I know, I know. 4.4 isn't even here yet, and here's a topic for 5.0. How dare I! The shock and horror! In all seriousness though, I think it's a perfect time to start talking about what kinds of improvements can or should be made for Invision Community 5. Some of these may not be possible, some might be, some might not even be thought of yet (oi, post those too). So let's start:

Something many members have asked about, and something I would absolutely love to see, is a member-customizable home page. What I mean with this is the ability of a member to customize what content and blocks they see when they log in. Some members want to rearrange how content is displayed on the home page, and currently that isn't possible. As an admin, I can do this for everyone, but not all members agree with certain choices in this regard. Allowing a member to customize their user experience going forward would be a huge gain.

Another thing to consider in regards to users is Profiles. Currently, clicking on a user link takes you to the Activity feed for that member. An option to select which tab is the "active" tab when a user link is clicked on could be useful for those communities who wish to prioritize, for instance, the About Me section over activity.

On the moderation side of things, the report interface is somewhat lacking. For those of us with the "gallery" application, when an image is reported, that image is not forwarded to the Report center. All that the report center gives is a link to the image and/or the album that was reported. This should at least update so the image reported it available directly and immediately in the report. This will save a lot of time for image heavy communities.

I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting, as I'm at work, but I'm liable to post more later.

1. I applaud you for starting an IPS 5.0 feedback topic before me.  Props to you.  

2. Customizable homepage - no.  I want to control the display and presentation (and I will admit, the ad placement because I'm a greedy admin farming my user's data.  Take that GDPR!).  

-- 2a. I'm okay with personalizing the content on the page. For eaxmple, pushing content from followers or prioritizing popular content for more interesting and relevant content.  But not the overall layout.  

-- 2b.  If this were Blogs or Profiles that are tied to the user, I could understand.  Those are "individual spaces"in the where it makes sense to give more design control.  But again, not the homepage which is a community homepage.  

4.4. See how I skipped to this number.  IPS is taking it's sweet time.  

 

At this stage, any discussion about 5.0 should be about the architecture (dev side) of the product imo. Unless a drastic new feature is planned that would warrant going to 5.0. Nothing the topic starter has suggested would qualify. 

All these features could be introduced in the 4.x series. (not that they should).

Forgive me but I disagree. If a discussion of features wanted isn't also started now, then there isn't really a point in also discussing the architecture. Besides that, I believe one of the IPS staffers has already stated that they have no plans at the current time to move away from php dependency. Though you are correct that things do change. Whether its wise or not remains to be seen. Regardless, this is an overarching discussion, so I don't see why both architecture and features cannot be discussed side by side.

As far as the suggestions already made, could some of these be planned into 4.x? Sure. Will they be? It's doubtful. Anyways, that's enough of that being said, moving along.

More descriptive error messages for Gallery. If "minimum number of tags" is set, and members attempt to upload images without tags, all they get is a generic "there were issues, please check indicated uploads".

Also for Gallery: have a Browse option that doesn't involve albums. A "fluid" version, if you will, for browsing the Gallery. I understand that if albums aren't used, this can be accomplished, however users like to sort and organize their images, and Albums allows them to do so.

Clubs: allow different club membership levels/subscriptions. Allow the club manager to open new areas depending on the member's subscription level. Think Patreon style. Also allow the club manager to add pages which they can organize (from the Pages app).

Continuing thoughts on this, architecture a little bit.

With the ever increasing threat of compromise (dont tell me that it won't/can't/isn't likely), perhaps it's time for a different method of password management? The md5/sha1 types are outdated, and I'm fairly certain that's what Invision still uses? Would be better to use Argon2id and XChaCha20-Poly1305, or something similar, if this hasn't already been dealt with.

 

Continuing thoughts on this, architecture a little bit.

With the ever increasing threat of compromise (dont tell me that it won't/can't/isn't likely), perhaps it's time for a different method of password management? The md5/sha1 types are outdated, and I'm fairly certain that's what Invision still uses? Would be better to use Argon2id and XChaCha20-Poly1305, or something similar, if this hasn't already been dealt with.

We haven't used salted md5s since v4 😉 We use bcrypt.

 

We haven't used salted md5s since v4 😉 We use bcrypt.

Good to know, thanks! Would it be possible to implement other forms of password encryption? Would this even be necessary? 

Edited December 14, 20186 yr by AlexWright

Just a few points from me...

1) In my POV it is far better for you to create individual topics for individual requests. It is rare that we spend time reviewing large "how about all of these things" topics because frankly it's difficult and time consuming. We can and do, however, flag individual requests for follow up on our side quite often.

2) We absolutely DO base our changes off of requests clients have made. They may not be requests YOU have made, but why would we (as a business) spend time implementing things no one wants? That's just illogical. It's important to remember that we get feedback from many different sources (this forum being but one of them) and you may simply not be aware of common things we hear about from other avenues.

3) We'll be sticking with PHP for 5.0.

It's like Prototype and jQuery all over again.

 

It's like Prototype and jQuery all over again.

I want:

• CLI-tools for install/build/update/enable/disable apps/plugins/themes. It will provide simplier operation many instances.
• Any technology, which provide staing framework in background all time. Not default PHP method of die after every request (I know about opcache and other methods, which speed up this, but mainly it's a symptom fixing, not the core of problem). Of course, this point will increase the threshold of entry into IPS. But we want to be "the best" or "just one of"? All have their price. If somebody interesting about that - there is a good article of positive experience at Badoo.
• Support working as a cluster (on multiple nodes) from the box? I mean some status pages, statistics, logs filter by server node, etc.. (nexus module doesn't do this stuff).
• Some app/plugin revise tool? Example: if application 'money' use hook for \IPS\Member::load() in IPS 5.1, than if in IPS 5.2 this load method changed - the revise tool should notify about needing to revise 'money' hook. If not changed in original code => not highlight hook. Not so difficult to implement it as it heard. We have a hooks table with classes, we can simple having classess history in a lot of ways.
• Testing scripts?  Please don't laugh at me.. I write (sometimes) test cases for my apps inside IPS. Without total coverage and without doing this job 'as becase that good'. It provide better controll when we have a lot of apps/plugins and want to check them together in newer version of IPS. So tests very helps me. From IPS I'd like to have IPS's tests of IPS Framework. It will provide to us is basic regression testing. We can check our code, but it be not interesting if some basic feature (like a post a topic) wouldn't work -). And of course I'd like to extend basic tests when I extend basic things.
• United IPS code style. I use PHPStorm and want to see same code format everywhere (in IPS and my code). Now I can't tune my IDE for totally support your style because from file to file it is different. You can do it in several ways - from creating style format file to creating autolinter in your cvs system. Please, dont't forget to share your style rules before =). Or may be you just apply PSR-2?
• Improved caching system. Sound simple - same incoming params to block/app/etc returns the same result (it worked only when params dont income in the middle of the func). And that's all. May be we can create some additional flag for mark classes, which support that type of caching. Any way..
• Using different DB for read and write. For people, who has master-slave replications and who want to improve the speed by reading from slave. It simple and worked perfect! And all neccesary tools already has in current IPS version. No extra pain.
• ...