- 4,397 views
Invision Community Blog
Uses div-mode which is much faster and more reliable. Clicking into the editor is now pretty much instant. Auto-linking and member mentions to use new APIs for better reliability Quotes, code boxes, and spoilers can be dragged and moved and there is no more "red line" When cmd/ctrl right-clicking: options to remove or break-out of quotes, edit links and edit image properties Pasting asks if you want to convert to plain text Totally new code plugin with syntax highlighting as you type Option to make enter behave as a new line rather than with spacing Editor is responsive, and ability to have small editor show in areas with less space Member @mentions in posts can now be selected by tab key The major things to note are that the editor is much faster loading, particularly on mobile devices. It makes the mobile experience much more pleasant. Check out the video for some more information or register on our site here and post a topic in our test area. We are really happy with the editor upgrades and early feedback has been great. We hope you enjoy it!
We are still on track to release 4.1 in early October. Expect beta release soon.
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I made a video to quickly go over the new Activity Streams and also a bit on the new Menu Manager. I hope you will see just how powerful and flexible they are. You can do everything you could do in previous versions of our software plus a whole lot more. We are really excited to see all the inventive uses our clients come up with for the new Activity Streams.
If you are not interested in hearing me ramble in the video, and who can blame you really, here are some screenshots and info on the Activity Streams in general.
AdminCP Interface:
The streams you see there are some examples of the default ones that come with 4.1 and a few others we made. The one labled View New Content we renamed from Unread Content to demo that it is the same thing just in a different name
Admin creating a stream:
All these admin-defined streams show up here:
And if you want them to show somewhere else you just use the menu manager:
If you do not like the "All Activity" stream (or anything else really) just remove the link to it:
Then, once you actually view a stream, the use can choose how they want to see it. In the full format or in condensed:
Once the user selects their preferred view format the system will remember it. There is no way for the admin to set the default view format because we did not really think that made sense. While many of us that run a site are power users and might want the condensed format because we "understand" what is going on, new users would not have that knowledge. Therefore, it makes more sense to show them all the content at first until they understand what it is they are seeing then they can choose, if they want, to condense it down.
In early previews of 4.1, some people were confused about the All Activity stream versus the custom streams that can be told what to do (like creating a View New Content stream). Also, some did not realize you could create admin-defined streams that could be tailor-made to what you want them to do. It is a bit different than old versions but in a good way in that you have a lot of flexibility. We hope you enjoy!
We are still on track to release 4.1 in early October. Expect beta release soon.
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New Menu Structure
Our new menu structure is designed to highlight the two ways people go about interacting with a community: general browsing of specific discovery.
The Browse tab looks just like the current, default menu does in IPS Community Suite with your list of apps. The new Activity menu is designed for discovery features like our new Activity Streams and the search functions.
This is just the default menu and gives new communities an idea of the different concepts. When upgrading from 4.0 to 4.1 your existing menu items will be placed in this format with any menu items created under the Pages app moved to a location in the new menu. You will want to adjust things to best fit your community.
Menu Manager
The Pages menu manger has been removed and replaced with a Suite-wide menu manger that is much more powerful. As shown above, you can now have both a top and second level menu bar. If you choose not to have a second bar it will hide itself automatically and will then look much more like the older menu style.
In addition to simply placing menu items, drop down menus, and special links: all menu items have permission controls so you can easily show or hide menu items based on a member's permission settings.
Activty Streams
The new Activity Streams are a discovery feature that takes the concept of the old View New Content, Activity, Followed Items, etc. and merges them into a unified system to allow for both admin and member-defined streams of content based on their preferences. The system is very powerful and allows for countless different ways for your members to discover content or for you to more easily expose content you want to highlight.
Front end interface member created streams
Streams that admins create are always visible to all members. Members can simply view those admin streams, create their own, or copy an admin stream as a base. Guests also have access to view all admin streams excluding those that reference unread or followed content as Guests do not have access to those features. Always available to all members is the All activity stream that shows a list of activity in order by date. The admin can define what shows in the All activity stream.
Admin options for All Activity stream
Members can share the link to the streams they create to other members. There is no need for privacy here as all they are sharing are their various filter settings - the actual stream data returned changes based on what member is actually viewing the stream.
Use cases for Activity Streams are endless. Some examples might be:
The current View New Content type of result. A Stream of all content from members you follow. Show a list of unread items from a specific list of members (perhaps members of staff). Maybe you are a prolific Gallery contributor and you want to see a feed of all unread comments on images that you posted. Rather than following every item you reply to, you can choose to create a feed of all content you have ever participated in. Get really fine-tuned and create a Stream showing unread comments in Blog only from members you follow. The Activity Streams feature is very flexibly and you can get really imaginative with its uses. It is a really big addition to IPS Community Suite 4 and we think you will enjoy it. We already do!
Updated Editor
We have updated our WYSIWYG editor in 4.1 to the latest version of CKEditor and we have also switched from iframe to div mode in the editor. That is basically technical speak to say that the new editor will be much, much faster and specifically behave much better on mobile devices.
Many of the custom systems we wrote for 4.0 have been replaced with native editor functionality in 4.1 to allow for both speed and greater reliability. This does mean some things work a bit differently but you will quickly see the very small learning changes are worth the editor being so responsive.
