Invision Community Blog

License Changes, IP.Board 3.4, and the Future

We have started work on IP.Board 3.4 and this blog entry will give you a general idea of our goals and also introduce some important license changes and future plans from IPS. It's an important entry so read on!

IP.Board 3.4

As always we will be blogging about specific features as they are completed. IPS does not post traditional roadmaps as roadmaps are subject to change. Instead, we post blog entries when a topic is completed and include screenshots and details so you know what you see is for sure going to happen. Here are the three high-level areas of interest for IP.Board 3.4:
Very few front end changes so version 3.3 skins will work with little changes on 3.4. Focus on back-end improvements (AdminCP user experience, SSO integrations, SEO options, and so on). Versions 3.2 and 3.3 were more about front end experience so now it's time for the AdminCP and other areas to get some focus. Work will be put into making areas that are difficult for non-technical/non-designer clients to use. Examples include skinning system, Visual Skin Editor, and upgrade system.

Three areas of focus will result in a lot of great changes and of course we will be doing other, smaller changes outside of those three areas but these will be the focus. Beyond this we have some bigger things planned but that will be revealed later. In addition to IP.Board: IP.Nexus and IP.Gallery are receiving large updates and other apps will receive smaller updates for maintenance and consistency.

We do not currently have a release date for IP.Board 3.4 (and if we did ... well you know :smile: ). Our continuing goal of offering the most stable platform possible will see continued maintenance releases on the 3.3 series and other applications. Expect to see an IP.Board 3.3.3 release coming out soon.

License Changes

To make our licensing system easier to manage for everyone we are going to be restructuring how they work and are displayed.

Here is how licenses show now:IP.Board Standard License
IP.Blog IP.Gallery IP.Nexus IP.Content etc.

Here is how the new structure will be implemented:IPS Community Suite
IP.Board IP.Blog IP.Nexus etc.

The main change is that IP.Board will no longer be the "root" license item. You will instead have a license to the IPS Community Suite and will then have the various applications as additions under that root license. Anyone with a current IP.Board Standard License or IP.Board Business License will see this change happen automatically in their client area in the coming weeks. There will be no change to your services of course.

Another change we are making is consolidating renewal dates. It's very cumbersome for both IPS and our clients to have the various apps under a license have different renewal dates. So we will be changing this to prorate purchases so they all have the same renewal dates. Of course the renewal frequency and amount will not change from how it is now. For example, if you choose to add IP.Nexus to your existing IPS Community Suite license the order system will automatically give you a credit based on the number of days until your next renewal cycle so everything balances out.

When we switch over to this new setup your existing purchases will also be prorated and your renewal date for your licenses will adjust based on a formula that gives you credit for all days remaining on all of your licenses. Said formula is a bit involved so check out this topic if you are so inclined to pull out your calculator :smile:

Finally, if your license is currently expired then you will still be put into this new structure but just in an expired state so nothing will change. Legacy license holders will see no change to their license terms but will also see an adjustment in the structure shown here.

This will all be implemented soon after IP.Nexus 1.5 is released which offers many great enhancements.

So why are we doing all this?

Future Plans

IP.Board 3.4 will be a milestone in the history of IPS because it will be the last release of IP.Board as we know it. It's pretty amazing to think that after 10 years this will be the last time IP.Board is released on its own as the flagship product.

After IP.Board 3.4, we will introduce the IPS Community Suite. The new Suite approach will see IP.Board become an application under the Suite just as IP.Gallery, IP.Nexus, and all of our other apps are today (hence the license structure change). There are some huge advantages to this way of doing releases:

Of course beyond these changes we have lot of exciting changes in store for IPS Community Suite 4.0 but that's for the future after IP.Board 3.4, new versions of IP.Nexus and IP.Gallery, and continued laser-focus on stability.

Summary

To clarify everything here is a summary timeline:

Very soon: IP.Board 3.3.3 maintenance release
Near future: Blog updates about IP.Board 3.4, new versions of IP.Nexus and IP.Gallery, and working toward releases
After next release cycle: Changes to the license structure

Then we will start work on IPS Community Suite 4.0!

The good news here is that we are not talking a long period of time. Since the IP.Board platform is very stable we can develop these releases in months rather than years.

We have disabled comments on this blog entry as a lot of various subjects were presented that clients will surely want to discuss and comments would get overlooked. However, feel free to start topics in the Client Lounge. Thank you for your support and continual feedback!Only one versionCurrently we have a version number for each of our products. This gets very confusing for everyone to know what version works with what other version. When we release IPS Community Suite 4.0.0 at that time all of our Suite will also be on 4.0.0. No longer will each application have its own release cycle and version numbers. Just one version number for you to look to when you are checking to be sure you're up to date!Suite consistencyAs we will be releasing our entire Suite at once for both new features and for maintenance releases you will always know everything is consistent and up to date. For example, if we add a new feature to moderation in one area it will be available in all areas without having to wait for a separate update.Tighter integrationIPS community products have always had great integration with each other. Our new Suite offering will further this integration by offering total uniformity and compatibility between all the features of the Suite.No forums requirement Currently if you want to use IPS products you are required to buy IP.Board even if you don't need a forum. Even though you might just need a commerce platform or a CMS you have to buy IP.Board as it is also the "core" application. No more with IPS Community Suite. You will be able to run a community with just a gallery, blog, and member list if you so choose. Maybe you are just looking to run a site and need a CMS and commerce system. The ability to mix and match our great product line will finally be here!

31,430 views

Charles

May 23, 201214 yr

IP.Nexus 1.5 Dev Update: FedEx Integration

IP.Nexus allows you to set up shipping prices with customisable rates, destinations and tax. Once an item has been shipped, you can then provide a tracking number which will provide the customer with a link where they can view tracking information.
While this solution allows complete control over shipping prices, it can be tedious to set up methods, and arrange shipments with couriers - particularly if you receive lots of orders.

In IP.Nexus 1.5, we're introducing direct integration with FedEx. In future versions of IP.Nexus we plan to integrate with other providers like UPS and USPS in a similar way.

The setup

To get started, you simply need to enter your FedEx account details in the Admin CP. You can also specify which services to use (if you don't want to use them all), add a surcharge to FedEx prices and more:

Once that's done - you're all setup. FedEx options will automatically become available when a customer selects a shipping method - you just need to make sure you have provided an accurate weight for shippable products. You can of course disable FedEx services for any individual product.

Purchase

When a customer goes to purchase a product they'll now see FedEx services in the shipping methods select box:

You'll notice that each option shows the price as well as an estimated delivery date. This data is coming straight from FedEx based on the customer's shipping address and the items being purchased.

The customer can also edit their shipping address on this screen which will adjust the prices accordingly - the shipping address can be different from the billing address provided in step 1 (but will be automatically filled out with that data). The address entered is also validated with FedEx to check for any mistakes in filling it out.

