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It's very easy to focus on a single metric to gauge the success of your community. It's very common for community owners to look at page hits and determine if their SEO and marketing efforts have paid off. Getting traffic to your site is only half the equation though. The most valuable metric is how many casual visitors you're converting to engaged members. Invision Community already makes it easy for guests to sign up using external services such as Facebook, Twitter and Google. However, there has to be a conscious decision to click that sign-up button. For some, this may be a barrier too many. Invision Community 4.4 reduces this barrier by allowing guests to create a post to a topic they want to engage with. Once they have posted, they are asked to simply complete their registration. They are more likely to do this now they have invested in your community. This will be incredibly valuable when you consider how much traffic a forum receives from inbound Google searches. With Post Before Registering, you'll increase your chances of turning that inbound lead into a registered member contributing to your site. Let me take you through the feature and show you how it works. When browsing the community guests will see the ability to submit a post, with an explanation that they can post now and complete registration later. The only thing they have to provide in addition to their post is an email address. Posting as a guest This works in any application for new content (topics, Gallery images, etc.) as well as comments and reviews. It will only show when a newly registered member would be able to post in that area - for example, it will not show in a forum that only administrators can post in. After submitting the post, the post will not be visible to any user, but the user will immediately be redirected to the registration form with an explanation to complete the registration. The email address they provided will already be filled in. Registration form after posting as a guest At this point, the user can either fill in the registration form, or use a social sign in method like Facebook or Twitter to create an account. After the account has been created, and validation has been completed if necessary, their post will automatically be made visible just as if they had registered and then posted. If the user abandons the registration after they've submitted their post, an email will be sent to them to remind them to complete the registration. Email reminding user to finish registering Some Notes Invision Community already has a feature that allows guests to post as guests without registration if granted permission. That feature has not been removed and so if you already allow guests to post, the behaviour will not change. This new feature is only available when a guest can't post in a given area, but a member would be able to. The entire feature can also be turned off if undesired. If the area the guest is posting in requires moderator approval, or newly registered members require approval of new posts, the post will enter the moderation queue as normal once their account has been created. Third party applications will require minor updates to support this feature. Once your casual visitor has invested time in your community by crafting a post, they are much more likely to finish the registration to get it posted. If you have set up external log in methods, then registration only takes a few more clicks. This blog is part of our series introducing new features for Invision Community 4.4. View the full article

With this plugin you will be able to display forum staff assigned to viewing forum by member. You may select only some groups which will be able to see the staff list and select staff type to display - members and groups. It's a widget type plugin. View the full article

