Invision Community Blog: Invision Community

IP.Content 2.1 Dev Update: Easier Administration

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 13:08:44 +0000

While we continue to work on polishing IP.Content 2.1 to make it easier to access and easier to use, we wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the changes we have already made which we believe will allow you to better make use of all that IP.Content 2.1 has to offer. One major goal we are continuing to work towards with IP.Content 2.1 is to make it easier for everyone to use, and we believe these two changes will do just that (even if our work is not yet done).

Textual Keys in Templates
Databases and articles map to pre-defined templates in the ACP. You can modify these templates, and even create new ones, as needed for your site. You can use one database template for all of your databases, or you can make one template for each database you create in order to give each database it's own unique look and feel. There are many ways to configure your templates so that you get the most out of IP.Content.

One limiting factor in IP.Content 2.0 (and previous versions), however, is that within the templates you refer to the fields by the field ID. For instance, if you want to show the "content" for a database record, you may have to use a variable like so: $record[ $database['database_field_content'] . '_value' ]. In and of itself, this isn't a "problem", however when you are working with the template it's not immediately clear what variable you are referencing, and you will probably find that you need to look up what variables are available in the templates quite frequently. We have implemented a way to make this easier in IP.Content 2.1.

When you add or edit fields you can now define textual keys, and then utilize these keys in your templates. For instance, the article title field has a text key of "article_title". Now, in your templates, you can refer to this value simply as: $record['article_title']. Clearly, this is easier to use, easier to remember, and easier to understand when you come back to this template at a later point to make changes.

The upgrade routine will NOT update your existing templates. You are not forced to use the textual keys, and in fact you will need to add text keys to any fields you already have if you do wish to use them. However, moving forward we believe this will make it much easier for everyone working with templates to adapt the template to their needs.

Overhauled Wizard Process
IP.Content features a wizard process for block and page additions and edits. This wizard process is both necessary (some options can change based on previously selected options) and helpful for new users. While we are happy with how the wizard process works, we felt there were some obvious improvements that we could make, and we are happy to announce that they will be available beginning with IP.Content 2.1.

Firstly, after a page or block is created, more often than not when you go edit either a page or block you are wanting to edit the content or template. We accounted for this in earlier versions of IP.Content by building a special secondary form that is loaded, and if you wanted to change anything else you needed to relaunch the wizard. In IP.Content 2.1 this is not the case - when you go to edit a page or block you are taken into the wizard process, defaulting to the page where you edit the page content or block template. This allows us to consolidate the process, giving you a more consistent user experience and reducing the total amount of code needed to deliver the same functionality.

Secondly, you can now jump back and forth to any step in the wizard process at will (after the page or block is created, when editing the saved content). This means when you click on the page you will be taken to the step in the wizard where you edit the content, however if you just want to enable caching you can click on the "Caching" step, supply the values you wish to use, and hit "Save" without having to walk all the way through the wizard again. You can use a "Save and Reload" button on the wizard as well, if you wish to apply your changes, but leave the form still open.

Additionally, when you are creating a new block or page for the first time, while you cannot jump ahead in the wizard, you CAN jump backwards to any previous step if needed.

You can view a quick video here:

http://www.screencast.com/users/bfarber/folders/Jing/media/aa2105db-7931-4364-8182-5e402e50ae0a

We hope that these improvements make it easier for you to create your blocks, templates and pages, and allow you to better control and manage these resources once created. Please let us know if you have any feedback!

Gallery 4.0 - Slightly more than a sneak peek

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Starting from next week I'll be going into more detail about the user interface changes for Gallery 4.0, but until then, enjoy...

I'm sure you'll have a lot of questions, so to keep things ordered, please leave feedback for this blog entry in the Gallery feedback forum.

See you next week!

IP.Content 2.1 Dev Update: Database Improvements

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 12:12:26 +0000

The article and database functionality in IP.Content helps you manage content on your site in many ways, so one goal we work towards in each release is balancing functionality and capability with ease of use. We don't want to remove functionality to make the software easier to use, but we also don't want the functionality available to inhibit how you use the software. We also work towards integration and consistency with the forums to help deliver a consistent experience for your users. Some changes you can expect to see to the databases and articles areas in IP.Content 2.1 have been implemented to help deliver on improved functionality, consistency, and ease of use.

Facebook Like
IP.Board 3.1 introduced the ability to "Like" any topic on Facebook, helping to share content from your community on the world's largest social network. This functionality has been well received, and we are pleased to announce that IP.Content 2.1 will feature this same capability for any articles and database records on your site. Your users will now be able to "Like" (and comment through Facebook) any content you post in your articles and databases areas (if you have enabled the Facebook Like hook).

Easier Moderation
It can be challenging for your moderators to know what content is pending approval in your databases in IP.Content 2.0. We have improved moderator interaction with the databases and articles in a few key ways that we believe will help you better manage the content stored in your databases.

1) Records pending approval in the articles section are now highlighted with the "moderated" CSS class on frontpages and in archive listings in the articles section. This allows you to easily see which articles are not yet approved so your moderators know which ones require approval.

2) Records pending approval are now tracked at the category level. This allows IP.Content 2.1 to show a link below each category "There are x articles pending approval". Your moderators can click on this link, and all articles pending approval will be shown at the top of the listing, similar to how the forums function.

The records pending approval tracking has also been implemented for general databases as well.

Enhanced Frontpages
Frontpages are a new concept introduced in IP.Content 2.0 - they act as a landing page for the articles area (or individual categories within your articles section). We have added two new key features to the frontpage feature of IP.Content 2.1 which we believe will help you better control this page and configure it to work how you like.

Pinned Articles
The "pinned" status on an article is honored in the archive listings, however pinned articles were not automatically pinned to the top of frontpages. We have added a new setting to the Frontpage Manager in IP.Content 2.1.0 that will allow you to choose if you want your pinned articles to be pinned at the top of your frontpages as well.

Pagination
Frontpages were meant to act as a sort of "portal" for your articles, and were not originally designed to allow you to walk through all of your content. You could use the archives view in order to walk through all of the submitted content, if you wanted.

