Invision Community Blog

IP.Board 3.2.0: Easy Member Management

One of the areas we identified as requiring significant update in IP.Board 3.2.0 was the member management process. Member management is, for most communities, the most frequently-executed task that happens in the AdminCP, so it is important the process is quick and easy.

In previous 3.x releases, each different type of member (normal, banned, validating etc.) had a separate page from which you could manage that type. Once on the correct page, you check the members you want to work with, then select an action. Refresh, repeat.

In IP.Board 3.2.0, we've significantly streamlined the entire process. All types of members are now viewed in a single interface, though that interface can adapt depending on what you're viewing. Let's take a look...

Viewing Members

Notice at top-left a toggle bar, to change the member type you're viewing. Notice also that the column headers (member name and email, in this case) allow for sorting. All of this takes place dynamically - virtually no page loads are required for any action in the new Member Management section.

Searching for Members

Searching for members is easy - simply start typing in the filter box, and results are displayed live in the list.

For more specific searching, you can use advanced search to narrow your criteria.

Managing Members

Managing members is a one-click process. The available options for each member are presented as buttons; clicking an action confirms it and removes that member from the list.

Previously, you would have to (in this example) select the members to ban, scroll down, choose the appropriate action, the page would reload, then you'd have to do the same for the members you wanted to delete. In IP.Board 3.2, you can simply work your way down the list, choosing the appropriate option for each user. We expect this will be particularly useful when managing validating members.

Once you've cleared the list, the page will automatically load in another 20 members for you to manage.

You can still mass-manage members, however. Selecting some members enables the available mass-actions, and again, once you confirm, more members are loaded for you automatically.

Summary

Member Management is now essentially a one-click process - a vast improvement on previous version of IP.Board. We hope that the new process will significantly reduce the time you spend on the repetitive and time-consuming task of managing your member base.

Feel free to comment on this blog entry below or, if you have feedback unrelated to this blog entry, start a new topic in our feedback forum. Be sure to check the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for a running list of announced changes!

13,670 views

Rikki

March 4, 201115 yr

IP.Board 3.2.0: View New Content and Topic Marking

Of all the features we receive feedback on, view new content receives the most. To many this is their primary browsing page and it's vital that it works accurately. We've had database level topic tracking for many years. It was introduced in 2.0 and has gone through many refinements for efficiency and accuracy.

We rewrote the system in IP.Board 3.0.0 as a global framework that all applications can use via a small extensions file. This provided great flexibility and a centralized storage area for the marking data. However, there were some technical limitations which made 'View New Content' a little unreliable in certain situations due to the partial reliance on cookie data to provide a full picture of what is unread.

Another common complaint is that partially read topics 'vanish' from the view new content list as they are marked read even when some pages are left unread which leads to confusion about which topics have been fully read.

As always, we listen very carefully to feedback from our customers and this feature kept coming up time and time again so I'm very pleased to say that we've tackled these issues head on in IP.Board 3.2!

Improved View New Content Tracking
We have rewritten large sections of the view new content tracking and parsing to make it much more accurate. We now fetch the data in a large chunk and then post process it against the topic marking table to ensure complete accuracy. This means that you won't have 'read' topics showing up in your view new content list again.

Sphinx Usage
We have added a setting to enable Sphinx users to use plain SQL View New Content to avoid the 15 minute 'delay' in the results due to the delta indexes being cycled. The SQL view new content is incredibly efficient so you can still use Sphinx for the general search areas but give your members instant view new content results.

Improved Topic Marking
Purely based on the feedback we've received from our customers, we've implemented a change so that a topic with many pages isn't marked as read until the last page has been loaded. This means you can partially read a topic and come back to it later. We've made it even easier to locate your last read position with a handy link on the topic page.

Improved View New Content Overview
Another common source of confusion was our two areas "View New Content" and "View Active Content". Most people were confused by the difference and ended up loading the wrong view to locate their unread content. We have now merged these views into one single "View New Content" page. This will instantly resolve that confusion and make it much simpler to fetch the data you are looking for.

The view new content page remembers your last selection preferences and stores them in the database so next time you load the view new content page, it'll automatically use those preferences. There's no need to go into your User CP to set them anymore!

Filter by "Followed" items only
In a future blog entry, we'll discuss the change from "Watched Topics/Forums" to "Follow" but for the purpose of this entry, assume that they are synonymous.
In IP.Board 3.2.0 you can now elect to filter the view new content result set by items you follow. This will search forums and topics you are following (in other words, 'watching') and present topics inside forums that are new or topics that you're following that have new posts. This makes the view new content area much more useful as it is delivering just the content that you want to read.

Please remember that the screenshots are taken from my development board and I've made little effort to 'style' the new additions as we're planning an interface update to some of these areas.

This shows the view new content page showing all unread content from items that I follow. I am following the forum "A Test Forum 2" and the topic "Test counters" but I am not following the forum "Sub Forum".

This shows the 'view first unread post' link available on partially read topics. Clicking it takes you to the first post that you haven't read based on marking data stored in the database.

We really hope that you enjoy these new features and improvements and please keep posting your feedback, we really do listen.

Feel free to comment on this blog entry below or, if you have feedback unrelated to this blog entry, start a new topic in our feedback forum. Be sure to check the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for a running list of announced changes!

