NewsBot

Statistics can help you manage and monitor the direction of your community, giving you valuable insight into how your visitors are interacting with your site and what areas of your community deserve the most of your attention. With the popularity of Clubs in Invision Community, we determined that some statistics aimed at helping administrators review how this feature is being received by their end users were warranted. Club activity statistics overview When accessing the "Club Activity" statistics page in the AdminCP, you will be able to quickly see at a glance which club types are the most popular, see which clubs are gaining the most traction with new signups, and see trends in club creations over time. With the signups chart, you can further filter by one or more specific clubs, and save these filter preferences as new tabs on the chart. See activity across all clubs The "All Club Activity" tab on this page shows you which types of content (topics, images, files, etc.) are most popular across all clubs as an aggregate. If you find that Calendar or Downloads is especially popular throughout clubs then you may wish to promote these features further. Conversely if you find that a certain type of content is not being leveraged, you may wish to promote it, or retire its functionality on your community. Activity by club shows you which clubs are most active You can also view activity per-club, allowing you to identify which of your clubs are the most popular and have the most activity. As with the "Club signups" chart, you can use filters to view just the clubs you are interested in comparing, and save these filters for easy review later on. We hope you find value in these new statistics pages, and that they help you manage the Clubs feature on your site more effectively. View the full article

Since we announced native Invision Community apps for iOS and Android, the response has been incredible. Hundreds of customers registered interest in joining the testing process, and for the initial round we selected around thirty users, roughly split between iOS and Android. Thank you to those testers for their work in reporting issues and providing feedback over the past couple of months. Open Beta I'm pleased to report that we are now ready to begin an open beta of the app, allowing everyone to install it and test it. See below for information on installing the apps. As this is still a testing process, we'd welcome any bug reports or feedback you have. Instructions on doing that can also be found below. The app going into open beta today is essentially a 'white label' version for our own community here. This enables us to test the basic community functionality more widely before we release the free 'multi-community' app that customers will be able to use with their own communities. Already signed up for beta testing via our survey? Thank you! Once we begin testing the multi-community app we will select a new group of testers from those that signed up, and invite them to offer the app to their own users on their own communities. This stage will come once Invision Community 4.5 is released later this year. Installing the app iOS iOS users will need to install TestFlight from the App Store. This is an app provided by Apple that allows developers (such as ourselves) to issue test versions of applications. Once installed, sign up for the beta test by going HERE on your iPhone. Android Android users should go HERE on their device to sign up for the beta. Reporting issues/providing feedback If you would like to report an issue with the app, we are managing issues via a special GitHub repository. You will need a free GitHub account to report new issues, if you don't already have one. Click the Issues tab, then the New Issue button and follow the steps. Please provide as much information as you can. If you'd like to provide feedback via a private channel, or if you have a sensitive bug to report, please email us at a dedicated email address: [email protected] Disclaimers The app you will be installing is a beta version and we offer no guarantees with it. If you are not comfortable using beta software and the inherent risks in doing so, please don't install the app yet. We reserve the right to suspend testing or exclude individual testers at any time if necessary. View the full article

? === Release Notes - (aXen) Yours chat entries from Chatbox+ === ? English: The plugin shows entries from the Chatbox+ app in: Hovercard, Profile, ProfileHeader, Topics (BIM) Chatbox+ (at least version 2.0.0) is required. Polski: Wtyczka pokazuje wpisy z aplikacji Chatbox+ w: Hovercard - Podgląd profilu, Profile - Profil, ProfileHeader - Header profilu, Topics - Tematach Wymagana jest aplikacja (BIM) Chatbox+ w wersji co najmniej 2.0.0. View the full article