In IP.Content 2.1.0 you can now enable pagination in the Frontpage Manager, allowing for pagination right from the frontpage. When enabled, a simple pagination method is utilized to provide a "Next Page" and "Previous Page" (when appropriate) at the bottom of your frontpages, allowing you to walk through all of your articles right from the frontpage similar to how a blog might work. It is important that you match the number of "articles per page" setting in the frontpage manager to the number of articles that are displayed (as frontpages can show fewer articles than you configure) in order for frontpage pagination to work 100% correctly, however after you have configured your frontpages correctly your users will now be able to more easily view all of the articles on your site without having to load each category's archive view individually.

Database Plugin Updates
Databases support plugin callback functionality to allow advanced developers to exert more control over how IP.Content processes data before updating it's local records. We have expanded the plugin support in 2.1 to give you better control in your callback plugins. All areas that support plugins now have preX() and postX() plugin callbacks, and further to that, context-specific data is now passed to the plugin to allow you to more easily check for errors in submissions or manipulate the data that will be stored in the database. For postX() plugins, the new primary key ID for the inserted content is passed to the plugin callback so you can manipulate the new record as needed.

Even better, we already have basic documentation written up for the plugin changes, so we should have all of our plugin documentation available when IP.Content 2.1 is launched!

We believe these small but useful features will allow you to better control the behavior of databases in IP.Content 2.1, giving you more functionality, more consistency with the forums, and more control over how IP.Content functions on your site.

Gallery 4 - Structural Changes

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 07:08:00 +0000

Following on from my manifesto blog entry, I wanted to discuss some of the changes to structure that Gallery 4.0 introduces and explain why we have made those changes.

This blog entry does get a little technical, but even if you are not a technical person, please bear with me and feel free to skip over sections that are not relevant to you. I feel it is important to explain in detail the challenges faced when re-writing Gallery.

Overview
I want to completely re-focus Gallery and make the media the center of the application. I want users to view the images without being so concerned as to where they belong. I want to focus on organic discovery over being forced to browse pages of user albums or pages of categories.

The Problem
Although competent, it's no secret that the current Gallery has become a little confusing and over complicated. Over the years features and settings have been added too appease a small demand that has undermined the "flow" of the product. I have reviewed a lot of our customer's gallery installations and in most cases a lot of the more complex functionality in Gallery is not being utilised.

For example, the current Gallery allows for very complex permission based hierarchical structures that mixes albums and categories. Programatically, this is incredibly hard to maintain and almost impossible to work with beyond a superficial level.

Consider the following:
- Category A (Global viewing permission)
-- Category B (Restricted viewing permission)
----User Album A (Public)
------ User Album B (Private)

This allows for great flexibility but a severe cost to code maintenance and efficiency. The only way to fetch images that the current user has permission to view is by loading all the categories and albums into memory and iterating over each; testing view permissions and finally constructing a large list of permissible IDs which is passed into an SQL query. This is an "expensive" operation and once you get past 10,000 albums you quickly run into issues with MySQL not being able to parse the query as it is too large. This is a wall and the current model allows for no way around it.

The Solution
Categories and albums are almost alike. They are both containers that can accept uploads. For this reason, I have merged them into a more pragmatic "albums" model.

Administrators can set up "Global Albums". These behave much like categories used to in that you can set them to be containers only or allow uploads. You can restrict access permission based on member permissions much like you do with forums.

Users can create "Albums". These are almost identical to the current user albums in that they can be set to "Public", "Private" or "Friend Only". These are no longer restricted to the 'Members' category or being children of categories. They are created at "root" level and are not included in the hierarchy unless attached to a category.

This creates two different spaces. The Admin defined strict hierarchy and a more social public space.

There are hard rules on user created album use and the software deliberately restricts the freedom of use so that order is maintained and a simple flowing permission model is employed. In practical use, you shouldn't notice these limits but the code is much simpler if you box in their usage.

When creating a user album, you can elect to attach it to a category. When you do attach it to a category, it automatically inherits the permission of the parent category. You will be unable to set it to friend only or private. You cannot attach a sub-album to an album attached to a category.

- Category A
---- Category B
------ User Album X (Inherits permission from Category B)

This small change makes selecting images much simpler as you do not have to consider a dozen different possible permutations. We can now cache permissions with the image which makes selecting them outside of an album a quick and efficient task. This allows us to quickly query "streams" of images without having to learn about their album which frees up what we can do with the interface.

I will begin to reveal more specific interface implementation over the coming weeks.

Please let me know if you have any questions!

IP.Content 2.1 Dev Update: Tighter Forum Integration

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 12:51:38 +0000

IP.Content features robust integration with IP.Board, allowing you to promote posts to articles and allowing you to use your forums to host the comments for your articles and other database records. This functionality is important to many administrators, helping integrate these two areas of your site closely. We have enhanced the IP.Content and IP.Board integration in IP.Content 2.1.0, giving you better control over how IP.Content interacts with your forums.

Better Control of Topics
You can configure IP.Content to post a new topic in the forums when a new database record is saved. This topic is then used to host the comments for the article or database record, and your users can then comment on the article either from the article page directly, or within the forums. Your moderators can control the comments from both areas, giving you a lot of flexibility with regards to how your databases function.

We have enhanced this integration in IP.Content 2.1.0, allowing you to better control the topics that are automatically generated in the forums. Previously, when a topic was posted, the post consisted of the article or database record "content" only. Beginning with IP.Content 2.1.0, you can now control on a per-field basis which fields are included with the automatically generated forum topic. A new "Topic Format" option is available for each field in your databases, allowing you to control how that field is represented in the topic that is posted.

If you leave the "Topic Format" option blank, the field will not be included in the automatically posted topic. Otherwise, you control the format very much like you would control a profile custom field - you can define a "{key}" and a "{value}" macro which IP.Content will replace appropriately. With this new option, you can control which fields are included (or not included) in the topic that is posted, and how they will be formatted. You could use this capability to create a form on your website which in turn posts topics in a hidden forum for your staff to review, or you could include more details about an article (such as the article image) when it is posted. This new option should give you much better control over the topics IP.Content creates in your forums.

Better Synchronizing of Articles
IP.Content 2.1.0 will include a new hook that will allow for comment counts to be more accurate when you use the forums to manage comments. Now, if your moderators delete a comment from the forums (instead of from IP.Content), IP.Content will be properly updated so that it reflects the accurate comment count.