Shipping

In the Admin CP, you'll now see a button on the shipping order to arrange the shipment:

Clicking this will show you a screen like this:

As you can see, there are several options for how you want to provide the package to FedEx. The nearest FedEx drop boxes and service stations are listed and clicking on any will provide the opening hours:

You can also have Nexus schedule a courier to come to you to pick up a package which will present you with this screen:

Once shipment has been arranged you'll be able to print a shipping label. When the package has been delivered, you'll be able to see a proof-of-delivery with the signature that signed for the package. Both of these are provided by FedEx:

Tracking

The shipping order page in the Admin CP provides tracking information from FedEx:

The customer also has a page in the client area where they can view the same information:

6,641 views

Mark

May 22, 201214 yr

IP.Nexus 1.5 Dev Update: More New Support System Features

Our last two blog entries have focussed on large new features to the support system in IP.Nexus.
But we're not stopping there! In this blog entry I wanted to talk about some of the smaller new features and enhancements we've made to the support system for IP.Nexus 1.5.

Pay-Per-Incident
IP.Nexus 1.5 adds the ability for you to define a support department as "Pay-Per-Incident".
Each department allows you to enter a Pay-Per-Incident amount. When a customers tries to create a support request in this department, they'll see a message like this:

Clicking the "Submit Request" button will take them straight to the payment screen to provide payment for the support request. After submitting payment, they'll be redirected straight back to the support request submission form - the title and department will even be remembered and filled in:

Contact Us
Nexus allows guests to create support requests which can be used for sales enquires, etc. Currently, this is usually done through the incoming email support, however in 1.5, we've added an optional "Contact Us" link to the footer which will allow anyone, including guests, to submit a support request:

Tracking notifications
IP.Nexus allows staff members to "track" support requests, tracked requests can be accessed quickly from the main support request list and are highlighted in that list.
In IP.Nexus 1.5 we've also added the option to receive email notifications when a customer replies to support requests you are tracking:

Staff members can reply to these notifications directly via email and their reply will be added to the support request.

Reply to notifications
IP.Nexus allows you to send a notification to any email address(es) for new support requests or emails within a particular department.
Previously, the notification just said that a support request had been created or replied to, and gave you the title and ID number. In IP.Nexus 1.5, the notification email will contain the full body of the message and can be replied to directly by email.

Improved Incoming Email Handling
IP.Nexus supports the ability to receive incoming emails as support requests and replies. In IP.Nexus 1.5 we've rewritten a lot of this code to make it more reliable and secure.
We've also added a setting to allow you to control whether you prefer Nexus to parse emails as HTML or in plaintext. Each message now also has a toggle which allows you to quickly toggle (it uses AJAX) between HTML or plaintext on any message:

Merge
Staff members have been able to split a support request into two requests in Nexus for a long time. In 1.5, we've added the option you can merge two together into one.

Reminder Emails
IP.Nexus allows you to assign support requests to staff members. Staff members can quickly see all support requests assigned to them from the support request list, however, if you don't regularly check the list, you may not know a request has been assigned to you.
In IP.Nexus 1.5, if a staff member has any support requests assigned to them, they'll receive an email each morning with a list of the support requests that are assigned to them.

Edit Title
In IP.Nexus 1.5, staff members will be able to edit the title of a support request:

Stock Actions When Logging a Support Request
Stock Actions allow you to quickly set a department, status, assigned staff member and reply on a support request.
In IP.Nexus 1.5, when logging a support request in the Admin CP on behalf of a customer, you'll be able to use these Stock Actions in addition to when replying.

4,957 views

Mark

May 14, 201214 yr

IP.Nexus 1.5 Dev Update: Custom Support Fields

Those familiar with IP.Nexus will be familiar with the ability to create custom fields both for packages (so when a user purchases a package they can provide custom information such as the size, colour, etc. of the item being purchased) and for customer accounts (so you could add additional fields for customers to provide when making a purchase, etc.).

In IP.Nexus we're adding the ability to use custom fields with support requests.

You can choose from several different types of field, select the departments it applies to, and choose whether or not it is required.
Here I've created a field to ask users what "software version" they're using:

Now when a user goes to create a support request in the "Support" department, they'll be prompted to provide this information:

This works on the mobile skin too, of course:

The values of these fields can then be viewed both by the customer, and admins:

4,755 views

Mark

May 11, 201214 yr

IP.Nexus 1.5 Dev Update: Customer Satisfaction

IP.Nexus provides a great support system, allowing customers to submit support requests through your community or directly through email.
The support system also includes robust reporting tools allowing you to see the volume of support requests over time and audit individual members of staff to view how many replies they're making and the quality of those replies.

Ensuring customer satisfaction is important to anyone running a support system, and in IP.Nexus 1.5 we're adding a feature that will allow your customers to rate, and provide feedback on, the support they receive.

When the system is enabled, customers will see a star rating system below each staff member's reply:

They can then click on their desired rating, which will bring up a popup where they can enter additional feedback. This is completely optional, and customers can just leave a star rating if desired.

In the Admin CP, you can control using ACP Restrictions if administrators can view the ratings given and optionally also view the feedback given.
If a rating is given and the administrator can see it, it will appear user the message, just like in the front-end:

If the customer left a note, and the administrator has permission to view it, they can do so by clicking on the rating:

IP.Nexus has a "Staff Audit" tool allowing you to view how many support requests each staff member has answered over time. The audit now has an additional column providing the average rating for their replies in that time period:

And of course, when you click on the number to view the staff member's responses, the rating and the note if available will display here too:

Finally, we've added an additional report page in the Admin CP which allows you to view the average rating for different staff members over time:

In this screenshot, I'm comparing two staff members average ratings throughout 2012 on a bar chart. But just like the other reporting tools in Nexus, you can select any date range, chart type (options are bar, line, pie or a plain data table) and can customise the series too (you could compare any particular staff members, group staff members by their department to compare departments, view everyone on one series, etc.)

As always, if you have any feedback or suggestions unrelated to this blog entry, please post them in the IP.Nexus forum

6,352 views

Mark

May 9, 201214 yr

IP.Nexus 1.5 Dev Update: Referrals System

IP.Nexus has for a long time included a referrals system, allowing your customers to refer their friends to your community and subsequently earn commission on any purchases they make in IP.Nexus.

The problem with this set up though is that you might not want referrers to continue earning commission forever, or you might want to specify different commission amounts depending on what the referring user is purchasing.

In IP.Nexus 1.5 we're adding much better control over the system - you can now create custom rules which control the commission amount which will be paid out to referrers. Nexus will loop through the rules you set up and give the highest commission amount out of the rules that match.
You can base your rules on:
The number of purchases that the referring user has made (as a number, or as a money amount) The group that the referring user is in The number of purchases that the user making the purchase has made (as a number, or as a money amount) The group that the referring user making the purchase is in The packages being purchased The amount of the transaction

You can then specify a commission amount to give as a percentage, and optionally a hard limit on the maximum amount of commission that can be given.

Here you can see I've set up a rule which will give the referrer 50% commission on the first purchase that members they refer make, provided the purchase is at least $10:

We've also made some improvements on the front-end. Firstly, users can specify any URL to use as the URL the people they refer are directed to.
In addition, users will be able to see the commission rules that apply to them:

If however, you don't want users to be able to see details of the commission rules, you can replace the content of that popup with your own custom message, or remove it all together.

