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4.0 - Delta Updates

IPS Community Suite 4.0 is nearly here, and we'll be distributing betas very soon. But 4.0 is really just the beginning; with the new tightly integrated, one-version suite of applications, we're already starting to think about all of the features we'd like to add in the future. This brings us nicely to the final 4.0 feature we'd like to talk about: the upgrade system.

In 4.0, when a new version is released, you'll see a message like this pop up in the Admin CP:


Clicking the "Download" button will allow you download, right from the Admin CP, a zip file with the new version. This zip file will contain just the changed the files from the version you're using (in technical terms, this is called a delta update) to save time and bandwidth when uploading the new version to your server. The system automatically knows what apps you have installed (so you don't have to download a separate zip for each application) and even knows if you've renamed your AdminCP directory and accommodates for that.

Here's a video of the process in action:


  • 11,042 views
Mark

IPS4 Pre-Release Available for Testing

If you like living on the edge and testing new products we would love your help in testing IPS Community Suite 4.0!

We now have pre-release versions available for download if you are an active Community Suite license holder.

Pre-Release vs. Beta

This is a pre-release which means we are not quite done adding/changing some areas of the Suite. It also means that you cannot upgrade between each pre-release. Once we reach Beta stage you will be able to upgrade from Beta 1 to Beta 2 and so on.

Important Information
This is a preview of unfinished software. Do not install this on a live server or attempt to upgrade your current community. Please. You cannot upgrade between pre-release builds so you will have do a clean install each time we update this package. This will change when we reach proper beta stage. Only download this preview if you are comfortable testing software with known issues and want to provide bug reports and feedback. We provide no support for these pre-release builds.

Please post any bugs you find in the bug tracker and feedback/questions on the preview site. We are getting close to a public beta and the final, supported release of IPS Community Suite 4.0 and appreciate your help getting there!

Download Pre-Release Now



Note that Nexus, Content, and Chat are not yet available for download but will show up on our preview site soon.
  • 15,762 views
Charles

IPS Community Suite 4.0 Preview Site

The IPS Community Suite 4.0 preview site is open and ready for you to start browsing our new software!

We have had the site quietly open for a few weeks now getting feedback and addressing issues. We want to make sure everyone is aware so you get a chance to look at what's new.

Register and have a look around at what's new. Read our updates forum to check out videos demoing the system. Get involved in feedback and bug testing. Everyone at IPS is very proud of 4.0 and really hope you enjoy it. Public beta releases of 4.0 are not yet available but are just around the corner so take this opportunity to become familiar with IPS 4.0 so your community is ready when it's released.

See you on the preview site!


Please keep all feedback about 4.0 on the preview site so we can keep things organized. Thanks!
  • 12,428 views
Charles

Get Ready For IPS 4.0!

IPS Community Suite 4.0, the most significant update to IP.Board and the rest of our apps we've ever made, is fast approaching a state where we'll be ready for a public preview and, soon after that, public beta testing!

We know most of you are just as excited as we are about this and can't wait to try it out.

With 4.0, we've made some significant leaps in terms of modernization, and it's possible that you might need to do some preparation before you're ready to install it. Notably, our minimum PHP and MySQL versions have gone up. It's the first time we've needed you to do this in 6 years, and the versions we need you to have have been around for a long time, we're not requiring the latest versions.

In addition, 4.0 is UTF-8 only (if you don't know what that is, it's a way text can be stored in your database which you may or may not be using at the moment) and while the 4.0 upgrade process will ask you to convert your database if you're not already using it, this is a moderately time-consuming process, so if you convert your database now, it's one less thing to worry about on upgrade day.


To make this process as easy as possible, we have created a little script which you can upload to your server to test if you're ready.

Download Now
  • 72,992 views
Mark

4.0 - Cover photos

I want to briefly show our new cover photo support. Cover photos allow users to upload an image to represent something in the community; we currently support them in profiles and calendar events and may roll out support to other areas later.

Here's a video of it in action for a calendar event.



It's really simple to use, and of course still works responsively like the rest of our default theme. We hope it adds a new element of customization for content in your community.

Developers

For developers, supporting cover photos in your own addons is as easy as you'd expect. A helper is available which handles the nitty-gritty for you; you simply add $item->coverPhoto() to your template, override a couple of methods in your controller, and optionally build your own menu to control the user interaction (or you can let the helper output them for you, as in the video above). That's it!

As always, screenshots are from pre-release software and are subject to change before release.
  • 20,677 views
Rikki

4.0 - Front-end Responsiveness Round-up

We've previously shown how responsiveness works in the AdminCP, but I'd like to briefly introduce responsiveness on the front end, and pick a few views to show you as examples (this will be a screenshot-heavy entry!)

What is responsiveness?

Before we get to that, allow me to recap what responsiveness is. Responsive design is a method by which you design one page in such a way that it adapts for the available screen space on the device the user is using. This means that one theme handles both the full desktop view and the condensed mobile view with some clever CSS, in contrast to 3.x where we had a separate mobile skin.

When we took the decision to use responsive design for IPS4, one key aim was to ensure that the mobile view isn't feature reduced. We want all functionality and all areas of the suite to be available regardless of device, and with only a couple of exceptions we're on track to deliver this.


Primary navigation

In mobile view, the primary navigation collapses and moves to a menu accessible with the icon in the top-right. The breadcrumb becomes a 'Back' control, taking you up a level from the current page:



The primary navigation, when opened, looks like this:



Moderation

Given that the responsive theme supports all functionality, this naturally includes moderation. IPS4 support full moderation capabilities regardless of the device you're using. Here's an example of moderating images in Gallery. Notice the menu to quickly select types of content to moderate, as well as the floating toolbar at the bottom of the screen to choose actions.



Settings page

Taking the settings area as an example, here's the same screen at the three supported breakpoints - desktop, tablet and mobile.








Profile view

Here's profile view (which we covered in more detail here) as seen on a phone:




Calendar

Calendar views on mobile:






Gallery

Viewing albums & images in a category:




Blog

The blog homepage:



And viewing a blog:




Forums

Submitting a topic on mobile:




Conclusion

So that wraps up this round-up of responsive views. Naturally, there's many more views than this in the suite and we can't show screenshots of every single one, but hopefully this entry has given you a taste of a variety of views, and a better idea of how we're approaching mobile users in IPS4.


As always, screenshots are from pre-release software and are subject to change before release.
  • 21,843 views
Rikki

4.0 - Profiles

Profiles are one of the key sections of a community, as everyone knows. They are what represent your users; where their information is shown and their content is gathered. When users contribute quality content to your community, their profile is where other users go to find it in one place. In short, it's an important area.

In IPS4, profiles have had a complete makeover. There's a lot to cover, so I'll start with a numbered screenshot, and address each section individually (please note this is a large image; if you're on mobile, you may wish to wait to view it full-size).



1 - Header images

In 3.x, users could customize their profiles by uploading a background image. In practice, this didn't work well when the software was integrated into an existing website design, and the options presented often ended up with a garish profile. In addition, social networks like Facebook and Twitter have adjusted user expectations on how profiles are customized.

In IPS4, instead of page backgrounds, users instead get to customize their profile header image. This provides the best of both worlds - ample space to choose something creative, but it's contained and won't mess up a website design.

2 - Reputation

The user's current reputation count is shown prominently in the info column, letting other users know if this member is an asset to the community.

3 - Warnings

For moderators/staff, the profile now provides quick access to warning tools. By expanding the panel, they can see a brief history of recent warnings:



And clicking one of these pops up the warning details:



New warnings can also be issued inline, of course.

4 - Followers

Followers replace friends in IPS4, and the user's followers are shown in this block. Instead of requiring mutual acknowledgement as with the traditional friends system (an approach that isn't entirely useful in a community of anonymous users), in IPS4 you follow users whom you find interesting in order to be updated when they contribute to the community. Users can of course prevent others from following them, if that is a concern to them. We'll have more details on how followers works in a later entry.

5 - About the user

Traditional information about the user is shown in the next block, including custom profile fields.

6 - Recent visitors

Recent visitors to this user's profile are shown next. As with 3.x, this can be toggled on and off by the profile owner. In 4.x, this is done by clicking the X in the corner of the block.

7 - Follow/Message member

These primary buttons enable others to follow the user (if enabled), and send a new message inline, without leaving the page.

8 - User's content

In 3.x, browsing a user's content was handled by the search area of the community (though links were available in the user's profile and hovercard). We felt this wasn't the best place for it, though. After all, a user's content should be available in their profile.

That's what this button does. It switches the profile view to 'content browsing' mode, where you can see everything the user has done. It's smooth and buttery, and because it all loads dynamically, it feels like a true part of the profile. Here's a video of it in action (14MB)



9 - Long-form custom profile fields

IPS4 supports various kinds of custom profile fields, including rich-text editors for long, styled content. Those custom profile fields will be shown in the main section of the profile where they get the space they need to be effective. About Me is a default field, but you can of course add your own too for your users to fill in.

10 - User's 'Nodes'

A node is a fancy developer term for content containers that a user creates themselves, like gallery albums and blogs (as opposed to forum categories, which are created by the admin). In IPS4, a user's 'nodes' are shown right on their profile page, making it easy to find more interesting content from the user. In this screenshot, you can see my profile is showing my albums, my blogs, and other blogs to which I contribute.

For developers, supporting your application in this section is easy too.

11 - Status feed

The status feed from 3.x is of course still present, and the interaction is all inline without leaving the page.


Conclusion

That's profiles in 4.0. We hope the new focus on content and streamlined design provides a better experience for your users!


As always, screenshots are from pre-release software and are subject to change before release.

  • 26,539 views
Rikki

4.0: Quick Translating

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" rather than "Sign up") - it can even be used to rename forums, categories, etc.

Before I couldn't show you it in action as we weren't quite ready to show the front-end interface but now here's a video of the feature in action:


  • 15,448 views
Mark

4.0 - Embeddable content

IP.Board 3.x supports "My Media", which enables you to share other content from within the community by using the "My Media" button on the editor. This results in:


http://community.invisionpower.com/files/file/4464-ips-gdk-for-ipboard-32-amp-33/


While this works, it has a few shortcomings:
The styling of the block isn't really designed for each type of content it might show Users have to click the My Media button, then browse for the item, when they probably already know the URL they want to link to Not all content types are supported; e.g. you can't use My Media to link to a topic. For developers, implementing support for My Media in other applications was a process involving extension files and multiple methods


We wanted to make sharing existing content much easier in IPS4, both for users and developers. "Embeddable content" is our solution.

How to use it

To embed content from elsewhere in the community, here's a step by step guide:
Paste a link to it


That's it! When you paste a link to almost any kind of content, whether it's a forum topic, calendar event, gallery album or more, IPS4 will automatically embed a small preview of the content, designed specifically for that content. In order to not disrupt an existing paragraph of text however, the embedded block won't be used if the link is surrounded by text. Embedded content only shows if the link is pasted on its own line, giving users more control over their post.

Here's what a post looks like with a few embedded types shown:



Embedded content can be used anywhere as you'd expect, including posts and comments, but also status updates, IP.Content articles, and so on.

For developers

Supporting embedded content in your apps is very easy; your content model simply has to implement IPSContentEmbeddable:

class _Topic extends IPSContentItem implements ... IPSContentEmbeddable
Your controller then simply looks for an embed request and returns HTML - that's it. Our default blocks also have their own template and CSS file, so theme designers can change the styling on a per-theme basis.

Conclusion

Our hope is that this easier method of embedding content encourages more cross-posting and highlighting of good content in IPS4. The process is almost wholly automatic, meaning users don't have to think in order to share great content with others.

As always, screenshots are from pre-release software and are subject to change before release.
  • 18,508 views
Rikki

4.0 - Q&A Forums

One of the most distinctive uses for a forum is that of a 'knowledge community', where users visit in order to get help with a problem or question. Our own Pre-sales forum uses this model, but we also have many customers who run forums that are almost exclusively knowledge-based (such as Roxio and Evernote).

IP.Board 3.x introduced the concept of a "Best Answer" flag, allowing topic creators and staff the ability to highlight the reply to a topic that they deem best answers the question. This shows a snippet of the post in green at the top of the topic. Many sites now use this feature, but for IPS4 we wanted to expand the functionality offered for these types of forums.

Question & Answer Forums

Forums in IPS4 will enable you to set a forum as a "Q&A Forum". This adjusts the forum to be specifically designed for knowledge sharing. Instead of topics and posts, it has questions and answers.

On the forum index, the forum will be shown as a Q&A forum with its forum icon (unless you've set a custom forum icon for that forum):



Forum View

When you enter the forum, instead of the normal topic listing, you see a list of questions:



You'll see here that questions that have a best answer are indicated with a green checkbox. You'll also notice that one of the stats on the right hand side is 'votes'. In Q&A forums, questions can be voted up or down by users, in order to give them more visibility. More popular questions will bubble to the top (depending on the age of the question). You can of course still order by more traditional methods, if you wish.

Popular questions from the past 30 days are also highlighted at the top of the forum, providing an up-to-date 'knowledgebase' that other users can see. Using our own presales forum as an example, if someone asked a question about an important feature and it was voted highly, other users visiting the forum would see it right at the top, which is great for content visibility and helping users get the answers they're looking for with minimal fuss.

Question View

Clicking into a question shows an adjusted topic view:



The question (i.e. the first post) is shown at the top of the page on all pages, with answers listed below. You'll see that replies can also be voted up and down - in fact, this determines the order in which answers are shown inside the question. Popular answers, as determined by the community, will appear at the top, with worse or incorrect answers being pushed down. This is great for quickly finding the best information for the question at hand; in IP.Board 3.x, all too often a high-quality answer will appear in the middle of a topic and unfortunately go unnoticed by the topic creator or others looking for an answer. You can still sort answers by date, if you prefer.

In the screenshot above you can also see the first post is marked as the best answer. "Best Answer" always appears at the top, regardless of its vote count.

Question/answer ratings are separate from reputation, so you can of course still "Like" posts even if you don't think they're a good answer to the question.

Conclusion

So that's the new Q&A feature for IP.Board. We think it'll a big step forward for knowledge-driven communities using IP.Board, or even individual forums in other communities (like our pre-sales forum), helping users find answers to their questions more efficiently, and ultimately making your communities more useful.


As always, screenshots are from pre-release software and are subject to change before release.
  • 24,853 views
Rikki

4.0 - IP.Downloads Version Control

One of IPS Community Suite 4's main goals was to overhaul the user interface. We wanted to go further than just a few cosmetic changes to the theme, we wanted to examine each part of the user interface and see what could be improved. The community suite has a lot of functionality and there's a lot of tools that we all use regularly so we felt that any improvements on these common areas would be very welcomed.

I'd like to focus on such a change in IP.Downloads.

IP.Downloads has always had version control. Essentially, this allows you to upload new versions and keep a historical record of the older versions. You can read change logs and even download older versions where allowed.

Let's take a look at how IP.Board 3 does it currently:



Although there's nothing particularly wrong with this form, we can see that it mixes up the ability to upload a new version with the general file settings such as title and description. The end result is a bit confusing and a little intimidating the first few times you use it. The section to add your change log is a little lost in the file information block.

Now lets take a look at how IPS Community Suite 4 handles this:

The first step is to enable download revisions for this category inside the Admin CP.



Now that this has been enabled, lets navigate to the "File Actions" menu to upload a new version.



This loads the "Upload a new version form". As you can see, it's very clean, very easy to follow and isn't cluttered with settings and text fields that you aren't interested in editing.



Once you've uploaded your new version, you can see what's new on the file listing page.



You can even view previous change logs and the download link without leaving the page.



Conclusion
As this blog entry shows, IPS Community Suite 4 is really focused on making real improvements to everyday interfaces. We believe that these changes are very important to modernise the suite and to make it as easy to use as possible.

  • 14,492 views
Matt

4.0 - Moderation Part 5: Warnings

Effective moderation features are essential for online communities. Forums, blog entries and member-to-member messaging are particularly attractive for spam bots and nuisance users alike. IPS Social Suite has always been best in class when it comes to moderation features with features like the free IPS Spam Service that are completely unmatched by other web applications. Over this series of 5 blog entries I'm going to introduce you to some of the new moderation features in the IPS Community Suite 4.0.

Part 1: Setting up moderators
Part 2: Approval Queue
Part 3: Reports
Part 4: Effective Moderation
Part 5: Warnings





Introduction

A lot of what I'm going to cover in this blog entry is similar to the warning system in 3.x which was recently overhauled. Since warnings and moderations are such an important aspect of running a community though, I wanted to reintroduce the system, showing off the new UI for 4.0 and highlighting some of the tweaks that have been made.

The warnings system in the IPS Community Suite is point-based. When issuing a warning to a member, you select a reason, and each reason is tied to a number of points, and then when a member reaches a certain number of points, an action (such as to ban them from the site) is taken.

This is the setup page for reasons - I've set up each one to give one point which is never removed.



For each reason, I can choose if moderators can override that or not:




This is the setup page for actions:



I've set up a number of actions so that the following flow happens: You can control whether members can see their previous warnings or not. Moderator Permissions For each moderator you can control is they can see, issue and revoke warnings, and control how often they can give warnings: Viewing Warnings You will be able to see the current warning points for a member from their hover card (which shows whenever you hover your mouse over their name throughout the suite) and can see the details in their profile. Clicking on a warning brings up the details which show a link to the content the user posted which prompted the warning, the notes both for the member and for other moderators, and lists the actions taken (points given, if the member was suspended, etc.): In addition, when viewing content (posts, comments, etc.) if that post prompted a warning, this will be shown to moderators: Issuing Warnings When issuing a warning, selecting a reason will automatically fill in the number of points and actions to take based on the number of points the member already has (these can be changed if the administrator has allowed it). You can clearly see the pre-defined actions for each point level on the right. You can optionally add notes, both a note for the member and for other moderators. Acknowledging Warnings You can optionally set the system so that members have to acknowledge a warning before they can post again. When this is the case, the member will se a message on every page: Viewing the warning details will have a button allowing the member to acknowledge the warning: Even if you do not require warnings to be specifically acknowledged - members who have restrictions applied to their account (are on moderator queue, are restricted from posting or are banned) can clearly see this and the reason why. For example, this is what a member who is on moderator queue sees when making a comment: Revoking Warnings A new feature in 4.0 is that warnings can be revoked. You can reverse all the actions of the warning, or just delete the record of it: [*]On the first warning, nothing happens (it's a verbal warning only) [*]On the second warning, all posts the user makes for the next day will need to be approved by a moderator. [*]On the third warning, the user will be banned for one day and all posts the user makes for the next week will need to be approved by a moderator. [*]On the fourth warning, the user will be banned for a week. [*]On the fifth warning, the user will be permanently banned.























































  • 13,816 views
Mark

4.0 - Messenger

I can distinctly remember 5 years ago reading a blog entry on this site about the "personal conversations" feature in IP.Board 3.0, which we were working on at the time. Up until then, the messenger system in community software and other websites was much like email - you sent one message at a time, with little continuity between messages. We were one of the first, on the entire of the web, to introduce what we called "personal conversations" - a sort of "private topic" between invited members - it was a really exciting idea back then.

For 4.0, we wanted to really focus on the experience of using the messenger - making it super fast and easy to compose, navigate and participate in conversations.

Starting a conversation

When browsing the site, you'll see a messenger icon at the top of every screen just like you do now. When hitting the "Compose Now" button inside though, the form to send your message will appear as a modal window, and when you send, it will disappear again with no page reload. This makes it incredibly fast and easy to send a message from wherever you are, without interrupting your flow. You can also send a message to a specific member by hovering over their name wherever you see it on the site and clicking the "Send Message" button in the hover card that shows.



Browsing conversations

We've completely redesigned the main messenger pages. You now see a (infinitely scrolling) list of all your messages on the left-side. Clicking on any message opens it up in the main pane. All the common actions are enhanced with AJAX so you can open a conversation, add a user and reply all really quickly.



Mobile

We've not forgotten about mobile devices! The new responsive design in IPS 4.0 means the whole messenger works and looks great whether you're on a desktop or on your phone.



Summary

We recognise that when members send a new message, it is often as a response to content read in all areas of the suite. You can now send messages in place without disrupting your flow. We have improved all aspects of sending, receiving and managing messages and are confident these changes will make communicating with other members in private simpler and faster.
  • 18,165 views
Mark

In Memoriam: Steven Shaw

The site eGullet.org was literally the first client of Invision Power Services when our company was founded over 12 years ago. Steven Shaw, along with his partner, stepped up and supported IPS in its first days and stayed with us all these years. They were our first paying client, our first hosting client, and often the first to get early betas of our releases.

It was with great sadness that I read today of the passing of Steven Shaw.

Steven was a friend and mentor to me personally. He advised me as IPS grew, provided valuable feedback, was our first attorney (he actually registered the first code copyright of IPB), and was always on board to hear out ideas. My first trip to New York City, my first cruise, and many great dining ideas (the man who convinced me to try wine) were all based around his friendly advice. He honored me with a copy of his book when it was released. And of course he introduced me to the joys of Julia Child by shipping me some old recordings of her show.

Steven Shaw will be missed. I personally am in debt to his generosity and advice over the years as is IPS as a company.

For other great tributes please Google his name.
  • 8,381 views
Charles

4.0 - Improving multiple calendars

Some sites make use of multiple calendars to help differentiate what type of events are being contributed to the community. You might have a staff calendar that allows staff members to add events and a community calendar for the rest of your users. Or you may have a holidays calendar as well as a gaming "raids" calendar on your community. Individual calendars are a form of categorization in IP.Calendar, and we wanted to bring some enhancements to them in the 4.0 Community Suite.


Colors

You will now be able to specify colors for each calendar you create. The software will automatically suggest a new unique color each time you create a new calendar with several pre-determined colors to start with (and then falling over to randomly chosen colors if you happen to create enough calendars to use these defaults up), but you are able to specify any color you wish for any calendar you create.



(As an aside for developers - you can easily implement similar "color" fields in your own forms using the form helper class IPSHelpersFormColor)


Merged view

If you are familiar with the current iteration of IP.Calendar, you might be wondering what good implementing calendar colors actually does. After all, the software does not show events from different calendars mixed together right?

As of 4.0, IP.Calendar does indeed support a merged-calendar view. In fact, it is the default in IP.Calendar. Your users will see all events from all calendars (that they have permission to view) merged into one view, but can click a menu at the top of the page to filter by calendar if they so desire.



They will see events from all calendars merged together



When viewing an event the calendar it has been saved to is of course indicated here as well.




The merged calendars model is supported for all of the major views in IP.Calendar: the monthly view, the weekly view, the daily view...and the new "event stream" view which we will talk about in a future blog entry (shhh).


Conclusion

We feel these minor changes makes Calendar more intuitive, and especially makes handling multiple calendars within your IP.Calendar installation more practical and useful. We hope you find working with multiple calendars to be easier and clearer with these changes, and we hope you find new ways to make use of the multiple calendar support present in IP.Calendar as a result of the merged views and better calendar differentiation.
  • 7,784 views
bfarber

4.0 - IP.Downloads Category Management

Copying Settings

Sometimes you need to change the same setting across multiple categories. For example, let's say up until now I've not allowed comments on files and now I want to enable it for most categories. In IP.Downloads for 3.x, I'd have to go into each category one by one and toggle the setting on.

In 4.x, when editing a category, each setting has a "Copy" button next to it, when opens a window asking which categories to copy that setting value to, so I can make the change to one category and then copy it to others (or all) quickly.





This feature is also available when editing things in other applications, such as forums in IP.Board or products in IP.Nexus.


New Settings
We've moved some settings which were previously global settings into per-category settings to give you even greater control over your community:
"Require approval of comments" "Log all downloads" and "Prune download logs" - we also added a new per-category setting: "Allow file submitter to view log?" "Allowed file extensions" (this used to be managed using complicated "Mime Type Masks" - now you can just provide the extensions which are allowed in that category, or allow any file type). "Enable versioning control" and "Number of revisions to keep"

  • 9,073 views
Mark

4.0 - Moderation Part 4: Effective Moderation

Effective moderation features are essential for online communities. Forums, blog entries and member-to-member messaging are particularly attractive for spam bots and nuisance users alike. IPS Social Suite has always been best in class when it comes to moderation features with features like the free IPS Spam Service that are completely unmatched by other web applications. Over this series of 5 blog entries I'm going to introduce you to some of the new moderation features in the IPS Community Suite 4.0.

Part 1: Setting up moderators
Part 2: Approval Queue
Part 3: Reports
Part 4: Effective Moderation
Part 5: Warnings





Multi-moderation

It's really important that moderators can quickly take action against undesirable content without spending too much time or effort. If your community is the victim of a spam attack, or perhaps even just an over-enthusiastic poster, you want to be able to hide, lock, move, merge and delete content quickly.

Throughout the entire suite, whenever you content (be that topics in IP.Board, files in IP.Downloads or even comments on a particular file in IP.Downloads or anything else you can think of), as a moderator, when you move your mouse over it, you will see a checkbox, and at the top of the list, you have controls to quickly select particular items:



As you can see, in addition to checking individual items or all items, quick options are available for me to select all hidden, unapproved, pinned, locked or featured items, or even the items that I personally have read or not read.

After selecting one or more items, you will see a menu appear at the bottom:



This menu is incredibly smart. It automatically shows you options available based on the type of item you're looking at and the specific items you've selected. For example, here in IP.Downloads I see the options (from left-to-right): feature, pin, hide, lock move and delete (if you hover over any of the buttons a tooltip will show you what it is). If, I'm in IP.Board instead, I see a slightly different bar:



Here, I have two new options: merge and Saved Actions (the new name for the IP.Board "Multimod" feature which allows you to define specific actions to do multiple moderator actions quickly).

Also, it takes into consideration the specific items I've selected - if I select items which are not currently hidden, there is the "hide" button - if I select items which are currently hidden, there is the "unhide" button - and if I select a mix of both, I see both buttons.

After clicking a button, the action is performed on all items and I'm taken back to the screen.

Here's a short video demonstration of this in action:




Quick editing

Editing posts and comments is something moderators do on a daily basis. We already have quick reply (where when making a post or comment, it appears using AJAX without a page reload) and now in 4.0, we have quick edit too.

When you click edit, the post/comment immediately changes into an editor:



And when you click save, the editor disappears and is replaced by the new content.

Here's a short video demonstration of this in action:

  • 12,572 views
Mark

4.0 - AdminCP Reordering

Different staff members typically have different roles within a community - especially larger communities, where you may have staff responsible for the theme, others handling tickets and different staff maintaining the system. In 3.x, we had a 'Bookmarks' system in the AdminCP that allowed you to create a menu of frequently-used sections in an effort to make them easier to get to, rather than navigating the main menus.

As with every feature in IPS4, we took some time to think about what this Bookmark feature aimed to achieve, and whether it was the best way to achieve it (seriously - we have considered everything you'll see in IPS4 very carefully; nothing gets a free pass).

We determined through speaking to administrators that the primary use of this feature was actually to get to one place quickly - whatever place that might be. It appeared to be rarely used as an actual bookmarks menu, and besides, duplicating browser functionality should always send up a red flag. We decided to rethink the idea.

What we decided to do instead is allow AdminCP menus, both primary and secondary, to be reordered on a per-admin basis. This means each admin can set the AdminCP menu up however works best for themselves. If you use the theme system a lot, you can make that your first menu item. Or, if you use the ticket system in Nexus, you can put that first.

Here's how it works:


  • 10,229 views
Rikki

4.0 - Global Sidebar

One of the goals for IPS Community Suite 4.0 was improving content discovery. In other words, making sure content still receives exposure even if it is posted in less used areas of the suite.

The sidebar that shows on the IP.Board index page in 3.x helps with this goal to some extent, however people who visit the forums app infrequently may miss out on valuable content. This became an even more important issue when the decision was made to decouple IP.Board as a standalone application. What if the focus of your site is Gallery or what if IP.Board is not even enabled for example?

Our solution was to extend the sidebar across all applications as shown below in IP.Downloads.



You may notice from the screenshot that the announcements block is not specific to the downloads application. Any block can show in any application and they are configurable using moderator permissions. This immediately addresses the issue of content discovery.

While the sidebar is now global in 4.0, it is important to note that individual areas can enable and disable the sidebar if necessary. Some areas of the suite simply require more room in order to display ideally, so the sidebar is disabled in these cases (e.g. the calendar "monthly" view needs a full page table grid to display in its ideal format). Further, you can configure sidebars differently for different areas of the suite in context-sensitive manner. You may show a recent topics block in the IP.Board application, for instance, while showing a recent files block in IP.Downloads. Or you can show both blocks in both areas - the choice is yours.

Many areas of the suite have specific things they wish to automatically show in the sidebar and will do so. This is determined at a programmatic level and is not something that can be shut off. For instance, in IP.Downloads the primary screenshot and the download button show in the sidebar, while in IP.Calendar a map and a button to download an event show. Each application has the ability to output arbitrary content to the top of the sidebar where-ever necessary.

It is also worth noting that advertisements have the inherent ability to display in the sidebar site-wide as well.

Editing

Editing is carried out inline from the front-end, rather than the ACP, and can be customized based on the application, module or individual view. The technicalities of this are beyond the scope of this blog entry but what this means in practice is that you can vary what is shown in the sidebar for each individual area of your site. Ordering of the blocks is of course fully supported using a simple drag and drop interface, and some sidebars additionally have configuration options available to them as needed.

Here is a video demonstration of how editing the sidebar works in IPS Community Suite 4.0.



Caching

With this approach it was important that performance was not compromised and for that reason sidebar blocks support varying degrees of output caching. The active users block which must always be kept up to date utilizes no caching, a more general block showing overall statistics is cached for all users at once and other blocks that rely on permissions are cached for each user group combination. The level of caching used is determined by the developer when writing the block so, while it is important to mention that this performance aspect has been considered, it is something that is transparent to end users and admins in day to day use.

Summary

Community integration is a key strength of the IPS platform and the new sidebar in version 4 expands on this even further allowing you to share content across all areas effectively.
  • 25,863 views
Andy Millne

4.0 - RSVP Enhancements in Calendar

IP.Calendar has supported an RSVP system for events for the last several versions, and this has been a well received addition to Calendar. Where allowed, users can request RSVP for events submitted to the calendar, and where allowed, other users can RSVP (and subsequently un-RSVP) for these events. This functionality is useful for real-world events being coordinated through your site to help event organizers know who will attend. Some minor but useful enhancements have been made to the RSVP functionality in calendar for 4.0.