Additionally, when IP.Content posts a topic to host the comments for the article, a link to the article is now included automatically at the end of the post. This may seem like a minor detail at first, but this will help better integrate and cross-reference the content on your site so that your users can more easily discover everything you offer.

Re-Use Existing Topics
Many users have requested a way, when they promote a post to an article, to be able to use the existing topic to host the comments for the new article. Currently with IP.Content 2.0, when you promote a post to an article and you use the forums for the comments, a new topic will be created. You now have more control over this process in IP.Content 2.1.

There is a new configuration option in the ACP under "Promote Article Settings" to allow you to control this new behavior. The options for this setting, labeled "Allow promoter to associate article?", are "Do not associate", "Allow promoter to choose" and "Automatically associate". When you select "Do not associate", a new topic is created, just as IP.Content 2.0 currently behaves. When you select "Automatically associate", when the post is promoted to an article the existing topic is automatically associated with the article, in order to host it's comments. When you choose "Allow promoter to choose", an option is available on the promotion form allowing you to re-use the existing topic to host the comments for the article.

It is important to realize some caveats with this capability:

While the option to "move" a post may still be available, this could result in breaking the topic association if you promote the first post in the topic to an article. It is strongly recommended that if you are planning to associate articles with their existing topics that you disable the ability to "move" posts.
Promoting a post in the middle of a topic will result in the entire topic (including posts made BEFORE the one that was promoted) to appear to be comments of the promoted post. This could result in unrelated posts appearing to be comments of your articles.

Notwithstanding the above noted "gotchas", this new capability is a highly requested feature that we hope allows you to control the way your articles and forums are integrated in the manner you see fit best for your site.

IP.Gallery 4.0 - Manifesto

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Evolution
Six years ago, before Twitter existed and before Facebook became popular we launched "Invision Gallery". It was a simpler time. Not everyone 'surfed' the web with javascript enabled and in general interfaces were fairly basic. The Gallery mimicked a forum structure. It had categories which the administrator set up and allowed members to upload images. Other members could comment on those images and it worked great.

A little further down the road we added albums so members could create their own albums. These went inside a special category called "Members". This worked great.

A few years back when we upgraded Gallery to be IP.Board 3 compatible we added a newer front-end that did away with the normal category view and added the "boxes" that we're used to seeing now. This was great.

Although Gallery was starting to show its age. The web has moved on. Interfaces are more fluid and dynamic. People don't want to click through a dozen links to upload a picture. The additional functionality added over the years started to cripple the interface so that many found it confusing. Even setting up the basic permissions and categories caused a few to reach for technical support in frustration.

Clearly it's time to take Gallery apart and start again.

Revolution
The "truth" of the application is very simple:

Upload some media into an album
View, discuss and share that media.

Our aim is to streamline those processes so that they are intuitive and modern. We're not content with basic static pages anymore. We want to interact with the site like we would a desktop application and the new Gallery delivers that experience.

IP.Gallery 4.0 is a huge upgrade; the single biggest upgrade it has ever seen. We're blasting out the cobwebs and introducing a slick new interface that never loses sight of what a Gallery should be. We're simplifying permissions and accessibility to remove the clutter and confusion. We want you to fall in love with Gallery again.

Over the coming weeks I'll be discussing the new functionality in more depth, but until then, I'll leave you with a few teaser images:

For this one blog entry, I'm going to close comments and ask that you post your feedback in the Gallery forum.

We'd love to hear what you think.

IP.Content 2.1 Dev Update: More Control

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:22:27 +0000

Every administrator wants to have complete control over the web pages on their site, and this is what IP.Content is all about - allowing you full control over your site's content, right from your admin control panel. While IP.Content is already extremely configurable, we have taken the software even further with IP.Content 2.1, giving you finer control over some key aspects of IP.Content.

More Control Over Searching
With the first release of IP.Content, the central IP.Board search routine only supported searching IP.Content "pages". With IP.Content 2.0, we added support for searching within articles, databases and comments (in addition to the existing page searching support) from IP.Board's central search area.

While this has proved useful and well-received, many administrators have requested more configuration options for IP.Content with regards to searching. IP.Content 2.1.0 will include two primary, oft-requested options that allow you to better control how searching on your website responds to requests.

1) You can now configure in the IP.Content settings which area to search by default when a user searches in IP.Content. In IP.Content 2.0, "Pages" were the default and this could not (easily) be changed. Now, you can configure IP.Content to search Pages, Articles, Article Comments, any databases you have, or comments in any databases you have by default (the user can still change this from the advanced search form and the search results pages as before), depending on what is best for your site.

2) You can now shut off searching within individual databases on a per-database level. When configuring the database you just toggle a radio button, and that database is no longer searchable through the central IP.Board search routine. When you turn off searching in a database, searching in comments within that database is also automatically disabled.

These two new capabilities, combined, give you much more control over how IP.Board's central search areas behave with respect to IP.Content.

Multiple Domain Support
When you run IP.Content outside of your forum root directory, you supply the URL to the index.php file in the admin control panel. IP.Content uses this information to format the URLs to pages, and to understand which page was actually requested by the user. Some users have expressed their desire to run IP.Content from multiple locations on their site, for instance "articles.site.com" and "media.site.com", rather than running all pages under one base URL.

With IP.Content 2.1.0 we have changed the setting "URL to index.php" from a text input field (which only allows one URL to be entered) to a textarea field, allowing you to enter as many URLs to the index.php file as needed, one per line. After you have supplied the URLs to the index.php file (or files), you can upload the special index.php to each location specified, allowing you to run IP.Content from more than one location on your site. IP.Content will then be able to parse any URLs you have configured for in the ACP.

Search Engine Optimization
A new configuration option has been added to the page configuration wizard which allows you to omit the page's filename from the URL when generated. This option will only work correctly for pages with the same filename configured under "Default home page" (index.html by default). The purpose of this setting is to indicate to IP.Content that when it generates URLs to the page, not to add the filename on to the end.

For instance, if you have configured IP.Content to run from the root of your site, you may want users to access the homepage through the URL "site.com/" rather than "site.com/index.html". This new option allows for you to tell IP.Content to do just that.