Just like before, you can also create banners and upload them in the Admin CP, which will provide users code for using your banners on that page:

And you can of course keep track of who referred whom on the customer pages and customer history page:

6,158 views

Mark

May 7, 201214 yr

IP.Nexus 1.5 Dev Update: Mobile Skin

As mentioned in our last blog entry, we're hard at work on our next version of IP.Nexus.

One of the more visual features we're adding in this version is an updated mobile skin - here are some screenshots!

Main store page:

Category listing:

Product screen:

Cart view:

Checkout screen:

Client area - menu:

Client area - invoice view:

New support request form:

6,300 views

Mark

May 5, 201214 yr

IP.Nexus 1.5 Dev Update: Fraud Rules

IP.Nexus is our hugely popular eCommerce and business management application for the IPS Community Suite. Over the past few weeks we've been working on lots of new features and enhancements for the next version of IP.Nexus (version 1.5).

The first change we wanted to share with you is called Fraud Rules.

For a long time, IP.Nexus has provided integration with MaxMind for anti-fraud measures. However, this is limited only to holding or refusing transactions based on the MaxMind score. You might want to, for example, manually review all transactions where, for example, the user's billing address doesn't match their physical location (which MaxMind can detect) - or perhaps you don't want to use MaxMind and want to manually review all orders over a certain amount, or all orders from particular countries - this is where Fraud Rules comes in.

IP.Nexus 1.5 allows you to create as many Fraud Rules as you like based on a wide range of criteria - each Fraud Rule is checked in the order you specify and the last that matches is what is used.

This is what the management screen looks like:

Here you can see I've set up a number of rules (the names are assigned by you as a reference for what the rule does) - I've created rules so that if the amount is over $100 or the the customer is paying by PayPal and has not made any previous purchases, the payment will be held for manual approval, unless the customer is in the "Administrators" group.

This is just an example of what you might do - there is a wide range of criteria that you can base rules on. Here is what the add/edit page for a rule looks like:

If MaxMind is enabled, even more options are available:

The full list of what you can base rules on is:The transaction amount (greater than, less than or equal to X) Payment method used was (multi-select) Customer is in usergroup (multi-select) Customer's email address (is/contains X) Customer's billing address country (multi-select) Customer has made X approved transactions (greater than, less than or equal to X) Customer has made X approved transactions which have been blocked by Fraud Rules or manually refused by an administrator (greater than, less than or equal to X) Coupon was used (yes/no) MaxMind: Score (greater than, less than or equal to X) MaxMind: Customer's billing address is valid (yes/no) MaxMind: Customer's billing address matches their IP address location (yes/no) MaxMind: Customer's phone number matches their billing address (yes/no) MaxMind: Likeliness that customer is using an IP address proxy (greater than, less than or equal to X) MaxMind: Customer is using a free email provider (yes/no) MaxMind: Customer's email address is considered "High Risk" (yes/no) MaxMind: Customer's username is considered "High Risk" (yes/no)

You can then choose whether the transaction should be approved, held for approval or refused based on the conditions specified.
You can also set the rule to ban the customer if it used (which you might use, for example, to ban someone if they make X transactions which are blocked by Fraud Rules).

For each rule, you can specify any number of the conditions available - the conditions you don't specify will be ignored and the rule will only be used if all conditions specified match.

As mentioned earlier, the rules are checked in order and the last that matches is used, with this in mind and the ability for a rule to approve a transaction, you can add additional rules to specify circumstances where a customer can bypass a rule (in my example above, I've set it up so Administrators are exempt from all rules).

The new Fraud Rules feature gives complete control over your transactions and will hopefully ease some of the headache of manually approving transactions.

This is of course just the first of many features and enhancements we have planned for IP.Nexus 1.5 - stay tuned for more updates over the coming weeks!

As always, if you have any feedback or suggestions unrelated to this blog entry, please post them in the IP.Nexus forum :smile:

5,453 views

Mark

May 4, 201214 yr

IPS iOS App Now Available

Referencing our coming soon blog entry ... Apple was fast and has already approved our new app!

Download now

A few things to keep in mind:
The app will work on all IP.Board 3.3 versions for the most part but will be much smoother with the soon to be released IP.Board 3.3.2 Please submit bug reports as we will be releasing updates to address any issues often over the next few weeks. Be sure to keep your app up to date! Your feedback on how to improve the app is appreciated. There are some known issues with those using IP.Content as their front end that will be addressed.

We will be releasing frequent maintenance updates to polish this new app. Please let us know your feedback but we will not be adding new features until we also have our Android app released. Once both iOS and Android are out and working great then we will start adding many fun features on our roadmap. We think it important to keep iOS and Android on equal footing as much as possible.

Once we are happy with the quality and stability of the app we will start promoting it to the broader audience but you as an IPS follower can get a head start and let us know how we can improve.

IPS is very excited to be investing in our mobile services and we look forward to continued development on our mobile apps!

13,365 views

Charles

May 3, 201214 yr

New iOS App Coming Soon

UPDATE: The app is now available!

We are happy to announce that the new version of our iOS app is in the Apple App Store review process now! Once approved, the app will be available for members to enjoy for just $1.99 one time. The new app will work with all IP.Board versions 3.3.2 or newer.

This new version has a native interface, push notifications, iPad support, and multiple community support. Check out this video for a walk through of the new app:

[media=]

Admin Control

As an administrator you can also upload new image packs for the app to use for the interfaces. You can change colors and such to match your community branding.

Another great option will be admob integration for administrators to monetize users browsing their community through our App. IPS will not get involved or take a cut so it's directly between you and your visitors.

More to come...

IPS is investing in the mobile space and has brought on new staff to continue development in this area. An Android version is in development and will soon follow this release (really it will). We have also opened a new forum for feedback and a bug tracker category so you can report any issues.

Features coming very soon include uploading files on your phone as attachments to posts, images to IP.Gallery, and camera shots directly to IP.Gallery. Future feature ideas include integration with IP.Nexus for on the go customer service, more push notification options, and more fun ideas!

7,963 views

Charles

May 2, 201214 yr

Developer Documentation

While working toward the release of IP.Board 3.3.0 and IP.Content 2.3.0, the development team took some time to refresh our developer documentation, aiming to provide useful information for our third party developers in order to help them update their work as necessary. We are still very much working on expanding and updating the developer documentation we have in place, but we wanted to go ahead and reveal the new documents that are ready to give you a head start.

PHP Docs

We have refreshed the phpdoc export using doxygen.

View the phpdoc documentation

Developer Documentation

In addition to the generic phpdoc export, the development team has written several more specialized articles aimed at helping developers utilize our framework. While we have had developer documentation in place for some time, these articles are up to date and based on IP.Board 3.3.0. We have a list of several more articles we intend to publish over the coming weeks, and relevant developer documentation already available will be retained or updated as needed.

For now, you can view the new articles in the Developer Docs (New) category. Over time, these documents will be merged back into the main Developer Resources category. We have some cleanup and reviewing of our documentation structure to tackle first, but we didn't want this to hold up our valued third party developers in the mean time.