19,360 views

Matt

March 2, 201115 yr

IP.Board 3.2.0 Dev Update: Calendar Improvements, Part V: iCalendar Support

In our last Calendar-specific blog entry for this upcoming IP.Board 3.2 update I wanted to discuss the last big change you should expect to see: support for importing and exporting events to and from your calendar using the universally-supported iCalendar specification.

The iCalendar specification is a universal format that many applications (such as Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, and iCal for Mac) support, allowing applications that support the format to share events between calendars. Think of it as an RSS feed specific to calendar events (although it's important to note that it is completely unrelated and dissimilar technically to the RSS specification).

Exporting Events

Two options will be available for your members to export events from your calendars. Your members will be able to download all events in the calendar as a .ics iCalendar file, which they can then import into their calendar application of choice, or your members can subscribe to your calendar to automatically import new events as they are posted through a webcal:// protocol link. Both options are presented on most pages of the calendar so that they are easily accessible.

When clicking on a link beginning with the (unofficial) "webcal://" protocol, the user's calendar application of choice should automatically launch, importing the feed without any necessary intervention from the user. Users can also copy the link and use the link to import the calendar into an application or website (such as Google Calendar) manually.

All relevant data is included in an iCalendar export, including the event start, end and recurrence information, the event organizer information, attachments (when applicable), and RSVP attendees (when applicable).

Importing Events

It is important to note that for this release, we have opted to make event importing an admin-only option. We may likely investigate front-end support for importing events into your calendar, however we have decided to implement the iCalendar importing in this release through the ACP so as to prevent resource issues on your board. I'm sure you can imagine how your server might react if 10,000 members all decided they wanted to import their Google Calendar events into your calendar on a recurring basis. :)

The ACP provides two ways to import events:

You can upload an iCalendar file (which will usually have a .ics extension) through an upload form You can define feeds (using http://, https://, or webcal:// protocols) to import on a regular basis

When you upload a .ics file to import, you can specify which calendar you wish to import the events to, and the member you wish to save the events as (the field to specify the member uses the member look-ahead javascript to aid you in finding the correct user). The file you upload will be parsed and all data that can be extracted and honored will be imported as provided. If the event file has attendees specified, and any of those attendees are also members of your board, they will even be automatically RSVPed for the event!

If you would like to subscribe to iCalendar feeds, you can also add as many of these as you like in the ACP.

When adding or editing a feed import, you specify the calendar to import the events to, the member to import the events under (again, you can utilize our member look-ahead to assist you in finding the correct user), the frequency to check for updates, a title and the URL to the feed. Upon initially saving the feed, the first batch of events will be imported, and then regularly (based on the frequency you specify for the feed) IP.Board will automatically check the feed for new events and import any that have not yet been imported. As with uploading an .ics file manually, event attendees will automatically be RSVPed for the event if they are also members of your board.

Are there any caveats?

Well, yes there are a few caveats to keep in mind. Calendar has limited support for event recurrence at this time, so some of the more creative recurring events (for instance, an event that recurs every second Tuesday of the month) may not import as you might expect. Calendar will do it's best to read the event and import it based on the intention, however some event types may not be fully supported due to limited support for certain functionality in Calendar. The vast majority of events you will import through feeds and .ics files, however, should import just fine.

Conclusion

This concludes our 5-part series outlining improvements to the Calendar you can expect to see with the release of IP.Board 3.2.0. While we hope you enjoy the improvements being made to Calendar in IP.Board 3.2.0, please do not be discouraged if we have not added something you were hoping to see. There are many more improvements that we can make in future versions and just because something wasn't added this time around doesn't mean you won't necessarily see it in IP.Board 3.3.0 or beyond!

Let us know your thoughts in the comments area, and if you missed out on the previous blog entries regarding Calendar, feel free to take a moment to catch up:

IP.Board 3.2.0 Dev Update: Calendar Improvements, Part I: SEO Improvements IP.Board 3.2.0 Dev Update: Calendar Improvements, Part II: Consistency IP.Board 3.2.0 Dev Update: Calendar Improvements, Part III: RSVP IP.Board 3.2.0 Dev Update: Calendar Improvements, Part IV: Simplification and Interface Changes

Feel free to comment on this blog entry below or, if you have feedback unrelated to this blog entry, start a new topic in our feedback forum. Be sure to check the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for a running list of announced changes!

10,941 views

bfarber

February 28, 201115 yr

IP.Board 3.2.0: New reputation mode - "Like"

In IP.Board 3.0.0 we added a reputation system. This allowed your members to "up-vote" and "down-vote" a post's "reputation". This not only allows you to quickly identify "valued" replies but you can also elect to filter out replies below a certain threshold.

This system has worked very well over the past few years and our own community receives many hundreds of positive votes for good or helpful content. It's a nice visual way of saying "Thanks!'.

We have extended this system in 3.2.0 to add a new reputation 'mode' selectable from the Admin Control Panel. This new mode works in the same manner as a "like" system often seen on social networking sites.

This "like" system is an even better visual way for identifying good content and makes it more personal by leaving your name in the "like" list rather than it being an anonymous donation.

Here are some screen shots:
Note: the following screen shots have been taken from my local development board. Expect the final interface to change

Here you can see that I've "liked" this post along with some other members.

Clicking the '1 other" link brings up an inline pop-up showing exactly who has "liked" this post.

Here's a brief video showing the system in action:

We hope that you "like" this new enhancement to our reputation system and find it brings a new level of interaction with your members.

