PHP Programming Language - OpenLibra

Invision Power Board 99
Invision Power Board
Developer(s) Invision Power Services
Stable release
Preview
release
3.1.0 [1] (June 1, 2010) [ +/− [1]
]
N/A / N/A
Platform PHP / MySQL / Oracle9i /
MSSQL
Type Forum software
License
Website
Proprietary [2]
www.invisionpower.com [3]
Invision Power Board (abbreviated IPB, IP.Board or IP Board) is an Internet forum software produced by
Invision Power Services, Inc. It is written in PHP and primarily uses MySQL as a database management system,
although support for other database engines is available.
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 skins.
History
Invision Power Services (IPS) was created by Matt Mecham and Charles Warner in 2002, after they left Jarvis
Entertainment Group (who produced Ikonboard). Their first product was Invision Power Board, another forum
package, which quickly gathered a community of former Ikonboard users.
Version 1.x.x
The last free full version is Invision Power Board 1.3.1, which is not as widespread as 1.3 because of the short
available time before 2.0 replaced it. Version 1.3 is commonly used on free forum hosts such as InvisionFree or
iPBFree, and is still used by many websites that refuse to purchase the latest version of Invision Power Board. Since
then many known exploits have been found, however, many patches have been produced by the community that fix
most of the security and exploit problems. [4]
Version 2.x.x
Although the software developers originally maintained that it would remain a free package, in 2004 Invision Power
Board ended its free releases for non-commercial uses. A downloadable trial version of Invision Power Board 2.0.0
PF [5] versions 1 and 2 were made available, but were discontinued on September 27, 2004. It was replaced with a
free demo with restrictions of 5000 posts, 1000 threads, 200 members and other restrictions, thus ending its claims
that Invision Power Board would be free forever.
Many users were upset with this, and some attacked Mecham, making allegations of copyright infringement. [6] On
July 1, 2005, IPS changed the demo time frame from 15 days to 5 days, [7] and a few months later, it was again
reduced to 24 hours, and again to 8 hours for private use. Later, it was increased to 48 hours, and recently it was
increased again to 5 days.