Although we continuously review security within Invision Community, a major release such as 4.5 allows us to be especially proactive when it comes to keeping your community safe. This blog entry outlines several enhancements to improve security in Invision Community 4.5. Password Handling Keeping your member's passwords secure is the simplest way to keep accounts safe and out of the wrong hands, so it makes sense to look at ways to ensure this doesn't happen. Invision Community already uses strong one-way hashing when storing passwords, which means that once the password is stored in the database, there is no way to know the plain text version. However, when creating a new member account via the AdminCP, a random password was created, and this was sent in the welcome email to the new member's email address. As of Invision Community 4.5, this no longer happens, and the new member is invited to create a new password when visiting the community for the first time. Part of your internal security procedures might be to force a reset of all passwords periodically. Invision Community 4.5 allows this on a per-member basis, or via a selection of filters to enforce a reset for many members at once. This clears out any stored password hashes and emails the affected members to remind them to set up a new password. AdminCP Security The Admin Control Panel contains the most powerful tools available to Invision Community. This is already a very secure area with a separate login with an option to add two-factor authentication to the login flow. Part of the session authentication has been a special key in the URL. While we have protection in place to prevent this special key being discoverable by a malicious user, there remains an incredibly remote theoretical chance that this could happen with a series of complicated steps. There was an additional annoyance that you are unable to share links within the AdminCP to members of your team due to the increased protection to keep URLs safe. As of Invision Community 4.5, we have removed the special key from the URL and moved it elsewhere in the session authentication flow. This means that it's impossible to fetch the special key via the URL and links can now be shared and will survive a login action. Text Encryption There are a few areas within Invision Community that we use text encryption to allow us to save data in the database in a format that is encrypted when saved and decrypted when read. This protects you in the incredibly remote event of your own hosting being compromised and your database downloaded (of course, our Community in the Cloud customers do not need to worry about this!) Invision Community 4.5 improves on this encryption by using PHP's built-in methods which give "bank-level" security to our encryption. Security is critical to the success of your community, and we are always proactive in improving security throughout Invision Community. Do you have any comments on this entry? Let us know below! View the full article

This plugin will display, in desktop and tablet, FontAwesome icons in Overview and Members tab in Clubs. It will also display icons on Home Page and Activity page if you have Improved Club Enhacements installed. You can choose any tab from this page: https://fontawesome.com/v4.7.0/icons/ View the full article

The goal of every client here in the Invision peer community, myself included, is to launch and run successful communities. Whether I’m going to be able to achieve that success in the new year depends entirely on trying these 10 steps. I know if that if I stick to these steps, then my community will grow – and I know if you follow along, your community will too. 10. Ignore Google Google makes me laugh; Google makes me cry; Google makes me want to pitch myself into the freezing icy waters of the San Francisco bay. But focusing on Google’s up-and-down volatility isn’t what is going to make my community successful. It’s a distraction, and at worst, a wrong commitment of attention. 9. Remember My Past Sins I’ve made every mistake imaginable – including over-the-top themes, too many customizations, and chasing after dream goals. The very worst is not making a database backup, then losing everything. Most of us came up through the School of Hard Knocks, and we should learn from those experiences. 8. Treat Every Person as Gold Members are the beating heart of your community, and are truly what makes your community special. I’m committed to taking time out every day to message, comment, or reply to 3 new people to cultivate new relationships. 7. Practice x3 Nobody is perfect the first time they try something. Thomas Edison famously stated that he found 10,000 ways for a lightbulb to not work, and 1 way that it did. Whether you’re publishing new content or designing a template, refine it multiple times. 6. Start as a Guest I don’t do this enough and I always find something surprising when I do. Either something is missing, something can be improved, or something is wrong. The guest experience is the very first impression a visitor will have, and it can shape all of his future expectations. 5. Less is More It’s easy to get sidetracked and to let your community get bloated with content and features. It’s better to be amazing in one domain expertise: you offer the most authority, the most trusted content, the latest news, or the most comprehensive overview. Excite members by being the best at what you do. De-emphasize, consolidate, or archive everything else as needed. 4. It’s Not the Feature; Its What the Feature Does It’s easy to think that because IPS ships with a new feature, then you should use it. You don’t. You should always pre-qualify the feature by asking how the feature can help you better engage with your community, how does it engage, and how can you customize the feature even better for your members? 3. Bring Your Superusers Along Even though I invite my superusers into a special private feedback group, I don’t leverage their knowledge, experience, or perspective enough. I recently asked for feedback about a particular feature, and it turns out none of them use it! 2. Experiment & Learn There’s always something new to learn, explore, and implement. It's my personal goal to enrich my personal skillsets in areas like leadership, team building, mentoring, emotional intelligence, organizational behavior, and psychology for more effective community management. On the promotion side, you can learn about email marketing, digital marketing, social media, creating rich media, and more. On the content side, you can always improve your content writing skills, emotive writing, keyword research, and the multiple use of one piece in different formats. 1. Enjoy the Journey For any community admin who sticks with his community for several years, you can get burned out. I know the feeling, and I like to periodically remind myself about what I enjoy running the community. There’s so much to learn and do that it can feel overwhelming, so it’s important to take every day in 2020 one day at a time. View the full article