We hope you will find some or all of these new options useful. While these new capabilities aren't exactly whiz-bang new features, they allow you to more finely control how your site works, and after all - that's what IP.Content is all about!

IP.Content 2.1 Dev Update: Block Improvements

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 18:53:06 +0000

Blocks are a core concept in IP.Content, allowing you to easily create widgets that you can embed on any page (within IP.Content or otherwise). IP.Content 2.1 introduces several useful updates for blocks that we believe will help you customize your pages even further than before.

Status Updates Plugin Block

IP.Board 3.1.0 improved status update functionality greatly, adding multiple status update support, commenting, and more. Along with this new functionality, the status updates sidebar plugin that is displayed on the forum index was updated to support the new features.

IP.Content 2.1.0 introduces a new plugin block that allows you to display this status update plugin on any IP.Content pages you wish.

New Feed Blocks

As of IP.Content 2.1.0, you will now be able to create feed blocks of both profile comments and status updates (and replies). This new feed block is available in addition to the previously mentioned status updates plugin block. You can filter both feeds to control what content is pulled based on the poster and receiver information (for instance, show all profile comments made by my friends, or show all profile comments received by the admin of the site). These feed types can be useful for creating social networking style pages - perhaps you want to show a feed of all profile comments for the currently logged in user, or perhaps you want to show a feed of all recent status updates from the logged in user's friends. These new feed types can be used in creative ways to create social pages your users will love.

New Filter Options: Members Feeds

Beginning with IP.Content 2.1.0 some new filtering options have been added for member feeds. You can now restrict a member's feed to only show members you are friends with. This can be useful to create a "friends feed", for instance, in order to list all of a particular user's friends. You can also now filter member feeds to only show logged in users. You could, for example, combine this with the option to only show friends for a user to show all of your currently online friends. These two new filter options can be used in creative ways to make interesting member feeds for your community.

Dynamic Filtering for Databases

In IP.Content 2.0, you can filter database and article feed blocks based on arbitrary data in up to 5 fields. This can be useful to create content-driven feeds based on specific fields in your database, however it has the drawback that the feeds are always static based upon the configuration in the ACP.

Beginning in IP.Content 2.1.0, you can now configure the database and article feeds to filter based on input variables. For instance, you can embed one of these feed blocks on a page, and then when you link to the page you can add an input variable that will allow for dynamic filtering of the content. This is probably explained easiest through an example.

Let's say you have a page "results.php" that you have embedded a database feed block in. This ecan create a feed of results from your database based on the block configuration in the ACP. With IP.Content 2.1.0, you could set one of the custom filter fields to search one of your database fields for "@title". The @ symbol here tells IP.Content to obtain the filter from the input variables - in this case an input variable named 'title'. When linking users to this page, you would use a URL similar to "mysite.com/results.php?title=hello". When IP.Content loads this page and parses the block, it will use the value from the input variable ("hello" in this example) to search in the field, finding all records that have "hello" in the title.

This feature may be hard to understand at first, but affords developers with powerful ways to create unique pages without having to manually configure feeds for every possible scenario. We will be posting some documentation on how to use this feature following the release of IP.Content 2.1.0.

We hope you find these updates to the blocks in IP.Content 2.1.0 useful and look forward to your feedback!

IP.Content 2.1 Dev Update: Template Updates

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:45:00 +0000

Improvements to Template Management

Development of IP.Content 2.1.0 is well underway, and we've reached the point where we are ready to start sharing with you some of the things you can expect to see updated in IP.Content 2.1.0. We hope you are as excited as we are about the upcoming update, so without further ado, let's cut to the chase...

Revision Support

Have you ever been editing your page templates and made a change that you wish you could undo, but weren't sure what the template was like prior to making your change? Or maybe a helpful admin on your site made a change to a database template that you later discovered broke some functionality that you had previously added? There are often times when you may wish to review, or possibly even restore, a previous version of one of your templates. With IP.Content 2.1.0 this will be possible through the administrative interface.

Anytime you edit a template in IP.Content 2.1.0, a backup of the template is saved in the database. A new menu option available for each template allows you to easily review all of the stored revisions.

When you click on "Manage Revisions" it brings you to a new page that will list all of the stored revisions for a given template in reverse chronological order.

From this page, you can edit and delete any previously stored revision. You can also restore a revision from this screen. If you restore a revision, the current copy of the template is stored as a revision for future reference. You can also compare a revision from this page against the currently active version of the template, allowing you to pinpoint exactly what has changed.

In addition to all template types (page, database and article templates), revision support is also available for pages! That means if you need to restore an older copy of a page, you no longer have to worry about finding a backup somewhere - just use the revision manager to keep track of all your changes, and backtrack through them as needed.

Sharing Made Easy

Many of our users have asked for an easy way to share templates, and we are pleased to announce that IP.Content 2.1.0 will now include the ability to import and export any of your page, database and article templates.

From the template listing screens, you can now export both individual templates AND entire categories of templates

If you export an entire category of templates, the category and ALL templates in the category will be included with the export. Of course if you export a single template, only that template will be included in the export.

After you export the template, you can then import the template into any IP.Content template screen.

If you import an XML export that contains a category, the category will be inserted if it does not already exist. All templates that do not exist will be inserted as well, otherwise templates that already exist (based on the "template key") will be updated.

We hope that the ability to export and import templates will help customers in 2 primary ways

We hope these template manager updates provide you with useful tools to help you better manage your website. We also hope that the import/export functionality is utilized to build a robust collection of community-contributed templates that everyone can benefit from. If you have any questions or feedback, we'd love to hear from you! Otherwise, stay tuned for our next IP.Content development update blog entry...

[*]It should now be much easier to transfer templates from a development site to your live site. After setting up your database, article or page templates how you want, you can export them and import them into your live site. [*]Skinners can now create IP.Content templates and share them easily through the resource site. This allows for skinners to share free and paid IP.Content templates with users, and allows users who are not as familiar with HTML and CSS an easy way to install templates without having to code them from scratch.