You can now move quote boxes with your mouse to embed them or move them above/below existing text. Another great feature is the new cmd/ctrl right-click menu that allow for contextual options. For example, cmd/ctrl right-click on an embedded image attachment yields:
When pasting in rich text from an external source the editor will now prompt you asking if you want to keep that formatting:
And admins can define paste and enter/return behavior in the new editor settings page:
A small, but useful improvements is allowing @member mentions to be selectable by keyboard. Just do @member and use the arrows and tab key on your keyboard to select the member. The editor also now recognizes its area size not only based on your browser window (to distinguish mobile, tablet, or desktop) but also where it is embedded. An example of this is the new status update widget:
A really useful feature is the ability to select and text in any post and get an option to quote just that text.
The new editor is a total rework and we hope you enjoy the new speed, stability, and options. Using the editor is the core function of any community so getting it right is very important.
Pages Enhancements
Our Pages CMS app not only lets you create basic web pages within your Suite with either drag-and-drop ease of use or, for power users, direct HTML/PHP access but it also allows for Databases and Blocks to greatly enhance what you can do. We have made several enhancements to Pages to make it easier to use and more options.
On install, Pages now includes some default content to point out key features to new users to get them started quickly. When creating an actual page, the editor box is larger, there are more tag sections in the sidebar to access advanced features, and you can now configure a custom error page.
There are tons of new Blocks in Pages now and create quite an impressive list:
Many Blocks have been enhanced. For example: comment/item feed blocks can now have a dat limit, customizable titles, Calendar widget can be restricted to one calendar, and so on. External Block embedding is now available. You can now embed any Block anywhere on the web - not just inside your IPS-powered site.
Within the Database system we have an enhanced article-view template, you can now export and share templates with others, and database fields can now either show as "labels" as they do now or as simple text either above or below the body of the entry. We have also added a simple relational database field to cross reference other databases when viewing an entry.
The other big addition to Pages is the new Media Manager. The problem we are solving here is access to the file system. There are many situations where you do not have access to FTP or other methods to directly access your server either because of security restrictions or because you are on a cloud/load balanced environment where it is simply not possible. So we now have a Media Manager that allows for direct uploading of things like images, CSS, and JavaScript. All the items get a key tag to be used in any template or page throughout the Suite. The Media Manager is also compatible with designers mode.
Terms and Privacy Policy Confirmation
A small but important change is the ability to force your members to re-accept your Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy when you edit them. Currently they are only prompted when joining your community but now you can ask them to accept again if you make a change. On their next visit they will see:
Gallery Enhancements
There are two changes to Gallery that may seem small at a glance but actually make using Gallery much easier and more flexible. There is now a new upload process which makes adding images or videos much easier to understand. You can more easily see the category, album, or album creation options on the screen.
Once you actually upload your image you can more easily add descriptions and other data to your images either individually or all at once.
This direct change to how your members add images should result in a much more pleasant experience when adding images to Gallery.
We also now support reviews on Gallery images in addition to comments.
New Upgrade Process
Since IPS Community Suite 4.0, you have been able to download "delta updates" (a zip containing just the files you need to upgrade from the version you are running to the latest version) from the Admin CP when a new version is released.
On IPS Community Suite 4.1, you no longer need to download the zip and upload the files manually. The system will automatically guide you through a wizard which will apply the update automatically and take you straight to the upgrader.
The system will also send you an email as soon as an update is available (you can configure any number of email addresses to receive the notification), and display a dismissible banner to administrators who have permission to run the upgrader so you also no longer need to check the Admin CP or the IPS website for updates. When an update is available, just click "Upgrade Now" in the email or on your community and follow the steps.
Special prominence is given in both the email and the banner if the update contains fixes for any security-related issues. Also, the banner cannot be dismissed if an update contains a security fix.
Updated Search Interface
We have given our search interface a revamp to more effectively use space and be easier to use (especially on mobile):
As well as simplifying the way filters appear, we have separated member searching from content searching. This made sense given that the filters available for finding members are entirely different to those you see when finding content, so this visual separation should make that more apparent to users. This new approach to filters also becomes the new Advanced Search view, with results loading dynamically below when submitted.
Another change we have made is to adjust the text snippet to show you the context of the result hit. For example, if you search ‘lorem', the results will now show you the text surrounding the first match. This small improvement can greatly improve the perceived quality of results:
Finally, another small change has been made to the contextual search box shown in the header on every page. We now default the context to the app you’re currently using, unless you’re on the homepage in which case it’ll search all content. In our testing, we have found this aligns much better with user expectations.
Notifications
We have introduced two new notification features: instant notifications and HTML5 browser notifications. Both work together to provide a great boost to engagement in IPS 4.1.
HTML5 Browser Notifications
We have built in support for browser notifications where they are supported (right now, this includes desktop versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera, but not IE, and mobile browser support is patchy). This allows IPS 4.1 to let you know when important things have happened even if you aren’t active in that window at the time.
We have enabled browser notifications in three areas. When you upload files using any attachment area, you will be notified when your files have finished uploading; when there are new replies to a topic you have currently viewing; and for instant notifications (more about that below).
Instant Notifications
Instant notifications has been a long-requested feature, and we are pleased to say they are included in IPS 4.1. We have worked hard to build an approach that is as light on resources as possible.
If you are active in the window, instant notifications will show as a standard flash message at the bottom of your screen; if you are not active, and your browser supports them, you will get a desktop notification instead, and a chime will sound to alert you. Clicking the notification box will take you to the new item (or open the notification menu if alert is telling you about multiple items).