We are working hard at bringing all of our documentation up to date, and we hope that our community find these resources useful. More information to come!

8,901 views

bfarber

March 26, 201214 yr

Additional IPS Community Enhancements

Following on our previous blog entry about our enhancements to the IPS Community here at http://community.invisionpower.com ...

A few more things to note that you may be interested in that we recently changed. These changes are related to us getting ready to release IP.Board 3.3 and generally our continual process of review and refinement of everything we do.

Enhanced Access for Expired License Holders

We have opened up previously restricted areas to expired license holders as mentioned in our previous blog entry. Expired license holders can also now read and post in our feedback forums and can now also have full access to the IPS Marketplace! We are sure that everyone will enjoy a larger user base with access to the IPS Marketplace from both clients and those that contribute to the IPS Marketplace while still ensuring that the security and trust-level is maintained in the IPS Marketplace by restricting access to known persons.

Visitor and Guest Access

Guests and Vistors (those with an account but who have never been a client) can also now read and post in our feedback forums. They can also now read (but not post) in the support forums. Note that sometimes feedback from non-clients could be moderated as we often get off the wall feedback from people who have never actually used our products. We even sometimes get feedback from people who think we run our clients' sites! It's hard to explain to someone who is confused that we provide the community software but don't run the community.

Upcoming Documentation Improvements

We are investing a lot of time and effort into our documentation section to go along with 3.3's launch. We admit and own the fact that right now our documentation is weak and really want to make this a key area of improvement. Rather than try to document every button and function in our software (which really is pointless and impossible) we will be doing a lot of tutorial based documentation. Yes, as if often requested, narrated video demos will be heavily used. We all know that a 30 second video can explain things better than pages of text.

There are many obvious things we can document and once those obvious areas are finished under our new format we will be opening suggestions up to our community on what areas could use some more explanation. Also, once the core documents are done, we plan on merging in the community article sections so all the great knowledge in our client community can be harnessed. Our clients come up with unique solutions to specific situations that are sometime really fun to read.

Finally, one area we think will benefit all in the long run is a greater link between development and documentation. Once we get into client feedback on documentation we are going to keep internal track of areas that, while they work just fine, cause our clients to have to stop and scratch their collective heads. I am sure you have all had to pause at times and say "ok now how do I do this?" when trying to customize your community. One of our long term goals that we started on with IP.Board 3.3 was making things more obvious and flow better. One could easily argue that if a feature needs documentation then we didn't make that feature very easy to use. That is an area we will continue to work on in future updates.

Mobile Apps

Yes we are in the process of making all new mobile apps. The iOS version will be out soon after IP.Board 3.3's release. No details yet (sorry!) but the app is shaping up very nicely. I personally cannot wait.

So yes boring stuff and some future plans in this blog entry but I hope you all enjoy the overall approach we are taking. We are very proud of IP.Board 3.3 and want to be sure that all the other areas around a release (documentation, future planning, spotting client trends, etc.) are of the same quality and attention to detail you expect from IPS.

8,558 views

Charles

March 9, 201214 yr

IP.Board 3.3 and IP.Content 2.3 Coming Soon!

We are well into beta testing for IP.Board 3.3 and IP.Content 2.3 and so far it's going very well. Practically no bugs are being reported and often times our staff have literally 0 open general bugs in our bug tracker. That is quite an accomplishment and something of which we are very proud!

If you are an IPS Client and are comfortable beta testing we would love for you to take some time in the next day or two and visit the pre-release testing forum. There you can download the latest beta releases to try out yourself. Please report bugs to the bug tracker so we can fix any issues before we go for the final, supported release.

One of our primary goals for these releases, in addition to feature changes and enhancements of course, was to fix as many issues as we possibly could. While there will always be bugs and such in any software package, we are very proud that we have been able to address every general operational bug report that has come in. That's not something many can say. Of course once this release is used by thousands of people we will need maintenance releases but going out of the gate with basically no known issues is a great way to start!

Thank you to everyone who has assisted in beta testing so far. The final, supported releases will be here before you know it thanks to your help.

13,649 views

Charles

March 7, 201214 yr

IPS Community Enhancements and IP.Board 3.3 Note

We are happy to announce that we have made a few changes to enhance the community experience here on the IPS Community.

Access to Support Forums

Based on client feedback and the mass of good will from many helpful clients who want to assist others, we have opened up access to our support forums to both current, active license holders and those that may have a license but it is expired. As our support forums are peer-to-peer we thought this only fair. Please keep in mind that IPS Staff do not actively post in the support forums but many helpful clients do and it is a great place to get help from your fellow clients. If you ever need official support from IPS please submit a ticket in the client area.

Community Tips

We have created a new Community Administration Tips forum that we hope everyone will use to learn and share your experience. We already have some great discussion going on in this new forum and encourage you to post a topic with your own ideas. Feel free to link to your own community as a great way to promote your own community. Share your experience and learn from others!

OpenID in IP.Board 3.3

Just a quick note regarding IP.Board 3.3:

IPS is removing support for OpenID as a login method in IP.Board 3.3. While OpenID seemed to show promise several years ago it has been overtaken by other login methods. More importantly, the PHP libraries that we use to connect to OpenID have been all but abandoned by those that created them and they do not work on the latest versions of PHP. As more and more people will start upgrading their PHP versions, OpenID will start to work on fewer and fewer installs due to the incompatibles in these abandoned libraries. Therefore we will be removing support for OpenID in IP.Board 3.3.

10,920 views

Charles

March 6, 201214 yr

IP.Board 3.3 Dev Update: New SEO Tweaks Roundup

We released IP.Board 3.3.0 as beta yesterday to our clients and I wanted to just round-up some of the very latest SEO changes we've made this week.

We've invested a lot of effort into making sensible non-invasive changes to IP.Board to encourage search engines to spider pages we want them to spider and to remove extraneous links, potential crawler errors and non-desirable keywords. We routinely check progress on this forum in Google Analytics and Google Webmaster tools to identify any areas that need further work. I spotted a few things which I've fixed which include the following.

Tags
We added tags back in 3.2 and we've continued to make improvements including adding 'other items tagged' which is now an option when viewing a topic. However, guest and search engine access to tags was largely blocked and the URL to fetch a list of matching items wasn't very friendly.

This has now been changed. The old format URL was 'index.php?app=core&module=search&do=search&search_app=forums&search_tag=tagName'. It's now a much snappier '/tags/forums/tagName/'.

Search engine bots now have access to the tag results page within the search engine so they can spider the results of specific tags. This should increase good keyword density.

Guests and 'unread' links
The default setting in 3.3.0 is to disallow topic tracking for guests. This means this setting applies to search engines too. However, the 'last topic' link when viewing a list of forums still retained the '/unread/' parameter. This is fine as it sends a soft redirect header which Google correctly picks up. That said, it is an unnecessary hoop for Google to jump through and as topic marking is disabled, there is no benefit to this parameter.
This has now been removed in 3.3.0.

Title tags
We've also gone through and removed some more unnecessary title attributes from links such as the 'Go to latest unread' which preceded almost every 'last topic' link when viewing a forum, search results and sub-forums. This further reduces undesirable keywords.

