Invision Power Services

Invision Power Services, Inc. (sometimes abbreviated IPS) is a Software company established in February 2002, probably most well-known for Invision Power Board. Some other products include Invision Community Blog and Invision Gallery, both of which are implemented as plugins for Invision Power Board, and Invision Power Chat. IPS also provide World Wide Web and forum hosting.

=History=

Invision Power Services was created after Matthew Mecham and Charles Warner disbanded from the company known then as Jarvis Entertainment Group (now Westlin Corporation) after allegations that JEG intended to charge for Ikonboard, of which Matt was the original author, rather than maintain its free status. A large number of supporters from Ikonboard followed Matt and Charles to the new company.

Initially Invision Power Board was free, including user-provided support, and the company maintained the product would remain free. The license has since been changed incrementally, so that the free version became a free trial. On September 27, 2004, the free trial download was eventually withdrawn from the Invision Power Services site and the product moved to a paid-only model. This was followed by much controversy, since there had been numerous bug fixes and suggestions incorporated into Invision Power Board from its user base who thought that the product would always remain free. This move disenfranchised many users, who for one reason or another, refused to pay for an IPB license. A limited free trial is now available which allows potential customers to evaluate the software before purchasing. The downloadable trial version of Invision Power Board 2.x series had subsequent limitations, such as encoded source.

On September 27, 2004, in a [http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.phpshowtopic=149069 press release], Invision Power Services discontinued the downloadable free trial of Invision Power Board, and was replaced with a free, 15 day demo hosted account, thus ending its claims that IPB will be free forever.

=Products=

==Invision Power Board==

Main article: Invision Power Board

An Internet forum software package written in PHP, comparable to other such bulletin boards, such as PhpBB and VBulletin. It is a commercial product, but there is a large modding community and most of these modifications are free. Many skin (computing)s can also be downloaded for use.

==Invision Community Blog==

Invision Community Blog is blogging system that plugs straight into Invision Power Board.

==Invision Gallery==

Invision Gallery is a gallery system. It is implemented as a plug in for Invision Power Board.

==Invision Power Dynamic==

It s a CMS of one form or another.

==Invision Power Vectura==

Vectura, a webmailing product.

==Invision Nexus==

A billing system used to sell digital, web-based products/items.

=Services=

Invision Power Services has since diversified its offerings to include services such as web hosting and dedicated server hosting. Since all of Invision s customers must use web hosting in some capacity, this is probably a lucrative source of second income for the company.

=External links=

*[http://www.invisionpower.com/ Invision Power Services, Inc. website] *[http://www.invisionboard.com/ Invision Power Board] *[http://www.invisionpower.com/ip.dynamic/products/blog/index.html Invision Community Blog] *[http://www.invisionpower.com/ip.dynamic/products/gallery/index.html Invision Gallery]