You may have noticed many of the Invision Community apps getting updates recently. Over the last several months we have revealed revamped Events, Gallery and Downloads apps and have listened to how you have been using them.

As a result, we are including some further app refinements as a direct result of that feedback.

Gallery

Many of you asked for more customisation options with the new overview page so 🎉 it is now possible to hide and show different sections of the overview using simple toggle settings without the need for theme edits. You can also adjust the number of items that show.

Searching for existing Gallery images to include in topics has been a feature of Invision Community for a while but previously search has been limited to the image name. Now, when searching for images via the "Insert other attachment" editor option, searching by album name returns images from that album.

Events

We added a similar improved overview to Events in the October release but for those of you with multiple Calendars you wanted a quicker way to subscribe to all events.

It is now possible to subscribe to all events from a prominent button in the header of the overview page. Members can subscribe to an iCal feed or download an export in just a couple of clicks.

Clubs

We also decided to use this release to add a couple of updates to clubs.

The popular “Mark solved” functionality is now available directly in your clubs with control over who can mark the item solved. You can allow the topic author to mark questions as solved or leave it to moderators only.

…and last but not least we added a contextual search tweak so that when members are viewing a club, the search filter defaults to “This Club”

We hope these small but useful improvements are popular in your communities and we look forward to hearing more of your feedback and requests.

Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments.

The features discussed in this announcement are available in both Invision Community and Invision Community Classic.

We love talking about our big new features, such as GraphQL and Live Topics, but we also like to shine a light on some of the smaller updates we've made to existing applications.

In this blog, I'll take you through a few changes to the Download app and an update on our various API integrations.

Downloads
After the success of the Events and Gallery refreshes, we've brought some of those changes over to the Downloads application.

Our Invision Community March '23 release will feature subtle theme updates to bring the Downloads app more in line with other applications. In addition, we have also added a grid mode for files. As in other areas of the platform, you can allow your members to choose their favourite view, which is remembered on subsequent visits.

A long-awaited request by our Marketplace Contributors was to delete their pending version updates. The good news is that our March release now allows this!

API News
Invision Community benefits from several API services, including REST, GraphQL and webhooks.

Our March release brings some improvements to GraphQL, including the ability to query for clubs and members. We have also enhanced the webhook for clubs which now returns information about the club itself.

While we're on the subject of webhooks, we have created a new webhook that is triggered via Downloads when a new pending version is approved.

I hope you find these updates useful. I'll be posting some more in our developer's blog on GraphQL, including some simple javascript examples to show you how easy it is to query for data and insert it into the templates without needing to edit templates.
 

This week, we're excited to preview some of the UI changes which will be included with Invision Community 4.7.8.

These changes result in improved performance for Google Fonts and better contrast for accessibility, while also fixing a few bugs along the way. When combined, these small improvements result in a much more polished UI, so lets dive in and take a look at some examples below!

Google Fonts

Google Fonts are now imported using the latest version of their API, which includes support for font-display:swap. This CSS property prevents FOUT, or the Flash Of Unstyled Text, where fonts would temporarily be invisible if the Google Font hadn't finished downloading. With this update, a fallback font will be displayed until the Google Font has been downloaded, so your text will be immediately visible even on your initial page load.

With this update, we have also imported font-weight:600 for improved rendering of semi-bold fonts.

Cleaner UI for Forum Grid

This update includes a cleaner UI for forum grids, resulting in improved contrast particularly for the forum icon and forum name.

Cleaner UI for "Expanded view" topic lists

In addition to new forum grids, the expanded view UI has also seen improvements in this update, where items are now separated by a simple border instead of being separated into their own boxes.

Improved button alignment on mobiles

When possible, buttons will now only occupy a single line on mobiles which results in a cleaner layout and less scrolling. Win win!

Before:

After:

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs now use a darker color and thicker font-weight for improved contrast, and no longer truncate when long titles are included.

Before:

After:

Social Icons

The background color of certain social icons has been updated to match their current brand colours.

Before:

After:

Widget designs

All widgets have received a slight UI overhaul, resulting in improved readability due to heavier font-weights on titles. Alignment issues have also been addressed in certain widgets for mobiles:

Before:

After:

Improved alignment in posts

Post controls (the bar containing the quote link and reactions) are now vertically aligned to the bottom of posts, regardless of the post length. Small change, but a big difference!

Before:

After:

And much more!

In addition to these changes, we've included a bunch of fixes including broken stats on record lists, wide tooltips, sticky announcements not staying stuck to the screen, incorrect image ratios for Recent Achievement badges and stretched thumbnails in widgets.

We think these improvements have really helped to clean up certain areas of our UI and we look forward to them going live on all sites with 4.7.8!

Over the past several years, you have seen us add many improvements to our platform packages. New features and capabilities leveraging the advanced technology we can offer you have really moved so many Invision Community powered sites into new areas of engagement.

We have been investing heavily in our platform resources and have seen hundreds of clients move from classic, self-hosted environments to our platform to take advantage of new features, and the peace that never having to run a server brings them. It's incredible how often the number one reason for moving is never having to utter the term VPS again!

Our packages used to limit based on online users, but that wasn't easy to track and explain. The switch to limits based on page views has made more sense, but it is still a limiter on traffic and, therefore, growth. 

We really do not want to limit your community growth! So today, we are happy to announce that all of our current platform packages now offer unlimited page views.

With this change, we look forward to seeing your community grow without worrying about traffic causing your costs to increase. We think you will love this change and look forward to presenting new platform improvements coming soon. 

Switch to our Platform 
Are you on a classic self-hosted Invision Community? Ready to stop caring about servers, databases, and backups? 

We offer free transfers to our platform, and we even give you an account credit if you want to give up your classic license. Not only does our team handle the technical move for you, but we also recognize your past loyalty so you can focus on running your community rather than the server. 

