Invision Community

Invision Power Board is an Internet forum software package 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, and vBulletin.

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

For a period of time following Invision Power Board 2.0's initial release, the software was made "trialware", so to speak, and the word "Trial" was added to the mandatory copyright statement. On September 27, 2004, only weeks later, the free/trial version of their product was discontinued completely. Shortly thereafter, on November 12, 2004, a version of the software was released (with restrictions on code and limits on usage) again as a trial, only for the purpose of letting people preview the software.

InvisionFree is a remotely hosted version of Invision Power Board, but is free to use. InvisionFree lacks many of the benefits and features of Invision Power Board, but provides an alternative for people who wish to use Invision Power Board, but do not wish to pay.

Forumer is a service similar to InvisionFree; both offer a remotely hosted version of IPB 1.3 (Final). It's free to use, but has some major limitations.

IPB 2.0.1, while outdated (the latest version is 2.0.3), was the last version to allow for a fully free and legal unlimited trial. It was technically for "evaluation purposes only," but can be used for as long as the user wishes.

External links

• Invision Power Services' company website
• Invision Power Board
• Invisionize - Invision Power Board resource website.
• IPB SDK - A library of PHP functions to allow application development and website integration.