This plugin will add the ability to randomly sort files in Files feed widget. View the full article

Every single day, your members are searching your community for answers or interesting conversations to join. Wouldn't it be great if you could learn what is being searched for to identify hot issues, commonly asked questions and discover trends? We thought so too, which is why Invision Community 4.5 comes with search statistics. For the first time, Invision Community gathers anonymized information on what your members are searching for so you can use this to highlight more relevant content and shape strategic decisions with your community's structure. Search statistics help you track searches performed on your community When a member searches, their identity is converted into a unique key that cannot be reversed to identify the member. This allows us to track a single member's search usage over many search sessions without being able to link it to a specific member account. The AdminCP now features a dashboard to review the most popular search terms as well as a raw log of recent searches along with the results they returned. We have a lot of ideas in mind for additional changes down the road with the tracking of popular search terms, but for now, we hope you like the new statistics page and find the information presented useful for your future site plans. View the full article

Advanced Gift Cards extends the default IPS gift card feature Features Select what payment methods to allow for purchasing Gift Cards Select what member groups can buy Gift Cards Allow members to send Gift Cards to other members via PM when purchasing them This will allow members to enter a users name and it will send them the Gift Card as a nice private message The receiver will be the only recipient in the private message allowing only them to see the code ( Apart from Admins, read below ) Enter a minimum amount required for purchasing Gift Cards Adds a page in the ACP keeping track of all Gift Card purchases with info on it Shows who purchased the Gift Cards Shows the delivery type of the Gift Cards Email Print Private Message If it was sent via Private Message it will show who they sent it to Shows the actual Gift Cards code Shows the Gift Cards value Shows if the Gift Cards has been redeemed Shows who redeemed the Gift Cards Shows the time and date of redemption Allows quick search of the code of the Gift Cards allowing you to check all its progress easily IPSCommerce is required to use this application View the full article

With this plugin you can easily add a watermark to every uploaded image via upload form. FAQ - read before purchase It works only for a newly uploaded images? Yes. It works for already uploaded images? No. Watermark could be applied into old images (already saved)? No. Would you be so kind and add new options? Yes and no. It depends what it would be. Watermark can be added anywhere on the image? No. It would be added only to bottom right corner. Watermark would be added onto thumb also? Yes. If you have any other questions please ask BEFORE purchase. View the full article