Feel free to comment on this blog entry below or, if you have feedback unrelated to this blog entry, start a new topic in our feedback forum. Be sure to check the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for a running list of announced changes!

26,648 views

Matt

February 25, 201115 yr

IP.Board 3.2.0: New AdminCP Style

One of the primary areas we have targeted for improvement in IP.Board 3.2 is a fresh style and usability improvements for the AdminCP. Our AdminCP has long been considered one of the best in the industry, so while we didn't want to tear up that work and start again, we did feel it was time to make substantial improvements.

Overview

First, let's take a look at a general overview of the new style:

As you can see, we've tidied up the header area. The live ACP search, which has been a hit feature, has been made more prominent (more on that later). The 'button bar' that many pages make use of has been styled more like a toolbar in a traditional application. Many other general aspects have been tweaked, such as improved typography, removing various bits of clutter on the screen and updating the drag handle to the standard used in places like GMail.

Sidebar / Menu

In 3.0/3.1, the sidebar is the primary way of navigating through an application. The downside of this is if I'm in the Forums app and I want to, for example, edit a member, I first have to click the Members app, then find the item in the sidebar, and finally arrive at the page I wanted.

We felt for an app of the size of IP.Board, more effective navigation could be done by using multi-level dropdown menus:

This makes it really speedy to get wherever you need to get. You can even navigate to your non-core applications:

The sidebar can be hidden, giving you more space on your screen for the important content. I've been using the new menu system for weeks, and I certainly couldn't imagine going back to using the sidebar as the primary navigation method. I hope this makes routine administration tasks noticeably easier for everyone.

New Item Menus

In 3.0, item rows that have additional options are displayed using the icon. While this works fine (especially when there's many options), it could be made quicker if the primary actions were buttons in their own right.

IP.Content and IP.Nexus have had the new item menus for some time, but they're now used throughout IP.Board. Primary actions (such as Edit and Delete) are displayed as buttons, while less-frequently used options remain in a dropdown menu. The row you are hovering on highlights itself for easy identification:

(Fun fact: this menu system is generated entirely with CSS3 - so it's incredibly easy for mod authors to reuse)

New Tab Bar

In IP.Board, many sections use tab bars for situations where you can edit all of your applications at once (for example, the Tools & Settings section). However, problems arise when you install lots of extra applications - the tabs can spill out of the bar and break the page layout.

To resolve this, we have added a new style of tab bar, that comfortably displays as many apps as necessary. By default, it looks like a standard tab bar:

But when many apps are installed and your browser window is not large enough to display them all, it adds smooth scrolling controls:

New Form Style

Though not a major change, we have updated forms throughout the ACP to use a slightly different layout. In 3.0, field descriptions were displayed under the field title. Where fields had long descriptions, this was unwieldy, and contributes to making forms more difficult to use than they should be.

In 3.2, we have updated the styling so that field descriptions appear directly under the field they relate to. Field titles meanwhile are right-aligned, making it really easy for your eye to travel the page and identify items:

New Live Search

I mentioned earlier that the ACP live search had been made more prominent in the interface. We hadn't expected it to be quite as popular as it is, so in 3.2, we've improved the display of the results box. Often, a search would have dozens of results, which made them difficult to scan through to find the relevant one. Live search in 3.2 breaks down the display into sections, like so:

Summary

We hope that the new navigation system and live search really makes finding what you need highly efficient, so you can get on with doing the important tasks. We hope the cosmetic and usability tweaks makes performing those tasks just a little bit easier. And, of course, we hope you like the overall styling we are going for.

Feel free to comment on this blog entry below or, if you have feedback unrelated to this blog entry, start a new topic in our feedback forum. Be sure to check the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for a running list of announced changes!

19,584 views

Rikki

February 23, 201115 yr

IP.Board 3.2.0 Dev Update: Calendar Improvements, Part IV: Simplification and Interface Changes

Hot on the heels of our blog entry detailing how RSVP-style events will work in Calendar as of IP.Board 3.2.0, we would like to take a moment to discuss some interface changes we have made in the next release of Calendar. Some of these changes are relatively minor, but we feel that they should improve usability and make it easier for users to understand how to use Calendar in 3.2.0. It is important to note here, since we are discussing changes to the interface specifically, that these changes are also subject to change. What you see and is discussed below should serve as an outline for some of the more important interface changes you will see in Calendar, however be advised that further changes may be in store, and what you see below is not necessarily exactly how IP.Board 3.2.0 will look upon final release. That doesn't mean, however, that we can't make you aware of the core changes now so you will be prepared when 3.2.0 is released.

Event Submission

One area we wanted to simplify a little was the event submission process. To start with, we have removed the three separate confusing button options on the calendar page ("Add Single Event", "Add Ranged Event", "Add Recurring Event") and consolidated this into just one "Add Event" button. No longer will users have to actively think about what type of event they are adding before they are even presented with the form to do so.

The event form has been overhauled to handle the addition of all three event types at once in the process. Javascript has been leveraged to show and hide fields that are not applicable to the type of event the user wishes to add, until they need to see those fields. The date picker javascript tool has been added to the form to make it easier for users to choose the date they are attempting to add, and times have been changed to a 12 hour format with an "AM" and "PM" dropdown menu, a vast improvement over the previous 24-hour format field previously used.

