Literally, Invision Power (maker of IPB) released a book — IPB - A User Guide.

Disclaimer: I never liked Invision Power Board, so if you a huge fan of this ugly board, please don’t sue me.

I was doing my usual browsing to see if there are any updates to the world’s only php bulletin board that became more expensive than vBulletin from what was originally free. Okay that’s another story, but the fact that a php script needs a book to explain how it can be used (not how the internal programming works) is plain ridiculous.

If one was willing to $69.95 every year to use a php bulletin board, maybe that administrator knows a thing or two about that a forum. Most people have been apart of a forum as users. Yes, administrating a forum is much harder. Oh yes! They should start reading a book about how to click a series of buttons! Look at the description of this book!

This book is your guide to configuring, managing and maintaining a copy of Invision Power Board 2.
Written for people who want to get their forums up and running as quickly as possible, this book will show you to execute the full power of Invision Power Board.

Once I came across a page on their site that does exactly that. It was the Documentation. Hm. Redundent isn’t it. Oh I know what the book is for! So that after it’s released, they can delete the online documentation located on their site. The reasons for that are as follows.

• To save bandwidth for a huge corporate site.
• To make users search over and over for the lost and forgotten documentation that’s actually useful to sort out the problems and inequities caused by one badly-programmed bulletin board.
• To generate profits for Canada because books use paper and paper comes from trees, which Canada has loads of.

In spite of the support forums and thousands of users answering questions everyday, a book must be the right way to go, since it costs more money… I mean it will exercise the users’ abilities as readers. Yes that’s it.

After all, this book isn’t that expensive. It’s only $22.49 at the moment — “10% saving from the cover price of �13.99 ($24.99)”! Also quoted from their site, “IPS customers qualify for a massive 15% discount.” Oh my. I could save so much from that massive discount (maybe a dollar?). But oh wait I have to spend $100 buying IPB in the first place, and then buy a book to learn how to use it.

If you don’t believe the utter insanity of this book — read the sample chapter (pdf, 748kb). Actually, just browse the sample chapter. There isn’t much content in that chapter. A couple of pictures and huge empty spaces fill the pages.

Seriously though, IPB isn’t good. I don’t know why some forums use it. It’s not nearly as good as vBulletin. Speaking of which, the new version of vBulletin that’s comming out soon will surprise you with its awesome functions (ie. editting posts without reloading the page!).

Let the truth be told, IPB sucks and you know it. If you really wanted to know the integrity of that statement (it’s actually a fact), purchase this book and find out.