We have come a long way since the late 90s when someone had the genius idea of using a small yellow smiling face image instead of the more common colon-bracket representation of a smiling face. In Invision Community, there are various places that photography can be used to create visual interest. From uploads in topics, to cover photos for blogs and members. The humble upload field has served these areas well, but sourcing images to use can be a pain; especially when you have to walk the minefield that is copyright and attribution. Fortunately, there are a few "CC0" online stock photo libraries that offer quality photography that requires no attribution and are not hampered by copyrights. One such library is the ever-popular Pixabay, which was established in 2012 and features a very powerful API. Pixabay has over a million images ready to use from llamas to sausages and everything in-between. Invision Community 4.5 now includes support for Pixabay which brings those images to your fingertips (or mouse pointer if you're on a desktop.) This video shows the feature in use. As you can see, not only can you upload into posts from the stock photo library, but you can also use it to add a cover image to your profile and blog entries. Finding quality photography has never been so easy! For those that love technical details, the stock photo picker is a programmatic option on the upload form field type making it very easy to add to your own code and apps. How will you use this new feature? Let me know! View the full article

Ever since Invision Community 4.x was launched you have been asking for the ability to categorize blogs in your community. We heard you load and clear, but sometimes when a feature sounds straightforward, it requires some re-engineering of the framework. Because users in your community can create both blog entries and their own blogs to hold these entries, this was one of those areas. Starting with Invision Community 4.5 I’m pleased to announce that it is now possible for blog authors to categorize their blog entries and it's now possible for administrators to categories blogs. Blog Entry Categories When creating a new blog entry, your members will now be able to create a new category for the entry or choose an existing one that had been created previously. Choosing your category when creating a new blog entry When a reader then visits the blog they can choose to display only those categories that interest them. Filtering by category Blog Categories Running a community where users can create their own blogs, you don’t only need to make sure individual pieces of content are categorized correctly, you also need to make sure the blogs themselves have a logical place. Well guess what? Now you can! As an admin you can now set up predefined categories in the control panel and Blog authors can then choose which one to create their new blog in. Managing blog categories We realize some of you have been waiting a long time to see these changes so we hope you enjoy this and everything else to come in Invision Community 4.5! View the full article

This plugin will add two button in your community pages for Next Item and Previous Item (If there is a next or previous item). buttons will stick in the sides of the page and have animation effect if hover to show more detail for next or previous items. like item's name and item's image. Note: Next Item and Previous Item is based on how IPS consider an Item is being updated in databases. Supported apps: Forum's topics | Demo Download's files | Demo Calendar's events | Demo Page's records (Require additional template works, provided by a guide inside the package) | Demo View the full article

This is a maintenance release to fix bugs. Wyświetl pełną treść wpisu

This is a maintenance release to fix bugs. Wyświetl pełną treść wpisu

Vuex is a new theme with a dark color scheme that can be used for any forums. N.b. this is still on beta, as I'm continuing to work on it, so feel free to report any bugs and give feedback! There isn't a working demo for now. (but hey, it's free, so just download it and try it! ? ) Main features: Customizable slider with images+captions Customizable footer items Quick side navigation on scroll Vuex is free and always will be. View the full article

This is a small plugin allows using Widget to display the statistic in your site. Members could see and update the newest information on that. Features: DISPLAY STATS IN TAB VIEW DISPLAY STATS IN GRID VIEW Manage stats in widget's settings: Easy to add/delete stats. Drag & drop to reorder the position quickly. Clicking on stats to select the categories. Supports the following stats: Forums: New Topics New Posts Most Viewed Hot Topics Downloads: New Files Recent Updates Most Viewed Most Downloaded Highest Rated Pages: New Content New Comments Most Viewed Members: New Members Most Reputation Most Content Other: Auto-update stats every X seconds. Widget title. Fully support AJAX. Fully support responsive design. Cache system for high quality/performance. LIVE DEMO: https://ipsviet.com/ View the full article

