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Introducing new Page Builder tools in Invision Community 5 Widgets are an incredibly powerful tool for displaying curated content of your choice on any page of your community - and despite the extensive array of settings for customizing their data, they've often been limited in terms of their design options. But this changes thanks to the new Page Builder tools in Invision Community 5! Widget Designs Previously in version 4, widgets would often have 2 designs: one for the main content area and a more minimal version for the sidebar. This worked well, but it meant your page was very limited in terms of design as you'd typically need to use the same table-like layout for most widgets. Anything beyond that would typically require a custom block to be coded, often with additional HTML or CSS. Version 5 offers much more customization by allowing you to change the design of each widget with the click of your mouse - no coding necessary! When dragging a widget onto your page, a new toolbar at the bottom of the page appears, holding all of the widget design options. Lets take a look at some below! Grid A familiar a very layout used elsewhere in the suite, the Grid design neatly aligns entries in a grid with a large cover photo sitting up top. A great combination of visual imagery alongside meta data such as entry descriptions. Featured A spacious list and a great way to feature content, pardon the pun. Wallpaper Perfect for content which includes uploaded cover photos or thumbnails! The Wallpaper design stretches each image to make it occupy the entire background, overlaid by a minimal amount of content. A subtle gradient sits behind the text to ensure it's easy to read, even on detailed images. Rows (table) The Rows design is a very familiar one, used very often throughout other areas of the suite. Content is displayed in a neat table, that collapses into a more compact design on small screens. Minimal Great for displaying a lot of content in a compact area! Minimal only shows primary information and hides meta data such as entry descriptions and stats. Great for sidebars, or areas with limited width. Minimal Grid The Minimal Grid design removes large meta information and displays content in a nice, compact grid. A nice option for displaying a lot of content while being cautious of vertical space. Carousel The Carousel option is quite unique because it can be applied in tandem with other widget designs, and is a perfect way to make the existing layouts even more compact. For example, by default, the Wallpaper design is aligned as a grid, but with the Carousel option enabled, the layout is converted into a carousel instead: Carousel-widget.mp4 Here's another example, using the Featured and Carousel options: Blog - featured carousel.mp4 Fun fact for developers: All of these designs use the exact same HTML structure; the only thing that differs is the class name on the parent element. This makes it incredibly easy to adjust the design of your own widgets without needing to manually code multiple layouts. Widget Areas Version 4 was often quite limiting when it came to aligning widgets in pages. Widgets could be dragged into a stacked, vertical list but that was typically as far as you could go in terms of design. Version 5 introduces a new concept called Widget Areas, which allow you to align multiple widgets in a variety of ways. Lets take a look! To create an area, you simply need to drag one widget on top of another. Blog - areas.mp4 By default, they'll align themselves into a grid, but can be realigned with ease by using the toolbar at the bottom of the page. The toolbar also holds controls for adjusting the width of widgets, and the gap between them: Blog - alignments.mp4 Widget Designs and Widget Areas in Version 5 make it incredibly easy to create a completely custom page in a matter of seconds. We're really excited for you to get your hands on these new tools in Invision Community 5, and are looking forward to seeing all of these new page designs in the wild, in the very near future! View full blog entry

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.

This is on my todo list, and has been for a while. Consider it fixed for version 5.

Exciting news! Alpha 2 has now been released, and it's now using our build system which means these installations are upgradable (hopefully 😬) and these are 'real' Invision Community 5 installations. I've sent out a bunch more alpha invites now that the initial round of testing has completed. 🎉

The TL;DR version: We actually provide the service you pay for through constant updates and communication. You don’t see people on our community wondering why we do not communicate or release an update in years. While there are countless differences in goals and vision, we cost more because we do more. Ask yourself: do you want ye olde forum script that you see people begging for updates on or a living company behind an evolving product?

