Invision Community v5: An update, and next steps

[Matt]

If you're basing this on the alpha, then just keep in mind it's alpha and we're still very much working on it.

[Chris59]

On 7/11/2024 at 9:18 AM, Marc said:

I would very much advise on playing with the new ways of doing things before passing judgement. I would say however, I feel that "everything except pages" on what is a complete rewrite of the way in which pages are put together, is a little unfair

 

Oh Sorry , no hard feelings here , just that I have read in earlier posts pages app will have some changes . my English knowledge just make me sound weird . you guys have done a super job on v5 and I lift my hat for you guys . I just hoped pages app got some updated with some spicy templates etc . pages app is the best app in the suite in my opinion . because you do tons of things with pages app 😘 and deserve good looking templates etc

Its Friday and be happy 🙂 excuse me if I sounded judgmental (my English, still learning 😉 )

i will love v5 for sure 👏

Cheers Chris

[superaven]

I probably check into this thread 3x a day, most days as well as the news section...

Anyhow, just popping my head up to say hello and mention the obvious about everyone being super freakin excited and waiting with bated breath. Can't wait to play with this new version nd very, very much looking forward to being able to run it.

[Matt]

We're up to Alpha 4 over in the secret alpha testing club and things are progressing nicely. There's been a lot of improvements to the theme editor, and the text editor. We've made some improvements based on feedback to several areas including advertisements as well as fixed a ridiculous number of bugs.

I think the alpha testers will agree that it's pretty stable now and closer to beta than a raw alpha. We'll be launching Alpha 5 tomorrow and this will be upgradable via the AdminCP.

Internally, we're going to test a clone of this site and upgrade that to see how that goes.

In the mean time, is there anyone else here that wants to join the alpha team? We're ready for more people if you are. Just let me know!

If you're just curious, you can follow the releases and fixes here.

[annadaa]

I'm just curious to know if, today, artificial intelligence helps you save time by removing unnecessary code and eliminating bugs. Personally, in writing long, tedious texts, it has helped me a lot by removing superfluous elements. Is this also the case for you? Because it seems to me that the transition from IPS 3 to 4 was marked by numerous bugs.

[Matt]

10 hours ago, annadaa said:

I'm just curious to know if, today, artificial intelligence helps you save time by removing unnecessary code and eliminating bugs. Personally, in writing long, tedious texts, it has helped me a lot by removing superfluous elements. Is this also the case for you? Because it seems to me that the transition from IPS 3 to 4 was marked by numerous bugs.

We don't use AI on a wide scale like that, and I don't think AI is quite there yet. I use AI in a few ways, but you always have to check the output as it's often wrong, or uses method names, and database table columns that don't exist.

I use Github Copilot which has access to our Github repository so it can learn about our code and make sensible suggestions from either prompts, or auto-complete, for example:

 

I sometimes use ChatGPT to avoid looking up syntax or functions and to avoid a bit of trial and error which probably saves 5-10 minutes on a bad day.

These tools can help a little, but they don't really wholesale fix issues and find errors. I think that'll come eventually.

During development of Invision Community 5, we have several safeguards in place to minimise bugs. Every single change is put into review via a pull request before it is merged into the development branch. The review has an automated PHP lint tool that checks for syntax issues and won't allow it to be merged if it contains them. We also do a human review on not only the code, but also the change to make sure it does what we wanted it to do. Some of these reviews go back and forth for weeks, others are merged quickly.

That said, bugs are part of software development, that's why we have alpha and beta testing. The v3 to v4 transition was complicated as it was a complete rewrite from scratch, we had a much smaller development team and it took much longer than originally planned.

[superaven]

Great question and great answer on the last two posts.

Just curious since I can't keep from holding my breath and speculating further... @Matt what is the standard timeline once things hit Beta? I know it likely is no accurate indication of the timeline on this particular project, but in the past, on full point releases... How long and complicated is the Beta segment of the development cycle on average? Would you mind explaining / outlining what that process is like for you guys?

Edited July 18 by superaven

[Matt]

4 hours ago, superaven said:

Great question and great answer on the last two posts.

Just curious since I can't keep from holding my breath and speculating further... @Matt what is the standard timeline once things hit Beta? I know it likely is no accurate indication of the timeline on this particular project, but in the past, on full point releases... How long and complicated is the Beta segment of the development cycle on average? Would you mind explaining / outlining what that process is like for you guys?

We have to kind of feel our way through it. We have milestones, like:

Alpha 1
Upgradable Alphas
Upgradable from 4.x Alphas
Beta x lots
Final

But the timescales are really determined by how much feedback and how many bug reports we get. Rarely, we need to rethink a feature or code and do a bit of reworking. I would expect the beta process to be fairly short given how thorough we are with the alpha.

We've yet to build zips and have people install it on various servers which always adds a little volume to the tracker. That'll be coming up fairly soon.

[Garrett M.]

I wouldn't mind being part of the alpha. I could definitely give Pages a good run through to check for bugs.