On behalf of the Invision Community staff and company, I'd like to wish our clients and community warm blessings and gratitude for the New Year. We're proud to be the community platform of choice for you and your organization over the past year (or decade!), empowering you and your users with the space to debate, discuss, investigate, solve, innovate and celebrate a shared sense of purpose. The ability to positively touch and connect with the lives of others regardless of location is one of the most transformative benefits of the modern web -- and there's never been a greater demand or need for online communities to connect members in an authentic, branded experience. Your community is the gift that keeps on giving, and we're delighted to be a part of it. Here's a round-up of the 2019's most visited, most commented, and most clicked-on articles from the Invision Community Blog: Invision Community managers use tools like Saved Actions and Auto Moderation to work smarter with 5 of the best time saving features Avoid the Engagement Trap, a never-ending race that measures all the wrong metrics in a community The crowd goes wild in the teaser announcement of the forthcoming mobile apps for iOS and Android Go back in a time machine with a Decade in Review - a celebration and testament to the enduring power of community. Once again, may the magic and wonder of the holiday season stay with you throughout the year! View the full article

This is a maintenance release to fix bug reports since 4.4.9.1. Wyświetl pełną treść wpisu

This is a maintenance release to fix bug reports since 4.4.9.1. Wyświetl pełną treść wpisu

Your users might not be aware and might not like that their display names are public in any public area of your site. And as a result, Google queries for real names or business names used as display names will often lead to your website. While this can be nice regards to traffic, it can upset users and might be problematic in regards to privacy laws. This plugin mitigates these problems by globally truncating or hiding display names when content pages of your site are viewed as guest. This decreases the likelihood of search queries for names leading to your community pages. For a live demo, check out Typography.Guru. Important notice: The plugin only works on sites that have removed the guest access to profiles through the permission settings. If you let search engines like Google index every user profile, obfuscating the usernames makes little sense. This plugin is specifically made for sites that already do not link to user profiles, but still expose the full display names (e.g. in forum topics or in the discovery feeds). If you are unsure about your settings, open a forum topic as guest user and check if the display names link to the user’s profile or not. If not, you can use this plugin. Plugin Settings: Set the number of characters to show. Jane Doe can be turned into “J…” (1 character) or “Jane…” (4 characters) for example. You can also set the value to zero to remove the original display name entirely. Use the “member” suffix. Put the word “member” in front of every truncated name. This works best when just a few or none of the original characters are shown. Jane Doe would become for example. The word member can be changed and translated. Use brackets. This puts square brackets around the replaced user names, e.g. instead of Member J… Show hover description A description explaining that full user names are shown after login. The phrase can be changed and translated. Pick admin exception You can pick one member that will be excluded from the truncation/replacement. This can be useful for your main admin account. You would protect your user’s privacy, but still have your name shown in your Pages articles and announcements for example. The plugin works for all pages of a site that use the theme templates “userLink” and “userLinkFromData” to generate the display names. This is the case for forum topics, Pages articles, the calendar and many block feeds. The display names might still be exposed in the source code or in other areas of the suite if they are set as being public. More areas to obfuscate the usernames might be added later on request. View the full article

This plugin allows you to disable paid files in downloads app categories. To disable paid files in a specific category, edit the plugin settings and set the categories where paid files shouldn't be supported. View the full article

This plugin will display in Forums index the root categories as tabs. Notes: It will add a tab for Club Forums if the setting to Show Club Content Areas is set to Throughout the community. It will add a new display option in the index if you allow members to choose forum view type Compatible with Grid View per Forums by @DawPi A second line of tabs will show up if you have many root categories. The less the better. View the full article