Soft 404s
On reviewing the crawler errors listed within Google Webmaster Tools, I noticed a lot of largely irrelevant pages were listed as being 'soft 404s'. Google declares a page a soft 404 if it sends a standard OK header (200) but it seems to contain no valuable data such as a generic 'No data to show' message within a table. This occurred with regularity with the 'Who Posted' feature as well as the 'Display Name History' button on user's profiles. I've now removed both links to Guests as arguably they serve little purpose to a non-member.

Ratings
I've added schema data to the IP.Board topic rating system so Google will detect and show the relevant rating with the search result.

These are all fairly little changes but they'll further improve your forum's SEO which can only be a good thing! We're looking forward to seeing these new changes and features in action on your forums.

20,739 views

Matt

February 22, 201214 yr

IPS Anniversary - 10 Years Online

Ten years ago today Invision Power Services was born and we continue to go strong today providing community software to thousands of clients. Ten years on the web is practically forever and we are proud to have reached this milestone!

IPS has grown over the years to one of the leading providers of community software. To our many thousands of clients including large, well-known brands like NBC, NFL, NHL, many music artists and more we have been able to offer a quality community experience.

Our staff, past and present, have made this possible through their dedication to providing quality software and great support for our clients. We apply the feedback we receive from clients, experience from running our own site, and information from running our own hosting to our product line to create a community suite that is stable, innovative, and easy to use.

Thank you to all of our dedicated clients who both give us the feedback we need to improve and also promote us to their friends and colleagues as the best choice for community software.

The future is bright for online community solutions. After all: from day one the web was all about communicating and sharing information. Through the crazes of newsgroups, personal web pages (Geocities anyone?), everyone having a blog, MySpace, Second Life, Facebook, Twitter, and whatever is next the common theme has always been communicating and sharing. IPS will continue as it has for the past 10 years with a focus on connecting people so they can share their world online.

13,407 views

Charles

February 11, 201214 yr

IP.Board 3.3 Dev Update: Microformat and Schema Updates / SEO

IP.Board has made use of micro formats and schema data since IP.Board 3.0. We added to this in 3.2 to include breadcrumb data in our navigation. This enabled Google to display our navigation links within search results.

The schema data has been read from our page which enables the green navigation links and post/author data.

We've further extended the schema data for 3.3 which is great news for SEO:

Topics and posts
At the head of each topic, we've added schema information to the title and author details. This will help search engines locate the title of the topic.

We've also tagged up the posts to help search engines extract relevant information.

As we can see, Google can read this schema data very easily and quickly locates the data we want it to focus on.

Forum View
We've added schema data to the forum view also. This will help search engines locate relevant data. The screen shot below shows the data Google extracted from the forum view page.

As you can see, there is a row for each topic in the forum.

Events
We've added schema data to calendar events and even the sidebar 'Forthcoming Calendar Events' block so they display correctly when your site is searched. Here's the result of Google's rich snippets tool preview. Note the 'Meeting!' event underneath.

These unobtrusive changes should greatly assist search engines in locating relevant content which is good news for everyone!

14,991 views

Matt

February 8, 201214 yr

IP.Board 3.3 Dev Update: Auto-share on posting

IP.Board was one of the first commercial products to make use of Facebook integration to allow logged in Facebook users instant membership. We extended this in subsequent releases to include the ability to share status updates and links from the board such as topics. During this time, we also added Twitter as an authentication system and the ability to tweet out links and status updates.

You don't have to be an active Facebook or Twitter user yourself to appreciate the advantages of tapping into the millions of users these sites receive daily. It's a great way of driving more traffic to your site and to encourage activity.

Auto Sharing
In the current version of IP.Board, you can quickly share and 'like' content such as topics, gallery images and blog entries when you read them. In IP.Board 3.3.0, we've taken this a step further and added the ability to auto-share content during creation.

You simply check the boxes for the services you want to share with and it'll share the content as soon as its been saved. You can even make the current preferences default so you don't have to remember to check them each time.

Of course, these buttons don't show if you've disabled sharing for that forum and you can optionally disable the entire feature from the Admin CP.

Authentication Flow
In the current version of IP.Board, you have to be connected to Facebook before you can share status updates and links. This means you'd have either registered with a Facebook account of you'd have linked them via your UserCP. Not everyone will be aware of this functionality so there's a chance that some of your members will never make use of those features.

In IP.Board 3.3, we've utilised the Facebook Javascript SDK into our own code so you can connect to your Facebook account without leaving the page.

The Facebook auto-share button is visible even if you're not currently connected (assuming of course that the feature is enabled and you've set up Facebook via the Admin CP). When you click the checkbox, if you're not connected, the request for permission dialogue loads automatically. Once allowed, the connection is finished in the background and you're all set up ready to share without leaving the page.

This drastically reduces the barrier for connecting your Facebook accounts with IP.Board and further encourages sharing.

Changes to meta data
When you share a link, Facebook checks the page for specific Open Graph meta tags. Once of these determines the image that is shown next to the link. By default this is the IP.Board logo. In IP.Board 3.3 when you attach images to a post, these are used as the shared image bringing context to the link.

These changes will no doubt increase the number of topics shared with Facebook which in return will increase visitors to your forum for those that embrace social media as a way to drive traffic.

25,562 views

Matt

February 7, 201214 yr

IP.Board 3.3 Dev Update: A few more SEO tweaks

Our core goals for IP.Board 3.3 where to clear up the moderator tools, make IP.Board more efficient for larger communities and improve SEO.

We've already blogged twice on our SEO improvements outlining tweaks to improve good keyword density, reduce crawl errors and improve good keyword placement.

Our own company forums are very busy and get a lot of traffic and we monitor the data via Google's Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. As we upgraded to IP.Board 3.3.0 last week, I was curious to see how the data looked even though it's too early to really spot any differences, a few things did become obvious.

Duplicate TITLE tags
I noticed that Google had recorded thousands of 'duplicate title tags'. This is where separate content shares the same <title> tag in the HTML document. This can weaken the impact of the page within its algorithms so it made sense to clean that up.

There were three very common areas that accounted for nearly 99% of all these errors:

Profile Tabs
When viewing a user's profile in IP.Board, you can click the side-bar tabs to view recent topics, posts, gallery images and more. This is handled by javascript where available with a linked back-up. Google naturally selects the linked back-up which has the correct content, but the actual document title still says "Viewing Profile {name}" hence the duplicate title tags warning. The simple fix is to add the tab name in the title 'Viewing Profile: Topics {name}'.

Skin Selector and Language Selector
At the footer of each page is a skin and language drop down selector. When you have more than one visible skin, the drop down is visible allowing you to move between them. This is completely lost on search engines and they crawl the links leading to more duplicate content.
As of IP.Board 3.3.0, they are no longer shown for search engines.

Direct post links
Each post in a topic has its own post number and this is a link to that particular post. Currently, this is a unique link (page__findpost__12345) which flags up as a warning because it is not unique content. The easy solution is to simply use a standard HTML anchor tag. This doesn't flag up as a warning as it is using basic HTML as intended. As an addition, I removed the generic "Link to post" title attribute to something more suitable.

