ips 4.4 will it have a decent homepage builder

[DustyDevil]

just wondering as at the moment I'm having to use wordpress as a landing page due to the ugly and simple layout you can only get with ips pages obvious other people with coding and the ability to create an HTML or something along those lines is fine I'm just hoping and suggesting  that there is some improvement to the page builder or maybe make something like wpbakery where you can drag-drop create rows ect

[MMXII]

I highly doubt that any huge changes regarding the Pages App will make their way into 4.4. I seriously hope though that we will get some easy-to-use stuff in IPS 5.

The Pages App has so much room for improvements, and while you can probably create anything you want with it, it would be so cool to do more awesome things as someone who has little to no knowledge of html, css, php, javescript and whatnot.

[kmk]

31 minutes ago, MMXII said:

IPS 5.

When I got 80 years ago??? 

[SJ77]

17 hours ago, MMXII said:

 in IPS 5.

 

Oh please.. I don't want to deal with a massive conversion to a new system for many years to come. Different doesn't always mean better. IPS 4 is the best system I've seen, some minor complaints aside, I want to use this platform for years to come.

[Joy Rex]

I understand the desire for a WYSIWYG editor for creating Pages, etc., but honestly learning the HTML/CSS/JS (and more importantly the IPS framework that uses all three) will not only result in you getting exactly what you want, but you'll have a deeper understanding of the software, etc.

If you've invested enough time to learn the IPS Forums software, Pages should be your next big investment (time-wise).

[Joel R]

1 hour ago, Joy Rex said:

I understand the desire for a WYSIWYG editor for creating Pages, etc., but honestly learning the HTML/CSS/JS (and more importantly the IPS framework that uses all three) will not only result in you getting exactly what you want, but you'll have a deeper understanding of the software, etc

No.  Just no.  I'm wholly uninterested in learning HTML, CSS, JS or IPS.  I'm not trying to be facetious or difficult, and I am open to learning new skills, but they should be skills on the front end to better engage with my community.  We're here to build our communities, not develop software.  

The modern web has advanced enough to offer open ended WYSIWYG editors where you don't need to worry about the back end to create a beautiful and responsive design.  The new Guten editor by WordPress looks promising.  

[DustyDevil]

I know it just sucks to have to use WordPress and ips4 when all I would like to do is use ips4 but if you have no knowledge about HTML etc your kinda screwed thing I love about WordPress is wpbakery I can make my own homepage to look slick and stunning  as its page building is just easy and has a wide range of rows modules etc I can use as for ips4 its limited and ugly but the rest of ips4 like store forums etc is just easier for myself I was just hoping they might having something up there sleeves so we can just use the one system (IPS4}

[Joy Rex]

22 hours ago, Joel R said:

No.  Just no.  I'm wholly uninterested in learning HTML, CSS, JS or IPS.  I'm not trying to be facetious or difficult, and I am open to learning new skills, but they should be skills on the front end to better engage with my community.  We're here to build our communities, not develop software.  

The modern web has advanced enough to offer open ended WYSIWYG editors where you don't need to worry about the back end to create a beautiful and responsive design.  The new Guten editor by WordPress looks promising.  

I get what you're saying, and it a lot of ways, you are right - the majority of folks here are probably like you, and don't want to "develop software". I think IPS has made great strides with the theme editing being easier for non-programmers to use, so hopefully for those who want it they will develop something like what WordPress offers.

Ideally, the best would be an editor where people could easily put together pages, but also allow "under the hood" editing for more advanced users.

[Joel R]

On 11/14/2018 at 10:42 AM, SJ77 said:

Oh please.. I don't want to deal with a massive conversion to a new system for many years to come. Different doesn't always mean better. IPS 4 is the best system I've seen, some minor complaints aside, I want to use this platform for years to come.

That's how I feel too.  I feel really good about Invision Community 4 and I'm hoping to use this version of the software for a couple more major releases.  I'm hoping to see 4.5 and 4.6 not too far off in the future.  We'll start talking about v5 in 2020.  