When the clocks strike midnight on New Year's Eve, we will enter the third decade of producing Invision Community. A lot has changed since we set up in 2002. Our team has grown and our product matured. In a world where online startups explode and die within a few years, we're something of an anomaly. We still have the same love and passion for creating the very best tools to build a community, and we have always ensured that Invision Community is in touch with modern demands. This decade has seen Invision Community go from strength to strength. In 2010 we were one of many forum systems catering to smaller niche audiences. In 2019 we're powering discussion for many international and well-known brands. Online habits may have changed in this time, and social media may have swallowed up smaller informal communities, but the need for independent community platforms remains strong. 2020 will see us release 4.5 which will bring another round of essential updates to existing features and a fresh batch of new features. But first, let us climb inside our Delorean, rewind the clock to 2010 and start from the beginning. As the sun rose on 2010, Bruno Mars was singing about parts of the human face in "Just the way you are", Katy Perry irritated Microsoft Word's spellchecker with "California Gurls", and CeeLo Green was trying to "Forget you" (at least in the radio edit). Christopher Nolan's boggled all our minds with Inception, James Franco lost the ability to clap in 127 Hours, and Colin Firth stammered his way through The Kings Speech. Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad to a collective snort, moderate derision and questions over just how useful a giant iPhone will be. President Obama, just a year into office warns of "Snowmageddon" that eventually dumps up to 40 inches of snow on the east coast of the United States. We lost comedy legend Leslie Nielsen (we'd never dream of calling him Shirley), and we gained a small child named Ryan who in just nine years would be earning $29,000,000 by opening boxes of toys on YouTube. 62% of us were using Internet Explorer to the chagrin of most web developers who wished that Chrome's 5% market share was more significant. Facebook celebrated its sixth year by reaching 400 million users (a far cry from the 2.5 billion it currently has). Twitter, just four years old hits 30 million monthly active users (and none of them talked about fake news). And how about Invision Community? 2010 We hit 2010 running by releasing numerous updates on IP.Board v3.1, including finally using long-established web standards, and share features now that "social networking is all the craze these days" noting that "friends and colleagues often share similar interests, after all." How innocent we all were in 2010. IP.Board 3.0 Back then, each product had its own name and release cycle. IP.Gallery's new features included being able to rotate images by 90 degrees. Honestly, people used to go crazy for this stuff. In May, we released a brand new application called "IP.Commerce". A few months later we renamed it "IP.Nexus" and years later, it was changed back to "Commerce". Naming things is hard. The announcement contained exquisite details such as "It's hard to say when it'll be available" and "we don't know how much it will cost". We were so sure that it would be accepted positively, we removed the ability to post comments to the blog entry. As summer turned to autumn and the end of the year loomed large, we released news about a significant update to Gallery called "IP.Gallery 4.0" which pre-dates Invision Community 4 and confused customers for years (so IP.Board 3 works with IP.Gallery 4, but IP.Board 4 works with Gallery 4?). Numbering things is hard too. The last blog entry was about an app called 'IP.SEO' that I had utterly forgotten existed. It was written by Dan who once locked Lindy out of his own datacenter, but we don't talk about that. I don't even remember this website 2011 Charles opens the year by managing expectations for IP.Board 3.2 by outlining our three key goals (promotion, usability and modernization). The last one was us removing the "back to top" button and then spending the next eight years explaining why we removed it. Our spam monitoring service processed 300,000 requests in the first two weeks of 2011. 30% of these requests were deemed to be spam and blocked (0.1% was probably an administrator registering 50 fake accounts before being banned from their own site). I posted about "exciting new technology" in our new "WYSIWYG" editor (although what you see is sometimes close to what you get) would be more appropriate but slightly less catchy. We spent the next eight years explaining why no one uses BBCode anymore to almost everybody. Brandon closed out the year with a blog promising "new toys" for IP.Content 2.3 (now called Pages, keep up!) which promises a "who's online" widget and a "shared media field" that was not only complicated to explain, but also use. IP.Board 3.2 in all its glory 2012 We start the year with news on IP.Board 3.3. This release was to feature essential updates such as the "Remember me?" checkbox on the login form and emoticons in signatures. Despite being constantly told that we don't take SEO seriously, we round up the latest serious SEO changes including tags, soft 404s and micro schema. We also celebrated our tenth year in business. Something terrible must have happened to one of our competitors because we asked if you'd like to switch to IPS. The year ends with IP.Board 3.4 being released for beta testing. This being a rare year where we release two major versions in less than 12 months. 