[BN_IT_Support]

On 7/17/2024 at 9:12 PM, Matt said:

In the mean time, is there anyone else here that wants to join the alpha team? We're ready for more people if you are. Just let me know!

Hi Matt,

I need an installable kit so I can start converting our many applications and plugins.

I guess that probably means that I'll have to wait for beta? But the sooner that I can have an installable kit and start converting plugins and applications the better...

Thanks.

John

[superaven]

On 7/18/2024 at 2:24 PM, Matt said:

We have to kind of feel our way through it. We have milestones, like:

Alpha 1
Upgradable Alphas
Upgradable from 4.x Alphas
Beta x lots
Final

But the timescales are really determined by how much feedback and how many bug reports we get. Rarely, we need to rethink a feature or code and do a bit of reworking. I would expect the beta process to be fairly short given how thorough we are with the alpha.

We've yet to build zips and have people install it on various servers which always adds a little volume to the tracker. That'll be coming up fairly soon.

Appreciate the reply, thank you. Other than follow along and engage on the forum, are there any suggestions on what to we could do to potentially ready ourselves? Unsure if there’s ever been a sort of hit list developed both pre upgrade and post upgrade, which might be a good idea if not already done. Suppose it’s a good time to think about content structure and organization, but anything else you might suggest as far as front running some stuff to help community owners get prepared as we wait?

[Mike G.]

1 hour ago, superaven said:

Appreciate the reply, thank you. Other than follow along and engage on the forum, are there any suggestions on what to we could do to potentially ready ourselves? Unsure if there’s ever been a sort of hit list developed both pre upgrade and post upgrade, which might be a good idea if not already done. Suppose it’s a good time to think about content structure and organization, but anything else you might suggest as far as front running some stuff to help community owners get prepared as we wait?

I'd consider 3rd party plugins and themes to be one of the most important areas to look at. I phased out all of mine with the exception of a few article templates and a competition plugin, which the community is aware will end when the upgrade comes).

I expect many of the popular plugins and themes to be upgraded, but I think it's worth preparing to be without them, at least for the start.

Deciding on your mainstays with tags is worth planning on advance as well, primarily the ones that can be used across multiple areas of your community (news, categorization, tags that are used regularly).

A lot of the magic will come through exploring the new pages and editor options, but you can't really prepare for the awesomeness on the way - I think that'll come as you feel your way through the software.

It's just a good time to do some spring cleaning in general and possibly consolidate inactive forums if you have a lot. I come across a lot of forums where the threads in those forums would be better suited as a tag in a more general forum.

Edited July 20 by Mike G.

[Gary]

Hi @superaven,

Reading through the blog posts that have come up over the past few months would be your best bet to get prepared. Things such as:

• Closer of the Marketplace (more information on this link too)
• Various layout, interface and theming changes
• Introduction of community experts
• Changes to tagging

I don't think there is an official "list to be prepared for v5", however you are likely to find more through topics like this one. Not everything may be an issue or specific to your community. I would also look are what plugins/customisations you have implemented in your community as some may be null and void; v5 is proving to be a powerful bit of kit created to benefit all of our communities as a whole. Naturally, there is no universal solution to meet every niche or subject, but the tools are there to make for a powerful community regardless of your niche.

[Matt]

Fairly soon, we're going to start getting some information out on how to prepare for v5. We want to get the timing right so that people aren't making huge changes to their community and then having to wait a few months for v5.

The basic things will be PHP version, MySQL version, big changes (support desk, status updates, tagging, etc) along with third party things (theme editing, plugins, etc).

[Emediate]

1 minute ago, Matt said:

so that people aren't making huge changes to their community and then having to wait a few months for v5.

Too late! Haha. We've been preparing for 6 months now. Removing redundant plugins, redeveloping others into apps, trying to second guess what we will and won't be able to do. Overall, it's been a long overdue process for us anyway, with at one stage over 60 different plugins and various things! Our board is running all the better for it now, but bring on V5!

[Marc]

45 minutes ago, Emediate said:

Overall, it's been a long overdue process for us anyway, with at one stage over 60 different plugins and various things!

Always something good to do 🙂 I've done the same myself in the past, and ended up with none at all lol

[Matt]

Wow, great work!

46 minutes ago, Emediate said:

Removing redundant plugins, redeveloping others into apps

If you have the means to do this, then this is an excellent start. It's also worth reevaluating plugins every 6 months or so to see if they are still effective or if you rarely use them or they had no impact on your community.

[superaven]

On 7/20/2024 at 4:43 PM, Gary said:

Hi @superaven,

Reading through the blog posts that have come up over the past few months would be your best bet to get prepared. Things such as:

• Closer of the Marketplace (more information on this link too)
• Various layout, interface and theming changes
• Introduction of community experts
• Changes to tagging

I don't think there is an official "list to be prepared for v5", however you are likely to find more through topics like this one. Not everything may be an issue or specific to your community. I would also look are what plugins/customisations you have implemented in your community as some may be null and void; v5 is proving to be a powerful bit of kit created to benefit all of our communities as a whole. Naturally, there is no universal solution to meet every niche or subject, but the tools are there to make for a powerful community regardless of your niche.

