Invision Power Board (abbreviated IPB or IP.Board) is an Internet forum software produced by Invision Power Services, Inc. Written in PHP and primarily using MySQL (other database engines are available), it is comparable to other forum software such as phpBB, UBB.threads, vBulletin and MyBulletinBoard.



While Invision Power Board is a commercially sold product, there is a large modding community and many of these modifications are free. In addition, many groups offer the download or design of free and paid-for skins.

History

Invision Power Services (IPS) was begun by Matt Mecham and Charles Warner in 2002, after the pair left Jarvis Entertainment Group (who produced Ikonboard). Their first product was IPB, another forum package, which quickly gathered a community of former Ikonboard users.

Although the software developers originally maintained that it would remain a free package, in 2004 IPB ended its free releases for non-commercial uses. A downloadable trial version of Invision Power Board 2.0.0, 2.0.2, and 2.0.3 versions were made available, but were discontinued on September 27, 2004. It was replaced with a free demo, thus ending its claims that IPB will be free forever. On July 1, 2005, IPS changed the demo timeframe from 15 days to 5 days, and a few months later, it was again reduced to 24 hours.

IPB 2.1 was released on September 13, 2005. The administrator's control panel was completely redesigned, and the posting options were renovated to feature viewable text properties (Rich Text Editor), such as bold, italics, underline, etc. The viewing styles were also redone, and a number of various other changes were made including the use of Ajax in many new features.

Version 1.3

Version 1.3 was the last free version, and IPS still permits it to be used, but does not offer a download or support. Regardless of the lack of help, many users still ulteiize the older version, even though it has known security holes. Up until 2005, IPS offered security fixes, but with the advent of version 2.1, these have ceased.

Latest Releases

2.0.x (obsolete) - 2.0.4: May 4, 2005

2.1.x (stable) - 2.1.5: March 1, 2006

2.1.x (stable) - 2.1.6: May 3, 2006