Yet again, Joel hijacks our company blog for another generous slice of knowledge from the front-lines of administrating a successful community. Inspired by Invision Community client @Joey_M who discovered the emoji of serendipity and chief architect @Matt who literally knows everything about Invision Community in ACP Tips and Tricks, they both made me realize there’s always something to learn no matter your level of experience. You know how to post. You know how to react. You sometimes spice it up and make a poll. And for the most part, you and your users go about your forum lives with a secure sense of certainty and satisfaction that you know how to interact with your community. But what if I told you there’s a whole world of wonder at your fingertips, young grasshopper? Your Invision Community includes stars to navigate by; magical pictures that appear and disappear; and little yellow men who giggle, laugh, and sometimes roll over in delight. Here are 5 hidden tips to help you discover a little more of the IPS magic for you and your users. How do you know what you don’t know? 1. Click-and-hold Be sure to dazzle your users with this secret way of changing your content title. Change titles of your content items such as topic titles, album titles, and download files by using the click-and-hold strategy. Go to your forums and click-and-hold down the mouse over any topic title until you see that you’re able to edit the title. Surprise! Use this secret strategy as the perfect way to quickly mass edit titles. Click-and-impress your users with the click-and-hold strategy 2. Stars and Dots Active forum users jump around dozens of boards every day to stay involved. And within a loooong topic with many pages, you need a fast way to jump to the most recent unread topic. Before each topic is an icon: either a dot or a star. Clicking these icons will always jump you to the latest unread post, so you can quickly dive back into the conversation. Dot means unread; Star means you participated in the topic. My forum icon constellation tells me that I’m most compatible with a Capricorn. 3. Emoji Short-codes One of the newest features to be included in Invision Community is emojis. While there are ways to insert emojis from both mobile keyboards and the editor, you can also start typing “:thumbs up:” to reveal the secret emoji menu. Try it now in the comments of this article. Last person to give me an emoji thumbs up wins! Be a ? with ? 4. Image Attachments Forum posts come alive with image attachments that add color and vibrancy. But adding thumbnails to the bottom of your posts is a missed opportunity to enrich your post at the appropriate spots within the post. After you upload an image attachment to a forum post, double-click on the image attachment. You’ll be presented with a secret menu with options to align and resize, so you can create stunning forum posts with images. Much color. Much alignment. So much wow. 5. Profile Banners Banners play a prominent part in multiple parts of the community, such as the Calendar, Profile, Clubs, and Blogs. But usually the page only displays a portion of the banner, and most of the banner is hidden. If you ever want to see the full banner in all of its glory, click near the top of the banner to auto-magically reveal everything! Now you see, now you don’t. The iceberg is a metaphor How many of these five secret tips did you know? If you knew all five, give yourself a round of applause! It’s rare for even the most seasoned Invision Community administrator to know all five, and you’ve mastered them all. Did you know four? Congrats, you’ve done a great job of exploring your community suite and you should keep it up. Did you know three or less? You should do some serious soul searching. Kidding. But it’s a definite sign that your soul would benefit from reading Invision Community News for more useful tips. Becoming a great community manager is a combination of community strategy and product knowledge. By empowering yourself with more functional knowledge and tools, you’re giving yourself the ability to leverage a bigger toolkit. Whether you’re typing emoji short-codes to laugh with your members or inserting attachments into a tutorial on hidden tips for your community, I hope you learned something new, something surprising, and something perhaps even a little wonderful. Let us know in the comments below what hidden tip surprised you the most. View the full article

On most websites, the page title for the homepage will just be "Site Name". This is impossible in IPS however, as the page title is always "Page - Site Name", even on the homepage. This plugin changes this for the homepage, making the homepage title equal to "Site Name", but leaving it as "Page - Site Name" on all other pages. View the full article

Requires IPS Gallery. By default, albums in IPS Gallery are set to only be editable and contributed to by the owner of the album. Even if users have moderation abilities for a gallery category, or even if you're the top admin, by default you can't add to an album that is owned by someone else. This plugin removes this per album setting, and sets all new or edited albums to be "public", ie. anyone with permission to upload to the gallery category can now edit and contribute to all of the albums within that category. View the full article

Tournaments allows your members to ceate Teams and then Tournaments to enter in, you can use this application for multiple tournaments including online gaming, sports or any other tournament you want to be involved in. You can allow members to comment and communicate with each other members on each tournament, Each team can have a unique skill what will be calculated using the elo rating system starting with a default of 1200 points. DEMO This application is fully compatable with clubs using the teams and tournaments modules Tournaments Main Features Create unlimited categories & sub categories to for members to create tournaments in Each category has its own permissions for user groups on Who can view each category Who can view tournaments in each category Who can add tournaments in each category Who can comment on tournaments in each category Tournaments implements the IPS moderation & content features allowing your moderators to fully moderate the tournaments from the front end and ModCP Choose to have 32 Teams / 16 Teams / 8 Teams or 4 Team tournaments ( more will be coming in future updates ) Each tournament can be set to be password protected forcing team leaders to enter a selected password to join the tournament Allow members to post comments on the tournaments to communicate with other members keeping the discussions in one place Members who create tournaments will be able to enter the results for each tier of that tournament ( admins & moderators with content edit permissions will also be allowed to enter the results ) Tournaments uses the IPS reporting feature allowing your members to report and tournaments that may be dodgey Show a list of all teams entering in the tournaments If you have Members Shop installed then you can choose to award the winning teams leader ( or each player in the team ) a set amount of points for each tier of the tournament they win in Tournaments uses the IPS embed function allowing you to copy & paste the teams URL into the editor Teams Main Features Create unlimited categories and sub categories for members to create teams Each category has its own permissions for user groups on Who can view each category Who can view teams in each category Who can add teams in each category Teams implements the IPS moderation & content features allowing your moderators to fully moderate the teams from the front end and ModCP Teams has a nice landing page showing All featured teams The latest teams created The teams with the most wins The teams with the best win average The teams with the highest skill Teams can upload their own image and enter a team description Team leaders can choose to set a password for their team for other users to enter to be able to join Each team can have a unique skill rating calculated with the elo rating system starting with a default 1200 points Members can create unlimited teams but can only enter one of their team in each tournament Team leaders can remove their players easily in their team page Each team have their own stats forming of Their Wins Their Loses Their Win Ratio Their Skill Teams uses the IPS embed function allowing you to copy & paste the teams URL into the editor Other Features Team leaders will receive a notification when a new member joins their team All team players will receive a notification when the first round of the tournament they have joined is drawn Tournaments fully implements the IPS search allowing your members to search for teams and tournaments Tournaments uses the IPS content moderation allowing your moderators to moderate the teams and tournaments via the front end and ModCP Tournaments and teams allows your moderators to fully moderate them via the front end they can, Feature / Pin / Hide / Delete / Lock & Move The moderator permissions uses the IPS content permissions what can be set either globally for all applications or you can choose them seperatly for this app If there is anything you would like to see added then feel free to visit the support topic and let me know your ideas, I am always happy to have new ideas for my applications View the full article

Who remembers the earlier days of the internet? Back when you popped your logo at the top left of your site and you were largely done? Invision Community has continually developed to account for all the new services that have been built during our 16 years. We now have social media sharing images, favicons and more to consider. Invision Community 4.4 also adds mobile application icons, Safari mask icons and data for an application manifest. Handling of these logos and icons was a prime candidate for improvement in 4.4. Moving our current options Step one for improving our handling of these images was to move our current options out of themes and to allow them to be managed suite-wide from a single area. You can still upload a logo image per-theme (which shows in the header area), but the rest of the options have now been relocated to a new area: Customization > Appearance > Icons & Logos. Adding new options After giving favicon and share logo management its own dedicated area, we took a look at enhancing the configuration options made available through the interface without requiring theme template edits. Multiple share logos You can now upload multiple share logos. If you elect to upload more than one share logo, Facebook and similar sites will generally either show a carousel to allow you to choose which logo to use when sharing, or simply use the first image referenced. Application icons You can now upload an image to represent your website which will be used to generate the "home screen" icons for iPhones and Androids automatically. Uploading a single image will result in several different copies of the image (in different dimensions) being generated, and mobile devices will automatically choose the best option from the list as needed. Safari mask icon You can also now upload a Safari Mask icon, which is used to represent your website in certain areas on Apple computers (such as on the "touchbar" of certain keyboards). This image must be an SVG image with a transparent background, and all vectors must be 100% black. Additionally, you can specify the mask color which is used to offset your image when necessary (e.g. to represent it as "selected" or "active"). Application manifest In order for devices to support the application icons that you upload, a file known as a web manifest must be generated and delivered to the browser. This now happens automatically, using details and icons specified in the AdminCP. Certain details, however, can be configured explicitly from the Icons & Logos page: Short name This is a short name to represent your site in areas with limited screen space, such as below your application icon on a mobile phone home screen. Site name This is the name of the site. The "Website name" setting is automatically used if you do not explicitly override it when configuring the manifest. Description A short description of your site Theme color You can choose a (single) color to represent the general theme of the site. This color may be used by devices in areas such as the address bar background. Background color You can also choose a (single) color to use as the background color for your site when the application is launched from a shortcut saved to the user's device home screen. Display mode Finally, you can specify the display mode your site should launch in. For our more astute designers and developers, you may have already realized that generating the manifest file lays the groundwork for future PWA (Progressive Web App) development and support. Additionally, some Android devices will automatically prompt users to add your website to their home screen now that a manifest file is generated by the site. Oh, and for the sake of completeness, we also generate the special browserconfig.xml file that Microsoft products (including Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, X-Box, and Microsoft-based mobile devices) look for when pinning sites and generating live tiles. There are no additional configuration options for this file - everything is automatically generated from the aforementioned options. The end result? Your community can now better convey, automatically, certain details to the myriad of devices out there that may be accessing your site, and you now have much better control over those details. You can more easily fine-tune the "little things" that help paint a complete picture of your web presence, and the groundwork has been laid for bigger and better things in the future as standardization and adoption of PWA functionality improves. This blog is part of our series introducing new features for Invision Community 4.4. View the full article