IP.Nexus Dev Update

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 10:20:00 +0000

Since we announced IP.Nexus back in May, the interest shown has been phenomenal. We have held two limited pre-sales of IP.Nexus providing participants with a beta version of the product to provide feedback and testing beyond our internal QA team.

The ideas presented by the participants of these pre-sales has been invaluable. By using Nexus in real-world situations, users have provided some great ideas both for putting the finishing touches on 1.0 and for future versions. I wanted to go over some of the bigger things we've improved on since my original development entries so you can see how the feature-set has progressed thanks to these pre-sales.

Improved Tax Classes and Shipping Methods

For users selling physical items, we have improved and expanded on the tax class and shipping method functionality and interface.

It is now easy to set up multiple tax classes with rates dependant on the location of your customers, and flexible shipping methods which are also location-dependant and taxable.

See these short videos for an short overview:

Upsell

Lots of stores offer addon products and services for a product. When a user adds an item to the cart, this is a perfect opportunity to present such addons to customers to upsell.

We've added this to IP.Nexus. This is an example of what you might see now when you add an item to your cart which has addon services:

Improved IP.Downloads Integration

IP.Nexus integrates with IP.Downloads in a way that allows you (or even your users) to add files to IP.Downloads and specify them as being paid.

While this works great if you're selling single files, some users wanted a way to sell items through the IP.Nexus Store, but still be able to take advantage of the great IP.Downloads file handling features like secure non-web-accessible files and version handling.

We've tightened up the integration between IP.Downloads to provide an additional option when uploading a file: the option to associate a download with an IP.Nexus package.

To the administrator, what this means is, if you're setting up a package in IP.Nexus which you'd like to add a download to, you would then go to IP.Downloads and add the file there. You can use a category no users can access to make the process a bit more seamless, but if a user who hasn't purchased the package stumbles across the file in IP.Downloads, they'll simply be redirected to the Store if they try to download.

To the user, when they purchase an item in IP.Nexus which has a file associated with it, they will then see a "Download" button when they view that package in the client area:

Clicking that link will begin the download immediately - the integration is completely seamless to the user.

You can of course, have downloads which are associated with more than one package, and packages that are associated with more than one download (multiple download buttons will show).

IP.Nexus Release Schedule

As we have received so much great feedback from our pre-sale beta testers, we have been implementing many of their ideas and fixing issues they have discovered. This does mean that the first supported release of IP.Nexus has been delayed as we add new requests and then must test those new additions. However, we believe that taking this extra time to mature and expand the product's feature set will benefit everyone in the long run. As IP.Nexus deals with commerce on your community we of course want it to be as stable as possible for its first release.

We are anticipating a final, supported release of IP.Nexus sometime in October at the current time. We may do another pre-sale between now and then for those who cannot wait to try IP.Nexus so keep an eye on our Blog or subscribe to our Blog for updates.

Thank you all for your interest!

IP.Nexus Second Pre-Sale

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 12:39:00 +0000

We are very excited to be nearing the first public beta release of IP.Nexus! There has been much interest in the community for this new product and we cannot wait to get it out the door so everyone can start to enjoy its ecommerce, support, and other features.

As this product deals with monetizing your community, we are being very careful with its release. We do not want to release a product that might be unstable when it is designed to collect money on your behalf. Therefore, we are going to offer pre-sales for IP.Nexus in two phases. We are now ready for the second pre-sale phase. This second phase is available for purchase now and will be available for 24 hours.

The final, retail price of IP.Nexus will be $74.99 plus an optional renewal of $35 every 6 months for continued support, services, and upgrades. For this second round of limited pre-sale, we will be offering those that purchase during the next 24 hours to buy IP.Nexus at a reduced up-front price of $50 plus no renewals for a full year.

In return for a large discount, those choosing to participate in the pre-sale phase will have access to a beta release of IP.Nexus and a private forum to give us feedback. Please note that if you are one of the pre-sale participants, no ticket support will be offered. You are also going to be using beta software so there will be issues and we will appreciate your feedback and bug reports.

To order, simply login to the client area and click New Purchase. You will see IP.Nexus under IP.Board Optional Addons. Once 24 hours has expired it will disappear so act now! Once you purchase, login to the company forums with same you use in the client area and you will see an IP.Nexus testing forum appear under the Customer Lounge forum.

Promotion Expired

The 24 hour time for this promotion has expired. Thank you!

Easier Documentation Search

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:08:00 +0000

IPS is constantly looking for ways to improve, and one area of focus is documentation. We get a lot of feedback regarding documentation, and quite frequently the feedback we receive is, unfortunately, too vague to act on specifically. It's always a pleasant delight to get specific, focused feedback on how we can improve.

Last week I happened across a topic on our forums with just this kind of feedback, and after reviewing the suggestion and what it would take to implement, we agreed that the work was worth it. Cap'n Refsmmat posted some well-thought-out, clear and concise feedback on a specific action we could take that would make finding documentation easier, and I'm happy to announce that this change has been put in place on our website.

It was pointed out that as a user, it doesn't matter too much where the documentation you are searching for is located specifically. Whether it is a community article, official documentation, or an error code - you just want to find out more information, regardless of where that information is located. Today I built a few Sphinx search indexes of our downloads area, our error codes database, our official documentation, and our community-submitted articles, and then built a search interface to query all of these areas at once. We have replaced the search form in our documentation area with this new search utility.

Feel free to test out the new search tool and let us know what you think! Just head on over to our documentation page and use the search box at the top of the page to look for whatever it is you need to find. We may evolve this new tool further in the future, but for now we hope that it helps you find what you are looking for with less hassle and bouncing around.

IP.Nexus First Pre-Sale

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:47:00 +0000

We are very excited to be nearing the first public beta release of IP.Nexus! There has been much interest in the community for this new product and we cannot wait to get it out the door so everyone can start to enjoy its ecommerce, support, and other features.

As this product deals with monetizing your community, we are being very careful with its release. We do not want to release a product that might be unstable when it is designed to collect money on your behalf. Therefore, we are going to offer pre-sales for IP.Nexus in two phases. The first phase will be limited to 50 people and will be offered at a generous discount off the retail price. In return for this large discount, these 50 people will have access to pre-beta release of IP.Nexus and a private forum to give us feedback.