Every time you start from scratch, yes you have the opportunity to refactor the underlying code but it's also at a tremendous cost of losing all of the "surface features" that make the UIX and front end easier and better to use, and all of the potential features that can be added as well. 

[DustyDevil]

On ‎11‎/‎15‎/‎2018 at 4:57 PM, Joy Rex said:

I get what you're saying, and it a lot of ways, you are right - the majority of folks here are probably like you, and don't want to "develop software". I think IPS has made great strides with the theme editing being easier for non-programmers to use, so hopefully for those who want it they will develop something like what WordPress offers.

Ideally, the best would be an editor where people could easily put together pages, but also allow "under the hood" editing for more advanced users.

dont get me wrong ips4 is amazing its just having a nice homepage is the issue everything else ips4 has is perfect it just lacks badly the homepage 

[LiquidFractal]

On 11/15/2018 at 3:47 AM, Joy Rex said:

I understand the desire for a WYSIWYG editor for creating Pages, etc., but honestly learning the HTML/CSS/JS (and more importantly the IPS framework that uses all three) will not only result in you getting exactly what you want, but you'll have a deeper understanding of the software, etc.

Having been a coder waaaaay back in the day, I am utterly sympathetic to this.  However, most people simply don't have time or the inclination to pick up this sort of expertise.  I love learning what I can about the new standards of CSS and JS etc., but these days my time is spent reading, writing, researching, teaching, tutoring..all those things that help one pay bills.  But I agree with your comments re: the best editor as a balance between ease of use and advanced tweaking.

 

@DustyDevil have you checked out @opentype's SuperBlocks plugin?

 

On 11/16/2018 at 10:31 AM, Joel R said:

Every time you start from scratch, yes you have the opportunity to refactor the underlying code but it's also at a tremendous cost of losing all of the "surface features" that make the UIX and front end easier and better to use, and all of the potential features that can be added as well.

I had to laugh when I read this...only because it made me think of this one guy here a while back who found something he didn't like in the suite, or realised it didn't do something he wanted it to do, so opened a criticism post with "the whole IPS platform needs to be rethought from scratch" 🤣

[DustyDevil]

22 hours ago, liquidfractal said:

Having been a coder waaaaay back in the day, I am utterly sympathetic to this.  However, most people simply don't have time or the inclination to pick up this sort of expertise.  I love learning what I can about the new standards of CSS and JS etc., but these days my time is spent reading, writing, researching, teaching, tutoring..all those things that help one pay bills.  But I agree with your comments re: the best editor as a balance between ease of use and advanced tweaking.

 

@DustyDevil have you checked out @opentype's SuperBlocks plugin?

 

I had to laugh when I read this...only because it made me think of this one guy here a while back who found something he didn't like in the suite, or realised it didn't do something he wanted it to do, so opened a criticism post with "the whole IPS platform needs to be rethought from scratch" 🤣

yh i have had a look at that before just isnt the type of look im wanting and also i would love to learn coding ect but finding a way for me to learn it is a pain in the arse due to dyslexia and other issues but im still looking to learn  

[The Old Man]

This always seems to come back to Pages being quite a limited as a pagebuilder/sitebuilder whilst being powerful in terms of the IPS raw data integration, and whilst block widgets are useful, Pages is completely devoid of any nice template layouts out of the box, despite several years of template being hinted at. Thank god for Supergrid templates by Opentype!

People talk of the Gutenberg update for Wordpress but half of users seem to really dislike it, myself included. Thankfully you can still opt out of it. It is honestly years behind the power and ease of use of Divi, which is the type of page/site builder Pages ideally needs to be for the majority of laymen and time-pressed but more technical admins familiar with html, css etc.

One of the things I really love about Divi and why I think Pages needs to have this type of builder, is that although it's very powerful and constantly gaining new features every month or so, you can get such easy results really quickly, and it works on any theme if you just use the standalone Divi builder plug-in instead of the actual Divi Theme. 