RSVP Limits

Often times, you may only have a limited number of spots available for an event. You may only be able to accommodate 10 users or 20 users at an event, and you typically will know this up front. Subsequently, it makes sense to limit the number of users who can RSVP for a given event in such scenarios. To this end, event submitters can now limit the number of RSVP responses allowed on a per-event basis. If you know only 10 users can be accommodated at an event, you may now specify this up front.


Yes? No? Maybe?

While being able to RSVP for an event is useful, many users online are familiar with other attendance systems that allow you to specify yes, no or maybe when RSVP support is available. In other words, instead of simply allowing you to say "yes I'm coming", sometimes it is just as useful to allow users to specify they are not coming, or that they might attend (in which case the organizer may plan to have extra food available, for example). The 4.0 Calendar will now support yes/no/maybe responses when RSVP is requested for an event.
One caveat to mention - when an upper RSVP limit has been specified, the "Maybe" option is not available. A gray area becomes apparent when there is a limit to the number of attendees allowed for an event and users begin to RSVP as "maybe". Does that fill up a spot? If not, what if they decide to come after all? It is much clearer for all involved to simply limit responses to yes or no when there is an attendee limit specified for an event.


When you have RSVP'd for an event, you will be presented with the option to leave the event in case you change your mind.





Download guest list

When RSVP has been enabled for an event, anyone who can see the list of attendees will be able to download a guest list in PDF format. This is especially useful for the event organizer in case they need to print out the guest list to bring with them to the event.


RSVP for imported events

When you configure iCalendar feed imports in the admin control panel, you will now be able to enable or disable RSVP status for events from the feed. As the administrator, you had no control over whether events imported from a feed had RSVP enabled or not in previous versions of Calendar. As of 4.0, you can specify whether to enable or disable RSVP for imported events on a per-feed basis.

As with 3.x, events exported through iCalendar feeds will include the attendee list with them.

When events are imported through an iCalendar feed, if an attendee is specified (through the iCalendar specification) and that attendee is also a member of your site (based on their email address), the member on your site will automatically be set as RSVP'd for the event.



We believe these several minor but useful enhancements to the RSVP capabilities in Calendar will make the feature more useful in real world usage scenarios, and will allow you and your event coordinators to get more out of Calendar than ever before.
  • 8,496 views
bfarber

4.0 - Minor calendar enhancements

IP.Calendar allows your users to schedule and share events through a centralized community calendar and supports many features that allow your community to coordinate, organize and interact with each other through the calendar. For instance, event organizers can request RSVP for events in order to note who will be attending before hand, and you can allow commenting on events submitted through IP.Calendar to allow users to share their thoughts about an event.

The latest version of IP.Calendar will see some minor yet useful enhancements that will allow you and your community to make better use of IP.Calendar in a more social manner than ever before.


Location support

Users will be able to specify a physical location (i.e. an address) when submitting an event to the calendar in the 4.0 Community Suite calendar application. When an address is specified and Google Maps integration is enabled in the admin control panel, a map will be presented when viewing the event that allows users to see where the event will be taking place.



Clicking on the map will take you to Google maps, allowing you to get directions to the event or otherwise find out more information about the location.

The event location, when available, will also be included in iCalendar exports using the GEO property supported by the specification. This means when sharing your calendar events with another application that supports iCalendar imports (and supports the "GEO" property), your event location will be available in those applications as well.


Downloading individual events

In previous versions of the calendar, you were able to download an iCalendar export of an entire calendar on the site, but you were unable to download an individual event as an iCalendar export. The 4.0 Community Suite calendar application will now allow you to download individual events, as seen by the "Download Event" button in the previous screenshot. Users can download individual events and import them into supported calendar applications if they desire. Events are downloaded with an ".ics" extension, which is supported by Windows Calendar, Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, Outlook, Mozilla Lightning and pretty much every other calendar application available.


Cover photo

Another small yet useful enhancement in the next version of Calendar is the ability to upload a cover photo with your events. You may now, optionally, upload a cover photo image with your events which will be displayed as a background image in the event header.



Please keep in mind that these are early screenshots and the interface is very much subject to change, however you can get an idea from this screenshot how you might end up specifying a cover photo for an event to give it some unique visual differentiation to stand out.


  • 8,959 views
bfarber

4.0 - Moderation Part 3: Reports

Effective moderation features are essential for online communities. Forums, blog entries and member-to-member messaging are particularly attractive for spam bots and nuisance users alike. IPS Social Suite has always been best in class when it comes to moderation features with features like the free IPS Spam Service that are completely unmatched by other web applications. Over this series of 5 blog entries I'm going to introduce you to some of the new moderation features in the IPS Community Suite 4.0.

Part 1: Setting up moderators
Part 2: Approval Queue
Part 3: Reports
Part 4: Effective Moderation
Part 5: Warnings




Back in IP.Board 3.0, we introduced a feature which at the time we called the "Report Center". Before this, if a user clicked the "Report" button, it would send a personal message to all the moderators for the forum the post was in (seriously). The Report Center was one of my favourite features in IP.Board 3.0 - it provided a great way for moderators to collaborate on reports and know the action that was taken.