Hi AtomiCAST, I appreciate your question. Value is very subjective, but I can run through a few things in terms of what I think offers a lot of value. The first thing I want to address is that we do not see XenForo as a competitor. They are a legacy forum-only system that is looking very dated with a slow development process that took over three years to bring a new version to the market that largely catches up to where we were years ago. If you purchase a license with XenForo then you will get a forum system and that is that. You do not get a commerce store, a powerful CMS and database system, nor a gallery or community blogging tool. We are different. We do not base all our decisions around code and development, but rather our conversations with professional community management teams running large complex communities. We focus on bringing tools to the platform that people need. You only have to look through our news blogs to see our forward thinking with regards to managing communities. We have: Redefined what a community product should look like with a brand new interface. Built a brand new theme editing experience designed to reduce complexity and enable everyone to theme their community. Added a way to erase frustration and find answers quickly. Added a new way to identify and follow community experts and leaders for a better onboarding experience. Added a simple badge builder to empower all community owners to create custom badges and reactions. Added a way to assign individual topics to moderators and teams to help organise your forum and provide better service for members. A brand new lightweight and fast editor that actually works. Rebuilt tagging to bring content from all over the community into one place. Added a drag and drop WYSIWYG page builder tool with dozens of pre-built widgets and layouts. As you can see, these features are not based around technology, but based around people and community. When you look at XenForo's 2.3 feature list, it's things like OAuth, Stripe integration, developer tools, web hooks, etc. These are all much-needed (and we've had them for years) but how do these help you grow a community and help your community get the best from their time on the forum? I believe their next release is 3.0 and will just be a new theme and unlikely to launch in 2024, so when will you get new features? 2025, 2026, 2027? Or you can have an alpha release of Invision Community 5 right now with a full release later this year. The basic question being asked is "why aren't you as cheap as XenForo" and the question is simply that we do not want to be "cheap", we want to be good. We want to help your community succeed with forward thinking features, regular releases and daily communication. We will not abandon the software for years leaving your communities struggling and stagnating against newer more modern community platforms. We are constantly thinking about how to allow your members to get the most from your forum in the small pockets of time people have. Invision Community 5 being a mobile first product allows your members to check-in (or be pulled back with notifications) while in a line at that the store, or waiting in the car while your kids are at sports clubs. This is how people use your forum now. So in terms of value, and what we offer for the price is simple: We offer you a strong future and will work hard to support your community. If you want a cheap forum, and are happy with the stop-start-stop development of XenForo then that is totally fine too.

There have been a few different conversations on this, especially, last year when we changed our license terms for moving forward. The summary really comes down to: the current license terms were put together in order to make self-hosting viable for the future for both our clients and us. The self-hosting market has shrunk to a very, very small part of our business (and respectively, the internet as a whole) so if we are going to offer a self-hosted option, we want it to be the best of our software suite and if we're going to sell it, we don't want to abandon our self-hosted customers so it has to be something we can continue to provide support to at a renewal which works. It's also worth mentioning that you get what you pay for. Our software is ever evolving (check out our Version 5 Blogs). We offer monthly releases, support, Spam Defense, GEOIP, and a lot of other goodies, all for $499 one time price and $199/year afterwards.

For the love of God and those in need, Grant full access, I humbly plead. With Creator's plan, they'll build and grow, A chance for all to let dreams flow. PLEEEASE bring Page Builder Full Access to the CREATOR plan! 🙏

Thanks for all the thought and innovation put into the new pages functionality. P.S. Dr. Seuss would be proud of that video.

For me, the new prices are very attractive, however, I kindly request that self-hosting continues to be developed despite the low interest. 🙏

We recently changed our pricing from 'pick what you want' to 'everything' for a few reasons. First, a forum-only community will not survive in 2024. Secondly, we want to strengthen the relationship between apps and that is impossible to do when an app may be missing. It sounds like XenForo is a great fit for you, so I wish you all the best!

back to facebook where they belong 😂

👀 From the first commit (mostly v4 at that point) to the first real alpha: 2059 commits in just over a year.

Yes the new page builder looks very nice. I really want to take a slice. Without rolling the dice. IPS v5 is my first choice. Well done folks. Love the new page builder 😍😍😍😍😍😍.

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: CleanShot 2024-07-18 at 09.01.20.mp4 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.

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.

We will soon let those on the alpha testing group share their test sites for more feedback. Not much longer now - it's all coming together - which (hopefully) those in the alpha group can confirm 😄

Widget Designs are still being rolled out and will be available for many widgets once I’m done. They are not finished in Alpha 2.

First order of business: Second: This looks awesome! Can't wait to give this a shot. One clarifying question: I presume these widgets and that functionality will work for building a page showcasing Topics? I'd love to see what the wallpaper version of Topics looks like. In my head, I'm thinking: a user posts a topic, but is required to upload an image, so that when the topic appears on the feed (on the page I've created), it has an image. Like this, but for Topics 😄 Anyway, looks super polished and slick! Nicely done!