Ability to limit the number of emails received
In IPS 4.1, you can optionally choose to receive just one email notification per content item until you revisit the community, rather than a separate email for each new reply. This is an option that was previously available in IPB 3.x that we have reintroduced based on feedback.
Retina Emoticons
Our well-loved emoticons have had a facelift (pun intended) and now look great on high-resolution retina screens and dark backgrounds:
The emoticon manager in the ACP intelligently handles retina versions of your own emoticons for you - simply upload emoticons with “@2x” appended to the filename, and IPS 4.1 will know it’s a high-res version of an existing emoticon and seamlessly serve it for you.
Not Included in 4.1
Areas such as View New Content, My Content, My Followed Content, Status page, and such are replaced by the new Activity Streams. You can easily create the same functionality with admin-created Activity Streams and we ship with several default examples that will serve most communities well. Sphinx is no longer supported as an alternative search engine. We are evaluating alternative search technology for a future release. Obviously we included a lot in version 4.1 so many things were not included. If your specific feature request or feedback was not included it may still come in a future release.
Launch Date
We invite everyone to check our our public preview and give it a try! Please report bugs in our bug tracker and keep all discussion about 4.1 on the preview site so we can easily review it and make changes.
Depending on testing, we do anticipate a release in early October.
We hope you enjoy all these changes in 4.1 and that they help your community grow!
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So nothing too exciting to report for August but really necessary work being done. That's August... but then there's September...
We have a whole lot in store for you in September. Behind the boring scenes of bug fixing and stability improvements we have been preparing a whole lot of changes. You might want to follow our Blog here as we will be announcing, over the next few days, some exciting news like improvements to our CiC (Community in the Cloud) service, special renewal promotion for existing clients, and a feature-release (rather than just stability focus) nearing completion.
Thanks for sticking around through the quiet summer months of 2015. We were not resting or on vacation and cannot wait to show you all the new things we have in store for IPS Community Suite 4! Keep an eye on our blog here or our Release Notes section.
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We are releasing a patch for IP.Board 3.3.x and 3.4.x to address a potential cross-site scripting (XSS) issue, and we are releasing a patch for IP.Nexus 1.5.9 to address an issue where license keys may be exposed to unauthorized users. The IP.Nexus patch also includes an updated SagePay payment gateway, required for all users that use Sagepay integration as of July 31, 2015, as well as an update to the Stripe payment gateway to use their "v2" javascript integration.
It has been brought to our attention that specifically crafted files uploaded as attachments to IP.Board may allow for javascript to execute. It has also been brought to our attention that specifically crafted URLs may allow for exposure of license keys otherwise kept private throughout IP.Nexus.
To apply the patch
Simply download the attached zip for your IP.Board version and upload the files to your forum server.
IP.Nexus 1.5.x:
nexus_patch_08072015.zip
IP.Board 3.4.x:
board34x_patch_08072015.zip
IP.Board 3.3.x:
board33x_patch_08072015.zip
If you are an IPS Community in the Cloud client running IP.Board 3.3 or above, no further action is necessary as we have already automatically patched your account. If you are using a version older than IP.Board 3.3, you should contact support to upgrade.
If you install or upgrade to IP.Board 3.4.8 or IP.Nexus 1.5.9 after the date and time of this post, no further action is necessary as we have already updated the main download zips.
We would like to thank ESET for reporting the IP.Board XSS issue to us, and we would like to thank user "vekmor" for reporting the IP.Nexus license key exposure issue to us.
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Most of July was spent with a focus on stability of version 4.0. As with any new platform there is a lot to learn and address once it gets out into real world use. Stability realeases are not very exciting and do not make for a fun blog entry but we have fixed hundreds of bugs with each maintenance release and continue to keep that as our focus. Clients are reporting that things are greatly improving and we are happy to hear that! Of course there are always some issues but the majority are running great.
So that's really it for July. I know, it's seems like not much but it's actually tons of work from our team to keep getting things better each day. But don't worry! We have some exciting new features in the works that will be introduce in August so do keep watching and keep letting us know you feedback.
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New Web Site
We launched our new web site featuring IPS Community Suite 4! Featuring our newest technology has been great for new and old clients alike. Our demo system is now using IPS Community Suite 4 as well so feel free to sign up and give it a try.
Release Announcements
In the past we would post an announcement for every release we did. With IPS Community Suite 4 that is not really necessary as the new upgrade system notifies you in your AdminCP when an update is available. Not only that but you can easily download a list of only changed files to quickly upgrade your Suite. It is really nice for us to be able to push updates out to you much more quickly and for you to not have to uploads a lot of unnecessary files for a quicker upgrade.
Release Notes
Be sure to check out our new Release Notes section. Theses notes are also fed into your AdminCP on release time but you can also check here for previews on the next release in production. Even more interesting is our Coming Soon section that shows things coming up in the next month or so. It's a great way to keep track of what is in the immediate future so you can plan your community development.
Development Progress
Since we released version 4.0.0 we have made 13 releases to add features requested by our clients, fix bugs, and improve performance. It has been a busy and exciting time. We are so happy that the vast majority of our clients are really happy with IPS Community Suite 4.0. It's also great to see clients provide so much feedback so we can continue to improve. One of our key goals is to communicate what is coming up next and our Release Notes section has been a really great way to do this and clients are enjoying the constant updates.
