Forums

The support tool has served us well for many years. You can identify, at a glance, potential issues with your community both presently and down the road, right from the comfort of your AdminCP, and you can often resolve those issues with just a few clicks.

But what if we could do better? What if we could make this useful administrative area of the software even more useful?

Wouldn't it be great to know if a staff member had replied to a topic before you clicked to open it?

When you're scanning a list of topics, knowing which have had a reply by a member of the community team can help decide which to read. Currently, you need to open the topic and scan the posts to see if there's a reply from the team.

Happily, in our next release, we've made it clear which have had a reply by a member of a specific group.

For a long time, Invision Community has supported a Question and Answer mode within the Forums application which allows a reply to be flagged as the "best answer" to the question posed. With the release of 4.5, we also introduced a way to allow topics to be marked as "solved" which introduces similar functionality without transforming the look and feel or other behavior of the forum itself.

Based on the popularity of this new addition in 4.5, we have made some further improvements to solved topics and answered questions in our next release.

For a very long time Invision Community has allowed community owners to choose how open or private their communities should be. Communities could optionally allow guests to post without registering, they could allow the use of pseudonyms or they could require the use of real names.

This covers a diverse range of communities but feedback from our clients made us realize that some use cases have not been accounted for.

With 4.5.5 we are pleased to introduce Anonymous Posting.

Starting a community is a rewarding experience, but you need to do more than just open your doors to ensure a successful launch.

Checking to make sure your site has a strong purpose, that you offer value to your members and the emotional pitch is right will set you on the right course. 

A community can be an economic moat, or in more simple terms, your competitive advantage.

When your product or service is surrounded by an engaged community that feels invested in your brand, you'll be able to resist challenges from competitors looking to tempt your customers away.

Humans are social creatures, and we love seeking out and joining a tribe that aligns with our values. The intangible value of belonging creates a sense of momentum for your brand and helps champion it to others.

The statistics back this strategy; 88% of community professionals said in a recent survey that community is critical to their company's mission and 85% said that their community has had a positive impact to their business.