Have to say I was super bummed when you guys decided to get rid of the commerce plugin. Stating that in case anyone on your side is second guessing that decision, but yeah. Though there was a major flaw with the help desk (unable to mass select replies beyond single pages, so getting rid of 20k+ spam messages was a nightmare), I did greatly appreciate the help desk feature since it avoided me having to stay on top of an entirely separate platform. Further, I'd been planning to sort of create a strike out version of my online store. Basically a plus to put clearance items and small batch inventory that I felt just sort of cluttered our main online store. Lastly, I was also planning to do a physical product (t-shirt and sticker pack) that was exclusive to our forum as a way to support. So in addition to having a sort of VIP section and subscription to go with it, the idea was to sell an exclusive tee that when purchased, kicked off a subscription. Anyhow, would love to see you guys bring that back, but I think I get why it was phased out.

That said, I've largely phased out all plugins already, so that's good. The couple that are left are more for aesthetics than function and not a big deal. I am running a custom theme, but from what I've seen of the new theme and editor, I'm excited to drop that as well.

On 7/22/2024 at 3:26 AM, Matt said:

Fairly soon, we're going to start getting some information out on how to prepare for v5. We want to get the timing right so that people aren't making huge changes to their community and then having to wait a few months for v5.

The basic things will be PHP version, MySQL version, big changes (support desk, status updates, tagging, etc) along with third party things (theme editing, plugins, etc).

Cool, looking forward to it. I'm on Invision Cloud, so fortunately, not much I need to do as far as technical requirements. 😃

[Randy Calvert]

1 hour ago, superaven said:

Have to say I was super bummed when you guys decided to get rid of the commerce plugin.

Commerce has not been removed.  It will continue to be available and they're adding more support for digital transactions (like better ad support, more subscriptions options, selling different digital offerings on your site, etc).  The only thing removed from Commerce is the ability to ship physical products.  The marketplace closure is not related to IPB5 development and has been done for MONTHS already.

Edited July 23 by Randy Calvert

[Dreadknux]

I've done an audit myself, and besides some small 'QOL' third-party apps that I think will be easily re-made for V5 (such as Change Post Date, which is mostly helpful right now for backdating/restoring archive content from past iterations of my community), the main third party app that will likely cause me pain when V5 rolls around is the Member Shop and the Profile Gifts apps, which are being discontinued by the current app maintainer ahead of V5's launch.

My community's been relying on the Profile Gifts app in particular quite a lot lately, so I will need to figure out a way that I can "bank" the information already stored on the database (as in, which user has which item/gift assigned to their account, how many shop points etc) so that I could potentially return to it later and 'restore' that information if a V5-compatible version of those apps become available.

But generally, since two years ago or so I stopped actively thinking about third party extensions in anticipation for V5, so I wouldn't have to 'start over' after the upgrade. 😄

[HighlanderICT]

On 7/23/2024 at 11:22 AM, Randy Calvert said:

they're adding more support for digital transactions (like better ad support, more subscriptions options, selling different digital offerings on your site, etc). 

Anywhere I can read about this? I cant see anything. I wonder if the option to add timed subscriptions that all expire on the same date will be an option? 

We run a sponsorship scheme for our local football team, and regardless of when someone joins, the sponsorship end date is the same date each year (eg. May 31st each year). We want to sell subscriptions to the scheme over the space of a few weeks but want all subscriptions to have the same renewal date. Possible in V5? 

[superaven]

On 7/23/2024 at 9:22 AM, Randy Calvert said:

Commerce has not been removed.  It will continue to be available and they're adding more support for digital transactions (like better ad support, more subscriptions options, selling different digital offerings on your site, etc).  The only thing removed from Commerce is the ability to ship physical products.  The marketplace closure is not related to IPB5 development and has been done for MONTHS already.

Sorry... guess I was confused since I was really interested in the physical product and help desk side, both of which were removed. Really wish, they'd bring both those back. Subscriptions is great and obviously ad sales is a no brainer, but I have no use for digital products personally.

[Gary]

To my knowledge, you can still have physical products listed in your store with Commerce, you will just lose the whole shipping capability. This would have to be organised by yourself as opposed to the software having this functionality, otherwise you can try out alternatives such as Shopify as has been suggested on the Deprecation Tracker.

[Marc]

On 7/24/2024 at 5:15 PM, HighlanderICT said:

Anywhere I can read about this? I cant see anything. I wonder if the option to add timed subscriptions that all expire on the same date will be an option? 

We run a sponsorship scheme for our local football team, and regardless of when someone joins, the sponsorship end date is the same date each year (eg. May 31st each year). We want to sell subscriptions to the scheme over the space of a few weeks but want all subscriptions to have the same renewal date. Possible in V5? 

There isnt this planned at present. I would advise posting this in our feedback forum if you wish to see something like this in the future

[dmaidon1]

4 hours ago, Marc said:

There isnt this planned at present. I would advise posting this in our feedback forum if you wish to see something like this in the future

I posted this feature request last year in this topic: