Invision Community
773 blog entries in this category
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IP.Converge is designed to be an open platform allowing any application to share a common authentication method. This allows sites on different servers, and using different products, to let users access it with a 'global' login. Unfortunately due to limitations within IP.Converge, only a handful of IPS applications utilised it. However, with the recent introduction of IP.Converge 1.1, functionality has been added to allow 3rd-party applications which use a different password hashing system, to
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IP.Converge is designed to be an open platform allowing any website or application to make use of its features. However, due to some limitations and the complexity of writing the modules, it's only been used by IP.Board until now. In IP.Converge 1.1 we have added the features developers need to make almost any application IP.Converge-ready. Username support One of the most frequently requested features for IP.Converge from both developers and end-users is username support. Some applications don
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Since we unveiled the new friendly url feature on our preview board, we have received a lot of feedback on how it could be improved with regards to maintaining good search engine optimization (SEO). Every feature we add has to be weighed against the impact to efficiency and memory usage. We understand that not every customer has the luxury of a dedicated server. We want to ensure the very best experience for a wide variety of hosting environments. However, in this case we felt we could make som
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IP.Board will now support a basic implementation of Facebook Connect as an option for logging into IP.Board and associating their account with the same login as their Facebook account. This feature will be off by default and can be optionally enabled by the administrator. We will have a technical specifications draft available in our knowledgebase upon release for those who care, but the basics are as follows: You must first register an "application" on Facebook's website pointing to the integr
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As we get closer to the final release of IP.Board 3.0.0 we have seen a huge increase in the number of clients converting to our software and services from other community software platforms. Of course we are always very excited to help anyone move to IP.Board and this is the best time to do the conversion. You can start getting familiar with IP.Board on the current 2.3.6 version and our staff can easily upgrade you to version 3.0.0 when it is available at no extra charge. In addition to convert
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For complete information on the IP.Board 3.0.0 Beta 1 release please read the full announcement. We have refreshed the download of IP.Board 3.0.0 Beta 1 to address a few critical bugs that were reported yesterday. The refresh is as of the time of this blog entry. We focused on installation bugs and core usability bugs for this small refresh so more people could install IP.Board 3.0.0 Beta 1 before the end of the year. Note that not all bugs marked as fixed in the bug tracker will be fixed in th
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As announced in our last blog entry, we are working diligently to clean up any problem areas in IP.Board 3.0 and to finish up the admin control panel so that we can deliver a beta release of our software to all of our users before the end of this month. Things are taking shape nicely. Rikki has the admin control panel nearly finished and we've cleared out hundreds of bug reports since the preview site was first launched. We are very hopeful that by the time everyone has their hands on a beta
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The IP.Board 3.0 preview has been going quite well and we have received some good feedback and ideas for version 3.0 which we have already implemented. This blog entry will outline some of the changes that have been implemented in 3.0 since the preview was made available. Other than the changes listed here there have been lots of minor skin interface improvements and many bug fixes too numerous to go into. Search Index For a long time we have been looking at ways to solve a problem with global
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The IP.Board 3.0 preview has been going very well. Lots of bugs have been reported and, more importantly, fixed already. The feedback we have received has been very valuable and we have already implemented some of the good ideas our customers have presented us. Thanks again! We are now ready to open the preview up to the general public. You can visit the preview at http://ipb3preview.ipslink.com and login with the same email address and password you use in the IPS client area or company forums.