Because the options are all interlinked, I've taken a quick video to show you how these work. When you submit the event, calendar will figure out what type of event (single, ranged or recurring) automatically and save the event data accordingly. By figuring these details out automatically, we make it easier for the user to submit their event without having to actively think about all of the details before hand.

Getting rid of redirector links

Some of the links in past versions of Calendar where links to redirector scripts. This means that the link did not actually point to the final destination the user would arrive at, but instead pointed to an intermediary page that would do some calculations and then redirect the user to the correct location. While there is nothing fundamentally wrong with this approach, it means two page loads instead of one for the user from a technical point of view (increasing the time it takes the user to arrive at the destination page, and increasing the amount of work your server ultimately has to do to get the user to where they are going), and this is not an optimal solution from an SEO point of view. We have changed all such links in Calendar for IP.Board 3.2.0 to point to the correct destination page without using redirector intermediary pages, improving user experience, resource usage, and SEO all in one go!

Daily View

Receiving some of the biggest changes in it's general interface, the "daily view" as we call it has been completely changed in the next release of Calendar. "Daily view" is what I call the page that shows what is happening on a particular day.

As a reference point, you can view our current Calendar to see what the daily view looks like for a day that has both an event and some birthdays by looking at February 8th. In the current version of Calendar, you will see that birthdays are listed vertically at the top with a lot of wasted space to the right, while the more important events are listed at the bottom using the same exact template that is used when viewing the event itself. If you have a calendar where there is one event on the day, you ultimately end up with a "duplicate content" SEO scenario. The daily view looks (and indeed, has the same source code HTML) as the event view because both simply show the same event on the page. We wanted to make this view a little more useful than it is currently in the next release of Calendar.

Reminder: This screenshot outlines the direction we are taking with the next release of Calendar, however keep in mind that the interface is very much subject to further change before release. Consider this screenshot an early preview of the direction we are taking, rather than a final screenshot of the finished interface.

The first thing you will notice is that this view is more similar to our weekly view. You have the handy shortcuts and monthly mini-calendars in the sidebar that let you easily navigate to other areas of the calendar without having to return to the homepage first. At the top of the page we have added "Previous Day" and "Next Day" shortcuts to allow you to more easily navigate through the days in calendar as well.

We have moved the list of birthdays below the events, as we feel the user-generated events are typically more important to the community than an automatically-generated list of birthdays. The events, while similar to the full event view, are a simplified interface meant to give you an overview of the event, but not all of the details (which is more undesirable in this version of Calendar, given the new functionality available for events). The birthdays have been overhauled to provide more useful information than just the name and age (although both of these pieces of information are still available and displayed). All in all, this entire page has been overhauled to be more useful, less of a copy of the specific event view page, and to allow you to more easily navigate the system and get to where you want to go.

Navigation Changes

Similarly, we have touched up the navigation bar on every page in Calendar to make it easier to navigate back up the hierarchy to where you want to go. Most pages in Calendar in the current release will show "Board > Calendar > Calendar Name > Page Name" in the navigation bar. While this generic approach does offer some flexibility to move back up the chain, you cannot easily get back to the page you were previously on when you view an event, or a day, or a week. With the next release of Calendar, the navigation bar will be much more dynamic and natural feeling, allowing you to more easily return to your previous page without having to use your back button.

When viewing a week, the month and year has been added as a navigational bar entry to let you return back to the month. When viewing a day, the same has been done here. The most useful changes have been made to the event view page, however. The event view page now will attempt to determine where you are visiting from, so that it can better show you a navigational bar that is relevant to how you reached the page. For instance, if you are viewing the daily view and click on an event, you will now see the month and year as a navigational entry, as well as the day of the event. If you reach the event view page from the weekly view, you will have the month and year as a navigational entry, as well as the weekly view you just came from. This is particularly useful when you are viewing a ranged or recurring event, as it allows you to return to where you actually came from, rather than simply returning you to the month and year the event started in (which is not where you came from, in many cases). The end result should be a more useful navigation bar for Calendar in 3.2.

Conclusion

Many other tweaks have been implemented, and there are many more to come as our interface designer continues his work on the public interface of IP.Board 3.2. The end goal, of course, is to make Calendar easier to use, more useful to use, and more intuitive to navigate. We think the above changes work toward these goals, and we hope you find them to be welcomed changes in the next release of Calendar.

Feel free to comment on this blog entry below or, if you have feedback unrelated to this blog entry, start a new topic in our feedback forum. Be sure to check the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for a running list of announced changes!

11,906 views

bfarber

February 21, 201115 yr

IP.Board 3.2.0: Text Editor Part III / Live Topic Replies

This entry rounds up our series of blogs on the new text editor and how we've enhanced other areas of the interface that use it.

I recently introduced the new text editor and then showed you some basic integration such as fast reply and instant quote.

I want to now show you the last piece of this feature set and resolve a common issue when making a reply.

Quite often you're on a busy board such as ours and you're using the fast reply to make a post and when submit the post you realise that others have posted in the mean time making your reply either redundant or out of context.

To solve this, IP.Board now checks at regular intervals to see if any new posts have come through and if so, you can add them to the page.

This screen shot shows the inline notification stating that there are new replies. Clicking on the link adds the replies into the topic.

This video shows the system working. Note, for this demo I increased the polling frequency to every few seconds.

