Hump Day: pages, pages, pages

[Jordan Miller]

Happy Hump Day, team! Dayum, is it just me or are the weeks flying by? It's probably because we're hard at work on a lot of exciting projects, including our website refresh (out sooner than later, stay tuned!), improvements to Spam defense, Achievements refinements and more. 

If you haven't already, follow us on Twitter and shoot us a Tweet.
 

Shout-out to @Jimi Wikman for his post about a tickets system using Pages. Internally, we're brainstorming new ideas for the future of Pages. It's down the road, but we'd like to up our game. The more ideas you all have and share... the better!

 

 

 As always, here's a roundup of the latest updates/fixes/changes we made in the last week. Mad props 👏:

- When building applications on Windows, Javascript/Themes imports will use \n line endings.

- Fixed an issue where weekly recurring events with no end date could display one day off.

- Fixed birthdays not showing on the initial Calendar view when only one calendar is present.

- Fixed an issue where the CVC/Address/ZIP checks were unavailable on Stripe payment intents in the AdminCP.

- Fixed an issue where following a member can send a notification if you choose to follow anonymously.

- Fixed an error when a restricted admin attempted to add moderators.

- Fixed an issue where some admin control panel profile blocks could show if the features were disabled. 

- Fixed an issue where a large file description may not save if it is larger than 64kb.

- Fixed an issue where not all forums could show when creating topic and post feed widgets.

- Fixed an issue editing hooks IN_DEV when using PHP 8.

- Fixed a database error caused by long shipping service names.
 
- Fixed an issue where the CVC/Address/ZIP checks were unavailable on Stripe payment intents in the AdminCP.

- Fixed an issue where videos attachments that are not supported by a browser may not be downloadable.

- Removed few occurrences from the in 4.6 removed notification sounds setting.

- Added a new Published column to track the date for new versions of a file.

- Added grouping to approved content push notifications.

- Fixed an issue where a view update task may attempt to connect to Redis when Redis is not used.

- Fixed an issue where it was not possible to post status updates if the ability to follow a member was disabled.

- Removed few occurrences from the in 4.6 removed notification sounds setting.

- Fixed an issue where the topic sync background task may get stuck in a loop.

- Fixed an issue where rare badges calculated with all members, and not just those permitted to use achievements.

- Fixed an issue where the 'follow member' achievement rule didn't calculate milestones correctly.

- Fixed an issue where WebP may be shown as an accepted extension when not fully supported by the server.

- Fixed a minor typo when processing an RSS import.

- Fixed an issue where an automatically deleted notice may be shown on a member in AdminCP but the account isn't queued for deletion.

- Fixed an issue where a failed file move could delete the filenames of Reactions.

- Fixed editor becoming unresponsive when inserting attachments into the editor.

Thank you all for being a part of Invision Community! If you have any questions, comments, feedback etc., particularly about Pages, please drop us a line in the comments; we'd love to hear from you!

[Claudia999]

Hi @Jordan Invision

we use Pages a lot I think. On my wishlist are still

• more possibilities for interaction with our community in articles - polls, surveys, forms etc.
• Schema.org markers as FAQ or How-to
• SEO features – more than meta keywords and meta description as now, but also SEO title, settings for no-follow etc. per article or Pages database entry
• a "Table of content" by default, which can be switched off per article
• additional fields for images (alt text, title, caption, credit, license, image source as URL and so on)
• better management and SEO options for images
• background images for categories as for forums grid viewtext area for category descriptions (and not only one text field)
• an option to show category descriptions only on category sites and not in categories overview.
• widgets per category and not for all categories together (yes, there's an app for that)
• the option to set multiple authors for one article
• snippet preview at least in ACP
• better options in menu manager to include a single entry from a Pages database (an article for example). So many menu entries are "external links" but actually "things" in Pages.

Before we switched from WordPress to Pages, our pain point was for a long time the ugly standard template. I think you give away a lot of potential with the developer driven, more technocratic template. If you want to convince people about Pages, you need a nice article template out of the box. (You should hire @opentype completely 🙂) Once Pages is understood, the many possibilities become more accessible.

Edited August 11, 2021 by Claudia999

[Davyc]

More flexibility in the possible layout options.  For example the ability to drop rows and columns on a page and then populate them with blocks and databases. 