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We are preparing the first public preview of IP.Board 3.0.0 alpha and look forward to everyone's feedback and help in testing. It is our current plan to preview IP.Board 3.0.0 alpha the second half of next week (around Nov 10 2008 +/- a day or two). As promised, those in the customer group on the IPS forums will receive the preview a bit earlier. Keep an eye on our company blog for updates. The public preview will be on a special web site and will not be available for download. You can use the
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We've been blogging for a while about some of the bigger changes you will see when IP.Board 3 is released. Things like enhanced bbcode management, hooks and plugins, and personal conversations, for example, tend to be a bit more interesting to read than smaller features. However, we wanted to take a moment to discuss some of the other smaller features being added to IP.Board that we haven't talked about yet. Minimum posts to view forum You can now configure forums to only allow access if you
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With the upcoming release of IP.Board 3, we will of course be updating our first-party components to be compatible with the new architecture. Releases of IP.Blog, IP.Gallery and IP.Downloads will be available alongside IP.Board 3.0 so that you can update everything at the same time and not have to worry about when your components will be ready. We are working with the community project teams to help them get releases of Tracker and Shoutbox ready for 3.0 as well. They should be available at,
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Introduction Administration is an important part of running your site. You need to be able to control your site the way you want to, and you need to be able to do it as quickly as possible. Not everyone has an hour or two to hunt down a setting, after all. Once you start to factor in the fact that other applications (such as IP.Blog, IP.Gallery and IP.Downloads) can integrate into this same administration control panel there are new challenges to take into account as well. With IP.Board 3
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Since IP.Board 2, we've had a "kernel" of classes which IP.Board uses but do not depend on IP.Board to use. A selection of these kernel classes includes DB management, file uploads, emailing, RSS parsing and reading, XML parsing and reading and our proprietry archive format XMLArchive. For example, you could use "classUpload.php" and "classImage.php" in your own modifications or extensions to handle uploads and GD thumbnail generation. You would not have to initialize the registry or do anythi
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We receive requests quite frequently to "add SEO to IPB". This is a very difficult request to quantify and to fulfill. What is SEO? What is wrong with IPB's positioning to search engines presently? What can be done better? We've seen some suggestions over time that make sense, and some we feel would be better left to modifications. While we are not jumping full force into the "SEO" arena with IPB 3, we have made changes throughout the software that we believe will help you position your
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Brandon blogged a while back about IP.Board's integration points. I wanted to spend a moment discussing the features within IP.Board 3 that all you integrate the board with your website and to create your own network. Member Management Since IP.Board 2, we've had, what we call, "Log In Modules". This is basically a mini-framework to allow custom code to be used easily when authenticating and registering members. For example, if you had a database full of members and you wanted for them to be
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Around ten years ago, I was hard at work on one of the first 'Private Message' modifications for a board that has long ceased to exist. At the time it was an exciting novelty to be able to message another board member. These days it's an expected feature for any seriously considered forum software. Not much has really changed with messaging's core features. Sure, the interface has become a little smarter and there have been a few little bells and whistles added such as message tracking but ult
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As we get further along in the development cycle for IP.Board 3 an obvious step that we will be taking on soon is general testing of the new codebase. While this happens with every release, both internally and publicly, it is even more important for a release as immense as IP.Board 3. The entire underlying codebase has changed and vigorous testing will be needed to iron out all of the issues us developers have missed. With every test phase of a product release, we frequently get barraged wit
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Possibly the most often requested feature we've had since the very first version of IP.Board is 'friendly URLs'. Although this sounds like you'd expect your URLs to greet you with a self-empowerment phrase first thing in the morning, it really relates to making the board generated URLs a little more attractive to both humans and search engines. I am being very careful to avoid the phrase "Search Engine Optimization" in this opening few paragraphs despite it being used often in the req
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It is necessary in any application to handle error situations. The most common method of handling such a situation is to issue an alert to the user so that they know an error has occurred. While this is sufficient in most cases to resolve the problem, we wanted to address IP.Board's error handling routines a little bit with the upcoming release to try to make them a little more useful. Firstly, we've gone through all of the errors that are issued, and clarified and separated them. No
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Topic markers have evolved quite a bit over the past few years. What started out as being an almost secondary concern has become quite an important part of the user experience. A Very Brief History Early versions of IP.Board relied on cookies to track read topics. This worked fairly well but it wasn't without problems. Anything to do with cookies is always a little flaky. There is a very finite amount of information you can store and browsers have a habit of eating them or not setting them cor
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We wanted to use this blog entry to bring you an update on the brand new IPB3 skin. In my previous entry, I didn't go into any detail about the skin itself, but I did introduce the Style Guide and some goals/ambitions for the front-end interface. We're now at a stage where we can talk about the skin itself. Whereas most of our other entries explain one particular feature in-depth, this post will be more of a quick-fire overview of some of things we're implementing on the front-end of IPB3, and
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Way, way back in the early days when we were planning IP.Board 3, a primary consideration was to completely overhaul the output engine to add several new features and to increase extensibility. Out with the old... The system in IP.Board 2.x is really just a perfunctory "engine" build around a few methods in a class. There was no real cohesive structure with many different files and functions accessing 'skin' methods. We decided that a virtual re-write was required. We didn't want to be tied to
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One of the most requested features of the past few years has been for a reputation system and we've already announced that it will be included in IP.Board 3. We're very excited to finally be releasing the details of this new feature and hope that you will enjoy this new feature! A user's reputation will be displayed on their profile and is based on the number of points that user has. You can configure 'Reputation Levels' in the Admin CP, a level includes text and/or an image, as well as the poi
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