Different staff members typically have different roles within a community - especially larger communities, where you may have staff responsible for the theme, others handling tickets and different staff maintaining the system. In 3.x, we had a 'Bookmarks' system in the AdminCP that allowed you to create a menu of frequently-used sections in an effort to make them easier to get to, rather than navi…
One of the goals for IPS Community Suite 4.0 was improving content discovery. In other words, making sure content still receives exposure even if it is posted in less used areas of the suite.
The sidebar that shows on the IP.Board index page in 3.x helps with this goal to some extent, however people who visit the forums app infrequently may miss out on valuable content. This became an even more …
IP.Calendar has supported an RSVP system for events for the last several versions, and this has been a well received addition to Calendar. Where allowed, users can request RSVP for events submitted to the calendar, and where allowed, other users can RSVP (and subsequently un-RSVP) for these events. This functionality is useful for real-world events being coordinated through your site to help eve…
IP.Calendar allows your users to schedule and share events through a centralized community calendar and supports many features that allow your community to coordinate, organize and interact with each other through the calendar. For instance, event organizers can request RSVP for events in order to note who will be attending before hand, and you can allow commenting on events submitted through IP.…
Effective moderation features are essential for online communities. Forums, blog entries and member-to-member messaging are particularly attractive for spam bots and nuisance users alike. IPS Social Suite has always been best in class when it comes to moderation features with features like the free IPS Spam Service that are completely unmatched by other web applications. Over this series of 5 blog…
IP.Calendar has a few primary important views: the monthly grid view (i.e. a typical calendar table), the weekly view which lists a calendar week and any events occurring during that week, a daily view which lists all events occurring on a given day, and the actual event views where you view details about a specific event. All of these views have their usefulness, however we felt that there was a…
Working with an image handling suite to resize uploaded images, build thumbnails, apply watermarks and perform other similar image-handling tasks has been improved in 4.0 to be easier than ever. It is important to know that many of the built-in helpers in 4.0 will automatically handle image-related tasks for you, such as building thumbnails when appropriate. In the instances where you need more …
Effective moderation features are essential for online communities. Forums, blog entries and member-to-member messaging are particularly attractive for spam bots and nuisance users alike. IPS Social Suite has always been best in class when it comes to moderation features with features like the free IPS Spam Service that are completely unmatched by other web applications. Over this series of 5 blog…
Day to day administration of your site and particularly managing member permissions has been greatly improved in IPS Community Suite 4.0. It is now easier than ever to see who has access to what but there are still times when being able to see exactly what a member sees can be useful. Perhaps a member is reporting that they can't view a section of the site or they need assistance altering settings…
Effective moderation features are essential for online communities. Forums, blog entries and member-to-member messaging are particularly attractive for spam bots and nuisance users alike. IPS Social Suite has always been best in class when it comes to moderation features with features like the free IPS Spam Service that are completely unmatched by other web applications. Over this series of 5 blog…
For many years, IP.Board has featured a "Moderating Team" page where the community moderators are listed so that users can quickly and easily identify who to contact in the event they need assistance. This page has typically been a somewhat generic table-style view of users who are a moderator of some level. The page is not configurable and has limited usefulness and relevance when you consider …
Almost all of our applications support commenting or reviewing to some degree. You can comment on events in IP.Calendar, images in IP.Gallery and blog entries in IP.Blog, and you can review products in IP.Nexus, for instance. The differences between reviewing and commenting are subtle, yet important. Commenting allows you to say something about a content item that has been contributed, while re…
IP.Calendar has supported basic recurring calendar events for many versions now. You can create events that recur weekly, monthly or yearly in IP.Calendar, and they will automatically show up on their specified schedule. While this capability is certainly useful, we felt it was time to enhance event recurrence capabilities in the next version of IP.Calendar. New options
Recurring every week,…
The submissions process in IP.Downloads has a certain complexity that may not be apparent at first. As well as simple file uploads, we also support adding files from URLs and from the local file system, and screenshots can also be added in these ways. Which category you choose to submit to affects which of these options are available. In addition, via the AdminCP you can bulk-upload files - but no…
Following content is an important aspect of interacting with your community. It allows you to be notified when there are updates to the content or when other users comment on the content, and it allows you to find content you are interested in at a later date. We have taken the opportunity with 4.0 to enhance the system where-by users can follow content in the IPS Community Suite to simplify and…
Please note that this entry may be a little technical, if you do have any questions, please post them in the comments below. A little history
IP.Board was first released over ten years ago when the web landscape was very different. A lot of emerging technologies were still trying to define new standards. Very early versions of IP.Board allowed one to specify the document character set and had a …
A few years ago we revolutionised theme editing in IP.Board with the addition of the "Visual Skin Editor". This tool quickly became a popular way of making broad color changes to new themes to match in with an existing site or existing branding. For the first time, you could instantly view the changes you were making. Goodbye Visual Skin Editor, hello Easy Mode Editor.
We have rewritten this too…
A little history
For many years, IP.Board functioned under a relatively normal model of managing a content's status. A topic, for example, was either unapproved or approved. If a moderator did not like the topic, that moderator could delete the topic. This worked well for many years, but improvements in technology and processes necessitated changes. As IPS software evolved we recognized the n…
IPS Connect is our in-house cross-site authentication framework utilized by IP.Board in order to facilitate sharing of login credentials on one or more of your websites. While IP.Board supports Connect out of the box (meaning administrators of two or more IP.Board installations can allow users to use the same login credentials on any site in the network with just a few clicks in the ACP), the des…
Back in June, we announced several updates to our proprietary Spam Service, which includes influences from existing spam mitigation services (Project Honeypot and Stop Forum Spam). Today, we are announcing the release of more options to help you fine-tune the spam service for your site. These features are being released as a part of our new Enterprise Spam Service package, which is available now…
Reminder: this blog covers the technical details of 4.0's programming. For details on 4.0's features, follow our main blog. Reviewing controllers
Some time ago, I blogged about the javascript framework we've built for IPS4. In it, I covered the most important component: controllers. To recap, a controller is a special object within the framework, and is applied on specific elements. That elemen…
Reminder: this blog covers the technical details of 4.0's programming. For details on 4.0's features, follow our main blog. Introduction
For almost all applications in the IPS Social Suite (IP.Chat being the notable exception), there are three components:
Each of these different types of items share many common features. For example, in all applications you can "follow" nodes and Content Items…
We have seen a huge increase in people switching to us over the last year or two and want to take advantage of this momentum and offer an exciting conversion promotion. But first some information... Our Pre-Packaged Converters
Our conversion scripts make it very easy to convert your existing community to the IPS Community Suite. The process is very simple: just install IPS, upload the converter…
IPS is happy to offer 15% off starting now through Monday on all new purchases for both new and existing clients! This includes all software licenses and Community in the Cloud hosting. This is a great time to add on those extra Suite applications you're missing or to go ahead and try out IPS if you have always been considering us.
Just use the coupon code HOLIDAY2013 at checkout. Conversion …
.thumb.jpeg.beabd3e950acc9626a39df2efa937da3.jpeg)
