Invision Community
773 blog entries in this category
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Introduction I previously wrote a blog entry about building tables in IPS Social Suite 4.0. Similar to tables, we also have trees. Trees in many ways look and behave similarly to tables, but can be distinguished mainly by the fact that trees show a collection of objects in a fixed order (often, though not always the order can be changed by the administrator) whereas tables can show data sorted however you like at the time. An example of trees would be the list of forums in IP.Board. Trees va
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Working with an image handling suite to resize uploaded images, build thumbnails, apply watermarks and perform other similar image-handling tasks has been improved in 4.0 to be easier than ever. It is important to know that many of the built-in helpers in 4.0 will automatically handle image-related tasks for you, such as building thumbnails when appropriate. In the instances where you need more control or cannot simply make use of an existing helper, however, you will find working with images
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In a recent blog entry, we talked about theming in IPS Social Suite 4. More often than not, you'll want to upload a new logo, tweak a few colours, add some custom HTML or work on the global template to incorporate your existing site wrapper. For this blog entry, I want to talk about the tools we have for more in-depth theming that professional themers will want to use to create downloadable themes for others to use. Custom Settings In 3.x, we have a number of system settings throughout the
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A few weeks ago, I posted a blog entry mentioning a new feature in 4.0 which aims to make development of applications within the IPS Social Suite (both for us and third party modification authors) easier. We focussed on managing the database schema in that blog entry and I'd now like to take you through the other features. Modules Two tabs (one for admin modules and one for front modules) allow you to view all modules and sections in your application. You can add modules (which will both i
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When developing, modifying the database schema (such as adding a column to a table) can be surprisingly time consuming. Currently, we have to: Make the change locally Change the installer Add the query to make the change to the upgrader for whatever version we're working on Let the other developers know so they can run the query to make the change in their installs. This can cause issues, especially at the last step - we currently use a large .sql file in the trunk directory of our r
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Charts and graphs are an essential tool in modern web applications. The API we use for displaying charts and graphs in IP.Board presently is something we wrote in-house during IP.Board 2.x - it uses the PHP GD library to generate an image representing a chart. At the time, it was pretty amazing, but as times have changed a number of libraries for generating much more visually appealing and interactive graphs have emerged. For IPS Social Suite 4.0 we've decided to retire our GD-based charting li
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A while ago I blogged about some of the internationalization and localization changes in 4.0. One of the things I mentioned is a "Visual Language Editor" which allows you to quickly change any of the verbiage used throughout the suite just by clicking on a word of phrase. Not only is the really useful for those who want to translate the IPS Community Suite into another language, it can also be used to easily change words and phrases as you like (for example if you want a link to say "Register"
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Our own site on invisionpower.com is now running version 4.1.16 with all the new features. Have a look around and see what you think! My personal favorite is being able to press cmd/ctrl+enter to submit a reply. It is a small change but sometimes small changes make all the difference. We have also released a beta for any clients who are interested in using the latest release before it is officially available. The alpha and beta forum has more information (clients only) if you want to learn
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Version 4.1.16 is now available to all clients. This release contains fixes, performance updates, and many new features. Check out what's new: You can also read the Release Notes for the technical details. Enjoy 4.1.16!