Contact sales today to talk about scheduling your transfer to our platform. We can talk via email or schedule a Zoom to go over options. 

We're excited to bring you a first look at our new and innovative Invision Community feature: Live Topics.

Live Topics is a hosted live chat and question-and-answer event that is converted into a forum topic upon completion. It combines the fun and togetherness of a live event with the permanence of a forum topic allowing you to continue the conversation long after the event has ended.

Your event doesn't have to just be text based! Live Topics allows you to feature a live video for your attendees. You can present to your attendees while fellow hosts select messages from the attendee chat to raise as questions for answers via the video or message replies from other attendees. 

Once the live event has ended, the questions and answers are converted into a permanent forum topic. Additional replies to the forum topic can reply to a specific question raised in the live event.

If you choose to answer on the live video, you can mark the timestamp of the answer, allowing members to jump to that segment of the video from the forum topic.

We're thrilled to finally share details of this new and exciting Invision Community feature. Although this is just a first look at Live Topics, we will follow this blog up with others drilling into the details, and multiple use cases Live Topics offers.

Live Topics is unique to Invision Community and will soon be available to selected cloud plans.

We are excited to announce that the Invision Community GraphQL API is now available.

This blog takes you through what GraphQL is and what makes it better than existing APIs present in Invision Community. It does get a bit technical, but you don't need to be a developer to appreciate how GraphQL will make life easier for those that do develop.

What is GraphQL?

GraphQL describes itself as a query language for APIs that gives clients the power to ask for precisely what is needed and nothing more.

GraphQL was created by Facebook in 2012 and is now an open-source project governed by the GraphQL Foundation, which operates independently of Facebook.

What makes GraphQL better than existing REST APIs?

GraphQL has several advantages over the existing REST API present in Invision Community, and these include:

Flexibility: GraphQL allows clients to request only the data they need, reducing over-fetching or under-fetching data. Getting data from a REST API often means receiving many fields and values you don't need to complete the operation you're creating.

Versatility: GraphQL can query multiple databases or APIs, making it a more versatile solution than REST, which often requires multiple endpoints for multiple data types.

Strong Typing: GraphQL has a robust type system, making it easier to understand the capabilities of an API and catch errors early in the development process.

Better Performance: By allowing the client to request only the data it needs, GraphQL can improve the performance of an application compared to REST, which often returns more data than necessary.

Easier to evolve: The schema-based nature of GraphQL allows for more straightforward and less-breaking changes to the API compared to REST.

Let's look at an example

You're building a dashboard that uses Invision Community data for your Node.js application that shows the latest topics, latest registered members and calendar events. With the REST API, you need to make three requests to get all the data you need. With GraphQL, you can fetch the exact data you need with a single request.

Modern Web Development

GraphQL is now the standard for modern web development, including building mobile apps. A modern web app has a "front-end" and a "back-end".

The front-end refers to the user-facing part of the web application. The front-end is typically written in client-side languages such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and is responsible for rendering the user interface and handling user interactions. It communicates with the back-end to retrieve and display data.

The back-end refers to the server-side part of the web application. The back-end is typically written in server-side languages such as PHP, and is responsible for performing business logic, managing data, and serving API responses to the front-end.

Using GraphQL as the interface between the front-end and back-end, the development and deployment of each component can be done independently, improving the overall efficiency and scalability of the application.

At Invision Community, we know that some clients use REST to pull data from Invision Community for use in bespoke web and mobile apps. So we hope you're even more excited about the possibilities with GraphQL.

A list with all currently available queries, mutators and data types can be found in our developer documentation section.

Extending Invision Community Functionality

Of course, you also have full access to the GraphQL API in the Invision Community framework, so you can use GraphQL inside your controllers to run your queries, which has the advantage that you won't need to worry about future changes to the API. 

In addition, we have also created a GraphQL template plugin, which can be utilized inside templates to fetch any data.

This is a more technology-heavy blog than usual. The main takeaway is that we continue to invest in ways to allow your Invision Community data to be used by your own applications. GraphQL makes that job a lot easier and much more efficient.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Humans are visual beings. Images attract our attention, can communicate ideas faster than the written word and can trigger meaningful discussions. At Invision Community we recognised this very early in the company history and have included a Gallery application for many years. During this time online communities have evolved substantially so we thought it was time to re-assess what it means to offer a community gallery and have some exciting developments to share.

Visual Refresh

The first thing we wanted to do was to give the look & feel a modern overhaul. @Ehren has done a fantastic job with modern design ideas. We took inspiration from the recent overhaul of the Events app and included a brand new Gallery overview page. This view better highlights featured and new images but also brings recent image comments in to focus to promote discussion.

Better Video Support

Video support has been included in Invision Community for a while but browser support has varied wildly. This often led to a poor experience where viewers were prompted to download plugins or forced to download the video in its entirety. Browser support for MP4 playback has moved on however and we have been able to update Gallery with some new functionality.

Frames from the video can be extracted for the preview thumbnail automatically. We have retained the option to upload a separate preview image however for people that want manual control over the image shown. Skipping ahead in videos is now also supported without the need to download the entire file or use plugins.

For communities that are able to leverage our cloud platform non MP4 videos will be automatically converted to support these features.

Searchable Image Contents

Another benefit for Cloud Communities is images can now be optionally analysed to make their contents searchable. For example, if an image of a tree or woodland scene is uploaded, this would previously only be searchable if the title or description of the image contained specific words or phrases. Now images can be identified solely by their visual contents.

NSFW (Not Safe For Work)

Invision Community contains tools to automatically moderate sensitive images to prevent them being posted. Some communities with more mature audiences may wish to allow these to be posted however but with some protection. We have therefore added the ability for images to be optionally set as NSFW when uploading. This will cause images to be blurred until the viewer opts in to viewing them.