The final, retail price of IP.Nexus will be $74.99 plus an optional renewal of $35 every 6 months for continued support, services, and upgrades. For this first round of limited pre-sale, we will be offering the first 50 people to buy IP.Nexus a reduced up-front price of $50 plus no renewals for a full year.

Once this first limited, 50 sale offer is full we will not accept new sales until our second pre-sale which will come when the first, public beta is available. The second pre-sale will be offered to unlimited people for a short time so please keep an eye on our company blog for updates.

Please note that if you are one of the lucky 50 pre-orders, no ticket support will be offered. You are also going to be using pre-beta software so there will be issues and we will appreciate your feedback and bug reports.

To order, simply login to the client area and click New Purchase. You will see IP.Nexus under IP.Board Optional Addons. Once the first 50 are sold out it will disappear so act now! Once you purchase, login to the company forums with same you use in the client area and you will see an IP.Nexus testing forum appear under the Customer Lounge forum.

First 50 Sold Out

In just an hour we have sold out of the first 50 pre-sale licenses. Please keep an eye on our company blog for the public pre-sale coming soon. Thanks for your support!

What's new in IP.Board 3.1.2? Incomplete Members

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 09:00:00 +0000

In IP.Board 3.1.0 we added a 'step through' form that users registering via Twitter and Facebook were prompted to complete before being fully registered. This was so that the user could choose their own display name and complete an email address when it wasn't available from the service (such as Twitter).

If a member chose not to complete this form then their registration would not be complete and their account would be missing some data such as a display name and valid email address. This led to some confusion when viewing the member list in the Admin CP.

Was this a bug? Was IP.Board mysteriously deleting member information? To prevent this confusion, we've removed these 'incomplete' members from the member list and added a new section to manage them.

This new section clearly lists those members that are still in the process of completing their registration. It also identifies which service they used to start the account creation process. If you choose to delete these partial accounts, the member can always re-sign in to repeat the process.

We hope this little feature cuts down on confusion and removes 'clutter' from the Admin CP member list.

What's new in IP.Board 3.1.2? ACP Live Search and Dashboard

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 11:19:00 +0000

One of the most commonly used features in the Admin control panel is the live search feature. This is a great way to quickly locate settings and even Admin CP pages.

In IP.Board 3.1.0, we did have quick search boxes for forums and members on the dashboard but these were not always to hand. Often you need to search for a member or forum and have to navigate through to the correct section.

In IP.Board 3.1.2 we have extended the live search to include matches from forum names, group titles, group settings and members (display name and email address). Simply tapping in a phrase will return all the relevant matches.

In this example, we can see that "admin" has matched a member's email address, a forum name and group settings as well as an Admin CP page and some settings. Simply clicking on the link will take you to the relevant page. In the case of a member, this is the edit page for them; likewise you are taken to the edit page when clicking on a group's name.

By moving these search features into the global search bar, we've created a much cleaner ACP Dashboard.

We've also made the dashboard warnings and new version notifications much more prominent, so you can clearly see when there is an issue requiring your attention.

In addition, in an effort to ensure there are no dashboard warnings on a fresh install, the installer will automatically lock itself (thus not prompting you to delete admin/install/index.php) and new users will be able to (optionally) enter the license key into the installer.

Little usability tweaks such as these really make daily tasks more efficient which makes administrating your IP.Board even more pleasant!

What's new in IP.Board 3.1.2? (Part 1)

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 09:25:00 +0000

Moved topic redirect links
A common request from our customers over the years is the ability to have those redirect links that are added when moving a topic to automatically 'expire' and be removed. This is one of those features that was on our lists for years but never made it into the feature set due to time constraints and other factors.

Happily, we found time to implement this for IP.Board 3.1.2.

The administrator can specify a number of days before the redirect links expire in the Admin CP settings page.

The daily clean out task now checks for any deletable redirect links and removes them automatically.

Archive Personal Conversations
Another common request we've seen since we introduced the new 'personal conversation' feature was the ability to somehow archive off conversations. Now that these conversations are much like personal topics that can have many replies from many different participants the old system of simply allowing a downloadable text file isn't an option.

In 3.1.2 you'll be able to email yourself a copy of the conversation. This will be sent as a HTML file attached to the email which you can download and store on your computer.

When you're viewing a personal conversation, you'll see a new box: "Archive Conversation"

Clicking this will send the email via 'ajax' meaning the screen doesn't refresh and you don't lose your place on the page.

The email is shown with the attachment

Which is a lo-fi copy of the conversation suitable for printing

Open ID: Email no longer required
We have removed the "email" requirement for OpenID logins, which should allow for many more OpenID services to work (including Google, TypePad and Wordpress).
While this change is in effect immediately for new users, for existing users you will need to edit the login method to enact the change. In the ACP, visit System -> Log In Management. Next to OpenID click the button and choose "Configure Details". Clear "email" from the "Required args to pull", and then add it to the "Optional args to pull" (which should appear as "nickname,dob,email" once you are finished).
Save the configuration and you're all done!

What's new in IP.Board 3.1.2? SQL Error Logging

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:51:00 +0000

It's an unfortunate fact that something may go wrong with your hosting environment at some point. MySQL is sensitive to many things and often this results in an error being thrown. This can be confusing for you and your members and getting support for this can take time as our technicians often have to request FTP details so they can log in and check the error logs written to disk.

A lot of the time, our technicians discover that there isn't an issue with IP.Board but rather something has happened with your MySQL database or server. This can delay you getting your board back up.

With this in mind, IP.Board 3.1.2 separates out "server level" errors such as a crashed table, 'out of memory' issues and more into its own error page which is displayed.

This instantly informs you of the problem and directs you to contact your host or troubleshoot the issue further if you run a dedicated server.

In the Admin CP, we have written a log viewer which lists all the generated SQL error logs. It also keeps a record of the latest error of the day which is displayed above the list of logs.

Of course, these logs can get quite large, so when you view a log, it is "tailed" and only shows the most recent 300 lines.

We hope these features help speed up getting the correct support for when you need it most.

IP.Nexus Dev Update: Customer Page

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 10:21:00 +0000

In previous blog entries, we've talked about various things the user can do: generate and pay invoices, purchase packages, have custom packages, purchase advertisements, file support requests, etc. IP.Nexus features a centralised customer page from which you can view all the data the user has made.