The flexibility to change column widths providing the mix of columns all add up to 100% - i.e. 40/20/40 or 50/25/25 or 40/60 or 50/50 you get the idea.

That's my tuppence worth 🙂

I almost forgot pagination for long articles so they are not one long continuous run - add in the ability to determine at what length pagination occurs.

Edited August 11, 2021 by Davyc
I'm so forgetful these days - it's an age thing, so I'm told

[Ocean West]

Throw in some JavaScript visual data flow ERD editors...

Make it easier for making databases relational. 

https://gojs.net/latest/samples/dataFlow.html

https://gojs.net/latest/samples/entityRelationship.html

Edited August 11, 2021 by Ocean West

[Jordan Miller]

2 hours ago, Claudia999 said:

Hi @Jordan Invision

we use Pages a lot I think. On my wishlist are still

• more possibilities for interaction with our community in articles - polls, surveys, forms etc.
• Schema.org markers as FAQ or How-to
• SEO features – more than meta keywords and meta description as now, but also SEO title, settings for no-follow etc. per article or Pages database entry
• a "Table of content" by default, which can be switched off per article
• additional fields for images (alt text, title, caption, credit, license, image source as URL and so on)
• better management and SEO options for images
• background images for categories as for forums grid viewtext area for category descriptions (and not only one text field)
• an option to show category descriptions only on category sites and not in categories overview.
• widgets per category and not for all categories together (yes, there's an app for that)
• the option to set multiple authors for one article
• snippet preview at least in ACP
• better options in menu manager to include a single entry from a Pages database (an article for example). So many menu entries are "external links" but actually "things" in Pages.

Before we switched from WordPress to Pages, our pain point was for a long time the ugly standard template. I think you give away a lot of potential with the developer driven, more technocratic template. If you want to convince people about Pages, you need a nice article template out of the box. (You should hire @opentype completely 🙂) Once Pages is understood, the many possibilities become more accessible.

Liking what I'm seeing! The ones that jump out at me first are:

• more possibilities for interaction with our community in articles - polls, surveys, forms etc.
• the option to set multiple authors for one article
• snippet preview at least in ACP
• SEO items

[Afrodude]

We need "Custom No Permission Error" like in forums setting in order not to mislead members whenever a group has no permission

 

Specially after they see only this.

 

 

Edited August 11, 2021 by Afrodude

[sudo]

This is annoying:

 

 

[Sonya*]

1. Import, export database including records, categories, page, CSS and JS, blocks and so on.
2. Include CSS/JS templates and database page into application like HTML templates.
3. Field Button with custom PHP actions on pre-save, post-save or display (alternatively bind fields to hooks)
4. IPS classes from CSS framework in CKEditor, like warnings, section header, blocks, any kind of typography.
5. Custom areas in template where the fields are placed (above or below the content is not enough). 
6. More control for the forms, like selecting tabs, adding AJAX, toggle on/off, generally all options we have in Field class.
7. Field keys and record data available in the form - this is really essential
8. Include custom CKEditor plugins into applications. 
9. Rework filter block to use and/or logic, filtering by Address field
10. Language (my personal pain). Just 5 options in language tab are not enough for the most languages out there. 

 

[Chris Anderson]

47 minutes ago, Sonya* said:

Import, export database including records, categories, page, CSS and JS, blocks and so on.

This could allow members and developers to upload pages to the marketplace.  Some might be offered up for sale and some might be used for learning purposes and some might be offered up to the community to further flesh out an idea. The more examples we have pore over the shorter the learning curve will be and the more customers will utilize them more fully.

[Afrodude]

Also another one of my suggestion is "Copy forum to database" option. It is really hard whenever you decide you want to make a new database for new project that already has been using forum has 500 topics more or less, and then move them one by one.