Performance & Usability

Images by their nature can be slow to load (particularly on mobile connections) so we took some time and removed lots of redundant javascript and CSS. Where appropriate we have also added support for prefetching the next and previous images in an album or category and lazy loading is handled by the browser natively. We combined this with an improved image navigation experience using an image carousel when viewing individual images and removed the confusing Lightbox overlay. The Lightbox is now used solely for full screen image previews without the visual clutter of comment counts and other meta data.

These changes are the start of further Gallery improvements to come and as always we will continue to develop based on your feedback.

Let us know what you think in the comments.

Last month we introduced some powerful updates with a long overdue overhaul of community events. We were very pleased by the excellent feedback received and enjoyed hearing your suggestions.

We listened and have been working hard to bring some further updates to Events.

Support for more streaming platforms

When creating a virtual event in your Events application, you may include a link to your event and the platform will advertise it with the vendor’s logo so your community knows what to expect. When your members are ready to join, choosing the “Open Event” button will set them on their way. With this update, a total of 14 third party streaming platforms are now supported.

• Zoom
• YouTube
• EventBrite
• On24
• Facebook
• Google
• Webex
• Slack
• Discord
• Microsoft Teams
• TikTok NEW!
• Twitch NEW!
• Vimeo NEW!
• SpotMe NEW!

Unobtrusive location prompts

When viewing the list of events, Invision Community would immediately prompt the user for their location. Your feedback suggested this was too intrusive and as a result members can now opt-in with the “Use my location” link and checkbox. If members do not opt in then their approximate location is used based on an IP address lookup. If neither of these options are available the results center on a default location that you can set in the admin control panel settings.

Bug fixes

As well as these changes we have also fixed a number of bugs including:

• A longstanding issue where event times could show incorrectly when members in different timezones edited events.
• Better localization to make sure all phrases are translatable.
• Some issues showing events in regions that use commas instead of periods for numbers.
• Hiding online event links after the event has passed.

We still want to make further improvements to Events and are looking forward to more updates in 2023. Let us know in the comments how you are using Events to bring together your community online and offline.

When we speak to community moderators of busy sites about what they want to see in future Invision Community versions, most ask for ways to improve daily workflows.

Community moderators are at the heart of every community, and those working with busy sites quickly find that repeating the same tasks reveals ways to save clicks and precious time.

We recently released our alert system, which is a great way to get information to a single user or an entire group of members. Alerts can be set so the members have to reply before they can continue interacting with the community.

Invision Community's November release now allows moderators to send a personal alert message to the author of the content they are moderating when their content is hidden, split, locked or moved.

This video takes you through the workflow when hiding a comment.

Combining the alert feature into the moderation workflow makes it easier to inform your members that you've taken action on their content.

For example, you may notice a member posting a topic in the wrong forum. It's now straightforward to move the topic and let the author know why it's been moved and where to find it.

Perhaps you've had to hide some content that doesn't fit your community guidelines. You can now let the author know when hiding the topic and the reason it's been hidden.

Informing your members why you've taken action on their content helps educate, remind them of your community guidelines when needed and prevent confusion when they cannot locate the content they recently posted. Making a personal connection when moving or hiding a member's content helps keep a positive relationship throughout the community.

Viewing alert replies

While we were at it, we have also made it easier to track and respond to alert replies when sending them to large numbers of members.

From November onwards, you will see the number of replies sent to your message when viewing alerts in the Moderator Control Panel. Clicking the reply count will show all personal message replies to that alert via a top-level filter.

This new time-saving feature will come to all Invision Community platforms in November.

@Daniel F proudly led development of this feature. 👏

We'd love your thoughts; let us know in the comments!

Community moderators have a responsibility to maintain a sense of normalcy and balance within a community.

The Invision Community platform includes powerful tools for moderators to help them mitigate issues that may arise. We just enhanced one of them.

Our new moderator approval queue feature, available in an upcoming release for all Invision Community clients, arms moderators with more information regarding why an item was sent to the approval queue in the first place.

The approval queue is a temporary waiting room for content that can either be approved, denied, hidden or deleted by a community moderator. 

Sometimes, it’s unclear to a moderator why an item was sent to the approval queue.

Our new feature solves that problem by including a reason with every item that needs to be approved. This provides clarity to the moderator in charge of handling items waiting in the wings.

There are a bunch of different methods in which an item can be held for approval:

Profanity/bad words

If a member uses a word you have deemed inappropriate, you may ask the platform via the ‘Word Filter’ option to automatically hold the post for moderator approval. In this example, the word “damn” is included in the Word Filter list. A member attempts to reply with it. Their comment is automatically held for moderator approval along with a reason why.

URLs

If a member posts a link to a third-party website, you may ask the platform to automatically hold it for moderator approval. 

Email addresses

If a member posts an email address, you may ask the platform to automatically hold it for moderator approval. 

Reviews

If a member posts a review on a digital download or a physical product, you may ask the platform to automatically hold the review for moderator approval. 

Topics/replies

A member, or group of members, must have their posts manually approved by a moderator before they can be seen by the rest of the community. 

A few other things worth mentioning:

• The moderator approval queue explanation is compatible with all of our applications (minus the Blog).
• The Forum and Commerce applications are the only two apps that can be required to have moderator approval at an item level (for example, individual replies within a topic or reviews on a product).

This new feature will be available in an upcoming release.

Thoughts? Let us know what you think in the comments!

Bringing your community together with both online and in-person events is one of the most powerful ways to create meaningful connections, long-lasting relationships and one-of-a-kind experiences. 

The pandemic put a stop to many in-person events, but now that the dust is settling and people are beginning to return to some sense of normalcy, physical events are becoming commonplace. However, we can’t ignore the recent surge in online events now that COVID inspired a new norm. 

Previously, the Calendar application acted as more of a personal planner, focusing on daily, weekly, monthly and yearly happenings. That functionality still exists, but we’ll leave it to Google Calendar and the likes to handle your standard appointments. 