Who wants another blog entry today? 😮

Ok, utf8mb3 is the new alias for utf8 in recent MySQL versions. You have to convert your database to utf8mb4 with the tool in the ACP before upgrading to the latest version. There should be a link to the tool on the ACP > Support page. Click the link and start the conversion from there. Alternatively, there is also a tool you can run from SSH if your database is big (GBs of data).

https://www.ipsfocus.com/ He is good 🙂

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

I've been a XenForo customer for a while, have run through a tons of scenarios in my head to find some logical explanation to this now that I'm looking into getting an IPB license but haven't found one yet. What makes IPB so expensive when it comes to Self Hosting? I can't find any logical explanation for paying $500 for a forum software that seems to be similar in features (Perhaps a few things are more detailed and/or complex) than other forum softwares out there. I know this question has probably been asked through out the years, but either Invision doesn't want to compete with other software or is just trying to grab as much money as possible (In my honest opinion). Why not lower the price for a stripped down version of the suite? I personally don't need all the bells and whistles, just something that I can offer to my community to store their posts and communicate in a more organized way. No need for a CMS, Gallery, Calendar, Ecommerce, Blogs or Clubs. I personally think that giving the price of the competition, if Invision had the amazing idea of lowering their prices drastically, it would certainly open up the doors for customers from other places to look into switching over. I don't personally mind paying anywhere between 200-250 and 75-80 in renewals (Or less in renewals but instead every 6 months due to being a stripped down version of it). I hope it doesn't come as rough or disrespectful, but I need some clarification to make a decision.

Huge update and an awesome touch to the video, Ehren. On ya mate! 🦘

It took me a while to realize each line was rhyming. From now on, I demand all documentation and communication from IPS come in the form of a rhyming poem.

I just ran a grep on the 4.7.17 files, but there are no references to that domain in any file. If CloudFlare detected it on your site, it must be coming from another script. Or maybe a 3rd party modification you're using.

Thank you, this seems to be a significant évolution. To align with the power of the IPS structure and to continue differentiating from what exists elsewhere, it would be useful to have the option to display content only to specific members, to specific groups, or after a certain number of days of registration. This would allow for the implementation of powerful filters. Additionally, it would also be beneficial to display only content with a specific tag, and so on.

This is really incredible, thank you for all the really hard work that has clearly gone into this! I can't wait to try it out.

This looks like a huge step up from IC4 widgets. Will you be able to edit the widget titles on predefined widgets, unlike IC4?

Additionally, when viewing a topic, all forums are loaded into memory: SELECT * FROM `forums_forums` LEFT JOIN `core_permission_index` ON core_permission_index.app='forums' AND core_permission_index.perm_type='forum' AND core_permission_index.perm_type_id=forums_forums.id LEFT JOIN `core_members` ON core_members.member_id=forums_forums.last_poster_id WHERE (sub_can_post=0 OR min_posts_view<=22) AND (( FIND_IN_SET(3,perm_view) OR FIND_IN_SET(4,perm_view) OR FIND_IN_SET('m1',perm_view) OR FIND_IN_SET('ca',perm_view) OR FIND_IN_SET('cm',perm_view) OR FIND_IN_SET('c1',perm_view) OR FIND_IN_SET('cm1',perm_view) ) OR perm_view='*' ) ORDER BY position

Okay, I found out what is going on thanks to an email from Google. It seems some of their Google Maps JS (?) was also using polyfill.io: The text doesn't explicitly say they were using it too (only examples), but nothing else comes to mind since I don't use that JS library on my site, either. 🙄

ACP > Statistics > Activity > Reactions.

Only on cloud at the moment so we have a single stable hosting environment for the early rounds of testing. We also have access to databases, files and can easily mass deploy updates.

Along with @Joel R suggestions - I would like (some) blocks (the first sections under pages) to have a temporal option - when they go live and how long they live or if they only need to be active during a specific scheduled repeating time. Sometimes we may need to prep stuff that is embargoed and want to get it setup prior for it to go live at a future date and time. Example I have a third party who has a daily broadcast stream I would like for their feed to appear when they are online. But that block disappears after the stream.

1. I'd like to second the comment above, to ensure we have filter / permission options per widget. The idea is to build a truly customized community as a user grows in their user journey. New members might see more introductory and popular topics; returning members might see content that they started or participated in. 2. Will IPS consider some basic meta options for widgets such as: - enable / disable Widget title - widget title is a link - enable / disable border As a use case, in my Downloads section, I've built simple widgets for each category to to showcase the latest files per category. It would make sense that clicking on the widgets title would go to respective file category. 3. We're still going to have options to hide / display individual widgets on mobile vs tablet vs desktop? I can see community owners building more elaborate widget areas for desktop, but more streamlined for mobile. (In my community, I've studied how my superusers are on desktop, my sales conversions happen the most on desktop, but 60% of my regular traffic is mobile. ) 4. I'm curious about other clients thought process around spacing between widgets. Is there a widget area where you would want tightly clustered widgets versus spread out widgets? 5. Are these widget display options are available for database records? Any changes to default list options or display options of databases?