This is what it looks like:

The buttons you see along the top allow you to send the user an Email, view the customer's history (which shows a chronological log of actions made to the user account, even if items have been deleted, discussed in more detail here) or go to the IP.Board edit member page.

Wherever a member name is mentioned in the Nexus part of the Admin CP, it will link to this customer page. You can also access this customer page from the IP.Board edit member page via a link in the "Actions" dropdown menu.
You can also search for a customer in the Nexus Admin CP.

Details

This box shows the customer's account details. You can edit these by pressing the edit button.

Alternate Contacts

This box shows all alternate contacts on the account and which purchases they are associated with. You can remove an alternate contact or manually add contacts.

For more information on alternate contacts, see this blog entry.

Notes

This box contains miscellaneous notes made by staff members on the account.
Staff members can (where they have permission) add, edit and delete notes.

Purchases

This box contains all purchases the customer has made.
This will include items from the store, custom packages, IP.Downloads files, advertisements and any purchases made through third party applications.

The icon on the left indicates the type of purchase (mouse over will provide a text description). You can see when the item was purchased, and when it expires, and you can edit, cancel or transfer the purchases.
Purchases which have expired are highlighted amber, and purchases which have been cancelled are highlighted red.

If a purchase is associated with another purchase, it will display in a tree format.

For more information on managing purchases, see this blog entry.

Invoices

This box shows all invoices that have been generated on the customer's account.
You can click on the invoice title to be taken to detailed information about the invoice, and can generate a new invoice by clicking the "Add Invoice" button.

For more information on managing and generating invoices, see this blog entry.

Support Requests

This box shows all support requests created under the customer's account.
You can visit the support request by clicking on the title.
The icon on the left uses the same icons as topics on the forums to indicate if you have read the support request and if you have posted a reply to it.

You can log a support request on behalf of the customer by clicking the "Log Support Request" button.

For more information on support requests, see this blog entry.

Referrals

This box lists all members which have been referred by the customer (and only shows if there are any).
It also lists how much commission the member has earned from each, and the total commission earned.

For more information on referrals, see this blog entry.

IP.Nexus Dev Update: Advertisements

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 08:03:00 +0000

IP.Board 3.1 has a great advertisement system. Administrators can specify code to appear in certain locations around the community to display banner ads.
With IP.Nexus, it seemed logical to expand this to allow members of a community to purchase advertisement space.

In order to do this, when you install IP.Nexus, the advertisement system in IP.Nexus will override the system in IP.Board. Even if you're not planning on selling advertisement space, the system in IP.Nexus allows you to set up multiple advertisements (for rotation), automatic expiry, per-ad permissions and other features.

Setting up your own Advertisements

The Admin CP has a page which lists all advertisements currently running on your community. These could be ones created yourself, or ones purchased by a user.

Here you can add your own advertisements. You can specify either raw HTML code, or an image URL and link URL. The latter is required for click tracking.
You can also specify which groups cannot see the advertisement and if it should expire after a certain number of clicks or impressions.

The table indicates how many clicks and impressions each ad has received. When it has reached its limit, it will expire and become inactive.
You can manually edit the current number of clicks or impressions the advertisement has by editing it.

Advertisement Packages

In order for a user to be able to purchase advertisement space, you will have need to created at least one advertisement package. These define the terms such as where the ad will show, who it should not show to and how many clicks/impressions it will last.

You can manage your packages in the Admin CP.

Purchasing Advertisements

A user can purchase advertisements in their User CP.

They can select a package, provide the URL for the target link, and either upload or provide a URL to an image.
For security reasons, and to allow click tracking, users cannot provide raw HTML.

Once a user has purchased an advertisement, it must be approved by an administrator. An Admin CP dashboard notification appears if there are pending advertisements, and unapproved advertisements will be highlighted on the listing page.

To approve an advertisement, you would just click the cross indicating it is not currently active.

When a user selects his purchase in the client area, a page will display the status (approved, pending approval, expired) and the current clicks/impressions of the advertisement.

How advertisements are displayed

IP.Nexus will display whatever ad is appropriate for each location. If there are no advertisements set up for a location, none will show, and if multiple are set up, one of the appropriate advertisements will be selected at random to show. This is calculated on each page load, however, advertisements are cached based on the appropriate location, so advertisements are not pulled on every page load to save resources.
Each time an advertisement is used, it's impression count is increased. When an advertisement is clicked on, it's click count is increased. IP.Nexus will automatically disable an advertisement after it has reached it's allocated number of impressions or clicks.

IP.Nexus Dev Update: Customer History

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 08:30:00 +0000

In an application like IP.Nexus, it is important to have verbose logging features. Frequently you may wish to look over a the past actions of a customer to assist them, to check for suspicious activity or just for your own records.
In IP.Nexus, every action taken on a customer account is logged and can be viewed from the customer's information page.

IP.Nexus features a customer page in the Admin CP (which will be discussed more in a future blog entry). From here, you can access their history page. This is what it looks like:

Please note that the interface shown in this screenshot is not finalised and subject to change.

The log can be sorted so that newer actions show first, or older. You can also filter the log by event type, so for example, if you just wanted to see the transactions made for the account, you could uncheck all the boxes apart from transactions. As soon as you check or uncheck a box, the results list is immediately updated to reflect this (no page refresh).

The actions logged are:

Account Changes - if a member changes their name, address, telephone number, EMail address or password (or a member of staff does) the action is logged along with the previous values. If the change was made by a member of staff, which staff member is logged.
A purchases is made (i.e. a package is added to the customer's account).
The information for a package (such as the custom fields information) is edited. If the change was made by a member of staff, which staff member is logged.
A member of staff (and who) cancels, reactivates or deletes a purchase from the customer account.
A purchase is transferred to or from the account, the account it was transferred to or from is also logged along with the member of staff performing the transfer.
A member of staff (and who) changes the purchase to a different package (this is done when a package is deleted from the Admin CP).
A purchase expires.
An invoice is generated. Whether the invoice was generated by the member (store purchase), the system (renewal invoice) or a member of staff (and who) is also logged.
A member of staff (and who) resends, changes the status of or deletes an invoice.
A coupon or account credit is used against an invoice.
An invoice expires.
The system automatically processes an invoice because the total to pay is zero.
The customer makes a transaction. It is also logged if the transaction was automatically approved, held for review, or failed.
A member of staff (and who) approves or denies a transaction.
A support request is filed. If filed by a support member, it will be noted who, and if the support request was filed because of a received Email, this will also be noted.
A staff member (and who) adds, edits or deletes a note on the customer's account.
A staff member (and who) sends the customer an Email, and the content of that Email.
The member requests a credit payout.
A member of staff (and who) dismisses a credit payout request.