Instead, we’re shifting focus to community-driven events with our appropriately named app, Events, available for all Invision Community clients. 

Our Events app features a beautiful overview page that showcases community events.

Let’s take a closer look: 
 

Featured Events

Community leaders can now promote member-driven events with the “Feature” option. This highlights the event on the main overview page for all to see. It includes the event’s cover photo, date, title and description.
 

Search Events

Search for community events that are located near you. 

Tapping the “use my location” prompt allows your browser to identify your physical location, then shows a list of events that are in close proximity to you. 

Get granular with your search. Filter by general  location, date and/or whether the event is an in-person or online event. 

Maps

When searching, a map is also available for you to see in an instant what community events are happening.

Happening Near You

This section shows a list of events happening near you. It includes a snap shot of the events happening near your physical location, as well as a map of where the event is taking place.

This tailor-made page displays events based on geo-location, so communities with members from all over the world will view and experience the Events page differently. 

If there aren’t any events happening, a message block is displayed instead that says: 

Quote

“We couldn't find any events happening soon near you. Check back later!”

Happening Today
 

On the day of, your event will include a badge to show the entire community the special event is happening.

Online Events

This section displays a list of virtual events within your community. Events are shown in chronological order by date and time.

Browse by month

We extended the search functionality to automatically show both in-person and online events categorized by the month. 

This is particularly useful to plan what events you’d like to attend and also see what’s in the pipeline. 

Event Page

Here's an example of what an Event's page looks like. It includes the event details, a map if it's an in-person event and an “Open Event” linked button for the online events. Optionally members can RSVP or confirm they attended when you request that per event.

Integrations

A particularly useful addition to our new Events application is the inclusion of popular, third-party video streaming platforms. When creating a virtual event in your Events application, you may include a link to your event and the platform will advertise it with the vendor’s logo so your community knows what to expect. When your members are ready to join, choosing the “Open Event” button will set them on their way.

Below is a complete list of platforms that Invision Community’s Events app can showcase (see examples in the screen shots above):

• Zoom
• YouTube
• EventBrite
• On24
• Facebook
• Google
• Webex
• Slack
• Discord
• Microsoft Teams

Here are a few examples of how your community can leverage our Events with in-person events:

Team building meeting
Unite your team with a collaborative event celebrating the company’s wins and victories. Sometimes in-person meetings spark new ideas in ways that a virtual environment can’t. 

Donation drive
Round up your local community and raise money for those in need with an in-person fundraiser. 

Training programs
Gather a group of community moderators and/or employees together and teach them how to innovate, strategize and lead with a physical training event. 

Flash sale
Make Black Friday, Boxing Day and other major retail sales an event within your community. Encourage your community to show up to a limited-time flash sale where in-person purchases are the only route to obtain an exclusive item. 

Let's check out some examples for online events:

Virtual happy hour
Let loose with a few of your community buddies at a virtual happy hour. Schedule something once a week or month and make a few extra friends no matter where they live (a cold brew at 5 a.m. your time when it’s 5 p.m. their time might be a tad awkward, but hey, it’s 5 p.m. somewhere). 

Holiday party
If your company is remote-based, an online holiday party is the perfect solution to spread the good time vibes. 

Interviews
Invite fans of an artist to watch a virtual live stream or music video where they can actively engage and contribute.

Fan gatherings
Speaking of fans or an artist or brand, unite people who share common interests together with a fan-fueled event. Conduct a Q&A, share inside information and create a space for them to celebrate their collective passions.

Our Events application is a welcomed addition designed to bring an enhanced presentation of the events happening in your space both on and offline. Community users can enjoy this interactive overview as an add-on to the traditional view. As a site admin, the overview page can be set as the new default in your AdminCP.

We are excited to bring the Events application to all Invision Community plans in an upcoming release.

Let us know what you think in the comments. 

Invision Community has an exciting opportunity to have customer service superstars join our team. 

Invision Power Services, Inc. is behind the leading community software platform, Invision Community. Our tailored solutions serve clients of all sizes, from smaller communities to the world’s biggest brands.

We have been on the forefront of independent and white label engagement communities since 2002.

The Role

General duties could include assisting customers via forum support, customer communication and marketing needs, and bringing ideas and energy to new customer focused initiatives. Part-time and full-time positions are both available. This role will vary based on your experience, skills, and our needs. If you have a passion for helping others and all things customer service, we would love to hear from you.

The position is remote, but it will require significant overlap with the EST working day. We offer a friendly relaxed environment with an established team who have a passion for what they do. There is an opportunity to learn from others and progress into more senior roles.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide public facing support and guidance to customers and prospective customers.
• Work with customer service team to communicate and prioritize customer needs
• Write and edit documentation
• Website maintenance and content creation

The most important characteristic is a willingness to learn and to take on new challenges. The role is varied and we are happy to find the right combination of duties to fit your skills and experience.

Skills & Experience

• Familiar with social engagement, not necessary Invision Community
• Experience writing cheerful and helpful support responses
• Willingness to learn our Invision Community software

The depth of experience can vary between applicants. Please apply even if some of these areas are not your strongest points. We can offer training and mentoring for the right candidate and our team is very supportive.

Location

Remote but must be available for a significant portion of 9-5 EST working day.

Salary

Part-time and full-time positions are both available and pay would be determined by experience and assigned duties.

How To Apply

Please complete the application form (This link has been removed) giving us as much information as possible.

.

Invision Community AI can now automatically detect and hold images not suitable for your community.

Our new Image Scanner and Discoverability tool, built into the newly-launched Smart Community section of the ACP for clients on select standard plans, has immense moderation power. 

This new AI feature scans images uploaded by a member, detects what objects the image contains then decides whether or not it’s appropriate to share the image within the community. 

If the AI believes the image contains anything adult, suggestive and racy, visually disturbing and/or violent, it will either hold the image for moderation or reject the image altogether. 
 