For those of you interested in such things: we finally switched from SVN to Git. We started using SVN many years ago when it was the cool thing and have been wanting to switch to Git for our repository for some time. Obviously this is not something that impacts our clients but it's really exciting to the group of nerds that is IPS development staff so they felt I should highlight this!
In addition to lots of bug fixes and performance improvements, here are some new additions to IPS Community Suite 4 in the last month:
Guest caching feature can now be used with MySQL (previously required a caching engine like memcached) New mobile pagination Max width option for video embeds Legacy PayPal gateway to allow for older PayPal Subscriptions to still be recognised. Attachment Type Restrictions: You can now choose from three options for file attachments in any post content: No files, Images only (this will actually check to make sure an uploaded file is a valid image) or All files (this is default) - If you choose "All files" you have the option to provide a list of allowed file extensions. Merge Concurrent Posts: If a user makes a post or comment and then makes another post or comment on the same item before any other user, the posts will be merged. There is a setting to disable or set the time limit for this to happen. There is a clear, visual indication when a merge happens to avoid confusion to the end user. Moderators can click and hold on topic and other item titles to quickly edit. New setting to optionally set products in Commerce to have a grace period to remain active for a period of time after expiration. New setting to specify domains to exclude from having rel='nofollow' added to links. The "+ Create" menu at the top of the page now has an option to create an announcement. New button to post a status within the status updates widget You can now embed Pages database entries by pasting their link. New widgets for blog entry, gallery images and downloads files feeds. Widgets displaying content feeds can now be given a custom title. The subject lines for emails sent about new content have been changed slightly so email clients can group them better. Announcements now show on every page by default (but can still be removed). New ability to disable but not uninstall an app. In case you missed it: version 4.0.8.1 contained a security update. You would have been alerted both in your AdminCP and on our Release Notes page. Be sure to always stay up to date.
What's Next
Version 4.0.10 is already in development and our Coming Soon list is well under way:
We will be announcing those exciting changes in the next few weeks!
Past Updates
As this is our first update entry we didn't provide previous updates so here is the list of things added since 4.0.0 original release that were prior to the last month:
Pages can now be run under your install directory Support Tools enhancements: You can optionally create an admin account and send that as a hidden field to our support staff. A reminder is set in the AdminCP dashboard for you to remove this account once your support request is done. You can optionally send the last PHP and MySQL error logs (if any are recent) as part of your support request. When a new version of IPS Community Suite 4 is available you will now see release notes. This feature is added in 4.0.2 but will not show until 4.0.3 is available. You can now set a maximum image dimension size. If a user uploads an image larger than that setting it will be resized down and the smaller size saved. Setting to limit the length of content item titles Suite-wide Added new notification setting for Members you Follow. On install and upgrade, this setting is off by default to prevent your users from getting bombarded with notifications for members they follow until they are able to decide their preference. If you enable the "use SSL for logins" setting then this will apply to the entire AdminCP: not just the login form. Setting was renamed to reflect this. You can now specify the default view option for the Commerce store front: grid or list. When you upload files for a new version, the AdminCP login box will now prompt you to run the upgrade system before showing login form. Queue tasks should run faster You can now select multiple locations for an advertisement rather than just one in Advertisement settings. We now support multiple version management. This means that we will no longer release "patch files" for major bugs or security issues but will instead simply release a new version even if that new version may only contain one changed file. No more losing track if you have or have not patched as you will simply make sure you're on latest version. Emoticon sets can now be reordered. You can also now delete entire sets. Bulk email system can now filter based on Commerce packages and information. The support tool in the AdminCP will now do MD5 checksum on all PHP files on the system. This allows the system to detect any modified PHP files which is useful both for support and for security. The master checksum values are fetched remotely from IPS to ensure the list is not tampered with locally. Interface improvements to Gallery Theme comparison tools
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IPS Community in the Cloud clients can simply submit a support request when you are ready to upgrade and we will take care of it for you. [data-pageApp='blog'][data-pageModule='blogs'][data-pageController='entry'] article header { display: none; } [data-pageApp='blog'][data-pageModule='blogs'][data-pageController='entry'] article section { margin-top: 0 !important; } [data-pageApp='blog'][data-pageModule='blogs'][data-pageController='entry'] article section .ipsType_richText h2 { font-size: 24px; font-weight: 400; text-align: left; display: block; padding: 15px; background: #f5f5f5; } [data-pageApp='blog'][data-pageModule='blogs'][data-pageController='entry'] article section .ipsType_richText h3 { font-size: 18px; padding-left: 15px; font-weight: 500; margin-top: 0; } [data-pageApp='blog'][data-pageModule='blogs'][data-pageController='entry'] article section .ipsType_richText p { padding-left: 15px; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.6; } [data-pageApp='blog'][data-pageModule='blogs'][data-pageController='entry'] .ipsType_richText .ipsAreaBackground_dark, [data-pageApp='blog'][data-pageModule='blogs'][data-pageController='entry'] article section .ipsType_richText hr, [data-pageApp='blog'][data-pageModule='blogs'][data-pageController='entry'] article section .ipsType_richText p + a, #elOverviewImage { margin-left: 15px; } #elOverviewImage { height: 300px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; margin-bottom: 30px; } #elOverviewImage::after { background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(rgba(255, 255, 255, 0)), to(#ffffff)); background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, rgba(255, 255, 255, 0), #ffffff); background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, rgba(255, 255, 255, 0), #ffffff); background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, rgba(255, 255, 255, 0), #ffffff); background: -o-linear-gradient(top, rgba(255, 255, 255, 0), #ffffff); background: linear-gradient(to bottom, rgba(255, 255, 255, 0) 0%, #ffffff 100%); position: absolute; left: -1px; right: -1px; bottom: -1px; height: 175px; content: ''; background-repeat: repeat-x !important; } #elPhoneDemo { width: 264px; height: 530px; padding-top: 61px; padding-left: 17px; background: url(//www.invisionpower.com/ips4assets//images/features/customization/iphone.png); position: relative; margin: 20px auto 20px; } #elPhoneDemoColumn { width: 400px; } #elCustomizeColumn { width: 570px; padding-left: 15px; } #elCustomizeInfo { vertical-align: middle; } @media screen and (max-width: 948px) { [data-pageApp='blog'][data-pageModule='blogs'][data-pageController='entry'] #elPhoneDemoColumn, [data-pageApp='blog'][data-pageModule='blogs'][data-pageController='entry'] #elCustomizeColumn { width: auto; } } IPS Community Suite 4 - Now Available
You can now purchase IPS Community Suite 4 or, if you are an existing license holder of IP.Board, you can download the upgrade as part of your license! Be sure to read this important information if you are upgrading from IP.Board 3.
