Invision Insight: 4.7.7 Beta 4 and a teaser!

[Gary]

Welcome to this week's Invision Insight!

How's everyone liking the new look to Gallery?! We want to hear all of your feedback, so please visit this topic and take advantage of the testing phase so we can keep it all centralised for easy reference.

On other news, Live Topics is almost ready for its beta release! In December last year we mentioned this new feature coming to the suite and it is definitely something many communities will benefit from. I promise we will provide more details soon!

 

New Version

We have released a new beta version of Invision Community, 4.7.7 Beta 4.

For those that would like to try the beta on their communities, please follow the link below. Last week I wrote about how you can opt-in to beta releases for both Cloud and self-hosted clients.

As always, please back up your communities before upgrading to any beta releases.

 

GraphQL

The GraphQL API is here!

GraphQL describes itself as a query language for APIs that gives clients the power to ask for precisely what is needed and nothing more.

I won't go into too much detail here of course; but @Daniel F has got you covered and went into great detail to explain this new addition to Invision Community.

 

Recent Event

Our February 2023 Release Chat happened this week, but if you missed it, don't stress as you can watch the recording below. Please post your questions and we'll do our best to answer them.

 

Changelog

Here's what the dev team have been working on over the last seven days:

Quote

Core

- Fixed PWA Notifications causing an error if the remote service cannot be reached.
- Fixed an issue where the Admin CP Login Logs did not show the proper value in the Display Name column.
- Fixed an issue where the Admin CP Login Logs advanced search did not work properly.
- Fixed an issue where the 'club_created' Webhook wasn't fired when a club was approved.
- Fixed an issue where content being held for approval would show the wrong word as the reason.
- Fixed an issue where content with no replies was being treated as solvable.
- Added the 'core_api_logs' database table to the support tools database checker.
- Fixed an issue where banning a member with a banned IP address could accidentally remove the IP ban.
- Fixed a race condition which could cause an error when an invalid timezone on an account is used.
- Fixed an issue where it was possible to enable security question mfa without any questions.
- Changed the Author and Update Check URL fields when exporting a language to an URL field to enforce valid URLs.
- Fixed an issue where a group could have the maximum number of lines in a signature as 0, but the signature editor was still available.

Gallery

- Fixed an issue where promoted albums could break the achievements rebuild process.
- Fixed an issue where images may not be sorted correctly.
- Fixed an issue where users had the option to sort by reviews when reviews were not enabled.

Forums

- Fixed an issue where re-engagement email notifications were sent for non-solvable topics.
- Fixed an issue where changing the topic publish date to "immediately" did not publish the topic.

Events

- Fixed an issue where searching events on the overview page did not properly display a map.
- Fixed an issue where events may show on the wrong time.

Commerce

- Fixed an issue where checking out as a guest would not pass guest email to Stripe.

Downloads

- Fixed an issue where custom fields could not be marked to be included in topics.

Changes affecting third-party developers and designers

- If your application ships with a log database table which can get huge, you can register the table in '\IPS\core\modules\admin\support\_support::getLogTables' to have it automatically checked in the support tools.

See you in the community and next week right here for another Invision Insight! I look forward to hearing from you all!

Thank you everyone! 🦘

[Jordan Miller]

5 hours ago, Gary said:

On other news, Live Topics is almost ready for its beta release!

[Rikki]

Looking forward to seeing how Live Topics has turned out 🎉

[Afrodude]

9 hours ago, Gary said:

Live Topics is almost ready for its beta release! In December last year we mentioned this new feature coming to the suite and it is definitely something many communities will benefit from. I promise we will provide more details soon!

How about more information on the bugs that have been reported and unfixed for more than 1.5 years and others that been reported for several months? Or the management main focus now is the cloud and its new features?

[Randy Calvert]

10 minutes ago, Afrodude said:

How about more information on the bugs that have been reported and unfixed for more than 1.5 years and others that been reported for several months? Or the management main focus now is the cloud and its new features?

Huh?  There have literally been hundreds of non-cloud features released in the last year and a half.  

Based on what has been said previously, bugs are fixed based on severity, level of difficulty in fixing, and also when it can be done without impacting other areas.