For 4.0 - we wanted to make this even more useful. We had 2 goals:It should be easy to set up and use. It currently has lots of configuration options dotted around the Admin CP and can feel a little confusing ("statuses" have "points" which leads to different coloured "flags" on reports) - it should be much easier for moderators to see what's important. When viewing the report itself, moderators should be able to see all the information they need immediately, and take action, without leaving the screen, making it quick and painless to deal with reports.


The first part was making it easy for users to submit reports (if submitting a report is difficult or time-consuming, users won't do it, which defeats the point of having the feature). We've made it so when clicking the "Report offensive content" button next to posts, comments, messages, etc. a modal window will pop up - here the user can optionally fill in a reason for their submitting the report, and when submitting, the modal window just disappears, with no page reload, so the user is not interrupted from what they're doing.



Video Demonstration


Next we wanted to improve how moderators deal with reports - here's a screenshot of the report screen:


Right from this page I can:See the content that was reported - I don't have to click anywhere to view it (naturally, I can click on the title to be taken to the actual content if I want to see it in context).

Edit or delete the content. If I do this, it will do it via AJAX, without me ever leaving the page.
Video Demonstration
See any warnings that have been given in the past to the user who posted the content being reported, and issue them with a warning (which will be issued without me leaving the page).


Flag the member as a spammer, which will automatically take all the appropriate action for that, depending on how I've set it up in the Admin CP.

See who has reported this content, and the message they provided with the report. By hovering on their photo I will see their hover card which allows me to send them a message (which will be sent without me leaving the page).

See any comments on the report from other moderators and make a comment on the report - comments are submitted by AJAX so I can make a comment quickly.

Change the status of or delete a report.

Move to the next/previous reports pending.


  • 13,950 views
Mark

4.0 - Calendar Stream

IP.Calendar has a few primary important views: the monthly grid view (i.e. a typical calendar table), the weekly view which lists a calendar week and any events occurring during that week, a daily view which lists all events occurring on a given day, and the actual event views where you view details about a specific event. All of these views have their usefulness, however we felt that there was a missing piece to the puzzle. During planning meetings we discussed adding a popular feature request known as an agenda view, which basically lists all events between a given time period (or from a given date forward) and while we liked the idea, we felt we could accomplish the end goal while taking the interface a step further.


The calendar stream

The new "stream" view is what it sounds like - a stream of calendar events listed in order of date, from oldest to newest. This calendar view is based upon a given month and will show all events occurring within that month (including recurring events). You can view the calendar stream for each month individually if you wish, just like you would view the calendar "month" view.

The events are displayed as small blocks of event data.



This is a general idea of what the stream looks like


As you can see, events are listed from oldest to newest in a "stream", i.e. a grid of blocks showing event details. The stream is an option for end users to choose from, and the admin can set it as the default viewing method for Calendar if they wish.


Conclusion

We believe this new stream will accomplish the same end goal an agenda view is designed to accomplish, but in a more robust and stylish manner. We look forward to your feedback on this new enhancement to the calendar product.
  • 10,674 views
bfarber

4.0 - Working with images

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 is as simple as can be.

First and foremost, it should be noted that ImageMagick support is now suite-wide. In past versions of our software, only IP.Gallery could make use of ImageMagick. The image handling configuration options are now part of the core framework and choosing to use ImageMagick as your image handling suite will apply to all image handling suite-wide, including attachment thumbnails, screenshots in IP.Downloads, image uploads in IP.Gallery and everywhere else that makes use of our core image handling classes.

As was mentioned above, you will typically work with images by requesting a user upload one through a form. In this case, using the "Upload" form helper is the simplest route you can go for this purpose, and when doing so all image handling is done for you automatically. You need only pass an option to the helper to specify that the upload must be an image, and optionally you may restrict the maximum dimensions of the image.

If you need finer-grained control or if you need to perform other manual image handling tasks, you simply use IPSImage for this.

The following represents an actual test script that takes an image (named a.png), resizes it to 200x200 proportionately, and writes it to disk as b.png. The script then takes the same a.png file, resizes it to 200x200 but this time crops the image, and writes it to disk as c.png. This script honors the ACP configuration and will use GD or ImageMagick, depending upon what is selected, and will adjust the JPG quality and PNG compression levels based upon the ACP preferences.

<?php require_once '../../init.php'; $resized = IPSImage::create( file_get_contents( "a.png" ) ); $resized->resizeToMax( 200, 200 ); file_put_contents( "b.png", (string) $resized ); $cropped = IPSImage::create( file_get_contents( "a.png" ) ); $cropped->crop( 200, 200 ); file_put_contents( "c.png", (string) $cropped );
Now, typically you should not expect to write directly to disk, and instead should use IPSFile::create() to store a file (which, out of the box, can store files on disk, in the database, in Amazon S3, or on a remote server using FTP). The above test script was merely written to facilitate easier testing of the image handling scripts specifically during development, but they highlight just how easy it is to work with images in 4.0.

If we wanted to apply a watermark to the first image we need only call the watermark() method.

<?php require_once '../../init.php'; $resized = IPSImage::create( file_get_contents( "a.png" ) ); $resized->resizeToMax( 200, 200 ); $resized->watermark( IPSImage::create( file_get_contents( "watermark.gif" ) ) ); file_put_contents( "watermarked-image.png", (string) $resized );
We hope you find the new easier to use image handling routines beneficial while developing within the IPS framework.
  • 1,567 views
bfarber

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