IP.Nexus Dev Update - Incoming Emails [Updated]

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Updated 25th June: Due to popular demand, we have added support for POP3 account polling as well as Email Piping

As mentioned in a previous blog entry, IP.Nexus supports Incoming Emails to be parsed as support requests.

Technical Requirements

In order for Incoming Emails to function, you will either need to configure your server to pipe Emails to a script, or a mail account which supports POP3.

Customers using our hosting service who are paying $5 for IP.Content and IP.Nexus will be happy to know their accounts support piping.
We strongly recommend piping over POP3 and customers not using our hosting service should check with their provider if either service is offered.

If piping is not available, most EMail accounts (including GMail) support POP3.
If using POP3 over piping, it is strongly recommended that you use a CRON job to poll the account. Check with your hosting provider if you are able to set up CRON jobs.

How it works

For Email piping:

The user sends an Email to a special Email address which you have configured on your server to be piped to a script in IP.Board.
Your server hands the Email to that script.
If the Email is a reply, the script will detect this from the subject line and add the content of the Email as a reply. If it is a new request, the script will look for support departments with the Email address the Email was sent to and create a new request in that department.

For POP3 polling:

The user sends an Email to a special Email address which you have configured on your server to be piped to a script in IP.Board.
IP.Board periodically checks (by default every 30 minutes, but this can be configured) if there are any new messages on your server.
If a message is found, it is pulled back to a script in IP.Board.
If the Email is a reply, the script will detect this from the subject line and add the content of the Email as a reply. If it is a new request, the script will look for support departments with the Email address the Email was sent to and create a new request in that department.

If the user does not have an account, IP.Nexus will still create the support request and they will receive replies by Email.
If the user then decides to create an account, IP.Nexus will recognise that they already have support requests and assign them to the new account so they can view them in the client area.

Attachments are parsed as per the normal IP.Board attachment settings so you can Email images, zip files, etc. but any file types IP.Board wouldn't normally allow you to upload will be ignored.
They will be displayed in the support request, and treated as normal attachments, just as if they had been uploaded in the client area.

Information for Developers

This is actually a feature of IP.Board 3.1, we just haven't previously announced it since there was no application until now.
You can however, add incoming email support to your own application, and we have written a developer article here which explains how to do it: http://community.invisionpower.com/resources/documentation/index.html/_/hidden-staff-only/incomingemailsphp-r371

IP.Nexus Dev Update - Alternate Contacts

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

IP.Nexus allows account holders to create alternate contacts who can submit support requests on your behalf.

On my account I have a package called "Basic Widget". I can create an alternate contact assigned to this package, and we will then both be able to submit support requests related to it, and view requests each other have submitted.

This is the alternate contacts page:

You can add a contact by pressing the button at the bottom, which will allow you to select which packages to assign them to.

And of course can remove contacts by pressing the button in the list:

When the alternate contact logs in and visits their client area, they will see, and can reply to, existing support requests, or create new requests associated with the package assigned to them:

When viewing a support request in the Admin CP, support staff can identify who is the main account holder, and who is the alternate contact:

IP.Nexus Dev Update - Handling Support Requests

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 09:00:00 +0000

In our previous blog entry, we showed the front end for submitting support requests.
In this entry, we'll show how staff members deal with support requests from the Admin CP.

This is what the support listing in the Admin CP looks like:

Staff members can select which departments and statuses to show using the filters at the bottom. Of course, only the departments they are allowed to access are shown.
Support requests are sorted by the date of the last reply, ignoring any replies made by the same member (so if a member replies to their support request with more information, they remain in the same position in the queue).

If there are any requests you are tracking or are assigned to you, buttons will appear at the top to allow you to view these requests, regardless of your current filter settings.
Support requests you are tracking or are assigned to you are marked in the list with an icon.

You can set the status on multiple requests at a time by selecting the checkbox for each one and using the dropdown menu at the bottom. For example, if you see duplicate tickets or spam.

This is what the request screen looks like:

The box at the top indicates the properties of the request. When you mouse over any of these, they will change to a dropdown menu allowing you to change them. After selecting an option, it will immediately be saved.
The box below this indicates the package associated to the request. If the request is in a department which requires an associated package and there isn't one, or it isn't the correct type, an warning will be shown:

When you change any of the attributes, such as department, the status of this will be updated via AJAX.
If the associated package has custom fields or subpackages, clicking on the package name will reveal this information:

You can change the associated package by clicking the link which will show a list of all the user's packages - the currently associated package will be highlighted:

You can reply to a request using the box at the bottom. At the same time as replying, you can edit any of the attributes.
You can also select a stock action, which will automatically fill in the reply and select the appropriate attribute values for you. You can then customise these or send the reply.

You can add a hidden note to a request by pressing the button at the top, which will display a popup for you to type your note:

The note will be displayed inline in the request:

Notes only show to staff members in the Admin CP - the customer will not see them.

You can control who is notified of replies to the support request using the "Notifications" tab at the bottom.
This is handy if the customer requests another person to be CCd on replies.

IP.Nexus Dev Update - Support Requests

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

In our previous blog entry, we discussed the management of the support desk.
In this blog entry, we'll be showing the front-end to creating support requests from the client area.

Members can view all of their support requests in the client area:

Members can submit a support request by clicking the "New Request" button.
The member can select a department, and if the selected department requires an associated package, they will be prompted to select one.
IP.Nexus automatically works out which departments are available to a member based on their active packages and your department settings.

Members can of course upload attachments to support requests.

This is what a support request looks like:

Members can reply to a support request right from the page, or, if enabled, set the status from the dropdown menu.