By the way...  the bug you reported impacts "cloud" based versions too, so I don't think they're ignoring for the fact that its "not cloud". 😉 

[Afrodude]

@Randy CalvertPlease stop doing this because, with all due respect, no one has mentioned you to quote me in order for you to speak on behalf of IPS. I knew it that you will be the first to respond.  

[Randy Calvert]

If you’re going to toss out a snarky message, expect to see some push back. 

[Afrodude]

2 hours ago, Randy Calvert said:

If you’re going to toss out a snarky message, expect to see some push back. 

It's not a snarky message as you are trying to show everyone. Everything I just said is genuine and not something I made up, so please mind your own business and stay out of other people's personal matters. Once more, nobody hires you to represent them.

Edited February 4, 2023 by Afrodude

[Randy Calvert]

Snarky is not about being “made up” or “genuine”.

1. critical or mocking in an indirect or sarcastic way.

   "snarky remarks"

   • bad-tempered or irritable.

     "Bobby's always a bit snarky before his nap"

Your comment was snarky. I’m sorry you can’t see that.

And I don’t need to represent IPS. I just speak my mind.  I call a spade a spade when I see it. 

[Afrodude]

I understand what it means. What I said about made up and genuine is completely different sentence to explain the matter.

5 minutes ago, Randy Calvert said:

I just speak my mind.  I call a spade a spade when I see it. 

This is a major problem, especially when someone can't help but become involved in other people's personal matters when no one has asked him to.

You have a nice day. 🙂 

[Randy Calvert]

1 minute ago, Afrodude said:

You have a nice day. 🙂 

You too!  🙂 

[beats23]

5 hours ago, Afrodude said:

It's not a snarky message as you are trying to show everyone. Everything I just said is genuine and not something I made up, so please mind your own business and stay out of other people's personal matters. Once more, nobody hires you to represent them.

I always wonder how comes @Randy Calvert hasn't got a job as an IPS official spokesperson with an IPS staff badge. Or is he a paid IPS employee on the hush-hush¿ 🤫 

[Charles]

Well Randy's point is correct. Attacking him doesn't negate that 🙂

We really have released hundreds of features across all package types. Of course we are putting effort into our cloud offerings as that part of our business is growing and self-hosted is declining. That's been the trend for about 10 years now.

If you are experiencing a bug in the software that is impacting your community, please contact support. If you have a support request that is unresolved, feel free to directly contact a member of staff and let us know the topic or ticket.

[Square Wheels]

For those of us that are barely able to afford the self-hosting options, and can't even begin to consider the significantly higher costs of cloud, would you please consider adding indications on what features are for cloud only?

[Luuuk]

1 hour ago, Square Wheels said:

would you please consider adding indications on what features are for cloud only?

Do you mean the topics here or the Pricing Page? Because the official Changelog has the indications (eg. compare with 4.7.0).

[Square Wheels]

5 minutes ago, Luuuk said:

Do you mean the topics here or the Pricing Page? Because the official Changelog has the indications (eg. compare with 4.7.0).

I know the pricing page lists what you get with cloud.  IPS will create topics like above and discuss new options, but often does not tell you which clients get what.  Self-hosted seem to be getting less and less.

[Randy Calvert]

I've seen several people comment that all of the new features added recently are only available for the cloud platform or that IPS is only focusing on the cloud platform.  Out of curiosity, I actually went back and looked at all of the features released in the 4.6 and 4.7 versions.  There were over 45 new features or major enhancements made across those two major versions.  Of those 45 features, 7 were cloud-only features.  That means 85% of the features added in that time were available to both platforms.  

Ver	Feature	S	C
4.7.7	Gallery - UI Redesign	X	X
4.7.7	Gallery - Better Video Support	X	X
4.7.7	Gallery - Video Transcoding		X
4.7.7	Gallery - Searchable Videos		X
4.7.7	Gallery - NSFW Tagging	X	X
4.7.7	Gallery - Performance & Usability	X	X
4.7.7	GraphQL	X	X
4.7.7	Converters - Improved Performance	X	X
4.7.4	Personal Alerts	X	X
4.7.4	Moderator Approval Queue Improvement	X	X
4.7.4	Events - Support for Streaming Platforms	X	X
4.7.3	Events - Revamp of Calendar to Events	X	X
4.7.3	OpenSearch 2.1 Support	X	X
4.7.2.1	Improved Mark Post as Solution	X	X
4.7.1	Search Bar Enhancement	X	X
4.7.1	Topics - Future Publishing Added	X	X
4.7.0	Alerts Feature	X	X
4.7.0	Fluid Mode Revamp	X	X
4.7.0	hCaptcha Support	X	X
4.7.0	Solved/Unsolved in Activity Streams	X	X
4.7.0	ElasticSearch Enhancements	X	X
4.7.0	Zapier Enhancements	X	X
4.7.0	Realtime - Who's Typing		X
4.7.0	Realtime - Who's Viewing		X
4.7.0	Image AI - Moderation and Search		X
4.7.0	Sentament Analysis		X
4.7.0	Trending Content		X
4.6.11	Block Submission	X	X
4.6.10	IndexNow Support	X	X
4.6.10	Webhooks Improved (New Triggers)	X	X
4.6.8	SEO Improvements	X	X
4.6.8	Achievements for Commerce/Downloads	X	X
4.6.8	In-Browser Audio File Support	X	X
4.6.8	New ACP Reports	X	X
4.6.7	Stream Subscriptions	X	X
4.6.7	Stock Replies	X	X
4.6.0	Zapier Support	X	X
4.6.0	Achievements System Release	X	X
4.6.0	Web App and Push Notifications	X	X
4.6.0	Anonymous Posting	X	X
4.6.0	Solved Content	X	X
4.6.0	Show When Team Replied	X	X
4.6.0	Health Dashboards	X	X
4.6.0	Spam Improvements	X	X

*Note: Zapier when initially added was cloud-only.  It was changed to support both in a later release.  

I did not include Live Topics in this list above as it's not available in any version yet.  When it does, it will be the 8th. 

In looking at the list above, I don't understand how it could be said that IPS is only caring about the cloud platform and that self-hosted customers are not getting enhancements/features.  

Edited February 4, 2023 by Randy Calvert

[Afrodude]

8 hours ago, Charles said:

Well Randy's point is correct.

It's completely incorrect because this is exactly what happens when someone gets involved in another person's personal matter; they start mixing things up and explaining things as they want.

My criticism is not directed at the lack of self-hosting development or at comparing it to cloud plans. My complaint was that you guys were working really hard to add new cloud features even though there were several open bugs for many months that had not yet been fixed.

8 hours ago, Charles said:

If you are experiencing a bug in the software that is impacting your community, please contact support. If you have a support request that is unresolved, feel free to directly contact a member of staff and let us know the topic or ticket.

We already did that, and the only information we receive from IPS staff is that the reports are still open. Furthermore, several issues that went unnoticed were reported by great third-party developers along with the fix in order to make it easier for the IPS developers' team.

Developer Connection - Invision Community

As of today, I have been with IPS for 18 years. I am really proud of the entire team and all that they have accomplished, and I will always support IPS. It is unfair that anytime someone offers assistance, his efforts and suggested solutions are ignored since there have recently been so many issues that they may sometimes be overwhelming especially whenever we see that you do have a deadline to release cloud new features, and yet several bugs report that been opened. A bug report that has been open for more than three months and is still unresolved, in my opinion, is unreasonable.

Edited February 4, 2023 by Afrodude

[Gary]

I appreciate all the feedback you are sending through. It gives me an idea of what people want to read about so I can do my best to provide the information you want to know.

Without having the bug fixing knowledge that the rest of the team possess, it goes without saying that some bugs are just more complex than others. And I know it's another obvious point to be making, but some of the features we have released recently have been in development for many months too. It is a combined effort of different departments in our Team to bring these into fruition. We try and balance things with bug fixes and new features, and there will be times where one becomes slightly more important than the other.

At the end of the day, we are not here to make excuses or side-step through bugs that are reported and make it into our scope. We do treat bugs based on priority over general quality of life. If there is something we can improve on where our community provide constructive ways to rectify something, it doesn't fall on deaf ears. I believe my weekly topics provide a consistent level of bug fixes occurring weekly via the Changelog; some bug fixes more recent than others.

On a side note, let's chill and be a bit more patient with each other. We don't all share the same opinion and that's completely okay.

13 hours ago, Square Wheels said:

I know the pricing page lists what you get with cloud.  IPS will create topics like above and discuss new options, but often does not tell you which clients get what.  Self-hosted seem to be getting less and less.

I'm sorry if you have been misled. I did make it clear that I would have more details soon. My intention here was purely a teaser to mention the feature, not to give the nitty gritty about it.

Since joining the Team and reading through Invision Community topics, blog posts, etc, I haven't stumbled upon a feature that wasn't specified to be Cloud only, self-hosted only, or both. I don't see a benefit in keeping things quiet... If we are complacent from time to time, then let us know! We're human too, and we can fix it to make things crystal clear. 🙂

[Kirill Gromov]

16 hours ago, Charles said:

We really have released hundreds of features across all package types. Of course we are putting effort into our cloud offerings as that part of our business is growing and self-hosted is declining. That's been the trend for about 10 years now.

@Charles can you roughly tell the ratio of cloud to self-hosted?

[abobader]

13 hours ago, Randy Calvert said:

In looking at the list above, I don't understand how it could be said that IPS is only caring about the cloud platform and that self-hosted customers are not getting enhancements/features.

That not the point about "how many", the point from my view, it's the same software forum platform so self-hosted or cloud do not matters, the issue here that cloud hosted got more features, that it, even if only 1 feature add to it.

I knew reply here me or any others will not change IPS decision now days, that in the past when Matt and IPS team listen to their customers, .. .wait, they do listen to their cloud customers, maybe they headed that way to be only cloud forum software as it seem.

I been using IPB forum before 2002, I indeed register same year here as well, but Matt combine 2 accounts I have and flag my account as 2005 🙂

All in all, IPS support team the best in business, really what keep me going with IPS all these years, the support and some management I knew as well great dev's personals.

 

[AlexWebsites]

8 hours ago, Kirill Gromov said:

@Charles can you roughly tell the ratio of cloud to self-hosted?

I would be interested as well as we continue to watch features not available to self-hosted clients. I have multiple licenses and although not happy about the direction, I can understand business models changing. I don't fault IPS for evolving and differentiating services. At some point I will probably have to make some hard decisions myself, hopefully way down the road. Cloud pricing just does not compare to having multi-license self server/hosting. Plus, I can tweak and modify my environment as needed. I run my own cloud..lol. 

16 hours ago, Afrodude said:

It's completely incorrect because this is exactly what happens when someone gets involved in another person's personal matter; they start mixing things up and explaining things as they want.

As far as non-IPS staff members jumping into topics like this to provide "answers", I have to agree...it can sometimes be a bit annoying as I read threads. I'm not trying to discourage discussion its just that we pay for answers that are sometimes expected from IPS Staff only, just saying.... However, maybe those individuals are "interviewing" for the next open IPS staff role...at least it seems like that. If that's the case, best of luck to those individuals! 👍

[AlexJ]

5 hours ago, AlexWebsites said:

I have multiple licenses and although not happy about the direction, I can understand business models changing. I don't fault IPS for evolving and differentiating services. At some point I will probably have to make some hard decisions myself, hopefully way down the road. Cloud pricing just does not compare to having multi-license self server/hosting.

You are not the only one. A lot of people are in the same boat. I have a feeling, eventually, folks will move to Discord or FB pages because both are complete free of cost. 

For those who can manage with current changes/cost, will continue to do so but I see slim chances, that initial forums will pay 90$/month i.e. 1K/year appx while they are just starting their forum. So discord would be massively popular down the road i.e. much more then now, unless XF or VB or phpBB alike, will fill in that spot. I haven't checked other forums in last decade. 

I would say 70-90% gaming communities have now discord available and it's picking up game by introducing threads, Q&A, etc. features. My only gripe is I don't own the data and if tomorrow Discord discontinues their service, all the valuable conversations, data, etc. is gone.

It will be interesting times down the road for sure with IPS going Pro Cloud vs Discord, FB, etc. complete free of cost. 

 

Edited February 5, 2023 by AlexJ

[AlexWebsites]

1 hour ago, AlexJ said:

A lot of people are in the same boat. I have a feeling, eventually, folks will move to Discord or FB pages because both are com

I can see that, if you are not really into monetizing your community. For me, it wouldn’t work. If I’m not earning from monetizing my sites, I’m not really interested. 

[Gary]

11 hours ago, abobader said:

That not the point about "how many", the point from my view, it's the same software forum platform so self-hosted or cloud do not matters, the issue here that cloud hosted got more features, that it, even if only 1 feature add to it.

I knew reply here me or any others will not change IPS decision now days, that in the past when Matt and IPS team listen to their customers, .. .wait, they do listen to their cloud customers, maybe they headed that way to be only cloud forum software as it seem.

I been using IPB forum before 2002, I indeed register same year here as well, but Matt combine 2 accounts I have and flag my account as 2005 🙂

All in all, IPS support team the best in business, really what keep me going with IPS all these years, the support and some management I knew as well great dev's personals.

 

It may be the same core software, but the technology used for some Cloud-only features are not easy to implement for the average Joe wanting to start up a community and requires more than just uploading Invision Community files to your server.

Thank you for your kind words. It's what we strive for.

6 hours ago, AlexWebsites said:

I would be interested as well as we continue to watch features not available to self-hosted clients. I have multiple licenses and although not happy about the direction, I can understand business models changing. I don't fault IPS for evolving and differentiating services. At some point I will probably have to make some hard decisions myself, hopefully way down the road. Cloud pricing just does not compare to having multi-license self server/hosting. Plus, I can tweak and modify my environment as needed. I run my own cloud..lol. 

As far as non-IPS staff members jumping into topics like this to provide "answers", I have to agree...it can sometimes be a bit annoying as I read threads. I'm not trying to discourage discussion its just that we pay for answers that are sometimes expected from IPS Staff only, just saying.... However, maybe those individuals are "interviewing" for the next open IPS staff role...at least it seems like that. If that's the case, best of luck to those individuals! 👍

There are always considerations that need to be taken into account of course. You've got to see what direction most benefits you and/or your community and go from there.

Sometimes others beat us to it. We have team members from all around the world and we try our best to reply in a timely manner, but if someone else decides to chime in, then that helps us too (I mean this more specifically in the Help & Support forum as you are referring to paying for support). If we feel certain individuals need to be pulled up on something, we have no hesitation in going down that path too.

1 hour ago, AlexJ said:

You are not the only one. A lot of people are in the same boat. I have a feeling, eventually, folks will move to Discord or FB pages because both are complete free of cost. 

For those who can manage with current changes/cost, will continue to do so but I see slim chances, that initial forums will pay 90$/month i.e. 1K/year appx while they are just starting their forum. So discord would be massively popular down the road i.e. much more then now, unless XF or VB or phpBB alike, will fill in that spot. I haven't checked other forums in last decade. 

I would say 70-90% gaming communities have now discord available and it's picking up game by introducing threads, Q&A, etc. features. My only gripe is I don't own the data and if tomorrow Discord discontinues their service, all the valuable conversations, data, etc. is gone.

It will be interesting times down the road for sure with IPS going Pro Cloud vs Discord, FB, etc. complete free of cost. 

 

Discord appeals mostly to the gaming sector as they build their platform to support gamers. Much like Twitch is to the gaming industry. They can use YouTube (in fact a lot started that way) but have opted for Twitch as it provides them with the right tools to engage with their followers/subscribers. That's their niche market in my opinion having used both platforms for a few years now. Create a channel -> Invite friends or other fans -> Play and stream the game for others to join, watch or engage.

I have had many websites and communities in the past. I would always start with the free options, but as you get older and earn a living, you have some money aside where you can invest in something that you were not able to do before. You are more open (or able) to taking risks. If it doesn't work out, then so be it.

I'm sure if Invision Community wanted to cater to a single market, their product suite would be targeting that market alone. Fact of the matter is we are not, so whilst we do our best to cater to a wide variety of audiences, industries, the small community, larger enterprise clients, etc, it's just impossible to make everyone happy.