IPS Community in the Cloud clients can simply submit a support request when you are ready to upgrade and we will take care of it for you.
Sign Up Now Existing Clients: Go to Client Area Background
Online communities are a huge part of the Internet. Millions of people around the world use online communities to connect with each other about the things that matter to them. At IPS, we've been facilitating this for over 13 years, working with some of the most amazing and interesting sites. Fan communities such as those provided by Warner Music Group and Live Nation for their artists, sports leagues such as the NHL for their fan communities or Bethesda Softworks for their games all use communities to bring fans together. Business like Evernote use communities to reach their customers on a more personal level. And specialist sites like FindLaw use communities to help people find the information they need. Every day new communities are born and we're thrilled at IPS to be involved with this amazing part of the Internet, a part that we feel makes the Internet great.
Two years ago we started on an ambitious project. We wanted to make our platform even better. We wanted to bring all of our applications together in a tightly-integrated suite with a modern codebase, gorgeous interface and unrivaled experience for users.
Philosophy
Being a web developer for a distributed application like the IPS Community Suite is an interesting position. The Internet moves very quickly: what looks good, works well and users will enjoy today might not tomorrow. Web development always needs to be modern, fresh and cutting edge to stay relevant. At the same time, a web developer needs to have understanding and respect for everything that has come before, and know what users expect. It’s no good creating a website that most people won’t understand how to use, or might not even work on some platforms. Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of projects rise and fall in popularity, and the ones that don’t do so well tend to fall into one of these two categories - either they fall behind and start to feel clunky, or overexcited developers get too carried away and create something that nobody wants.
At IPS, we don’t do either. We make a platform that is modern and both easy and fun to use and customize. In short, we make the best community platform available. This is the philosophy which underlies IPS Community Suite 4.
Features / Technology
IPS Community Suite 4 is designed for the modern web. The default theme is designed to be clean and simple both so it’s easy to use and simple for designers to expand upon. The design is also responsive meaning it looks great whether you’re on a desktop or a mobile phone, or anything in between (and we do that the right way: we don’t just remove things on smaller screens) and this is true not only for the front-end but even the administration control panel too.
Our editor supports drag-and-drop uploading, automatic media embedding, auto-saving and mentions. Every email the suite sends looks great no matter what client you’re using. These are just a few of the countless features that make IPS Community Suite 4 great.
Check out the full feature tour The platform is built on modern, but solid, technology. We use PHP and MySQL because they run on pretty much every web server, but we use modern coding techniques within them like the namespacing, late static binding and closures provided by PHP 5.4, and we use HTML5 features like local storage and geolocation. And it’s coded well with meticulous care; things like valid HTML markup which doesn’t really matter to the average user, matters deeply to us.
Finally, it’s ready for communities of any size. You can use Amazon S3 for file storage. You can leverage caching technology, including memcached to page output caching for guests which can even mean most requests never even establish a connection to your database.
And that’s without mentioning all of the features which have always made IPS stand out, like the spam monitoring service, monetization, Sphinx integration and so on.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
Expansion Potential
But not only is IPS Community Suite great out of the box, its potential for expansion is huge, and there’s a great community of third party designers and developers working with us.
Tools for developers
The framework that IPS Community Suite runs on is powerful, but flexible and developers can get started with ease. It is possible to override any class anywhere in the entire framework using a technique called monkey patching, allowing customization of any aspect of the suite. Whole new applications can be created easily, using central classes for common concepts like content handling. And the framework is designed to be safe at low levels: output escaping for XSS protection (note, not input escaping, which is the wrong way round to do it) and prepared statements for SQL injection protection are handled at a low level, global basis, and customizations are sandboxed so an error in a customization cannot bring down the community.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
Tools for designers
Designers also benefit from a powerful designer mode that allows customization of HTML, CSS and other theme resources using local files so they can use their own code editors and tools. Designers can even create theme settings allowing end-users to customize even further. We also provide tools to allow designers to see the changes made to templates between versions so themes can be updated for new versions. Of course, for the less technically inclined, there is a powerful “easy mode” for creating themes allowing anyone to customize the look easily.
Tools for translators
Translators too can translate the IPS Community Suite easily. A “quick translation” tool allows any word or phrase to be translated just by clicking and holding to bring up a textbox, or an extensive list of all words and phrases can be browsed. Furthermore, we have been meticulously careful to use phrases throughout the entire suite that can be translated into any language with understanding of the differences many languages have with English such as grammar structure and pluralization.
All of these customizations can be exported with one click and distributed as a single file. To install an application, plugin, theme or language, users only need to upload a single file in the administrator control panel. No more uploading dozens of files with FTP.
Rapid Development
Perhaps though, the most significant thing about IPS Community Suite 4 is what comes next. We now have a solid platform for future development. With the new modern framework, new features and improvements can be written much quicker than ever before. In addition, we have been using new tools and techniques within our development team for faster development, testing and deployment of new releases.
For when a new release is ready, IPS Community Suite 4 includes a powerful delta upgrade system: no matter what version you are on, you can download an upgrade package for the latest version - this includes only the files you need, so upgrading is quick and painless.
With these three significant improvements (to the framework, to our development processes and to the upgrade process for users) we have been able to adopt a much more rapid release cycle. A more streamlined process also allows us to be much more open about our future plans. The benefits of this have already been seen: since releasing IPS Community Suite 4, we have already added several new features. And this is just the beginning.
Conclusion
IPS Community Suite 4 has been a huge project. It’s an amazing experience to see the communities that have already upgraded - the countless hours of planning, discussions, whiteboard drawings and thousands of lines of code come that have come together in this incredible platform already spawning online communities of all genres. We’re hugely excited to see the many more to come.
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This is a maintenance release to consolidate security updates released since 3.4.7, release additional security updates, and fix some minor bugs impacting many clients. We recommend you upgrade to ensure you have all security updates in place.
You can download in the client area and upgrade as normal.
Support Notes
IPS will no longer provide upgrade services for self-hosted licenses on the 3.x series. You can do the upgrade yourself (it's very easy) but our support will only do upgrades for you to IPS Community Suite 4. If you are a IPS Cloud client we will still do the upgrades for you.
IP.Board 3.3.x and related apps will no longer receive any support or security updates after 1 January 2016. IP.Board 3.4.x and related apps will no longer receive security updates after 1 April 2017.
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We are releasing a patch for IP.Board 3.3.x and 3.4.x to address three cross-site scripting (XSS) issues.
It has been brought to our attention that specifically crafted URLs may allow an attacker to adjust another user's ignored user preferences and private message options.
To apply the patch
Simply download the attached zip for your IP.Board version and upload the files to your forum server.
IP.Board 3.4.x:
patch_34x_04272015.zip
IP.Board 3.3.x:
patch_33x_04272015.zip
If you are an IPS Community in the Cloud client running IP.Board 3.3 or above, no further action is necessary as we have already automatically patched your account. If you are using a version older than IP.Board 3.3, you should contact support to upgrade.
If you install or upgrade to IP.Board 3.4.7 after the date and time of this post, no further action is necessary as we have already updated the main download zips.
We would like to thank rack911labs.com for bringing the private message to our attention.
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We are releasing a patch for IP.Board 3.3.x and 3.4.x to address an SQL injection issue.
It has been brought to our attention that specifically crafted URLs may allow an attacker to trigger an SQL error with specific configurations.
To apply the patch
Simply download the attached zip for your IP.Board version and upload the files to your forum server.
IP.Board 3.4.x:
patch3122015.zip
IP.Board 3.3.x:
patch3122015_33.zip
If you are an IPS Community in the Cloud client running IP.Board 3.4 or above, no further action is necessary as we have already automatically patched your account. If you are using a version older than IP.Board 3.4, you should contact support to upgrade.
If you install or upgrade to IP.Board 3.4.7 after the date and time of this post, no further action is necessary as we have already updated the main download zips.
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It has been brought to our attention that a cross site request forgery issue exists with gravatar images that can allow a potential attacker to cause a user to store a gravatar profile photo that was not desired. Further, during internal reviews of the issue we discovered another CSRF issue that can allow an attacker to mark all private messages as read. Finally, a minor "self XSS" issue has also been patched with this update.
To apply the patch
Simply download the attached zip for your IP.Board version and upload the files to your forum server.
IP.Board 3.3.x:
patch_33x_Feb2015.zip
IP.Board 3.4.x:
patch_34x_Feb2015.zip
If you are an IPS Community in the Cloud client running IP.Board 3.4 or above, no further action is necessary as we have already automatically patched your account. If you are using a version older than IP.Board 3.4, you should contact support to upgrade.
If you install or upgrade to IP.Board 3.4.7 after the date and time of this post, no further action is necessary as we have already updated the main download zips.
We extend our thanks to Daniel Price, A.K.A ShadeSpeed of the GameMaker Community for notifying us of the gravatar issue privately and promptly.
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This means we have left the beta stage where things are unsupported and known to be broken and enter the period between that and final. The Release Candidate phase allows us to partially support the Suite without committing our full resources to it. This step also means that there will still be some bugs in the system but they should not be major issues any longer.
You can download IPS Community Suite 4.0.0 RC in your client area. IPS Community in the Cloud clients can request upgrades through support. If you are using our Chat product please note that it is not yet available for version 4.0.0 so please do not upgrade if Chat is required.
