VigLink is a service which works with a number of affiliates to provide you commission when a user visits the affiliate from your website.
So, as an example, let's say someone posts a link to an Amazon item on your community, with VigLink integration, you'll be provided with compensation every time a user purchases that item if they bought it after following the link from your site.
VigLink, an…
As part of our regular SEO round-up when developing a major new release, I'm happy to run through the latest SEO changes we've made for IP.Board 3.4. Friendly URL Changes
After much research and discussion with other SEO focused forum owners, I decided to revamp the FURL structure when handling additional page parameters.
The existing format uses the following structure:
board.com/topic/123-t…
IPS is introducing a program whereby we nominate a charity to receive our attention and support. These nominated charities are chosen by IPS for the work they do and how they might impact us personally.
The first nominated charity is Autism Speaks. You can find out more information on our charity page. IPS and our Client Community
It is our goal to expose various charities to our client comm…
The IPS Community Suite provides a fantastic community solution for all kinds of websites.
For many of our customers, the community is just one component of their site. Many of these customers utilise single sign-on systems for integrating the community with the other areas.
At IPS, we get requests for this on a regular basis, and over the years, I've worked on many of these solutions as part o…
Custom Sidebar Blocks and Profile Photos
Since the IP.Board 3.2 update, the look & feel of content blocks and sidebar widgets has been somewhat left behind in IP.Blog. Inconsistent avatar image sizes and design decisions that were made for IP.Board 3.1 have left some areas of IP.Blog looking dated and disconnected from the rest of the suite.
For IP.Blog 2.6 these sidebar blocks have been given …
The license changes that we blogged about back in May are now live! License Structure Changes
The main change is that IP.Board is no longer be the "root" license item. You now have a license to the IPS Community Suite and will then have the various applications as additions under that root license. Anyone with a current IP.Board Standard License or IP.Board Business License will see this chang…
With a product history of over ten years, it's quite often a challenge keeping the product right on trend. Old technologies go and we make provisions to remove them and likewise, we make provisions to incorporate new technologies.
For example, IP.Board was the first bulletin board to incorporate Ajax functionality all the way back in IP.Board 2.1 back in 2005. We were also one of the first board…
Another of the goals for IP.Blog 2.6 development was to increase the level of user engagement, both from existing on-site users and from elsewhere. Auto Share on Content Creation
To complement the existing share links which appear alongside blog entries, it is now possible to automatically share Blog content with Facebook and Twitter at the time of posting. This is possible even if the content a…
With the recent IP.Board 3.3 update much emphasis was placed on search engine optimization. Many areas were found where a small change would make a big difference in preventing duplicate content, reducing crawl errors and ultimately resulting in better rankings. One of the goals for IP.Blog 2.6 was to continue this trend and identify potential improvements. Duplicate Content
Recent algorithm cha…
IP.SEO is a popular free add-on for IP.Board which provides many additional SEO features for your community.
IP.SEO has proved so popular since it's introduction that as of IP.Board 3.4, we're going to be moving it's features into the core of IP.Board meaning that a separate application will no longer be necessary.
If you're not already familiar with IP.SEO, here's an overview the features it …
Development of IP.Gallery 5 continues, and today we wanted to blog about some additional changes you can expect to see in the next release. These changes are unrelated to one another, however they collectively will improve the functionality and capabilities of IP.Gallery 5.0. Note that these changes were derived as a direct result of client feedback, so keep it coming! RSS Feed Enhancements
A…
Hopefully most of you don't have the need to visit our bug tracker enough to have noticed, but we recently switched from a third party application for managing our bugs to IP.Content.
The history of the software we used to use for our bug tracker goes back quite a bit. It was originally written by Matt, many years ago - before that we used regular forum topics as bug reports!
A couple of year…
While we discussed some of the basic core navigational changes in IP.Gallery 5.0 already (and yes, we've heard your feedback on those changes!), we have implemented some other changes to enhance consistency and bring IP.Gallery into the modern world wide web. Some of these changes are basic on the surface, but will help to ensure the interface remains consistent throughout the application, in thi…
We have taken the time with IP.Gallery 5.0 to implement some smaller changes that help to round off the functionality of the software and bring it more in-line with the rest of the suite. While these changes individually are all quite small, collectively they help to make Gallery easier to use and more intuitive for the average user. pInterest Integration
For those of you not familiar with this…
One of our big goals with Gallery 5 is to restore a level of administrative control that allows different sites to dictate how their users and moderators will interact with the software. Some sites wish to allow their users to have control over their submissions. Some sites wish to control the submissions their members contribute once the file is uploaded. In order to accommodate the myriad of …
Development of Gallery 5.0 is well underway, and while we are not quite ready to reveal the product just yet, we wanted to give our clients an outline of what they can expect to see when the new version becomes available. Gallery 5.0 will build upon changes in the 4.x series, while restoring some of the functionality of the 3.x series, delivering a product you can easily understand and navigate t…
To wrap up our blog entries on IP.Nexus, there's a few more additional features and enhancements that we haven't previously covered: Custom Advertisement Zones
IP.Nexus allows you to create advertisements and even sell advertisement space on your community.
There are several different areas where the IPS Community Suite has built-in advertisement spots where Nexus can place advertisements.
…
Our last few blog entries on Nexus have talked about some of the larger changes we've been making to the storefront and how billing is handled.
In this blog entry, I wanted to go over some of the smaller changes we've made in these areas :smile: Gift Vouchers
Starting with Nexus 1.5, customers can purchase gift vouchers, which can then be redeemed in your store.
If you have enabled this, w…
IP.Nexus allows you to sell hosting packages with using integration with CPanel/WHM.
In IP.Nexus 1.5 we're adding support to sell domain names too using integration with eNom.
Once set up, customers purchasing hosting accounts will see a new option to purchase a domain name:
The TLDs available and their prices can be set in the Admin CP.
When selecting this option, the domain will be added …
IP.Nexus currently provides support for a number of gateways: Authorize.Net (with ARB and CIM support), PayPal (Website Payments Standard and Pro), 2CheckOut and manual payments (check, bank wire, etc.)
In IP.Nexus 1.5 we're adding more gateways and extending the functionality of some existing gateways. Gateways Stripe Stripe is a relatively young payment gateway. They support all major car…
We have started work on IP.Board 3.4 and this blog entry will give you a general idea of our goals and also introduce some important license changes and future plans from IPS. It's an important entry so read on! IP.Board 3.4
As always we will be blogging about specific features as they are completed. IPS does not post traditional roadmaps as roadmaps are subject to change. Instead, we post blog…
IP.Nexus allows you to set up shipping prices with customisable rates, destinations and tax. Once an item has been shipped, you can then provide a tracking number which will provide the customer with a link where they can view tracking information.
While this solution allows complete control over shipping prices, it can be tedious to set up methods, and arrange shipments with couriers - particula…
Our last two blog entries have focussed on large new features to the support system in IP.Nexus.
But we're not stopping there! In this blog entry I wanted to talk about some of the smaller new features and enhancements we've made to the support system for IP.Nexus 1.5. Pay-Per-Incident
IP.Nexus 1.5 adds the ability for you to define a support department as "Pay-Per-Incident".
Each department…
Those familiar with IP.Nexus will be familiar with the ability to create custom fields both for packages (so when a user purchases a package they can provide custom information such as the size, colour, etc. of the item being purchased) and for customer accounts (so you could add additional fields for customers to provide when making a purchase, etc.).
In IP.Nexus we're adding the ability to use…