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Viewing and editing a member is probably one of the most frequently used features of the AdminCP. With the design unchanged for many years, and the tabbed interface starting to grow unwieldy, it was due for some love. We have not only dramatically improved the design but added many new features. New AdminCP Member Page Let's look at some of the improvements: Easy Toggle between Member and Customer View If you have Commerce installed, you can now toggle between "- 14,197 views
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We have a very important announcement to make! There are times where you need to get the attention of your visitors. You might be closed on certain days of the year, performing server maintenance (if you are consider our Cloud Plans, they're excellent) or running a competition. Invision Community has always had an announcements feature baked in, but we felt it could be improved. Okay, maybe this feature isn't as flashy as some of the others we're introducing in 4.3, but these usef- 12,490 views
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One huge benefit of running your own Invision Community is the moderation tools. Out of the box, Invision Community allows you to turn members into moderators. Better still, you can define what these moderators have permission to do. Part of this moderation suite is the report system. The report system allows your members to flag posts that need a moderator's attention. There comes a time when your community is so successful that it can be a little tough to keep up with all the co- 41,144 views
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We've recently spoken about how we've brought our Gallery and Blog apps up to date with interface overhauls to bring them inline with the high standards our customers expect. Keeping this in mind, we're thrilled to announce that we've taken Commerce right back to 2009. This needs an explanation. Way back in 2009, Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President. Minecraft was put into beta, Slumdog Millionaire was released to critical praise and we had a product called IP.Subscriptions- 16,142 views
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As we come close to wrapping up development of Invision Community 4.3, we wanted to let you know of a few smaller improvements we've made to increase engagement to your community. Email Despite fancy new things like social media and push notifications, trusty old email has been proven to be highly effective at getting repeat visitors to your website. It's one of the reasons Invision Community has built in email support for notifications that can be sent instantly, or via daily or wee- 12,053 views
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Emoji: built in to Invision Community 4.3! ? Invision Community has a long history. We remember the early days of forums, back when graphical "emoticons" or "smilies" were added. We have always shipped our products with a basic set of emoticons with the ability to add your own images and has supported emoji from mobile devices. Emoji has become a standard across mobile and desktop devices so it made sense to bring them to Invision Community fully. You can choose from 3 differ- 17,677 views
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"The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data", the Economist wrote recently. Invision Community software stores a lot of important data that can be leveraged to analyze and improve upon the traffic and interactions with your site. While there are some various statistics tools in the AdminCP already, we spent some time with 4.3 enhancing and improving upon our existing reporting tools, as well as adding some new analytics tools you may find useful. Chart Filters- 6,355 views
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A picture says a thousand words, they say. If getting those pictures online is troublesome, some of those words might be a little choice. Gallery has been an integral part of our community suite for just about as long as T1 Tech Mark Higgins can remember (and he has many years of memories). It has seen many interfaces changes as the years have rolled by. The most recent version received a fair amount to feedback on usability. We've listened. We've re-engineered most of Gallery's key in- 16,265 views
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We released news of Clubs just under a year ago for Invision Community 4.2 and it has been the best received feature to date. Clubs opens up new ways to run your community by allowing members to create sub-communities away from the central forum area. Since the feature was released, we've collated an immense amount of feedback on the feature. Here's what we're improving for Invision Community 4.3. Paid Club Memberships If you have Commerce installed on your community, 4.3 add- 13,499 views
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Social media promotion should be a part of any marketing strategy. Curating interesting content from your community and sharing to social media channels like Facebook and Twitter is a great way to drive traffic to your site. Invision Community 4.2 introduced Social Media Promotions to allow this. You hit the promote button, fill out the text to share with each service, click which photos to include and schedule the promotion or send it immediately. We use this feature almost ever- 8,311 views
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"No man is an island" wrote John Donne. He wrote that a good 200 years before computers were invented, but it rings true for any well written framework like Invision Community. The included REST API allows developers to fetch data from Invision Community and also allows data to be added. This data can be used to power widgets on your website, or to be used within other applications you are already using in a very simple way. Several enhancements have been mad- 6,521 views
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Search. Let's be honest, it's not the most exciting feature in the world. You ask to find things, and it shows you what it found. Simple, right? It's a lot more complex than that. After numerous tests, a few surveys and many discussions with customers, we've decided that there is no "right" or "wrong" way to search. Invision Community is used on many diverse communities and each has its own needs. The bigger the community, the more of a headache search can be when you start hittin- 11,986 views
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The best way to convert guests into members is to make the onboarding process as simple as possible. Over the years, we've added special log in methods for Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Microsoft. We've carefully hand coded these integrations to allow guests to sign up with just a few clicks using services they're already a member of. These services used to use proprietary methods to link with other websites, but a new standard has emerged. OAuth You may not know it, but you're- 22,336 views
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Stripe is the most popular payment method in Commerce, allowing communities to take payments by card securely with easy setup. While there's no doubt that credit cards are still the most popular methods of making a payment, digital innovations such as Apple Pay are increasing in popularity. For 4.3 we've deepened our integration to support some of their latest features. Apple Pay & Google Pay Apple Pay allows users to pay quickly with their iPhone, iPad or Mac (with Safar- 9,737 views
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Often it's the smaller changes that can make a big improvement in the day to day use of your community. We have made quite a few updates that will make your community flow better for you and your members. Update files in Pages Media Manager Previously when you wanted to update a file in the Pages Media Manager you actually had to upload a new file and then change the references to that file to the new one. This was obviously not so great. When you select a file there is now a repl- 9,481 views