 

Should the image meet the approval requirements and get posted, the image is labeled with what the image “could contain.” These terms optionally show when hovering over the image and allow the image to appear as a search result. 

These keywords will also support your search.

In this example, I searched for the word “apple,” and results included a photo that @Matt posted of an apple.

Score thresholds

Each uploaded image is assigned a score - essentially a gatekeeper to what is deemed appropriate (and what isn’t).

How does the AI determine this score?

For each of the categories, a score is returned indicating how confident the service is that the image matches the corresponding category. Depending on the threshold percentage, you can choose to either hold the post for approval, or reject the image.

If the content being posted cannot be held for approval (for example inside a personal conversation) the image will be rejected at either threshold. 

When choosing your percentages, the higher the percentage, the more confident you want the AI to be when it scans images and identifies what the image contains and before holding or rejecting the image. 

For example, if an image is scanned for adult content and the threshold is 75% or greater in confidence that it contains adult content, the platform will hold the image for moderator approval. For the same image, if it is 85% or greater in confidence that it contains adult content, it will reject the image. 

If you want to hold more images, resulting in more moderator oversight, you would keep your percentages low. 

For example, if an image is scanned for visually disturbing content and is 40% or greater in confidence that it contains visually disturbing content, the image will be held for moderator approval. For the same image, if it is 75% or greater in confidence that it contains adult content, it will reject it.

The same applies to the suggestive and racy / violence and gore categories:

Here are a few more real life examples:

Example 1: A sneaky troll decides to disrupt a corporate brand community by posting NSFW images. The image detection can automatically enforce predetermined rules set by the administrator and stop the photo from seeing the light of day in the community.  

Example 2: A travel company has a community for people to share vacation experiences and information with others. Someone innocently posts a photo wearing a bikini during their trip to the beach, however posting scantily clad images in this community goes against the terms of the community. It is therefore automatically either held for moderation, or is automatically hidden from view. 

The Image Scanner and Discoverability feature is available now on select standard plans. 

ACP -> System -> Smart Community -> Features -> Image Scanner

Please note the video above uses a Beta version of the Image Scanner; the screen shots in this post reflect the most up-to-date interface. However, the logic remains the same. 😀

Interested in moving to a plan with the Image Scanner feature? Please feel free to reach out to us.

Questions? Comments? Let us know what you think about the feature in the replies. 

You’ve got questions, and you’ve got answers.

One of the glorious benefits to running a thriving community is its ability to be self-sustainable. We’ve added new Solved features available on both standard and self-hosted plans. 

While you’re working on growing the community’s presence (and the bottom line), your members are busy connecting and engaging with one another. In addition to you and your team answering questions, peer-to-peer networking is an efficient way to increase support and quickly attend to your members’/clients’/customers’ needs. 

Invision Community’s previously existing Solutions feature allows a topic starter, as well as community moderators, to mark a reply inside a topic as the solution to the question. We’ve added a green block for the member who started the topic that encourages them to mark a response as the solution. This is only visible to them and not other members participating inside the topic. 

Quote

If any of these replies answered your question, please take a moment to click the 'Mark as solution' button on the post with the best answer.

Marking posts as the solution will help other community members find answers to their questions quickly. Thank you for your help!

Here is what the new Solutions button looks like:

Not only did it receive a style update, but more importantly the topic starter can now receive periodic emails reminding them to revisit their topic and either re-engage until a solution is found, or mark a previously-posted answer as the solution. 

Community leaders have the ability to turn this feature off, or set the number of days before an email is sent (the default is set to 14 days).

Here is an example email:

We also added a Solved report in the Statistics section of your Admin Control Panel.

The report consists of daily snapshots taken within the community. The platform then records the percent of topics solved, as well as the average time it took to find a solution. This helps you understand pain points in your community, as well as what kinds of questions get answered and how long it took for a solution to come to light. 

Benefits of your community using Solutions:

• Cuts support costs: Customers help one another so your team can focus elsewhere.
• Builds a library: Community answers are easily searchable & shareable for future customers.
• Gives props: Reward customers for answering questions with Achievements.
• Empowers members: Customers help themselves by asking questions and finding answers.

The new Solutions features are available in an upcoming update to version 4.7 of our platform. 

The Solutions option is located in: Admin Control Panel -> Community -> Forums -> Forums -> Select desired Forum -> Edit -> Display Settings -> "Enable Solved?" Toggle + "Allow the topic starter to mark solved?" Toggle

Thoughts? Let us know what you think in the comments! 

Invision Community’s new Live Community features offer an immersive, real-time experience for members. 

Clients on select standard plans now have access to live components that drastically change how their users engage within the forum section of their community. 

These live features are included in the new Smart Community section in the Admin Control Panel. When enabled, Live Community allows a community to track and display hot spots where members are most enthralled. 

Admin Control Panel -> System -> Smart Community -> Features -> Live Community

Our Live Community components include:

• Who’s viewing an area live
• Who’s typing a response live

Who’s Viewing 

Our new Who's Viewing feature shows a list of members who are viewing any area within the forums application.

Sound familiar? We previously created a "Recently Browsing" block that shows what members are viewing a topic, however that block was a snapshot over a small block of time. The new Who's Viewing feature shows a list of members who are viewing a topic (and when they leave) in the present moment. 

Who’s Typing

We also implemented a live Who’s Typing feature. If you're quick, you’ll see a member typing a reply in real-time when formulating your own reply at the form located near the bottom of a content item.

These live community features can enhance your community by inspiring members to stay engaged within the community for longer, as well as feel connected to the other registered members. 

Whether you’re patiently waiting for a comment to come through because the reply form indicates a member/multiple members are typing, or gauging who’s viewing what in real-time, Invision Community’s new live features will elevate your community’s experience in the here and now.

No time like the present; that's why it's a gift! The Live Community features are available in our new version, 4.7.1. 

Community managers and moderators have a simple but powerful new tool at their disposal: scheduling a topic's future publishing date.

Previously, if a community manager wanted to draft a topic for a future release, they would have to craft the content elsewhere. It wasn’t the best experience. After listening to client feedback, we implemented a path for those with moderator privileges to create topics now, but have them go live in the future. 

Set this new permissions setting in the Admin Control Panel -> Moderators -> Content -> Can set a future publishing date? 

Notice the Publish date and time fields at the bottom:

Here are a few examples of when this would be useful:

Welcoming new members
A community manager can compose a topic welcoming members from that week, but set it to go live the next week. It’s a powerful, engaging and visible way to acknowledge new sign-ups. Pair this with our new Alerts System.

Anniversaries
Big day coming up? Create content around it now, but set the topic's publish date on the actual day. 

Content calendar
If you are in charge of creating community content, budget a chunk of time towards creating engaging topics. Set their future publish dates apart so there’s space for members to engage accordingly. It also allows your team to visually see the content and weigh in with changes (or hoorays!) before members see it.

Related:

Announcements
Scheduling an announcement inside a topic, in tandem with our Announcements workflow functionality located in the Moderator Control Panel, allows community moderators to create space for feedback from loyalists. 

Promo campaign
As a community manager, time is a commodity. Setting up a promotional campaign for a future product release sets you up for success. When planning intricate marketing projects, organization and editing are paramount. Setting a future release date creates space to ensure the messaging is clear and effective.

This feature, available for all Invision Community clients, is available in 4.7.1 Beta 1 (out now). View our release notes.

Thoughts? Let us know what you think in the comments (preferably now 😉).

See how long, on average, members ascend from one Rank to the next. 

 

We are excited to have added this new chart to our existing statistics that shows Rank Progression. This addition, available for all plans, is included in an upcoming release of our latest version 4.7.

You can find it in your Admin Control Panel -> Stats -> Users -> Rank Progression.

Ranks display a members’ perceived value to the community. The higher a members’ Rank, the greater their influence. Members with higher ranks earned those through their engagement and participation in the community. Actions like commenting, reacting and should your community be utilizing the Achievement system, through those Rules that award points. The more points, the higher the rank.

Learn all about our Achievement System and Points in this previously shared Blog.

Why is our new Rank Time Progression chart important?

Understanding how long it takes members to move from rank to rank helps you strategize a user journey. You want meaningful contributors to feel rewarded for their engagement and participation in your community and receive an increase in their Rank.

This chart provides a better understanding of how long it takes members to change Ranks.

You will now be asking yourself insightful questions like:

• Am I happy with that timeline? Are my members happy too?
• Are any ranks being achieved too quickly or not quick enough?
• Are the ranks that I want to be “exclusive” and reserved for my star members, appropriately adjusted and take long enough to achieve? 

Ranks, Rules and all things Achievements can be adjusted and changed. Ask yourself these questions and make changes to better support and reward engagement from those valuable members.

Related: Help Guide on how to set up Ranks in your community

Let’s take a look at this chart again.

Here, the Rank Progression average shows a curve, meaning the time, on average, it takes a member to jump from rank to rank increases.

If a member reaches Grand Master faster than you intended, you’re now armed with information to adjust the Ranks.

Ultimately, the shape of the line on the chart depends on your goals.

• Flat line = no time between ranks
• Rising straight line = similar amount of time between ranks
• Rising curved line = increasing amount of time between ranks

This new addition tracks Ranks for all registered members from day one.

Want input setting new Rank Progression goals? Please post in our community forum or leave us a comment.

While you’re at it, feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you think; we're looking forward to hearing from you!
 

See what members are currently most engaged with in real time in your community by using our new Trending Content feature included in our latest release, 4.7.0. 

Our new Trending Content feature, available on our Business & Corporate/Enterprise plans, automatically rounds up a list of engaging topics that are most active in the present moment within your community and proudly displays them for other members to see and contribute to. 

Trending Content is one of the best ways to stay on top of popular and current topics, as well as engage with other members in the here and now. It’s also a powerful method to inform search engines that your community is an authority in its niche because your members are constantly fueling the community fire.

How does the real time Trending Content feature work?

Our platform applies a value to different forms of engagement. This informs the Trending Content feature as to what it should display without delay.

This criteria is weighted and includes:

Replies: most valuable ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Topics that receive replies are the clearest sign a piece of content is trending.

Reactions: valuable ⭐️⭐
Your members are engaging with other members’ topics and replies. That’s great in helping to decide what is trending, but ultimately we want members to comment.

Views: somewhat valuable ⭐️
Visibility is important and plays a role in deciding whether a content item shows in the Trending Content section. 
 

The Trending Content may be visible in a block, or on your community's leaderboard.

Trending Content block:

Trending Content section on the leaderboard page:

The Trending Content feature may be turned on or off by visiting your Admin Control Panel (ACP) -> System -> Smart Community -> Features -> Trending Content.
 

Examples of useful Trending Content blocks in different types of communities:
 

Enterprise communities
If you’re in the corporate realm, displaying a list of trending content gives your influential clients and members an opportunity to see what’s shaping the ecosystem of your big-named brand. It also provides the company with an opportunity to monitor trends, then focus on more content like it to create another set of trending topics.

Educational communities
Display a list of trending content amongst your students. If there’s a particular question that captures the attention of your e-learning audience, chances are it’s engaging and thought-provoking. By including a Trending Content block in prominent areas of your community, students (and teachers) have an opportunity to weigh in and reach a solution together. 

Gaming communities
Include a Trending Content block inside your gaming community to drum up interest in new releases, share insider information and rumors about your favorite games and consoles and gauge what your fellow gamer peers are engaged with. 

Support communities
Should a critical support issue arise, your team will see what content items your clients are contributing to, assess, then solve.

News communities
Don’t be the last to know. When breaking news strikes, members tend to flood to the content item and share their two cents. Including a Trending Content block in a news community is the most efficient route to quickly keep your members in the loop regarding live news. 

Our new Trending Content feature is available in version 4.7.0. 

Thoughts? Drop us a line in the comments and let us know what you think. Should this blog post receive great engagement, you'll see it in our Trending Content feature located in our community forum. See you there!

In a digital world with no shortage of places to connect, a beautiful theme will help you stand out from the crowd. 

We previously touched on the importance of branded communities, and now we’re unveiling new functionality that will help make your theme more functional: easy access to header and footer tabs within our new simple theme editor. 

Invision Community already has a powerful and advanced theme editor allowing total control over every aspect of your community’s UI, however this power comes at the cost of ease of use. We often get asked if there’s an easier way to add a site wrapper, or header and footer with some tweaks to the CSS without learning the complexities of the theme editor. Now, we do!

Invision Community 4.7.0 comes with a simple theme editing mode.

Utilizing a clean interface, this editing mode allows you to quickly and easily add header and footer HTML, along with any CSS.
 

When editing a theme, after clicking the big green button that says "Use Simple Theme Editing," you're taken to a simplified theme editor page where you can add in code for your header and footer, as well as custom CSS.

Previously, this option was not available. Before, community leaders had to sift through a theme’s template structure to modify anything within the header and footer code by manually editing Core > Global > GlobalTemplate and work out where to put the HTML. Now, there are header, footer and CSS tabs for easy access.
 

The same Header and Footer tabs are also viewable when editing a theme. 
 

TL;DR? We streamlined an important theme editing process.

Our mission is to further simplify the more complex parts of the Admin Control Panel without losing the extensibility and customization Invision Community is famous for. The simple theme editor is a single step in that direction.

The new, easy-to-use header / footer / CSS theme options are available to use in our new release, 4.7.0.
 

Take control of your community messenger inbox.

Topics, replies and reviews are an incredible way to engage with members in a community, but sometimes a conversation needs to be had in private. 

Invision Community's built-in messenger is a powerful system that allows members to privately message another member, or a group of members, directly within your community. 

However, allowing your members unrestricted access to reach out could clog up your community inbox (and mind!). There are times when you may want a little space from receiving new messages. For example, when you are… 

• Going on vacation
• Working on a project that requires your complete attention
• Needing a moment to catch up

Currently, your only option is to disable the entire messaging system. That is effective, but it means you cannot engage with existing messages, send replies or message other members.

We’ve developed a solution! 

Invision Community 4.7.0 allows for more refined control over your messenger by allowing you to disable the inbox. 

The benefit of this is that you can continue existing conversations and start conversations with others while preventing anyone from messaging you (except staff members) either directly or via the Alerts System.

The "Disable my messenger" link has been replaced with "Disable my inbox". The warning pop-up makes it clear what this action will do.

Of course, administrators can still completely disable the messenger for themselves and other members of the community, which prevents them from accessing the messenger entirely.

The new disable your inbox feature, included in Invision Community 4.7.0, will be available to all in the near future.

Thoughts on the disabling the inbox feature? Let us know what you think in the comments!
 

Related:

Invision Community’s forthcoming release includes an exciting new feature available for all. 

Announcing the Alert System! 🚨™

The Alert System is a new tool for community managers to communicate with their members. There are times when a community manager needs to bring information to the attention of either a single user, or a group of users; when existing systems such as PMs or warning points are not suitable. So, we developed a happy medium to empower you. 

The new alert system offers multiple ways to engage with single users or multiple member groups with a message that must be acknowledged and dismissed before further engagement with the community.

Here are a few examples of when a community leader can use the Alert System for individual members:

Moderator actions 
A moderator moves a topic and wants to inform the topic starter that the topic has been moved and why. 

Get ahead of warnings
A member left a comment that doesn’t justify a warning point, nor should it warrant a private message. You want to kindly remind them of the community guidelines. 

Community leaders may wish to send information to an entire member group. This may to warn them of new limits, or to notify support changes, etc. 

Here are a few examples of when a community leader can use the Alert System for groups:

Updates to community guidelines
After reviewing and updating your community guidelines or terms of service, you can send an alert to all affected member groups outlining the changes, so they are aware. As the message needs to be dismissed before any further interaction with the community, you can be sure it has been read before any more posts are made.

This example shows an alert with send anonymously switched on.

Welcome message
To strengthen your onboarding flow, you may like to send all new members a welcome message to introduce yourself and your team, along with some helpful information to help get them settled in.

This example shows an alert with the option to reply, with send anonymously turned off.

Heads up
Remind a group of a permanent account-related change, like their subscription will be decreasing/increasing. 

New forums added
After consultation with your community, you want to add some new discussion areas for your VIP Members. You can now send an alert targeted to members in that group to let them know where the new forums are and what their purpose is.

Let's chat
You notice that a great community member is having a bad day. Instead of reaching for punitive tools, you can send them an alert that they have to reply to before being allowed to continue engaging in the community.

These are just a few examples; of course, the alerts functionality has a lot of flexibility built in. 

Alerts are managed from the Moderator's Control Panel.

Let us take a look at the different areas that can be configured.

Dates
Each alert has a start date, and this date can be in the future. This is especially useful if you have an event coming up you want to showcase. You can optionally set an expiration date to only serve the alert for members that visit between the start and end date. You can also leave it running indefinitely for uses such as the welcome message.

Send to
This section allows you to choose to send to a single user or to a single or multiple groups. If you are sending to groups, you can further fine-tune the deliverability by choosing to send to everyone currently registered and to new members when they register, or you can target just new members (to be precise, this will target members who register after the alert date), this option is ideal for the welcome message alert.

Send as yourself or anonymously 
You can choose to send the alert anonymously or from yourself. There are times when you want a personal touch and times when you need more of a system style alert, perhaps when notifying of guideline updates. Or, if the message is general, or you want to protect members of your team, send the alert anonymously. 

