Since applying IP.Downloads 2.3 to our company forums this month, we've noted a few features that we felt would be really handy to add. Given the fact that all of these features have been requested by customers recently, we took the time to add these features now, for IP.Downloads 2.3.0, in an effort to ensure we release a solid product that has everything you need to manage your file repositories. We hope you enjoy these few small but useful changes coming in IP.Downloads 2.3.
Featured Files
Beginning with IP.Downloads 2.3, you will now be able to designate a single file as a "featured" file. This featured file will be highlighted on the IP.Downloads portal page for everyone to see. This is useful for pointing out a file that is of particular importance to your community, or to highlight a file of exceptional quality that has been recently submitted. Here at IPS, we will be using this new functionality to feature files we feel our customers will be interested in using, be they skins, applications or hooks.
Note that there is also a new moderator setting in the ACP moderator management area to allow you to control which moderators can feature files. All super moderators will automatically have this ability.
Pinned Files
In addition to "featured files", we have also added the ability pin and unpin files in the file listing. When you pin a file, much like a topic, it forces the file to be listed at the top of the category listing no matter what sort order you choose to use to list the rest of the files in a category. You can pin (and unpin) files to help users find commonly requested or downloaded files quickly. For instance, if you use your IP.Download installation to host car manuals, and you find that a large portion of users are downloading a specific car manual, you may wish to pin this file to the top of the category listing so that it is easier for them to find. Or if you have advertisers on your site that also submit files, you can charge your advertisers a fee to pin their file at the top of the listing for a specified period of time.
As with featured files, there is a new moderator setting in the ACP to control which moderators can pin and unpin files. All super moderators will automatically have this ability.
Redesigned Category View
Continuing from Rikki's last blog entry where he showed you all of the other redesigned areas, we have now updated the category listing page to bring it more in line with the rest of IP.Downloads modern look and feel.
At the top, you will now have some quick filters that allow you to easily re-sort the category in various ways. Additionally, if IP.Nexus is installed (it is not, in this screenshot), you will be able to quickly filter "All files", "Paid Files" and "Free Files" in the category via a filter option at the top of the screen.
If a file is reported broken, this will now be highlighted with an alert icon in the category listing like so:
(Note in the first screenshot we opt to display screenshots in the category, while the second screenshot is taken of a file where screenshots are not displayed in the category listing)
The download count can be clicked on to view who downloaded the file (for those with permission to see this information). When you view a category with subcategories, the category bar on the left changes slightly to indicate this.
In this picture, we are inside "Empty" and you can see there are two subcategories within this category in the left hand block.
Conclusion
We have a few small areas to touch up still, but for the most part things are now wrapping up. We hope you like the update and we look forward to your feedback regarding the changes to come.