Important Support Note
Release Candidates are partially supported only.
There will be bugs in the Release Candidates. Do not use Release Candidates if any sort of issues will impact your ability to enjoy your site.
We will assist you in support with any major problems in installing or upgrading from 3.4.7 to make sure your install is online. However, once the site is online and functional, other less critical bugs may be deferred until the next release to fix those issues. We do plan on a fast update schedule but it does mean you may not get fixes for several days.
To reiterate: we will assist with major problems that make your Suite not function (install issues, upgrade issues, major problems) but you may have to wait for update releases for other issues. Please keep these support limitations in mind when choosing to use a Release Candidate.
Release Candidate Schedule
We plan on having several RCs that will be released every few days over the next couple weeks. By doing a rapid release schedule it will allow us to get fixes out to you very quickly and ensure things are as stable as possible for the final, fully supported release.
Beta Testers
Everyone at IPS greatly appreciates those of you who participated in the beta testing phase. If you did you use beta releases you can upgrade from Beta 8 to RC1 however you may wish to consider a fresh upgrade from 3.4.7 just to ensure you are not carrying over any beta quirks through to RC and final.
Our Thanks
IPS Community Suite 4.0 took at lot longer than we thought it would as we changed the focus of the Suite and were forced to extend our workload and therefore timeline. We are sorry for these delays and we do hope that you see it will be worth it in the end. IPS4 is a great platform and we are very excited to start adding lots of fun features throughout this year.
Upgrading IP.Content to Pages
When upgrading from IP.Content to Pages, it is worth noting that because the underlying code has changed, custom templates and custom blocks are not upgradable. Custom templates are removed from the system after the upgrade, and any custom blocks are retained, but left disabled as a reference point for recreating manually.
This release of Pages does not have external blocks (this feature allows you use IP.Content blocks on another website or page) and neither does it have relational database field functionality. Both these features will be available in a near-future release.
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IPS welcomes any clients who enjoy testing beta software to participate and post bugs in our bug tracker. These beta releases help us to provide a more stable final release and the more people who participate in testing the better it is for all.
This release makes available:
Forums Blog Gallery Downloads Calendar Commerce Pages
The upgrade system is now available and you can upgrade from IP.Board 3.4.7 to test this system However: do not upgrade your live community! IPS does not provide technical support or services for beta releases. You can append "-TESTINSTALL" on to the end of your license key to allow to a separate install for test purposes. More information on license keys...
Downloading
You can download IPS Community Suite 4.0.0 Beta 6 in the client area. Go to your Purchases section, select your license, and click the download link. IPS Community in the Cloud clients do not yet have access to the beta.
You will be able to upgrade from Beta 6 to the first supported release of IPS Community Suite 4.0 when it is released. Unless major issues present themselves, we anticipate that Beta 6 is the final beta and next release will be supported. Please do help us test and report bugs. Thank you!
Note: If you are already running Beta 5 you can upgrade in your AdminCP. You will see a notice on your Dashboard. If you do not see it: go to Applications and click check for update.
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IPS welcomes any clients who enjoy testing beta software to participate and post bugs in our bug tracker. These beta releases help us to provide a more stable final release and the more people who participate in testing the better it is for all.
This release makes available:
Forums Blog Gallery Downloads Calendar Commerce Pages
The upgrade system is now available and you can upgrade from IP.Board 3.4.7 to test this system However: do not upgrade your live community! IPS does not provide technical support or services for beta releases. You can append "-TESTINSTALL" on to the end of your license key to allow to a separate install for test purposes. More information on license keys...
Downloading
You can download IPS Community Suite 4.0.0 Beta 5 in the client area. Go to your Purchases section, select your license, and click the download link. IPS Community in the Cloud clients do not yet have access to the beta.
You will be able to upgrade from Beta 5 to Beta 6 when it is released and to all future betas through final release. Depending on how this Beta 5 goes we may not actually have a Beta 6 so please do help us test and report bugs. Thank you!
Note: If you are already running Beta 4 you can upgrade in your AdminCP. You will see a notice on your Dashboard. If you do not see it: go to Applications and click check for update.
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It has been brought to our attention that a cross-site scripting issue exists within the messenger in IP.Board. We are releasing a patch today that addresses this issue.
3.4.7: patch12_5_2014.zip
3.3.4: patch12_5_2014 - 3.3.x.zip
We would like to thank Matthias Ungethüm (http://www.unnex.de) for reporting this issue to us.
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IPS welcomes any clients who enjoy testing beta software to participate and post bugs in our bug tracker. These beta releases help us to provide a more stable final release and the more people who participate in testing the better it is for all.
This release makes available:
Forums Blog Gallery Downloads Calendar Commerce (formerly IP.Nexus) Pages (formerly IP.Content)
The upgrade system is now available and you can upgrade from IP.Board 3.4.7 to test this system However: do not upgrade your live community! IPS does not provide technical support or services for beta releases. You can append "-TESTINSTALL" on to the end of your license key to allow to a separate install for test purposes. More information on license keys...
Downloading
You can download IPS Community Suite 4.0.0 Beta 4 in the client area. Go to your Purchases section, select your license, and click the download link. IPS Community in the Cloud clients do not yet have access to the beta.
You will be able to upgrade from Beta 4 to Beta 5 when it is released and to all future betas through final release.
