Invision Community 5.0.17 SPRINGS into life

This is our monthly updates and improvements release. You can see the full changelog here.

Along with the usual fixes, we've got new features in this update:

Pages

Workflow Manager

(Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise)

This is an exciting one!. Workflow Manager is designed to streamline and automate repetitive actions. This range of Pages updates are designed to save time and reduce repetitive tasks.

Each database has a "Workflows" menu item in the AdminCP. Each created workflow is displayed as a single button. You can define the properties of the button, and you use "Match Criteria" to determine when the button should show, and "Actions" to determine what it does when clicked.

For this series of screenshots, I have two workflows set up, one to approve and one to reject the article. The status field itself is configured so it cannot be changed outside of a workflow.

Available Match Criteria

• Item Status - pinned/featured/hidden/etc.

• Custom Field value (uses OR logic, not AND)

(match criteria is the same for both workflow actions)

Available Actions

• Assign an item

• Post a comment

• Change the item status - pinned/featured/hidden/etc.

• Notify the item author

• Notify specific members

• Change the value of a Custom Field

This configuration gives us two new buttons on the article.

Let's click approve this and send a message to the author.

There's a huge number of Workflows that could be implemented. Let us know what flows you're thinking about automating.

Reusable Template Blocks

This new block type allows you to define a set of input fields and a template to reuse multiple times.

Create your new block with the template structure of your choice.

On the front-end, you can add the new block to the page using the Page Editor. Fill in your fields for this block location and hit save!

You can use the same block as many times as you wish on the same page. This screenshot shows two blocks using the same pre-defined template.

Field Templates

Custom display formats for fields can now be saved as a template. This allows multiple fields to share the same display formatting without copying and pasting the setting on each field.

This also has the advantage of being able to update templates using the Pages template manager.

Status Field

A minor, but time-saving, new feature is the status field. Out of the box, it allows you to specify the statuses and an associated color which are automatically displayed on the record without any further configuration.

Status fields are integrated with the new Workflow Manager, allowing these fields to be automated.

Other smaller, but notable changes:

• We added a new setting to allow archived topics to instruct search engines not to index them (they're also removed from the sitemap).

• Continued modernization by removing reliance on 2 more JavaScript libraries.

• Further improved accessibility on the registration form (password strength is now announced by screen readers).

Focused Beta Testing

We'd love it if you could pay some extra attention to these areas during the beta process.

Removed underscore.js usage in favour of native JavaScript equivalents

• Underscore was used extensively in our code, leading to widespread adjustments to remove reliance. Please let us know if you see any JavaScript errors.

Preparing for jQuery 4.0

• We have made many changes to remove reliance on deprecated jQuery functionality to prepare for jQuery 4.0. Please let us know if you see any JavaScript errors.

3 hours ago, PanSevence said:

Personally, I see the Classic (self-hosted) version as the base version of the software, which the name itself kind of suggests. The higher tier plans then build on top of that by offering additional features and capabilities.

Even one of the lower tiers that is similar to the Classic is far outside of what I can afford. I have three licenses that would cost over 5 grand.

For less than 1/2 of that, I have a VPS, the three licenses, and access to my data,

Once they remove Classic, I will have to move elsewhere.

Great, thank you.

The good news is that we've already fixed this for beta 2 (I merged in the fix a few minutes ago!)

Thank you to the Invision team for all their hard work on the beta and the next upgrade.

5.0.17 has been released!

Changes since the last beta include:

#6884 Add hover effect to mention dropdown
#6886 Ensure "Continue Shopping" button closes its dialog
#6887 Ensure animations finish running in Safari and Chrome.

On 3/18/2026 at 9:50 PM, RevengeFNF said:

Elasticsearch is not usable since the release of IPS 5.

Huh? We're using Elasticsearch with no issues now.

Not that I'm affected (yet), but I find the answer to people with broken forums on PHP 8.4 quite unsatisfying for a paid product. If you look at your own checker at https://invisioncommunity.com/files/file/7046-invision-community-requirements-checker/ and linked from https://invisioncommunity.com/buy/self-hosted/ you will see on the screenshot that version 8.4.3 is highlighted as valid. You also said "Rather than stating we support over x version, we now explicitly state which versions we support". This situation is really not fault of the client then, because Invision broke for them something that was working when you "unsupported" newer PHP. Even though what you tried is understandable, it's still a major regression. Any chance priority can be put on the recent PHP support going forward? I mean PHP 8.4 was released 1.5 year ago! I know cloud customers are unaffected, and us in self-hosted are a bit third-tier client, but still... Once you deal with implicitly nullable params, which could be practically automated to fix, the rest of the PHP upgrade issues should hopefully be even easier 😅

Just now, Marc said:

You would have to revert to backup in order to switch back. I have to be honest though, and say I would very much advise on contacting your hosting company. If you are using 8.0.3 this has not been supported since 2024 by PHP even for security

There really needs to be a 'cancel upgrade' function on future updates here, because I got completely blindsided by this php upgrade thing and wouldn't have hit the upgrade button if I had known about this prior... now I'm stuck unless I roll back to a backup? Pretty inconvenient...

On 4/7/2026 at 8:18 AM, Marc said:

You would need to switch your PHP version to a supported version. Version 8.4, while you appear to have had it working, is not yet supported. What has changed here are the PHP requirement checks to make it more specific. Rather than stating we support over x version, we now explicitly state which versions we support, as when a new version came out people were upgrading before we had chance to update the software

If you have issues with changing the PHP version, your best option there would be to revert to the backup taken prior to your upgrade

I don't get this. You guys created a version that I installed 3 weeks ago, which worked on 8.4 without giving me any warnings of the dangers. It then prompts me to update, without again warning that the board would become inaccessible. Then I'm trapped in an upgrade loop, as there is no Cancel option. I can't revert to a backup as the server doesn't have a backup that goes back more than 1 day. Is there a way to manually push through the update, or will I be stuck with a downed community until 8.5 is supported?