Finally, one of the most requested features for clubs in Invision Community is coming with our March 2024 release: Pages databases in Clubs.

You may be surprised to see a new feature being introduced for Invision Community 4 during our flow of news for Invision Community 5, but as we're committed to Invision Community 4, we wanted to continue to bring optimizations and improvements to the platform.

What is the benefit of this new feature?
Clubs enable communities to host multiple micro-communities with many benefits. Clubs allow more specialized and focused discussions on specific topics. This can lead to higher-quality content and a deeper exploration of niche subjects that may get overlooked when posted on a busy forum. Clubs also offer the ability to tailor the community experience based on the needs of that community. That customization is what this feature focuses on.

Pages is a powerful application that allows truly custom layouts for content areas. Simply by adjusting templates, you can create a news feed layout (it is what we use for this news blog area!) or something even more customized to your needs.

The March 2024 release allows you to create Pages database categories directly inside clubs, including custom fields and templates.

How does it work?
Setting up your Pages database to allow clubs to use categories is simple. Simply allow categories to be created within clubs when creating or editing a database.

Once that is done, club owners can add a Pages database category to their club in the same way they can add topics, galleries, etc.

Once the Pages database category has been added, you can then add content as you would any other club area with the added features of Pages, including custom templates and custom fields.

This example club uses a custom Pages database listing template to show the articles in a custom format along with custom field data.

Likewise, viewing an article in this example club showcases the use of custom templates to present the content differently from the standard topic templates Invision Community uses elsewhere.

Allowing Pages database categories inside clubs brings the opportunity for more complex custom areas making use of multiple custom fields along with truly custom layouts using templates. This is a great way to bring additional areas, such as news articles, into your club areas to compliment discussions.

We hope you enjoy this feature, and if you have any comments, please leave them below!

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This is indeed a great new feature and also unexpected one. kudos to the team.

I wanted such feature for my old website for very long time and eager to see how different aspects like custom fields and templates works.

One question... is it possible to also assign already existing category to a club?

How does it work?
I've activated "Yes, allow categories[...]" in two existing databases but there is no "articles" in dropdown "Manage Club" to choose!?

If a site has clubs/pages meticulously set up and full of content, will it all carry over when it comes time to upgrade to V5?

I'm still playing with this, but what I'm expecting to happen would be that the permissions would be honored from the database.  If the user has the ability to add records to the database... it would work.  Will try to play around later this weekend to confirm.

On 3/1/2024 at 5:48 PM, Matt said:

Does your logged in member have permission to view the database?

yes

13 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said:

Content will of course. In terms of layout/theming etc, of course, you would need to visit that once v5 is out to update anything required. But that would apply to any area.

Its based on permissions, so if they have permission yes.

We would then need to an example. I would advise creating a new topic with your issue though, rather than in this topic

Excellent, thanks @Marc Stridgen.  Yeah the concern was primarily for the content since I generally use stock themes. 👍

On 3/1/2024 at 5:48 PM, Matt said:

It's all honoured, so if the member doesn't have access to that database as they would normally, then they won't be able to add the categories.

Is it intentional that turning on Club categories for a database turns off the possibility to set custom permissions for (existing) database categories? I can still set “Set Custom Permissions” for my existing categories, but once I activate the club functionality for the database, the link to edit the category permissions disappears. I wouldn’t expect the clubs function to change parts of the regular usage of Pages databases. 

Use-case example: Let’s say I have an article database with categories where I publish admin news and now I want to allow clubs to post their own club news in this database. I would allow members to post on the database level, but set custom permissions for the existing admin categories outside the clubs so only admins can post there. Doesn’t seem possible at the moment. I can’t access the permissions anymore once I turned on the clubs functionality for the database. 

 

P.S. Also, why do Pages categories in Clubs don’t have the Description field like forums do? Seems reasonable to describe what one is supposed to post and see in those categories and Pages categories normally have that field. I suppose it’s even in the MySQL table by default, but not in the form when creating/editing the Pages category in clubs.

Edited March 13, 20242 yr by opentype

I was delighted when I read the announcement of the new function. When I tried it out on the test board, I realized that I had obviously misunderstood the feature. 

My use case: I have clubs mainly for people from one region. I thought I could now define a category in my Pages database (for example: Regional News) that can be used in the clubs - this one category. My hope was that all articles from the clubs would be visible in this category in my Pages database. And in the clubs, all articles written in the respective club would be visible.

Or have I not found a setting that would do exactly that?

On 3/4/2024 at 5:29 AM, Dreadknux said:

To offer a use-case example; suppose I have an existing Pages database, that works like a wiki. I want to keep that wiki visible and accessible as it always has been, but I might have a category called '1990s Movies' that might work well if linked to an existing '90s Lovers' Club. This way, Club users (who like to stay on the Club app and don't leave) will be able to see and enjoy the Pages content, without them needing to create a brand new Pages DB for that purpose (and risk duplicating content across the site)?

 

I was thinking this too. If we have a movies database, and three clubs are created which use that database, then there's potential for 3+ copies of Back to the Future. That's confusing.

I'm not sure what the solution would be though.