[Dreadknux]

Some smaller (but useful!) suggestions I've made in the past:

1. Allow Multiple Categories to be assigned to a Page record
2. Options to change URL slug format on a database level (by [YYYY]/[MM]/[record_slug] for example)
3. Remove the "-r" at the end of a record's URL by default (this one is really annoying)
4. Allow Page Categories to be set in Menu Manager
5. Ability to pull records from multiple databases in Widgets/Blocks/Loops

But in particular, I'd like to throw in a more inspired idea. I'd like InvisionCommunity to really focus in on the relationship between Pages and the Core community. @Jordan Invision I enjoyed reading about how you were able to migrate your news/blog into the core InvisionCommunity software to great benefit, so I figure you might appreciate this suggestion as well. I think it would really help integrate the two apps together and encourage community activity/contributions. 🙂 

The concept is to improve the 'Copy to Database' feature. Let's say that I run a movie news website/community. Oftentimes, the community will post (and react to) a piece of movie news (a new trailer or celebrity interview) as a Topic in the Forums, before the admin's staff writers get a chance to write a story about it. To avoid duplication of content, Copy to Database can be a powerful tool - admins can import a user's existing topic to a 'news' record in Pages.

But there's a problem; by doing this in the current InvisionCommunity system, you either destroy the original community user's content (if your site editor writes new content when Copying to Database) or you create a duplicate topic in a different forum to where the original Topic lives, creating redundant content (which will return duplicate results in searches).

This can be alleviated in three major improvements to the system:

------------------------------

Step 1: New AdminCP Settings to 'Keep Original Topic Content' & 'Add Post Meta' When Copying to Database

The above image is a mock-up of two new options that could be implemented into the AdminCP. The first makes sure that any content in the original topic/post is not modified in any way when an admin Copies the content to Database - even if the admin decides to write entire new content for the news story.

Why would someone want to rewrite a topic's content when importing to Database, but keep the topic itself the same?

• An admin may wish to simply unify Page comments and Topic replies, and keep the tone of both separate
• It gives the freedom to reword the information in the original topic to reflect the site's "house style" of writing, while keeping the topic's original informal tone
• It helps to acknowledge the community source of any resulting story (and avoid annoying the community by "censoring/deleting" their posts)...
• ...which can open the community up to special rewards for helping contribute to the site blog, via custom Achievements or Badges

 

Step 2: Add Post Meta

Related to Step 1, there could be additional post meta produced when an admin Copies a Topic to Database (which can be toggled on or off). A mock up of what that might look like is above. The post meta could be situated relative to the exact time an admin takes the Copy to Database action, or it could sit at the top of a Topic much like the Recommended Posts might do. Having this feature will make the community feel like they are contributing to the overall site/blog and that their content is getting noticed.

 

Step 3: 'Post Topic' AdminCP Options Override in Page Creation Form

If an admin creates a new article in Pages, they will often want to have that story re-posted as a Topic in a designated forum. That's where the AdminCP "Post Topic" settings come in real handy. But if that same admin wanted to create an article using Copy to Database, they may not wish to have an additional Topic created. They might think that the existing Topic - and all the comments/replies that may exist in it - is enough. Unfortunately, in InvisionCommunity's current setup, if you set your database category's "Post Topic" settings, it's everything or nothing. You can't tell InvisionCommunity to NOT post a topic on the odd occasion, if you do not want it to.

That's where this Topic Override option comes in. Set at the per-post level, this gives admins the freedom to choose on an article-by-article basis if they want an associated topic to be created when the article is published.

------------------------------

I appreciate the open ears and eagerness to hear feedback! 😄  🙏

Edited August 13, 2021 by Dreadknux

[Jimi Wikman]

I would say the thing that is most important is to lower the entry level for new users.

Add 5-10 templates for each of the category listing, entry and start page with icon representations that show the structure. That way, you can pretty much build anything you want out of the box and never touch any code. Custom templates should of course still be an option for those that want to tinker with that.

The second thing I would suggest is a WYSIWYG for custom fields in the templates. Make it easy to drag and drop custom fields into the template structure, and also how to present each of the types of fields.

Third, I would suggest reworking the way database relation fields work so we get a new template in Pages rather than in the theme structure to control output. Again, this should come with a few preset templates that is easy to get started with.

 

I think this would increase the adaptation from people that don't want or can't do code. Make things easy to use out of the box, and then build tools for the advanced users later.

[Jordan Miller]

2 hours ago, Jimi Wikman said:

That way, you can pretty much build anything you want out of the box and never touch any code.

Love this in particular! Appreciate all the other points as well.

[Jordan Miller]

22 hours ago, Dreadknux said:

Some smaller (but useful!) suggestions I've made in the past:

1. Allow Multiple Categories to be assigned to a Page record
2. Options to change URL slug format on a database level (by [YYYY]/[MM]/[record_slug] for example)
3. Remove the "-r" at the end of a record's URL by default (this one is really annoying)
4. Allow Page Categories to be set in Menu Manager
5. Ability to pull records from multiple databases in Widgets/Blocks/Loops

But in particular, I'd like to throw in a more inspired idea. I'd like InvisionCommunity to really focus in on the relationship between Pages and the Core community. @Jordan Invision I enjoyed reading about how you were able to migrate your news/blog into the core InvisionCommunity software to great benefit, so I figure you might appreciate this suggestion as well. I think it would really help integrate the two apps together and encourage community activity/contributions. 🙂 

The concept is to improve the 'Copy to Database' feature. Let's say that I run a movie news website/community. Oftentimes, the community will post (and react to) a piece of movie news (a new trailer or celebrity interview) as a Topic in the Forums, before the admin's staff writers get a chance to write a story about it. To avoid duplication of content, Copy to Database can be a powerful tool - admins can import a user's existing topic to a 'news' record in Pages.

But there's a problem; by doing this in the current InvisionCommunity system, you either destroy the original community user's content (if your site editor writes new content when Copying to Database) or you create a duplicate topic in a different forum to where the original Topic lives, creating redundant content (which will return duplicate results in searches).

This can be alleviated in three major improvements to the system:

------------------------------

Step 1: New AdminCP Settings to 'Keep Original Topic Content' & 'Add Post Meta' When Copying to Database

The above image is a mock-up of two new options that could be implemented into the AdminCP. The first makes sure that any content in the original topic/post is not modified in any way when an admin Copies the content to Database - even if the admin decides to write entire new content for the news story.

Why would someone want to rewrite a topic's content when importing to Database, but keep the topic itself the same?

• An admin may wish to simply unify Page comments and Topic replies, and keep the tone of both separate
• It gives the freedom to reword the information in the original topic to reflect the site's "house style" of writing, while keeping the topic's original informal tone
• It helps to acknowledge the community source of any resulting story (and avoid annoying the community by "censoring/deleting" their posts)...
• ...which can open the community up to special rewards for helping contribute to the site blog, via custom Achievements or Badges

 

Step 2: Add Post Meta

Related to Step 1, there could be additional post meta produced when an admin Copies a Topic to Database (which can be toggled on or off). A mock up of what that might look like is above. The post meta could be situated relative to the exact time an admin takes the Copy to Database action, or it could sit at the top of a Topic much like the Recommended Posts might do. Having this feature will make the community feel like they are contributing to the overall site/blog and that their content is getting noticed.

 

Step 3: 'Post Topic' AdminCP Options Override in Page Creation Form

If an admin creates a new article in Pages, they will often want to have that story re-posted as a Topic in a designated forum. That's where the AdminCP "Post Topic" settings come in real handy. But if that same admin wanted to create an article using Copy to Database, they may not wish to have an additional Topic created. They might think that the existing Topic - and all the comments/replies that may exist in it - is enough. Unfortunately, in InvisionCommunity's current setup, if you set your database category's "Post Topic" settings, it's everything or nothing. You can't tell InvisionCommunity to NOT post a topic on the odd occasion, if you do not want it to.

That's where this Topic Override option comes in. Set at the per-post level, this gives admins the freedom to choose on an article-by-article basis if they want an associated topic to be created when the article is published.

------------------------------

I appreciate the open ears and eagerness to hear feedback! 😄  🙏

🤯 Can't thank you enough for taking the time to offer all this great feedback! 

I love this idea because I personally can relate. The community 99% of the time will post information before the official team/staff does. It would be pretty cool to plug the already-existing comments into a news article. Writing this idea down :] 🤲 

[Davyc]

Said this in an earlier post about flexible layouts 🙂

 

[jaeitee]

On 8/12/2021 at 4:35 AM, Claudia999 said:

• SEO features – more than meta keywords and meta description as now, but also SEO title, settings for no-follow etc. per article or Pages database entry
• a "Table of content" by default, which can be switched off per article

With around 2000+ user contributed articles now in Pages this would really help us.
 

➡️ SEO Titles
SEO needs a real look at, the fact that we create categories there should be a way to manage the SEO Title and structure within each category. Right now there's a lot of pointless words being added to the Record Title so it comes up in the Page Title for SEO results.

IE: [Record Title] [Custom Field A-Z] [Category SEO Title] [Database SEO Title]

The ability to customise SEO Titles for a whole database, with the ability to include Custom Fields in to the Title would be brilliant.  We use a lot of pre-defined select lists which would be useful to have those words in to the SEO title.

 

➡️ Table of Contents
Similar to the way Atlassian Confluence achieves this, just an insertable Table of Contents either within writing the article via a Tag or pre-defined through pages.  Either way, we have some long entries that would really benefit from a Table of Contents.

 

➡️ Dependent Custom Fields
Lack of a better way to describe this, however this really is a bit if a pain in some way so the best example I can give is Mobile Phones for example:

Select Box: User Chooses their Manufacturer (ie: Apple)
This brings up a Second Select Box: User chooses their Model: (ie: 12 Pro)
This brings up a Third Select Box: User chooses their Size: (ie: Standard or Max)
This brings up a Fourth Select Box: User chooses their Capacity: (ie: 256GB)

The benefit of having all these select boxes pre-defined and dependent on each other is to be able to achieve the same in the Sort Filters and gradually filter the results from the frontend.

[Afrodude]

New suggestion 

Add show rules for database and categories like in forums display settings. It's really annoying if you want to add rules through WYSIWYG editor because it will show everywhere. Moreover, if you have different rules for each category you won't be able to do anything. 

 

[Jordan Miller]

On 8/14/2021 at 4:51 PM, jaeitee said:

With around 2000+ user contributed articles now in Pages this would really help us.
 

➡️ SEO Titles
SEO needs a real look at, the fact that we create categories there should be a way to manage the SEO Title and structure within each category. Right now there's a lot of pointless words being added to the Record Title so it comes up in the Page Title for SEO results.

IE: [Record Title] [Custom Field A-Z] [Category SEO Title] [Database SEO Title]

The ability to customise SEO Titles for a whole database, with the ability to include Custom Fields in to the Title would be brilliant.  We use a lot of pre-defined select lists which would be useful to have those words in to the SEO title.

 

➡️ Table of Contents
Similar to the way Atlassian Confluence achieves this, just an insertable Table of Contents either within writing the article via a Tag or pre-defined through pages.  Either way, we have some long entries that would really benefit from a Table of Contents.

 

➡️ Dependent Custom Fields
Lack of a better way to describe this, however this really is a bit if a pain in some way so the best example I can give is Mobile Phones for example:

Select Box: User Chooses their Manufacturer (ie: Apple)
This brings up a Second Select Box: User chooses their Model: (ie: 12 Pro)
This brings up a Third Select Box: User chooses their Size: (ie: Standard or Max)
This brings up a Fourth Select Box: User chooses their Capacity: (ie: 256GB)

The benefit of having all these select boxes pre-defined and dependent on each other is to be able to achieve the same in the Sort Filters and gradually filter the results from the frontend.

Nice suggestions! Especially the table of contents. Curious about that one. Can you show me an example please of an entry that's large enough where a ToC would be beneficial? I'd like to see that. Thank you again! 

[Randy Calvert]

On 8/14/2021 at 7:51 PM, jaeitee said:

➡️ Dependent Custom Fields
Lack of a better way to describe this, however this really is a bit if a pain in some way so the best example I can give is Mobile Phones for example:

Select Box: User Chooses their Manufacturer (ie: Apple)
This brings up a Second Select Box: User chooses their Model: (ie: 12 Pro)
This brings up a Third Select Box: User chooses their Size: (ie: Standard or Max)
This brings up a Fourth Select Box: User chooses their Capacity: (ie: 256GB)

Would LOOOOOOOOOOVE this!

[Ramsesx]

The search function could be improved. Unfortunately, it is currently only possible to search each category of a database individually. It is not possible to search all categories at once. 
In addition, the visual representation is outdated and takes up too much space. On mobile devices, the search function is only placed below all database entries. It should be at the top.