That's beautiful! Really well done! Great video identifying the limitations of v4 and addressing enhancements to close those gaps. Looking forward to giving this a try!

That's actually insane, I love it!

Awesome! 🤩

Fantastic new features! Lots of possibilities. It'll take time playing with all of this to realize all the power under the hood. Thanks!! 🙂

It would be great if we could use a minimum content for all areas. We use Invision Community as a Knowledge Base for our customers and we need our customers to focus on the relevant content, nothing more. For example, they don't need to see or know who started article or when.

We recently announced the new Invision Community 5 editor which adds many new exciting features such as semantically correct header tags, custom boxes and more. As the new editor is a leap forward in technology, some legacy features had to be left behind. We received a lot of messages about these changes, and have created new tools based on that feedback to ensure you still have the tools you need. The new features are based around restricting some high level editor functionality for specific member groups and enabling an easy way to add custom embeds. Permission Levels Invision Community 5 puts a lot of new tools in the editor, including header tags, boxes and positioning tools. These are useful features, but perhaps you do not want your members changing the semantic structure of the page by adding H1 tags. Or maybe you don't want them being able to add custom boxes with colors. Based on this feedback, we have introduced a permission levels system. At the heart of the system lies three editor permission levels: Minimal, Standard and Advanced. Specific editor features are assigned to one or more levels. For example, you may only want header tags and content boxes to be for the 'advanced' permission level which only administrators can use. These permission levels are configurable via the Admin Control Panel. When is Each Restriction Level Used? Now that we have set up the permission levels, we need to apply them to member groups. We do this by simplying heading over to the Member Groups section of the Admin Control Panel. In the "Content" section of that form, there are two new options: Default Editor Restriction Level: This is the restriction level the group uses by default, for example in Forum Topics and Blog Posts. Editor Restriction Level for Comments: This is the level used for Comments (including Topic Replies) throughout the Community. When a member has multiple groups, they will use the most permissible editor setting out of all groups. Custom Embeds In response to news that the ability to toggle into 'source mode' and directly edit the underlying structure of the editor document was not implemented because editor technology has moved on, many people told us they used that feature to add custom iframes from specific services they use. We understood the need for custom embeds, and we've added the option to create iframe elements with any whitelisted URL from a link. CleanShot 2024-06-20 at 15.49.43.mp4 Additionally, iframes created this way have configurable height and width so you can resize to your liking This feature has two editor permissions: "Can Embed External Content," and "Can Convert Links to iframes". Adding iframes into a post can potentially be a security issue, so strong controls are needed to ensure there isn't abuse of this system. The editor will only allow links to be converted to iframes if the domain has been whitelisted. The whitelist exists in the new tab, Admin Control Panel > System > Posting & Editor > Embeds. The feature can also be entirely disabled from here. That wraps up this round of changes based on your comments. We hope that you enjoy this update to our Invision Community 5 editor and we always appreciate your feedback. View full blog entry

This is because it was being used as a target for spammers to test stolen credit card details.

This would be OK for smaller groups, but if you had 500,000 members in the same group and tagged them, it would be a lot of notifications to send out (a good number being email too). It's more of a technical reason for it not being possible right now.

I get asked about 5 times a week since Invision chat was discontinued when is the chat room coming back it was an important part of the site, was busy 24/7 and a lot of my regulars just drifted away so I'd love to be able to replace it and had hoped the live chat mod would be a solution but its seems its not possible on cloud

I'm helping with the upgrade, and I figured it out. I'm posting the cause in case someone else hits the same issue. The Gallery application was not updated to the latest version (5.0.5) for IP.Board 3.4.6. Some required tables/columns added in newer versions were missing, which caused the errors.

These are on our list but will likely not make it in the initial Community 5 release. Tables sound simple enough, but when you factor everything that goes into delivering a powerful table system - background color, border color, border width, what type of content can go in a cell, what to do about overflow, actions applying to the entire row/column etc - and make it not only powerful but easy to use and reliable, the dev time really adds up. 🤔 😉