need help setting up my forum

[Jonstar]

Hello everyone and marry christmas! Does anyone have any guide or tips to how use invision community? I checked their guides but that doesn't help. After I bought beginner plan, I can't do anything, the UI is too hard for me as I'm just a beginner. How do I open ACP and how do I set my custom domain?

 

Thanks

[Randy Calvert]

18 minutes ago, Jonstar said:

Hello everyone and marry christmas! Does anyone have any guide or tips to how use invision community? I checked their guides but that doesn't help. After I bought beginner plan, I can't do anything, the UI is too hard for me as I'm just a beginner. How do I open ACP and how do I set my custom domain?

The ACP can be accessed from <domain.com>/admin or if you're logged in with an admin account from the menu that shows up when you click on your username in the upper right hand corner.  (The last option should be "AdminCP".)

Regarding setting a custom domain, this needs to be done by IPS.  You can open a support request from your Client Area (https://invisioncommunity.com/clientarea/).  Just click on "Manage Your Purchase" and scroll down to the bottom until you see "Licensed URL".  It will have a link that lets you submit a request.

Once you get logged into the ACP, the help guides will make more sense and be more helpful.  If there is something specific you're trying to do, just let us know!  🙂  

[John Horton]

I have to say I agree that there is a lack of getting started documentation or it is not super easy to find.

[Miss_B]

41 minutes ago, Jonstar said:

I checked their guides but that doesn't help.

What guide did you check? Have a look at the following guide. It contains very usful info.

https://invisioncommunity.com/4guides/welcome/

[Jim M]

59 minutes ago, John Horton said:

I have to say I agree that there is a lack of getting started documentation or it is not super easy to find.

As you purchased a self-hosted license, you should have information about accessing your license key, downloading the software, and a link to our guides for help. The Guides include information on how to install and then also, how to get going in the software. As we have 2 different paths to run our software, either self-hosted or on our Cloud, there may be certain information which does or does not pertain to you and you will need to read the notes our guides make to outline this. For instance, on self-hosted, you're in charge of setting up your domain, etc...

 

Just as an example, this "First Login" chapter of our guide details the ACP and General Configuration:

 

However, if you have suggestions for our guides, we are all ears 🙂 . The software is rather vast, and people learn differently so suggestions are always welcome.

[Gary]

Hi @Jonstar and @John Horton,

I am also interested in where we may be falling short in our documentation, or perhaps our Help Guides not being clear enough.

If there are things you would like to suggest making this a simpler process not only for yourselves, but for other new clients, please do reach out to me. I am happy to communicate via private message should that be a preference.

[John Horton]

Nope. My mistake. Once I realized how good the search functionality was it is very easy to find stuff. 

[John Horton]

@Gary let me add that when I figured out to use the search in my admin section it was a godsend. It works great. On the other hand even when I search here I struggle to find some general info and the little things.

As an example "Stars". It was easy to find where to enable them but what is the point of stars? Do they impact the way a thread is seen? Do they do something else? I finally figured they do not much so I do not care but I spent 1/2 hour searching for that info. 

Another example ( maybe better ) is LazyLoad. I searched for it and found the settings page but I can not find info on why it may or may not be a good or bad idea to enable it. 

[Marc Stridgen]

On 12/30/2022 at 3:05 AM, John Horton said:

@Gary let me add that when I figured out to use the search in my admin section it was a godsend. It works great. On the other hand even when I search here I struggle to find some general info and the little things.

As an example "Stars". It was easy to find where to enable them but what is the point of stars? Do they impact the way a thread is seen? Do they do something else? I finally figured they do not much so I do not care but I spent 1/2 hour searching for that info. 

Another example ( maybe better ) is LazyLoad. I searched for it and found the settings page but I can not find info on why it may or may not be a good or bad idea to enable it. 

Just wanted to come back and let you know that I have added some notes to look at the items in question there.

With regard stars, it would be ratings you would be looking for. These are simply the rating of an item, and a visual thing. It doesnt really do anything more than show someone what other people rate that topic. 

Lazy loading is actually enabled by default, and generally items where you are unsure such as these should be left in their default configuration. In fact nothing in the advanced configuration should be changed, unless you are an advanced user who knows to change these for a specific reason. Lazy loading itself means that when items are not loaded (images for example) until the user can actually see them. So they will load when scrolling down a large page, rather than all loading when the topic is initially opened. This means the topic loads up faster for your users

[John Horton]

@Gary

My comments are not really about LazyLoading or stars.

If you look at a toolset like Joomla there is a lot more documentation throughout the admin section. Not saying that a new user does not have a learning curve with joomla but most admin choices are well documented.  If you look at Vanilla documentation  is not linked to in the admin section like Joomla but everything has an easy to find explanation on the Vanilla site.

The IPS documentation is not bad. I am just saying the admin learning curve might be steeper than with Joomla.

To be clear - I left Joomla and Vanilla because I think IPS is a better system. It has only been a week and I am sure IPS is a cleaner and more powerful tool.   

Attached is a screenshot from one of the best-respected Joomla 3rd party tools

[Gary]

Thank you very much for the feedback! Suggestions like these are what we rely on in order to ensure Invision Community is meeting the standards of our clients and the industry.

I’ll discuss this with the team to see if it is something we can improve on.