An interesting topic was started a few days ago about a possible SEO pagination issue. The author feels that our pagination method could do with a few more links in to encourage Google to crawl deeper into your forum. While I feel the user/search engine trade off wasn't worth it, I make it simple enough to change.

As of IP.Board 3.3, simply add:

$INFO['show_x_page_link'] = 9;
into your conf_global.php file to tailor how many pagination links are shown so you can find the best balance for your needs.

These changes will help reduce crawl errors and strengthen your ranking. It's the little additions like these that really add up over time.

13,939 views

Matt

January 30, 201214 yr

IP.Board 3.3 Dev Update: Performance Enhancements

During each release cycle we often take some time out to assess performance and look at ways to improve in this area. We're also in a unique position to have first hand experience at hosting tens of thousands of IP.Board installations via our own hosting network.

We also work closely with our clients who constantly give us feedback on how IP.Board is performing and let us know about any areas that need further examination.

All of this data is very useful when it comes to profiling and testing IP.Board and making performance improvements for the next major version.

In this this blog entry, I'd like to discuss some of the improvements we've made for IP.Board 3.3.

Topic Markers
IP.Board has had a centralised database drive topic marking system since 3.0. As IP.Board is only part of the suite, we wrote the system to be extensible and flexible so that our own apps and apps written by others can use the system without maintaining their own tracking databases.

We wrote the system to use two tables. One of which can be considered a 'deep storage' table. This contains permanent tracking data in the format of one row per member per parent. So this means that if you had 200 forums, each member would take up 200 rows.
The second table can be considered the 'active' table. When a member is loaded from the database and no 'active' row is found, the markers are pulled from deep storage and written in a serialised form to the 'active' table.
When the member is no longer active, the data is removed from the 'active' table and written back to the 'deep storage' table ready for the next time they visit.

In theory, this is the perfect solution. You only have to read and write to a smaller table which should make the system more efficient. However, we discovered that trying to keep the tables synchronised when you have a very busy site negated the benefit. The sheer number of SQL inserts and deletes often caused bottlenecks affecting the whole board.

Another downside was that all the marking data had to be loaded when the member was loaded. This could be up to 200k of marking data - most of which wouldn't be needed. If the member was viewing a topic, they wouldn't need marking data for Blog, for example.

We've tweaked the system to remove this SQL bottleneck. We've removed the 'active' table and simply write to the main tracker table. Now we don't have tables to synchronise, we can simply write back to the 1 row that needs updating and not have to periodically update all 200 rows.

Furthermore, we've removed the need to load all markers at once. A new function in 'coreExtensions.php' dictates which markers to load. You can still load all as this may be more efficient (as is in the case of the board index when you have a lot of sidebar hooks)

If you choose not to load the marker data on member initiation, you can use the new built in JOIN methods to fetch the marking data along with your dataset.

In testing, this has dramatically reduced write overhead and the memory footprint required per page view by up to 150k.

We're testing this out right now on our company forums and many people have already commented that 3.3 is seriously faster.

Post Table Access
The largest table in your database is almost certainly the post table. We have clients with millions of rows in this one table alone. It makes good sense to keep reads to a minimum where possible.

In older versions of IP.Board, we had different views such as 'threaded'. These were removed in 3.2 as these older legacy views were rarely used and not really applicable in a modern context. However, some of the older code remained which meant that the post table was being queried twice per topic view. Once to fetch a list of post IDs and again to fetch the data.

We've rewritten this bit of code to use a new API and now we only query the table once. This alone will drop read access to your post table by almost 50% in normal daily use. This is a significant change.

Today's Top Posters
This fairly innocuous feature is accessible via a link in the board footer and on most boards doesn't get a deal of traffic. However, we've found that clients with larger boards notice a significant slow down when this feature is used which can cause another SQL bottleneck.

This is because the query is fairly complex due to the flexible permission IP.Board offers. The query causes the creation of a temporary table to sort the data which isn't desirable for larger boards.

We've added a new caching table which caches recent post IDs. This makes this feature much quicker (over a second in SQL terms in testing) and as an added plus, it doesn't have to query the post table to generate the list which again saves read access on that large table.

Conclusion
There are many other, smaller changes in additions to those listed here. Some of these changes may seem trivial but they quickly stack up. It only takes one or two slow queries to bring a site to a crawl while SQL catches up with queued queries. These changes will make a significant different to everyone but especially those working with large databases. Your IP.Board will be faster, consume less memory and be more SQL efficient. Those are changes we can all appreciate!

12,674 views

Matt

January 29, 201214 yr

IP.Content 2.3 Dev Update: Odds and Ends

While we have discussed many great things you can expect to see coming in IP.Content 2.3 already, we've got a few miscellaneous changes that we wanted to let you know about, but that weren't necessarily grouped into a single "theme". Still, we felt you would be interested to hear about these changes, so I've taken a moment to compile this blog entry, discussing some of these odds and ends for those interested.

Default Install Content

The content that is inserted and available during the installation process is important. It helps users understand how the product works, gives them some examples of the product in action, and lets the admin start using the product right out the door with minimal configuration necessary. We have taken a moment to review our default installation, and have made some minor changes.

Firstly, we have updated the screenshots that are shown with the default articles to reflect the IP.Board 3.2 skin. The screenshots in IP.Content 2.2 were based on IP.Board 3.1, and the skin has since changed. Additionally, I've touched up the article content here and there to bring it up to date, and I have added one new article about the new navigational menu system. This is all simply default content to show you how the system works, but we felt it was important to make a good first impression, and it is useful using the articles system as a sort of "how to" for users installing the product for the first time.

At the same time, we have moved the articles system to a different page (articles.html) and we have made the default page IP.Content display a portal. A portal page is simply a page that brings in content from various parts of your community, usually used as a homepage so users can get a quick and easy overview of what is going on or what is new. This is very easy to set up in IP.Content, since its goal is to allow you to pull data from various parts of your community with ease, and as we get a lot of requests for a simple portal-style page in IP.Content, we have decided to make this the new home page. Blocks are set up to pull content from Blog, Gallery, Downloads, Calendar, Articles and the Forums by default, but if you don't have one of those applications installed don't worry - the block will simply not display and the page will function as normal. At the same time, this allows us to show off how the new block templates system works, as most of the blocks on this new portal are feed blocks utilizing new block templates.

Content Pending Approval / Moderator Changes

It can be challenging finding the content that needs to be approved in IP.Content 2.2. While ACP-based tools help with this necessity, there are few tools available to your moderators on the front end to find this content that requires their attention. We have addressed this with IP.Content 2.3 in a tiered approach.

First and foremost, IP.Content is now integrated into the ModeratorCP. You can easily view database entries (and articles) pending approval, comments pending approval, database entries that have been hidden and comments that have been hidden. You can edit, approve and delete as needed right from the moderator control panel with ease.