Note: If you are already running Beta 3 you can upgrade in your AdminCP. You will see a notice on your Dashboard. If you do not see it go to Applications and click check for update.
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IPS welcomes any clients who enjoy testing beta software to participate and post bugs in our bug tracker. These beta releases help us to provide a more stable final release and the more people who participate in testing the better it is for all.
This release makes available:
Forums Blog Gallery Downloads Calendar This release does not contain Commerce (formerly IP.Nexus), Pages (formerly IP.content), or Chat. These three apps will be released soon as a separate download in a pre-release state. Both are nearly ready to go to full beta.
The upgrade system is now available and you can upgrade from IP.Board 3.4.7 to test this system However: do not upgrade your live community! IPS does not provide technical support or services for beta releases. You can append "-TESTINSTALL" on to the end of your license key to allow to a separate install for test purposes. More information on license keys...
Downloading
You can download IPS Community Suite 4.0.0 Beta 3 in the client area. Go to your Purchases section, select your license, and click the download link. IPS Community in the Cloud clients do not yet have access to the beta.
You will be able to upgrade from Beta 3 to Beta 4 when it is released and to all future betas through final release.
Note: If you are already running Beta 2 you can upgrade in your AdminCP. You will see a notice on your Dashboard. If you do not see it go to Applications and click check for update.
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Get started now!
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It has been brought to our attention that certain PHP configurations allow for a potential SQL injection vulnerability. Although this exploit requires some knowledge of your configuration and for certain files to be web-readable, we felt it important to release an update.
Additionally, it has been brought to our attention that it may be possible to send attachments via the email classes which would ordinarily be removed.
To apply the patch
Simply download the attached zip for your IP.Board version and upload the files to your forum server. You do not need to run any scripts or the upgrade system.
IP.Board 3.3.x
3_3_x_patch_nov_14.zip
IP.Board 3.4.x
3_4_x_patch_nov_14.zip
If you are an IPS Community in the Cloud client running IP.Board 3.3 or above, no further action is necessary as we have already automatically patched your account. If you are using a version older than IP.Board 3.3, you should contact support to upgrade.
If you install or upgrade to IP.Board 3.4.7 after the date and time of this post, no further action is necessary as we have already updated the main download zips.
We extend our thanks to Andrew Erb for notifying us of the email issue privately and promptly.
patch12_5_2014 - 3.3.x.zip
patch12_5_2014.zip
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We are developing a fix for this issue now and anticipate its release tomorrow. Until the fix is released, clients are advised to delete the following file from their community:
interface/ipsconnect/ipsconnect.php
This will disable the IPS Connect service which is our system to allow for multiple sites to share one login. Most clients will not need this service but if you do use it then we still suggest you temporarily disable until a fix is released tomorrow.
IPS Community in the Cloud clients: we have already disabled this feature for you so you are not impacted by this exploit.
Update: Patches are now available.
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IPS welcomes any clients who enjoy testing beta software to participate and post bugs in our bug tracker. These beta releases help us to provide a more stable final release and the more people who participate in testing the better it is for all.
This release makes available:
Forums Blog Gallery Downloads Calendar
This release does not contain Commerce (formerly IP.Nexus), Pages (formerly IP.content), or Chat. These three apps will be released soon as a separate download.
The upgrade system is now available and you can upgrade from IP.Board 3.4.7 to test this system However: do not upgrade your live community! IPS does not provide technical support or services for beta releases. You can append "-TESTINSTALL" on to the end of your license key to allow to a separate install for test purposes.
Downloading
You can download IPS Community Suite 4.0.0 Beta 2 in the client area. Go to your Purchases section, select your license, and click the download link. IPS Community in the Cloud clients do not yet have access to the beta. That will be coming soon.
You will be able to upgrade from Beta 2 to Beta 3 when it is released and to all future betas through final release.
If you are not interested in downloading our beta releases you can still check out our IPS Community Suite 4.0 preview site to see the new version in action.
Note: If you are already running Beta 1 you can upgrade in your AdminCP. You will see a notice on your Dashboard.
Discussion
Please post in our special Beta Releases forum on the preview site for anything about Beta 2. Enjoy!
We will be upgrading our own site next week. Stay tuned!
Update: Pages pre-release now available.
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IPS welcomes any clients who enjoy testing beta software to participate and post bugs in our bug tracker. These beta releases help us to provide a more stable final release and the more people who participate in testing the better it is for all.
This release makes available:
Forums Blog Gallery Downloads Calendar
This release does not contain Commerce (formerly IP.Nexus), Pages (formerly IP.content), or Chat. These three apps will be released soon as a separate download.
The upgrade system is now available and you can upgrade from IP.Board 3.4.7 to test this system However: do not upgrade your live community! IPS does not provide technical support or services for beta releases. You can append "-TESTINSTALL" on to the end of your license key to allow to a separate install for test purposes.
Downloading
You can download IPS Community Suite 4.0.0 Beta 1 in the client area. Go to your Purchases section, select your license, and click the download link. IPS Community in the Cloud clients do not yet have access to the beta. That will be coming soon.
You will be able to upgrade from Beta 1 to Beta 2 when it is released and to all future betas through final release.
If you are not interested in downloading our beta releases you can still check out our IPS Community Suite 4.0 preview site to see the new version in action.
Discussion
Please post in our special Beta Releases forum on the preview site for anything about Beta 1. Enjoy!
- 9,687 views