Sections, Rows, Modules. Add a Section, choose a Row layout, then add from dozens of Modules into your Row. If it's a 2 block row, add 2 modules into each one, say an image and a rich text block or email newsletter sign up widget.

So the layout above gives you a call to action module (grey) inside a Row (green) inside a Section (Blue) with 4 Blurb modules below in another Section and Row. You can add lots of rows all in 1 section if you want to. It looks like this on the front end Divi Visual Builder...

 

Or using the main Divi Theme, which is nicely styled for a head start, just jump into the Divi Builder mode on any page, click a button to add a new draggable Section anywhere, click to add either a fixed or fullwidth Row within it, or maybe even a 2 block with sidebar layout Row, then select the Module aka feature or widget (text block, blurb, menu, full width slider etc) you want inside your row.

Tweak the colours, maybe add a gradient, image or video background, use a slider to change the bottom padding or select a nicer shadow, all in seconds. Click Save at any time and your page is updated.

https://www.elegantthemes.com/documentation/divi/visual-builder/

You can save then optionally your new section or feature into a library, for future re-use or to use through your site. But, the Divi designers have added some extra sauce...

Take one of your saved library features you want to reuse on many pages, like a full-width header with image slider, and save it as a Global item in your Library.

Now you can select or deselect the content (text/images) or the design aspects of your header you want to re-use when you add to multiple new pages. Because it's Global, you can quickly edit the text, images or style and it changes immediately throughout your site. Maybe use a featured image as a parallax background. Add a fade or easing option.

Or perhaps assign dynamic text from a list of cms content, maybe a page or post title that's different on every page, to say the widgets H2 title. Now you have the benefit of a quickly changeable slider but the title text is updated automatically depending upon which page it's being used on. A site builder, not a page builder.

All within minutes.

Want to add some custom css, class, ID or code? No problem, just add it to your widget then save it or to the theme's custom css or html section.

Anyway, I'd love to see Pages enhanced with a comprehensive Pagebuilder. There's no reason why Pages couldn't continue to be intergrated with the database side of things.

[MMXII]

1 hour ago, The Old Man said:

the power and ease of use of Divi

Never took a look at this so far, but definetly will do.

Hopefully we will see some improvements going in that direction in Pages soon. I get it that it is super-powerful and all that, but there definetly is a userbase that would like to see easy-to-use functionality to build awesome pages -- myself included. Yes, one could start learning to code stuff, but no, not everyone has the time and courage to do this just to get a step closer to the main goal: content creation, that comes with a nice look.

[kmk]

43 minutes ago, MMXII said:

Yes, one could start learning to code stuff, but no, not everyone has the time and courage to do this just to get a step closer to the main goal: content creation, that comes with a nice look.

+1

[Claudia999]

I'm using Wordpress and IPS like other here. What bothers me is that the IPS content never appears in the Wordpress search results and vice versa.

With Gutenberg at the latest, I want and have to decide what to do - everything in Wordpress or everything in IPS?

But I can't get a homepage like the one in Wordpress in IPS without developer knowledge. And: What if IPS simply kills Pages? For Wordpress there will always be developers, for IPS they are already rare. That doesn't make the decision any easier.

[The Old Man]

Hi @Claudia999

I'm using various combinations of IPS Gallery, Pages & Wordpress front end too but I also have a site that uses my own html/PHP/MySQL database front end with IPS Forums, Blogs and Gallery, and so I think one quick and easy solution that worked for me is to use the free edition of Google Custom Search. It provides guest friendly search results from both my front end (could be Wordpress in your case) and IPS Community. Plus if you tweak it, you can add categories to filter specific categories or just IPS forums, Gallery  etc. 

[DustyDevil]

i like the visual composer well now called wp bakery page builder

[DustyDevil]

@Matt we need a solution to pages in 4.4 i dont want to use wordpress when ips4 could do  it all for me :(((( (((