Give the members on your forums the ability to download their messages Features Download message threads in JSON and HTML formats Bulk download all of your threads at once Customize the HTML markup for the downloaded file from within ACP Enabled / Disable HTML and JSON downloads individually Coming Soon Custom formats along side HTML and JSON Select which fields are included in downloaded data Selectively download multiple message threads at once Browse and download any members messages from within ACP. More to come. View the full article

Eligius Project, it's a dark theme for all category ( gaming / business e.t.c ) Info: - It's the first release, so if you see some bugs just give me a pm here. - If you want to change the logo / background / top / footer, you have the psd files in the folder. - Theme it’s made with profile in topic ( so you don’t need to install plugins for that ) - For footer i used ( general statistics widget, members widget, who’s online widget ) - For sidebar i used ( top contributors, topic and post feed widgets ) - You dont need to renew this theme. - For minor changes im open for free ( so just give me a pm ) DEMO FORUM ( select eligius project ) View the full article

This resource will add a notification when the item submitter responds to a review. Note: All apps that uses Review model will be reached by this resource. Tested on: Downloads Pages Calendar Quizzes Raffles Tutorials View the full article

ProVision Theme from @A Zayed an IPS Theme with Different Taste. Its supports all IPS addons [RTL support not completed yet] Attached, a plugin file that will change the default gallery landing page to be in a similar a different look ? . Hope you enjoy it... ? View the full article

This plugin will display members own topics on the sidebar. View the full article

This plugin remove autosync of cover and photo from facebook View the full article

I personally really like the support ticket system in Commerce, however one thing that has always annoyed me is that users don't get notifications when a staff member replies to their ticket. This application will notify the user (either by inline notification or email, depending on their settings (defaults to inline)) that their ticket has had a reply and will take them to it if clicked. View the full article

Login Redirect / Pop-up Message by @A Zayed A simple plugin that allows admins to set the page that selected users groups will be redirected to once they Login. There's also another option that allows admins to set a pop-up modal message once users Logins... The plugin comes with the following features: Select users groups you want to redirect/show pop-up message. URL field for user redirection. Option to allow redirection to the logging user profile. Option to enable/disable popup message. Message header title. Full CKE to enter the message that user will get. Pop-up modal message size. Pop-message button text. Pop-message button URL. Support & updates are guaranteed only via @A Zayed View the full article

Vortex is a powerful Gaming theme.it will bring your site to life and engage your visitors! Editable footer via acp more features to come! View the full article

This plugin will add a Sign Up link for guests in the Error messages across the board. View the full article

This plugin will prevent Commerce asking the user for their real name and address information when purchasing a subscription. Please note that if you use PayPal as a payment gateway with Billing Agreements set to Required, this plugin will not be able to help you as PayPal requires address information for Billing Agreements. View the full article

This removes the follow button for guests in most places. It should stay the same for members. Useful if you don't want visitors to see who follows what an adds some more privacy for your users, since I don't think there is a setting that disables this. if you want to show the follow button again simply disable or uninstall this plugin. You can see the before and after in images above. View the full article

This plugin allows users to easily create topics about movies and actors and fill them with content automatically. Requires a free ComicVine API key which can be obtained here. Features Users can add comic issues to topics. After attaching the comic, which can be done easily using a search with auto complete, the thread will show various information about the chosen comic above the post. The topic will show the comic art, characters, tagline and much more. Discussed comic can be shown in adjustable widgets which allow random order, recently posted, most discussed and much more... Posting content can be restricted to certain forums. Comic boards can show movie content with the posters above the topic list. Access rights to edit and post content. How to Install Go to ACP > applications and upload the downloaded tar file After installation a free ComicVine API key has to be added in the settings. The API key can be obtained here. Demo noexcept.de Compatible with other ThreadStarter plugins This product uses the TMDb API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDb. View the full article