So how does it work? Will it crash my server?
It's a bit clever and no! When you start typing you trigger the polling action which checks every 3 minutes for new posts. This is a very fast and light query that requires far fewer resources than a simple page refresh. It will continue polling until you either add the reply or an hour has passed. We added this upper limit to prevent instances where a reply is started but then the member changes tabs, etc.

I hope you enjoy this feature and all the new functionality we've added in this crucial area. Making posts is the very lifeblood of your forum and making it easier to contribute can only increase the number of posts made.

Feel free to comment on this blog entry below or, if you have feedback unrelated to this blog entry, start a new topic in our feedback forum. Be sure to check the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for a running list of announced changes!

11,188 views

Matt

February 18, 201115 yr

IP.Board 3.2.0 Dev Update: Calendar Improvements, Part III: RSVP

As part of our continuing IP.Board 3.2.0 development update blog entries, we've already told you about some great improvements you can expect to see in Calendar with the release of IP.Board 3.2. In addition to much improved SEO capabilities in Calendar, we have also made loads of changes to improve the consistency of Calendar compared to the rest of our suite lineup. While these changes alone will make Calendar much more useful for administrators and users alike, we are most certainly not done yet. We can still squeeze some more improvements out of Calendar in 3.2.0 before moving on to other important tasks, and to that end I'd like to use this entry to discuss a new feature you will have opportunity to use in the next release of Calendar: RSVP events.

Important Note: The screenshots you will see below are taken of a very-early build of 3.2 and the interface will be subject to change. Our UX designer will be going over the RSVP changes in Calendar in greater detail in the weeks to come, so please understand that what you see below is not how the final result will appear upon release.

The Concept

Often times you will find that when creating an event on your community you want to allow users the opportunity to let you know if they will be attending or not. This is useful for both real-world events (i.e. a club meetup at a coffee shop) and for online-only events (i.e. a developer seminar). As the event organizer you may need to know how many people will be attending, and/or if specific users will be attending. It is useful to have a way to allow users to signal that they will be attending the event.

In the "real world", this is usually done through what is known as "RSVP". Basically, an RSVP is a notification from a participant to the event organizer that the participant will be attending the event.

In the next version of Calendar, users will have the ability to create events that request attendees to RSVP for the event.

Administrative Controls

Administrators can control which users can both create RSVP-requested events and which users can respond to RSVP-requested events.

For each individual calendar you create within the Calendar application, you can specify on a per-permission mask basis which users can create RSVP events, and which users can respond to RSVP events. You can also control on a per-calendar basis if the event poster is allowed to remove users who have saved an RSVP for an event or not (super moderators always have this ability). If you do not wish to use this capability in a specific calendar (or at all), you can simply not allow any users the ability to create RSVP events in the calendar.

Creating and responding to an RSVP event

Creating an RSVP-requested event is as simple as checking a box on the event submission form.

When viewing an RSVP-requested event, a new box will be shown to the user to signal that the event organizer requests attendees to RSVP, and who has already RSVPed for the event.

When you click on the RSVP button in the RSVP area, your participation status will be saved through AJAX and the attendee list will be dynamically updated. Note that if javascript is disabled, your status is saved through a normal browser redirect screen fallback.

If you have permission to remove attendees (as I do in this screenshot), a delete icon will show next to each attendee, affording you the opportunity to remove them from the list.

Wrapping Up

While we have some ideas in mind for future versions of Calendar to possibly expand the system as implemented presently, we wanted to go with a clear, simple and straight-forward approach for this first implementation of the RSVP system that we feel will be easily understood by your users (and thus, more likely to be used properly by your users as well). Creating an RSVP event is as simple as checking a box (if you have permission to do so), and signaling your attendance is as simple as clicking a button (again, if you have permission to do so). We feel this approach will make the feature more likely to be used, while still allowing us opportunities to expand the feature in the future.

Let us know what you think in the comment area below, and be sure to keep an eye out for our next blog update about Calendar, coming soon!

Feel free to comment on this blog entry below or, if you have feedback unrelated to this blog entry, start a new topic in our feedback forum. Be sure to check the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for a running list of announced changes!

12,955 views

bfarber

February 16, 201115 yr

IP.Board 3.2.0: New Photo Editor

One of our main goals for IP.Board 3.2.0 is to streamline the interface and make it easier to work with. We're also taking full advantage of modern techniques to ensure that IP.Board has more of an application feel by eliminating page reloads and using rich web technologies.

We've revamped the photo editor to make it easier and simpler to use. The first thing you'll notice is that if you've connected your forum account to Twitter and/or Facebook, you can quickly select to synchronise your photo with the service on the same page.

We're also using square cropped images for the user's photo for a more uniform feel and you can adjust the crop viewport if the default center crop doesn't catch all the detail.

Here's the new photo editor complete with all the options available to me for my photo.

After uploading a new custom image, I can quickly re-crop it to better capture the relevant portion of the photograph.

And finally, here's a little video of it in action!

We really hope you enjoy this new interface and we're sure it'll make changing your photo an easier and more pleasant experience!

11,497 views

Matt

February 14, 201115 yr

IP.Nexus 1.2 Dev Update: Miscellaneous Enhancements

To round up our development updates on IP.Nexus 1.2, I'd just like to mention in brief some additional features not already mentioned in previous blog entries.

Go back in Checkout

When going through the checkout, a progress bar at the top indicates what steps are still required.