You will note in this screenshot that when you select "Database Records" that you can then (and must) filter by database to view the entries pending approval within that database. The same goes for viewing hidden content in the Trash Can section of the ModeratorCP. In contrast, all comments pending approval or hidden can be displayed at once without the need to view them separately per-database.

Going beyond this central tool, however, we have also added indicators throughout the IP.Content templates themselves when something is pending approval.

Frontpage and archive templates will show you if there are comments pending approval (if you have permission to approve them)

So do the category listing templates

And if you follow one of these links, the listing will be filtered so that you ONLY see the content pending approval.

To remain consistent with IP.Board, we use badges in the various listings to show you when something is hidden or unapproved.

We believe these changes when used together should help your moderators better find and manage the content that requires their attention throughout the front end.

Finally, we have gone through and made IP.Content moderator processes more consistent with IP.Board 3.3. If an article or comment is requiring approval, it is considered unapproved and you can approve or delete that comment or article. If the article or comment is approved, you can delete or hide that article or comment. Some time was spent with IP.Board to clarify these actions and make working with them more logical (what is soft delete? what is hard delete?), and we wanted to bring those same improvements over to IP.Content. And, if you haven't picked up on it throughout this paragraph, IP.Content now supports soft deleting articles and comments (which is called "hiding" in IP.Board 3.3). These are the items that will show in the trash can of the ModeratorCP.

Administrative Logging

While not an overly exciting change, we have gone through the entire ACP codebase and added administrative logging to IP.Content. Now, when "Admin Joe" deletes a page from the page manager, or alters your most important database template, you will quickly be able to see this through the Admin Logs page of the ACP.

Article Teaser Paragraph

We have added a new default field to the articles system (upgraded installations will also get this new field) called a "Teaser Paragraph". This field allows you to define the teaser paragraph to show to users in the various listings (e.g. the archive view or the frontpage templates). When this field is populated, its entire contents will be displayed as given (it is an editor field, so bbcode parsing will also occur). When the field is not populated, we will default back to the current functionality, which is to show a certain number of characters from the article body field (without any bbcode parsing occurring). It should be noted that when viewing the article itself, the teaser paragraph is shown, and then the article body is shown after it, so the two fields are "combined" visually, however you can always edit the article view template to remove the teaser paragraph field if you do not wish for it to display. You do not need to use this field if you don't want to, however many customers have requested a way to better control the content shown in the listing and this new field will allow you to do just that.

Further Interface Polish

We are also presently working through the default templates to further refine and polish the interface before release. We have made many minor changes already - often times using a different CSS class to add some padding, or adding an extra line break (or removing one!) can make really make the templates appear more professional. We've worked on some various areas that we felt we could improve through minor changes, and we have ensured that the default templates make use of the IP.Board default CSS to the extent possible, removing IP.Content-specific CSS definitions that are no longer necessary in the process. The end result is a more refined interface for your users, less for skinners to have to customize, and more consistency between IP.Content and IP.Board pages.

In Closing...

We are working hard to prepare the best IP.Content release we have ever made, and we are eager to get your feedback on the new and improved product. We are expecting a spring 2012 release, and we are working through many of the last few pieces of the puzzle to deliver a product we know you will be excited to use. If you have any feedback about changes you would like to see in the product that we haven't already announced, please feel free to share them in our feedback forum. If you have any comments about the changes discussed above, please leave your comments below!

7,726 views

bfarber

January 27, 201214 yr

IP.Board 3.3 Dev Update: Banning and more SEO tweaks

Anyone that runs a lively and thriving community knows that now and again you have to make the hard decision to ban a member. IP.Board has a powerful set of tools built in to manage this for you and you can ban a member for a set number of days or permanently with a few clicks via the warning system or the ACP member management system.

Currently, there are two ways to ban a member. One is to flag them as banned and the other is to move them into the pre-defined banned group. They both act very similarly and there's a lot of overlap which leads to some confusion as to what the differences are.

Flagging a member as banned will prevent them from viewing the board and contributing to the community. Moving a member to the banned group does the same but at a group level and also removes the member from the member list. This isn't immediately apparent and we do find some administrators get confused. "Do we have to flag as banned and move to the banned group?".

We've simplified this in 3.3 by removing the pre-set banned group for new installations. Now when you flag a member as banned, they are removed from the member list and any friends lists they may be on. Additionally, only super moderators and admins can then view their profile.

I've also ensured that spammers are treated in the same way. When you flag a member as a spammer, they are removed from the member list and any friends lists they may be on.

It's worth noting that existing installations do not get their banned group removed, but any members in the banned group are automatically flagged as banned. You can, if you choose, remove the banned group yourself.

I've taken this a step further to consider the impact on SEO when you flag a member as a spammer or ban a member. You don't really want your members and search engines following profile links that lead to an error, so I've removed the hyperlink for banned members and spammers for anyone that is not a super moderator or admin. This means fewer crawler errors and more importantly less keyword pollution. We all know that most spammers choose keyword rich user names that you don't want associated with your community!

The new warning tools have been updated to allow you to move banned members into a group of your own choosing if you'd like to keep group-level organisation.

I'd like to wrap up this entry with a quick mention on some other SEO tweaks. I read a great little entry by Enkidu yesterday on his blog. He suggested some quick tweaks to remove unimportant keywords like 'category' and 'forum'. I've gone ahead and implemented his suggestions.

This will help reduce keyword noise and increase keyword density for keywords you want to focus on. The screenshot below shows the changes in action. Note how many times the category name is now repeated:

These changes and updates further our goals to increase SEO, improve moderator tools and clean up interface elements in IP.Board 3.3.0!

15,835 views

Matt

January 26, 201214 yr

IP.Content 2.3 Dev Update: Introducing Block Templates

As part of our goal to improve the usability of IP.Content, particularly for non-coder administrators, we've used the 2.3 release to look at ways of reducing or eliminating the amount of code that needs to be written in order to create great websites.

In the current version of IP.Content, blocks require individual templates (entered as part of the wizard process), and the default, unedited HTML is generic and not ideal for most blocks you'd want to create. This clearly left room for improvement, so we're pleased to introduce our solution: block templates. Block templates give us two primary benefits:
Make it easier for IP.Content users to set up a good website, without needing to code Make it possible for those who can code to share interesting block interfaces either directly or through the IPS Marketplace

Reusable Block Templates

In IP.Content 2.3, the templates that feed blocks use are created separately, using a new Block Template manager, and then assigned to blocks when they are created:

The block template manager

What does this mean in practice? Firstly, it means that block templates can be used by more than one block, without recoding them, and when changes are made to the template, all blocks update at once. More importantly, it means block templates can be created, exported, shared and imported, so that those with the skills to create them can share them with those who can't. We hope this will spur some great block interfaces from our modding community, to benefit all IP.Content users.

How does it work?

Templates are linked to a feed type and a content type. For example, you might create a template designed for "Topics" in the "Forums" feeds, or "Albums" in "Gallery". In addition, you can create generic templates based on a content type alone, for example "Comments", which can then be used with any feed that shows comments.

Adding a new block template

When feed blocks are created, you are presented with a gallery of all suitable templates. Clicking one previews the template with the real data that the block will generate, so you can see exactly what the block will look like on your pages:

Creating a new feed block using a block template

Of course, if you still wish to provide a custom template for a particular block, you can do so - the process will be exactly the same as before.