This application will add a Video Directory to your forum where members can add embeded videos. Categories: Admins can add unlimited categories from the application 's category page in the Admin Panel. Each category will display the videos that it contains. Adding Videos: Admins can add videos from the Admin Panel and from the front end too. Other groups can add videos from the front end in the video directory page or from the global Create button. Display: Grid View. Moderation: Videos can be moderated for groups before they are displayed. Users with the appropriate permissions can review the moderated videos in the ModCp. Sidebar Widget: Most recent videos can be showed as a sidebar widget as well. Moving Videos: Users with the appropriate permissions can move their own/and/or all videos from one category to another. Daily Limit: A limit of how many videos users can add can be set for each group at their video permissions tab. Video Management: Admins will be able to manage all videos, editing or deleting them from either the Admin Panel or the front end, where a list of all added videos is displayed. Admins can also delete all videos in one go from the video directory page. Users can edit/delete own and/or all videos depending on the permissions that they have. Hoover Card/Postbit Video Count: An option to show the video count of users is available in their user cards and postbits. Pagination: You can set the number of videos that will be displayed per page on front end from the application 's setting page. Custom Search: Users can search for videos submited by users, posted between a certain time frime and title. View the full article

Dealing with spam can be an annoying problem for community moderators. It's bad enough that our inboxes get clogged up with it daily. Invision Community comes with several tools designed to mitigate spam, and make it hard for spammers to get a foothold in your community. This short video takes you through several key areas: The Invision Community spam defense system CAPTCHAs Question and Answer challenges Group Promotion Flagging a member as a spammer Do you have any tips on dealing with spam or spammers? We'd love to hear them. Let us know in the comments. View the full article

Communication has come a long way since those very early humans grunted at each other to determine if they wanted more mammoth for lunch. The course of human history has seen cave paintings, hieroglyphics, the written word, emoji and now GIFs. GIFs have been around since the dawn of the internet. Many websites proudly displayed a 'man at work' animated GIF when they were under construction. Now, GIFs are now mostly used to express complex thoughts and emotions by showing a short animation. Mind Blown Invision Community has allowed GIPHY to be used as an embed for a while now, but we craved something much more straightforward. Behold, the GIF button! Now your members can reply with the majesty of animation. Of course, GIFs won't replace real and meaningful conversation, but they are a fun way to express yourself quickly and encourage more engagement. The GIPHY functionality is enabled via the 'Community Enhancements' page in the Admin CP. GIPHY is enabled from the enhancements page All you need to do is grab a key from GIPHY, and you're all set! Configuration You'll notice a "MPAA style rating" option. This allows you to select a maximum rating for the GIFs as some will have adult themes and language that may not be suitable for your community. For example, you can choose "G" for general audiences, "PG" or "PG-13" to limit what is shown. Yes! Drop your favourite GIF below to show us how you feel about this new feature. This is a blog about our upcoming Invision Community 4.4 release, due later this year. View the full article

