arantor]

I don’t know if people have seen this, going to assume not, but there is a pretty interesting directory of Invision customisations on Invisioneer.

Marketplace Directory - Invisioneer

www.invisioneer.org

Interesting reading for sure.

 

[Cedric]

For those who may not know, Invisioneer was born out of Invision Community's decision to discontinue hosting plugins. While I still believe that wasn’t the wisest choice on their part, it led to the creation of this platform, and here we are today, making the best of it!

I do wonder how much is going to be left that we'll see being brought over to v5 though.

 

[Arantor]

There’s already some resources updated to IC5 by the looks of things. But you have a valid point.

 

[Cedric]

There’s already some resources updated to IC5 by the looks of things. But you have a valid point.

Valid point is my middle name.


Not but seriously though, v5 removed the ability to have hooks, which made plugins more easy to develop as far as I know. It seems they want to get rid of the ability to customize altogether as time goes.

 

[Arantor]

Kinda.

Hooks are both a blessing and a curse: they give you great power but they’re also a nightmare to debug when things don’t play perfectly nicely, and that’s before we talk about actual monkey patching (what XF calls class proxying). It’s very powerful in the right circumstances, but it’s not as effective as it might seem depending on what you’re trying to do.

The reality of Invision’s world is that the increased flexibility comes with a rampant increase in support costs - in XF’s case this ends up being borne by the addon authors, or they just shrug and each go “it’s their problem” pointing to the other addon where there is a problem.

I get why Invision has taken the route they’ve taken, and on some level I’m not sure it’s the wrong answer. While there is a place for customisation, I sometimes wonder if the rich ecosystem XF has is a symptom of a different problem.

We can talk more once I’ve had a go writing an addon for Invision.

 

[Cloaked]

I remember when the announcement was made to discontinue the marketplace. Many said that will be the death of IPB. In the end they came out stronger. While the mod and theme makers, for the most part, are the most vocal in a community they really are in the minority. Many users, like me, use software as stock. We are normally the ones that buy the software, install it and you never hear from us again.

I've been to Invisoneer a few times. I think I have an account there.Been a while because I strayed from IPB for a few years. Might have to stop by and check it out again.

 

[Arantor]

I think that’s symptomatic of the schism of Invision Community’s user base. It has the vocal minority for whom customisation is important, even vital, and it has the core functionality that is perfectly adequate for the rest of their user base.

Funny thing is, both sides see the others as “you’re using it wrong”.