A Javascript & CSS framework provided

To go with block templates, we've created a mini Javascript and CSS framework. This means that all block templates, whether they are provided by us or by our modification community, can maintain a consistent style.

The required framework files are automatically injected into all IP.Content pages, whether you use the IP.Board wrapper or your own HTML wrapper.

The javascript side of things is powered by jQuery, and based on the jQuery UI Widget Factory. Block templates can include their own assets, such as javascript widgets, CSS files and images. IP.Content automatically compresses all the JS and CSS files from all templates into a single minified file to help keep websites loading quickly and cut down on HTTP requests.

Sharing templates

As mentioned above, block templates can be exported and shared with other IP.Content users. To make this process very simple, when a template is exported, it's built as an XMLArchive - that means all of your CSS, JS and other assets are compiled into one file for you to distribute (a little like an IP.Board skin is).

Exporting a block template into one XML file

Conclusion

To give you a taste of what is possible with block templates, here's a demo page I've created using some of the default templates we'll be providing. No code - other that putting template tags into a page and adding a div to make the right column - was typed to build this page!

An example page using default templates

Our aim with block templates is to allow all IP.Content administrators to have interesting, useful, interactive blocks, without needing to write the code themselves. The addition of a new standardized JS and CSS framework also means that blocks can maintain consistent styling, regardless of who authored the template.

We'll be including a number of pre-made templates with IP.Content 2.3, and hope that the modification community and other coders will embrace the new possibilities offered by block templates, and create many more to be shared via the IPS Marketplace. Once IP.Content 2.3 is released, we'll publish some developer documentation to help you get started with the new tools.

We think block templates are a huge step forward in making it easier to create websites using IP.Content. We hope you exploit their full potential!

We look forward to your suggestions and ideas for improving the software in our feedback forum. We heavily rely on feedback from all of our clients to shape the future of our software, and even if we don't reply to every topic, rest assured they are all read. If you have any comments on the new block templates feature in IP.Content 2.3, please share your thoughts below!

15,521 views

Rikki

January 24, 201214 yr

IP.Content 2.3 Dev Update: Nexus Blocks

As part of our continued effort to strengthen existing functionality in IP.Content 2.3, and bring about a more consistent and reliable experience for novice and advanced users alike, we have implemented support for IP.Nexus blocks in IP.Content 2.3. IP.Nexus is our powerful e-commerce application, allowing you to monetize your site through the use of many great features such as a storefront, user subscriptions, hosting and support helpdesk functionality. Beginning with IP.Content 2.3, you will now be able to pull much of the great content IP.Nexus contains in unique and useful ways through feed and plugin blocks.

Donations Plugin Block

IP.Nexus ships with a "donations" sidebar block that can appear on the board index sidebar. If the hook is enabled, the block shows up automatically once you have configured a donation goal. We have duplicated this functionality as a plugin block in IP.Content 2.3, allowing you to show the same donation block anywhere you want, on or off site.

Nexus Feed Block

And, of course, we have included a Nexus feed block. While many of our applications have more than one data content type you can pull (for instance, you can pull files, categories or comments when you create an IP.Downloads feed block), our IP.Nexus feed block supports a whopping 6 content types. As we mentioned at the start of this entry, IP.Nexus is a very powerful application, and we wanted to allow you to pull the most commonly needed data through the new IP.Content feed block. While we will evaluate feedback and improve this block over time as needed, we feel we have captured the most useful data feeds in our initial implementation here.

You will be able to pull the following data from IP.Nexus:
Packages
Filter by stock quantity Filter by "show on registration" setting Filter by "show in store" setting Filter by "is physical item" setting Filter by "is subscription" setting Filter by "allows upgrading" setting Filter by "allows downgrading" setting Filter by price (minimum and maximum) Filter by "is renewable" setting Sort by name, in stock, upgrade charge, downgrade refund, price, renewal price, ACP-specified position, featured status, or random

Filter by product Filter by member (e.g. to show the viewing user purchases they have made, or purchases their friends have made) Filter by active status Filter by cancelled status Filter by purchase date Filter by expiration date Sort by name, active status, cancelled status, start date, expiration date, renewal price, package name or random

Filter by department Filter by status Filter by severity Filter by member Filter by replies (minimum and maximum) Filter by open date Filter by last reply date Sort by title, start date, last reply date, last new reply date, last staff reply date, number of replies or random

Filter by status Filter by creation date Filter by paid date Filter by total (minimum and maximum) Sort by title, amount, date, date paid or random

Filter by status Filter by date Filter by method Filter by member Filter by amount total (minimum and maximum) Sort by amount, date or random

Filter by status Filter by order date Filter by ship date Filter by ship method Sort by date, ship date or random

[*]Purchases[*]Support Requests[*]Invoices[*]Transactions[*]Shipping
As you can see, most of the bases are covered here. If you want to pull a block of "all transactions the viewing user has made, most recent to oldest" you can. If you want to pull a block "random product available in our storefront" you can. If you want to pull "all customer service tickets that are on hold", you can. And remember some special tips with IP.Content - date fields accept any regular date string (e.g. "today" or "last year"), and member fields support two special values: "myself" (restrict to viewing user) and "friends" (restrict to friends of the viewing user). These special options available in all IP.Content feed blocks can lead to some really creative and unique blocks.

Time out for a techy moment

If you are not a developer, feel free to skip this section.

Beginning with IP.Content 2.3, support has been added for pulling blocks from the application folder. In IP.Content 2.2 and below, block files for third party applications must be uploaded to the IP.Content folder (admin/applications_addon/ips/ccs/sources/blocks/*). This works fine, however it is ideal to allow applications to keep their files self-contained to the extent possible. As such, you can now store feed blocks for your third party applications in (application_folder)/extensions/content/feed_blocks/ and plugin blocks in (application_folder)/extensions/content/plugin_blocks/. Behind the scenes, IP.Content will first check application folders, and then check its current block directories. A block in an application folder will override any included in the IP.Content directory. This will allow you to better self-contain your application files while still making use of all the features our application suite provides.

What the future holds

We are certain there will be other types of data in IP.Nexus you will want to be able to feed through IP.Content blocks over time, and look forward to your feedback and suggestions on ways to improve this new block type in future releases. We hope this initial release, however, covers most of your needs and that you find ways to make use of this powerful tool in IP.Content 2.3.

We look forward to your suggestions and ideas for improving the software in our feedback forum. We heavily rely on feedback from all of our clients to shape the future of our software, and even if we don't reply to every topic, rest assured they are all read. If you have any comments on the new IP.Nexus feed or plugin blocks available with IP.Content 2.3, please share your thoughts below!

8,239 views

bfarber

January 16, 201214 yr

Platform

Solutions

Guides

Help & Resources

Configure browser push notifications

Chrome (Android)

Chrome (Desktop)

Safari (iOS 16.4+)

Safari (macOS)

Edge (Android)

Edge (Desktop)

Firefox (Android)

Firefox (Desktop)