Previously, once you had completed one step, you could not go back and change the information provided. In IP.Nexus 1.2, you can click on any step in the progress bar that you have already completed and will be taken back to that step.

Change Package

You can now "swap"the package that an existing purchase is using in the Admin CP.

This will apply all properties of the new package to the purchase (renewal dates, etc.) and apply any usergroup et al changes that the new package allows.

Split Support Requests

You can now split support requests and delete individual replies in the Admin CP.
Each reply now shows a checkbox in the top-right corner, when this is checked, options will appear at the bottom of the replies.

The system works across multiple pages - simply check the replies on one page, change to the next page and select any additional replies - the checked items from the first page will be remembered.

Task Frequency Change

In order to prevent time-outs when handling large amounts of data, and to generate invoices and expire purchases closer to their specified dates, all tasks in Nexus now run more frequently, with a limit on the number of items to process.
This number should be fine for most users, but can be adjusted if necessary.

2,770 views

Mark

February 11, 201115 yr

IP.Board 3.2.0: New Text Editor, Part II

I recently introduced the new text editor in 3.2.0. This new text editor brings a robust rich text editor coupled with custom BBCode and an auto-save feature.

Today, I wanted show some user interface and usability improvements we've made in this area.

Firstly, where space is tight or where you don't want to be overwhelmed with the text editor, it is shown 'minimised'. The screenshot below shows this minimised state and the editor looks just like a regular HTML text area that everyone is familiar with.

Upon clicking the text area to begin making your post, it'll expand into the full editor ready for use:

We've also gone ahead and added 'Ajax reply' and 'Ajax quoting'. This improves the responsiveness of IP.Board by removing the page reloads and gives it more of an 'app' feel by posting and updating the page instantly.

I've taken a short video of this in action. Please note that you are viewing an in-development feature so the final design is not set for both the board and the editor and also that I'm currently working in "development" mode with CKEditor which means that there is a slight pause as it loads. This will not be the case when we package it up for release.

We hope that you enjoy these enhancements to commonly used areas and that it makes a common task more enjoyable. Please do keep in mind that cosmetic style issues and such will be addressed in future blog entries.

12,022 views

Matt

February 10, 201115 yr

Spam Service Update

On 13 January 2011 we posted some information on our Spam Monitoring Service that was helping to block the huge amount of spam accounts hitting communities all over the web.

There's not much new to report - spam will always exist unfortunately - but we thought everyone would be interested to know that we were recently able to block huge ranges of attacking IP addresses.

IPS has a hosting division that provides managed community hosting for many thousands of communities. We host everyone from small, hobby sites to large enterprise clients with thousands of online users. We manage our own network and hardware to have the best possible control over the experience we can offer our clients.

We have been able to leverage our hosted network of thousands of communities to detect the signatures that the spammers were using to get past the various defenses in IP.Board. The spammers were using automated software to, for lack of a better term, brute-force their way past the reCAPTCHA service and this program left clear marks in our server logs because of the unique way it accessed the servers. Our network staff were able to, across our dozens of servers, gather up all the IP addresses used to register spam accounts and add those to the block-list on the Spam Monitoring Service.

While this is not a complete solution we were very happy to be able to detect these trends and block those spammers at the service level so the knowledge we gained from our own network could be applied to help all those with an active IP.Board license.

Fighting spam is an ongoing battle of course but we will continue to do our best to help blocking those who would try to disrupt your community. The better your community runs the better IPS grows and we take our responsibility to your community seriously.

4,045 views

Charles

February 9, 201115 yr

IP.Nexus 1.2 Dev Update: Custom Packages Improvements

IP.Nexus has always had the ability create "custom packages" - you can specify a price and renewal terms and IP.Nexus will keep a log of the purchase and generate renewal invoices.
However, some options like member group promotion, custom modules, etc. are not available in this setup - and with the addition of advertisements and hosting packages, it is necessary to be able to generate custom packages of these types also.

In IP.Nexus 1.2 we've completely rewritten how custom packages are handled to allow this flexibility.
When generating an invoice, the normal "Custom Package" option appears in the dropdown - choosing this will show you a menu of available package types just like when creating a normal package.

The next screen shows all of the options that would normally be available to normal packages (except settings which don't make sense for custom packages, such as if the product should display in the store or only be available to certain member groups):

After creating the custom package and the invoice has been paid for, it displays just like a normal purchase, both in the Admin CP and the client area:

Administrators can of course edit any of the custom package settings from this page.

2,770 views

Mark

February 9, 201115 yr

IP.Board 3.2.0: New Text Editor

Nearly ten years ago, IP.Board shipped with a pretty advanced functional editor that allowed you to quickly format your text in a rough "WYSIWYG" format. This was an exciting technology. As the main browsers started adding better support for this functionality we updated our own code to keep up.

The internet is a constantly evolving space and web browsers and technology rise and fall and keeping up with these changes gets harder and harder. This is why we've added a new editor to 3.2.0 that is developed by a dedicated team outside of Invision Power Services.

IP.Board 3.2.0 will come with the excellent CKEditor as standard. It's a well developed and well tested editor that is very extensible. It's constantly updated which means that we simply have to update the version that comes with IP.Board to get all the latest fixes.

In general use, the new editor is much better at "WYSIWYG" (rich text editing) than our own current implementation and we've extended it further.