2013 Brandon has eight coffees and tries to explain what it's like to be a developer: "us developers are a strange bunch. We have a lot of crazy thoughts that just don't make sense to anyone else. Our brains are wired differently. We get from point A to point B by going around point Z and bouncing off point M first.", he closes the blog entry by urging you to ignore us. The big news is that work on 4.0 is officially underway! Don't get too excited, releasing two major versions in 2012 clearly fatigued us as "IPS Community Suite 4.0" is not released until June 2015, over two years later. 4.0 was our first complete rewrite in years. We threw out all our stable and tested code and started over with an empty editor. It was a vast undertaking that consumed us completely. The result was worth it as we had a new modern framework that still serves us today. But we're getting ahead of ourselves a little. Back in 2013, Mark talks about trees. Not the kind you find laying around in forests, but rather the programmatic type. It's just a way for Mark to show off how beautiful his code is. IP.Board 3.4 still gets many updates (along with IP.Gallery, IP.Blog, IP.Content, IP.Downloads and IP.Address (ok that last one was made up)). We spend the year talking about various new things in 4.0, including a new-new editor and various special features (and no one noticed we started calling it "IPS Social Suite 4.0" - it just rolls off the tongue!) I introduce the new theme engine for 4.0, and this time, my code is not deleted by Mark (true story). 2014 We didn't know it at the time, but 2014 was not the year that IPS Social Community Suite 4.0 (naming things is hard) will be released. Still, Rikki talks enthusiastically about "extending JS controllers and mixins" a way of coding so complex, to this day you can count the number of people who truly understand it on one of Rikki's fingers because it's only Rikki that understands it. Determined not to be outdone in the confusing customers' stakes, I go on about how important it is to convert your database to UTF-8 when upgrading from 3.0. As 2014 neared its inevitable end, we did manage to put up a pre-release testing site and release Beta 1 a release so unstable; it makes the current political climate look absolutely peachy. IPS Community Suite 4.0 (Preview) 2015 Finally, the year that 4.0 is to be released! We released six betas and a few release candidates before nervously hovering over the 'release' button (actually it's a collection of git commands and 'to the letter' instructions I ignore). After a year of training customers to call our forthcoming release "IPS Social Suite 4.0," we release it as "IPS Community Suite 4.0". Lindy writes a lengthy blog article that sounds like a cross between a technical discussion of the Brother 8987-A printer and an award acceptance speech. Quite frankly, after nearly two years of development, we're just relieved to have finally released it. The year is spent refining and fixing 4.0 and culminates in the news of 4.1, where we add activity streams and a menu manager. We also talk about the new-new-new editor. December 16th marks the time that IP.Board 3.4 officially dies as we declare it "end of life" and no longer support it. That shiny new release we were excited to talk about in 2012 is finally put out to pasture. The last we heard, IP.Board 3.4 moved to a farm and is doing well. 2016 Now that IP.Board 3.4 is end of life; we do the sensible thing and make a few minor IP.Board 3.4 releases to improve security. IPS Social.. sorry, Community Suite hits version 4.1.17 (confusing Lindy) before the year is done with many new improvements, including embeds, warning notes and the new leaderboard. We're still mostly undecided what to call the product, so we avoid trying in all our blog entries. In fact, looking back, it's quite remarkable how often we changed the name of our product. You'd be forgiven for thinking that it was a robust and well-considered attempt to prevent Google from serving up relevant search results and to confuse potential customers. We find time to update our own website and introduce a new developer's area. 2017 Barely 16 days into the new year, and we release news of the two-factor authentication feature added to IPS Community Social Invision IP.Board Suite 4.1.18. When spring has sprung, Charles drops the news that we're working on 4.2, the main feature being a screenshot of the Admin CP log in. We promise that you will love it and that it will be released mid-2017. Updates come thick and fast. Calendar event reminders, content messages, recommended replies, letter profile photos device management and delayed deletes