Replies
If you choose to send the alert personally, then you can allow the member to reply, force the member to respond to dismiss the alert or remove the ability to reply. For a welcome message, you'd likely want to allow replies which then will create a new personal message between you and the member. 

We have built the system to be very flexible to cover a wide range of uses where you want to directly engage with a member or group of members and be confident that they have seen the alert before any further engagement in the community. Alerts can be used to strengthen onboarding, notify sections of your community about exciting new features and changes or even create an open dialogue after a punitive measure such as having a posting time-out.

This feature is coming to Invision Community 4.7, across all platforms.

Thoughts on our new Alert System?! Drop us a line in the comments and let us know what you think.

To celebrate Invision Community turning 20-years-old (an eternity in Internet years), I interviewed the company's founding fathers.

Ahh the good ol' days. Remember simpler times?

This new video interview touches on Invision Community's past, present and future thanks to the invaluable insight from  @Charles, @Matt and @Lindy. 
 

In our chat together, these gentlemen...
 

• Take a nostalgic trip down memory lane and reflect on the company's origins
• Explain the power of community amidst the social media boom
• Offer advice for new community leaders on how to grow
• Share some of the biggest changes to the platform
• Recant fond memories from the earlier days
• Reveal a teaser of what's next for Invision Community

Noteworthy quotes:

Charles:

Quote

"Don't be afraid to push the envelope forward more quickly. Sometimes we've held ourselves back in implementing new technologies because people don't like change... sometimes we have to push people out of their comfort zones and say, I know it's always been this way, but [the platform] needs to move forward, it needs to advance."

Lindy:

Quote

"[Looking back on advice I'd give to my younger self... it] starts as a confidence. If we get a lot of pushback on things that deep down we know we're right, but kind of succumb to the pressure... [That] holds yourself and everybody else back in the process. Be confident in what you're doing, push the envelope and move forward."

Matt:

Quote

"20 years ago we had no idea we'd still be here in 20 years time. When we started all those years ago, we didn't have a 20 year business plan, we had a 12 months business plan... It was like can we get through the month? Can we get to the end of the year? Be confident in your decisions and don't be scared of change. Change is critical to growth."

Thoughts on the interview? We'd love to hear from you in the comments! 🎂 

Improving SEO with your community is a hot topic with community managers. Many minor tweaks can move the needle in the right direction, but the most significant changes come with increasing crawl efficiency.

I recently wrote about changes we made to Invision Community to improve crawl efficiency. By removing thin content pages and being laser-focused on what you want to be crawled, you present a more efficient site ready for crawling.

Crawl depth is another metric that impacts crawl efficiency. The more 'clicks' Google and other search engines have to make to get to your content; the less efficient your site is for crawling. With a community, this can present problems because using forums and child forums segments content and places it an extra click or two away from the home page. Segmenting is ideal when your community has defined content boundaries, but it can mean Google has to work harder to find your content.

We introduced a "fluid view" in a past release, which streams all of your community's topics into a single filterable view. This streamed view works well when you have a small number of forums, but it is less valuable when you have a more significant number.

Wouldn't it be perfect if you could have a fluid view per forum or category so you can stream the forum's topics with any child forum's topics in a single view?

With our latest release, you can do just that! In this example, I have a forum called "Ideation", and there are two child forums. The new feature enabled on a per-forum basis in the AdminCP allows the topics from all three forums to be streamed in a single view. As with the global fluid view mode, your members can toggle the filters to refine which forums you want the stream to include.

Showing the topics from multiple forums in a single unified stream is not only helpful for search engines as it reduces the crawl depth, but it also reduces helps your members find valuable content faster.

Update (July 14, 2022):  You asked and we listened! Thanks to valuable client feedback, we made an update to our fluid view feature included in our latest release, 4.6. To better the user experience, we improved the fluid-mode per forum filters to remove a page reload! We also reversed the filter checkbox status to make it clear which filters are being viewed. 

The Fluid View updates are available now. We'd love to hear your thoughts below!

There’s a fine line between freedom of speech and censorship. 

Invision Community always aims to empower community leaders with options to encourage an open dialogue within a community, while including barriers for members who choose to ignore the guidelines. 

Invision Community’s latest release, 4.6.11, includes a simple but powerful new feature to help you shape your community’s tone. 

It’s called Block Submission.

Block submission stops a member’s message from being posted if it includes any word(s) added to your Word Filters list with the “Block Submission” option enabled. 

Word Filters, a previously existing feature, allows community owners to prohibit profanity in the community. If a member types a word included on the banned words list, the platform will automatically either...

• Replace the word with something else you set
• Hold the post for moderation
• Or, with our new Block Submission feature, notify the member they must amend their post. 

Located: ACP -> System -> Settings -> Posting -> Word Filters -> Add Word Filter

Here is an example:

I added the word “hate” to the Word Filters list in the Admin Control Panel and selected the Block Submission option. 

Now, when a member tries to post the word hate, a message pops up indicating it wasn’t published and why. 

Quote

Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.

hate

The member must modify their comment in order for the post to go live. In this scenario, that would look like taking out the word hate.

Feel free to change the default warning message (the text located in the orange message bar above) to something better suited for your community - it's located in the Languages settings in your ACP. 

Why did we create Block Submission?

This feature not only helps automatically moderate content, but more importantly, it sets a precedent to members regarding what is (and isn’t) accepted. 

Gently notifying members that their comment doesn’t align with your community’s guidelines helps maintain the existing culture you’ve worked hard on cultivating, as well as your initiative to keep the language and sentiment positive. 

Interested in trying our block submission feature out? Please upgrade to 4.6.11!

If you don’t have an Invision Community license yet, please reach out to me and I’ll help get you started. 

Thoughts on our latest feature? Sound off in the comments (just make sure it passes our new vibe check 😉).