Please keep in mind that the screenshots and videos below are using a very early development copy of IP.Board 3.2.0 and the editor will likely be skinned in a little more to match IP.Board before we release.

All the usual IP.Board tools are present
We've written a lot of plug-ins so that no functionality is lost. You can still create custom BBcodes and add buttons to the editor easily via the Admin CP and you can still use your own smilies.

Switching between modes
We love the new editor and as it supports nearly all major browsers, it's the first choice for replying and adding new topics. However, there are times when you want to edit the BBCode directly and with that in mind, you can switch between rich text editing mode and simple text mode without a page reload.

Auto Saving Text
A new and really handy feature we've added is auto save. As you type, the editor checks to see if there's any new content and if there is, it'll ping off via Ajax to save what you've written. If anything happens to your page, upon reloading you'll see it's stored your content and you can quickly restore it. You won't lose another post to a browser crash or server time out.

IP.Board saves as you go.

A refresh without posting allows you to view and optionally restore any content that has been auto saved.

We hope that you enjoy the new editor in IP.Board 3.2.0 and the extra functionality we've added. We're excited to use it ourselves!

25,686 views

Matt

February 8, 201115 yr

IP.Board 3.2.0 Dev Update: Calendar Improvements, Part II: Consistency

We are continuing to make improvements to Calendar to both bring it more in line with the rest of the suite of IPS products and to modernize the application and make it more functional and useful for our customers. If you haven't read our first blog entry describing improvements you can expect to see with Calendar in IP.Board 3.2.0, Part I: SEO Improvements, feel free to take a moment to read our last blog entry to catch up. In this entry we'll discuss some of the changes you can expect to see in the Calendar with the release of IP.Board 3.2.0 that provide for a more consistent use of the application when stacked up to our other products.

Ratings

With the next update of Calendar, you will now be able to rate events very much like you can rate topics now. Ratings are saved through AJAX, just like with topics, falling back to a normal page load and redirect if javascript is disabled on the user's browser. You can control on a per-calendar basis which permission masks have permission to rate events within the calendar. If the user has permission to change their rating via their user group configuration, they will be able to change their previously rating for any event in Calendar as well.

Reputation

As with posts within the forums, you will now be able to give the member who submits an event reputation when viewing the event in Calendar. The reputation box displays just like it would for a forum post, allowing your users to quickly and easily understand the interface and functionality. By allowing reputation to be issued for event submissions in Calendar, you provide incentive to your users to submit events in your Calendar, making it all the more useful for your entire community!

Attachments

In our continued effort to increase consistency and functionality in Calendar, we have also implemented attachments for Calendar in the next update. When submitting or editing an event, the standard attachment uploader will be shown on the event posting form. You will be able to submit attachments based on the ACP configuration, just like you would be able to for posts in the forum. You can embed the attachments anywhere within the event content, or let Calendar just append the attachments to the end of the event information, again just like a post within the forum. Attachments may be useful for Calendar to share an event poster or flyer, to share coupons for an event, or to attach documentation users may need to be informed of prior to the event, just to name a few uses.

Notifications

Users can now optionally elect to be notified of new or updated events in Calendar, allowing your site to notify users of changes to the Calendar that they may elect to be informed about. Previous versions of Calendar provided no way to push information to the user to notify them of changes in Calendar. Any user interested in an event saved to your Calendar would need to manually check on it periodically to verify any changes made to the event, which we can agree is certainly not an optimal experience or expectation. As of the next version of Calendar, users can follow both individual calendars and individual events, allowing them to be notified of additions to calendars they are following, and updates to events they follow. By letting Calendar notify your users of changes, the software becomes more functional and useful in it's prime goal, sharing event-based data with the community.

Comments

Your members will now be able to comment on events submitted to Calendar. You can control on a per-calendar basis which permission masks can comment on events in each calendar, and you can also specify whether comments must be moderated prior to becoming visible (again, on a per-calendar basis). Comments in Calendar use the central commenting class of IP.Board, meaning it works identically to all other applications (e.g., identical to the blog commenting system at the bottom of this page), allowing for a consistent interface users can understand and utilize without having to learn how to use yet another posting screen. If a user opts to follow an event to be notified of updates to the event, they will also be notified of comments made on the event, allowing your site to better communicate updates to users about content they are interested in, and driving more activity within the Calendar in the process.

"Like"

Alongside commenting, users can now "like" calendars and events (the aforementioned "follow" capability), giving them the opportunity to either show their support for the calendar/event, to be notified of updates to the calendar/event, or both. As with IP.Blog, IP.Downloads, etc., the like system is a central class within IP.Board that is reused within Calendar, again to provide a consistent interface to users that they can learn and understand once, and expect to use throughout your entire site.

Sharing

The general use share strip that you see below each topic (and elsewhere throughout our suite of applications) has been added to Calendar. This allows users to share events through social networking sites, through email, or even to print an event's details out with their printer. If Facebook support is enabled in your ACP, the Facebook "like" button will also show up for the user, allowing them to share the event on Facebook. This is likely to drive activity to your site as the user's friends see this content shared on Facebook and follow it through to your site, where they may be interested and join your site...a win-win!