all make the blog. Still not convinced that people take us seriously when we say we're committed to SEO, we post about more SEO improvements. This time, we talk about implementing JSON-LD, rich snippets, pagination tags and more. We also squeeze another one in about the new-new-new-new editor. We overhaul our own blog (using Pages because that's how we roll) and I start a hilarious series of blog entries where I troll our own team. Everyone including me loses interest early on in 2019. During April, we do the sensible thing and change the name of our product once more. IPS Community/Social Suite 4.1 is out, and Invision Community 4.2 is in. Just to recap: IBForums > IPB > IP.Board > IPS Social Suite > IPS Community Suite > Invision Community. You're welcome search engines! As promised, we release Invision Community 4.2 around the middle of the year. Well done, everyone! We finally hit a release date! As is now tradition, we end the year with news of our next big release Invision Community 4.3 (and tease the new emoji feature). We also calm nerves about Europe's endless fascination with regulation (it's this kind of joke that caused Brexit you know) and wrote up a guide on GDPR. 2018 Phew. We're almost there, dear reader. If you skimmed through most of the blog to this point and expected me to finish with a bang, you'll be disappointed. We start 2018 at full speed releasing feature news on Invision Community 4.3 including emoji, OAuth, community moderation, REST API, subscription manager, announcements and more. Oh and we hit our sweet sixteenth birthday in February! We release Invision Community 4.3 in April to rapturous applause after a short beta testing period. We all agree that 4.3 was a great stable release which instantly makes the developers nervous. Towards the end of the year, we announce that work has begun on Invision Community 4.4. We talk about new features such as GIPHY integration, AdminCP notifications, Post Before Registering, Commerce Updates and more. Still not sure if we care about SEO? Well, how about another blog entry on SEO? The only thing missing this year is a new update on our editor. 2019 And we arrive back home in 2019. A week into January and I pull the massive twist that we're using Invision Community 4.4 on our own community. It's not quite up there with "Bruce Willis is a ghost" though. In March we write up a case study on The Trevor Space, an LGBTQ charity set up to prevent suicide and to provide crisis intervention. TrevorSpace commends Invision Community for allowing anonymity online which isn't possible with social media. Rikki drops a bombshell in September when he announces that we're actively working on native iOS and Android apps for Invision Community. Apparently mobile is a thing now. November starts a series of blog entries talking about our new upcoming release, Invision Community 4.5. We talk about the Admin CP overhaul, Club Pages, RSS Feed Improvements and Club improvements. And here we are. Right up to date. This decade may have only taken us from IP.Board 3.1 to Invision Community 4.5, but it really has seen a massive change in the company we are, and the industry we are in. We have seen the inception, rise and stumble of social media. While it's true that forums are no longer the preserve of Star Trek fans obsessing over continuity errors and informal communities have been absorbed by Facebook and friends, spaces that you completely own to host discussions are still very much in demand. Invision "Chameleon" Community in 2019 Over the past year or so we've seen a sustained rise in the demand for independent communities. Brands especially like that you own your data and can use it to gain insights into customer habits. Just this year, we've launched communities for LEGO, HTC, Sage, Mattel, Gibson Guitars, Squarespace, and many more. We are constantly evolving Invision Community (assuming we stick with that name) to be at the very centre of your online presence. We have tools to add discussion comments to any page of your site, to embed widgets with a few lines of code. We want to showcase your community throughout your site by adding multiple touchpoints to take your customers on a journey with you. Our native apps will offer new and exciting ways to interact with a community via new interfaces. As we move into our third decade, I can only see a resurgence for independent communities as we tire of the crushing intrusion of social media. We give away so much of our attention, time and information for very little reward. We have never been more divisive and fiercely tribal. It's time to come back together to discuss a topic with care and thoughtfulness. It's time to allow our personalities to take a back seat and let considered discussion live again. And we'll be here doing what we have always done; creating the very best community platform possible. I'd love to know when you joined us on this crazy ride. Was it before or after 2010? View the full article

this adds in a community enhancement for an alternative maps option (other than google maps or mapbox). they offer reasonable prices per 100k request. View the full article