It's not often that we get to blow our own trumpets. That's not just because we don't own trumpets, but also because we like to keep our heads down and focused on producing fantastic software [Ironic trumpet blowing - Editor]. Many of our team also run their own Invision Communities. So this month, we asked: What is your favourite Invision Community feature? Here's what we said. Brandon My favorite feature would be Pages 'databases' feature. You can quickly and easily create databases of content, and then you can adjust the templates to make those databases display in a more relevant manner for the type of content you are working with, all without having to modify any code. On my wife's real estate website, I have used Pages to create databases for hosting leads, property listings, closings, and realtor contacts. Being a developer I've further enhanced some of those areas with plugins, but even right out of the box the system is powerful enough to do quite a lot with just a little bit of configuring and templating. Trying to remember the block names when creating Pages templates Jennifer So, I love Invision Community. I've loved it for ages and it's hard to pick just one favorite feature. I'm going to say that Clubs and Pages are probably my top two favorite things in the whole wide world on Invision Community. For clubs, it allows your members to create special interest groups/forums/galleries/etc without having to do all of that yourself. It makes pulling together people of similar interests really easy and it makes it to where you don't have to manage "as much" of the responsibility for having a billion forums or groups. I also find it's a great way to get people excited and talking about things that they love which spreads positivity and happiness, which I love as an administrator. For Pages! There is so much! From Databases that you can super customize to blocks! There is so little I can't do with Pages!! I've made a super custom link directory (https://rpginitiative.com/directory/), a directory of searchable people (https://rpginitiative.com/pb-directory/) and one of my favorites a copy and paste code directory (https://rpginitiative.com/codex/). They all are unique in look and feel and all have different purposes but they fill them so well. I of course have a basic Guides listing (https://rpginitiative.com/guides/) but I don't think it's nearly as cool. Pages gives me a sense of empowerment on my community. It gives me the ability to create content that is special to my site and doesn't have to be cookie cutter in any way. Honestly, the whole suite always makes me happy because I get the community I want out of it and to me that is always the best and most special thing about Invision Community. [This is the best answer - Editor] Mark H Given my forum’s niche, amateur pyrotechnics [Must be nicer to Mark - Editor], my favorite feature would be the Gallery. You can describe a pyrotechnic shell, effect, build process, etc, with as many pages of text as you wish, but photographs or videos are truly worth 1000 words. While our Gallery isn’t the largest one around, it does contains a large number of items that our members have contributed to showcase their work, some of which are quite impressive. Mark's last day at Invision Community Matt I've given this a lot of thought [Makes a change - Editor]. There are several contenders, Pages (because I wrote it), Social Promotion (because I wrote that too), Commerce (I did not write this) and Gallery. All deserve to be picked on their own merits. I decided to go with the profile completion system. It's not a massive feature, and it's not the most exciting feature but it does its one job very well. It helps reduce overwhelm when registering. It's critical to make the transition from guest to member as frictionless as possible, and having a dozen custom profile fields to complete is a good way to put people off. The profile completion system allows you defer data collection after registering, which reduces the barrier. Mark W The auto-upgrader. When I first started at Invision Community one of my responsibilities was doing upgrades - often from 2.x to 3.x at the time - hours and hours of uploading files by FTP (sometimes painfully slowly) and clicking the upgrader, over and over again. I'm glad those days are behind us! I think it was quite a good technical achievement too. The system knows what version you're coming from, what apps you have installed and only downloads the files you need. It knows if it needs to ask you for FTP access or if it can just write the files. Recently we made it so it knows if your themes are going to be compatible with the new version and warns you before you upgrade if they might not be. Perhaps most significantly for me though is the backend behind it. Releasing an update used to be a bit of a nightmare (we had to build zip files ourselves!) - now I just tag the release in our git repo and everything magically figures itself out [Only if following instructions to the letter - Editor]. It still delights me every time I do it. Mark (not) doing upgrades now Marc S For me it has to be the block manager. The block manager makes it was so easy to set up the basic structure of your site. And it's hard to believe we used to disable hooks to remove an item, or even comment them out in some cases. Adding something like a list of new posts was something you would need a 3rd party plugin to achieve, and adding a simple bit of text is something you would have likely done in your theme. This brought a large amount of flexibility for users that wouldn't have previous had the capability to make some of these changes, and generally just made life easier for others. Daniel Pages App because of blocks and databases. I have all kind of custom databases which I use daily to organise my work (Linklists, Knowledge Bases, Documentation) It saves one a lot of time and makes coding own apps quite unnecessary in most cases. Ryan Okay, I think I've finally decided that Reactions is my favorite feature. It's really cool to see how clients implement the feature on their own sites with different reaction types. Also, I wrote the backend and it was probably one of my favorite things I've done in the software. Indeed Stuart I like OAuth and RestAPI, I wanted us to do those since 4.0 and they work really well. [That's it? Can I make up the rest of the answer? - Editor] Those are our favourite features - but what are yours? We'd love to hear, let us know below! View the full article

This plugin will allow that members (from selected groups) can download Gallery images. Requirement: Gallery Notes: External storage: it DOESN'T work on external storages like S3. Path: it will generate a ZIP file with the exact path to the image in your server, which makes your life easy if you want to reproduce your server environment or simply wants to restore a backup. Places do download: Gallery index: a form will appear to choose category and albums Category view: will download all images from that category, including images from their albums Abum view: will download all images from that album Admin CP: new menu below Gallery settings. Only Admins can use this option View the full article