I realize this blog entry is pretty concise and the above-mentioned changes are not thoroughly detailed here, however because these are consistency-based changes to bring Calendar in-line with the rest of our products, the majority of our customers will already be familiar with everything mentioned above. By bringing these changes to Calendar, we allow for more useful functionality and more consistency with the rest of our suite of applications for IP.Board. Our next blog entry for Calendar will start detailing some of the changes unique to Calendar that we believe will make it much more useful for you and for your community. Stay tuned, and if you would like to be notified when we post future blog entries, be sure to "like" our company blog.

10,607 views

bfarber

February 7, 201115 yr

IP.Nexus 1.2 Dev Update: Editing Existing Packages

Currently in IP.Nexus when a package is edited, certain factors, like the group a user is moved into when purchasing the package, only apply to new purchases.
While less of an issue for traditional products there are times, particularly with advertisement and hosting packages, where you will want to apply these changes to existing purchases.

Let's say for example, a user has purchased a product called "Premium Membership" - note how the customer is in the group "Members":

I now decide that I'm going to create a new group for people who have purchased this group called "Premium Members" and change the product settings to move members into this group when they purchase the package - note that I'm editing the package that the member bought, not creating a new package:

When I save this, I will now see a new screen which indicates the change I've made can be applied to existing purchases:

If I choose the bottom option, no further action will be performed - the package will save and the changes will apply to new purchases only.
If I choose the top option, IP.Nexus will go through all existing purchases and make the change:

And all of the appropriate changes will be applied:

You can change almost any field for similar behaviour - removing the usergroup for example would move everyone back into their original groups, enabling the license key settings would cause license keys to be generated, for hosting accounts changing the allowances will update the account on the server, etc.

The system will also notice if you have customised a purchase and keep your changes in such a situation.
For example, let's say you've manually edit a customer's bandwidth allowance on their hosting account - when IP.Nexus goes to update the purchase it will notice the value has been customised and leave that particular setting alone (and update other settings as usual).

Of course, changes made in this way are logged on the customer page as normal, as if done manually.

2,792 views

Mark

February 4, 201115 yr

Gallery 4: Mobile Skin

As the beta process for Gallery continues, I've found the time to implement the mobile theme that can be used by any mobile handset's browser or by the iPhone app we have available for free in the App Store.

The mobile theme is lightweight as expected and makes good use of the small cropped thumbs as well as the new 'small' image that is created. This saves a lot of bandwidth which will be a huge relief to those that don't have a good 3G signal.

I'll be updating Gallery here later today so you can see this live. The mobile theme will be available with Gallery 4.0 Beta 3.

The Gallery homepage:

If you scroll down you can access the global and member albums:

Album view:

Viewing an image:

I hope that you enjoy this new functionality when it's available!

4,492 views

Matt

February 2, 201115 yr

IP.Nexus 1.2 Dev Update: Custom Customer Fields

IP.Nexus can ask the customer for various information (like their full name, postal address and phone number) when registering purchasing an item. This information is required for shipping, some payment gateways and the anti-fraud system.
Up until now, these fields were static - only the hard-coded fields were available and you could only specify all or no fields were required at registration or checkout.

In IP.Nexus 1.2, we've made these fields customisable - you can choose which should show where, which should be required and add and reorder fields as you see fit.

This means, that you could, for example, add a "Company" field, which would show alongside the others:

Of course, users can also edit custom fields in the client area, and administrators can edit them from the customer page.
Whenever the details is changed, it is logged to the customer history page as one would expect:

Administrators can also search by custom fields both from the quick-search in the menu, and the main customer search form:

This also means that since existing fields can be edited, you can now reorder or remove options from the "Country" field. You can also specify if "State" should be required or not.

3,556 views

Mark

February 2, 201115 yr

IP.Board 3.2.0 Dev Update: Calendar Improvements, Part I: SEO Improvements

Work is underway on IP.Board 3.2 so we wanted to start divulging some of the great changes you can expect to see in our next upcoming major release. One area of IP.Board that we wanted to spend some time improving was the calendar, and this blog entry is the first of several outlining changes and improvements you can expect to see in the calendar with IP.Board 3.2.

We intend to post several blog entries detailing changes you can expect to see in calendar, so if there's something you're looking forward to and you don't see it mentioned in this blog entry that doesn't mean it won't be coming. Keep an eye out for future blog entries outlining calendar-related changes by "liking" this blog entry.

Meta Tags

Beginning with IP.Board 3.2, Calendar will start issuing appropriate meta tags based on the page you are viewing. When I say meta tags here, I'm not only talking about "keywords" and "description", although these are certainly included. I'm also talking about context-sensitive link tags that relate to SEO, such as the canonical URL tag.

Previously, Calendar set no meta tags at all. Now, calendar will set the following meta tags as appropriate, based on the page you are viewing:

Keywords: Calendar will begin setting the generic "keywords" meta tag Description: Calendar will begin setting the generic "description" meta tag Canonical URL: Calendar will set the appropriate "canonical" link tag to consolidate backlink weighting to the appropriate page in Calendar Up: Calendar will set the appropriate "up" link tag which helps navigational tools and other software designed that reads and understands this link tag Author: Calendar will set the appropriate "author" link tag, again supported by some navigational tools

Friendly URLs

While Calendar supported FURLs in previous versions of IP.Board, that support was limited and often times various versions of a URL would cause the FURL not to be generated correctly. We have re-evaluated all of the friendly URLs in Calendar for IP.Board 3.2, solidifying the format and enhancing support where appropriate.

First, of note, the event title is now added to the friendly URL when you view an event. A sample event URL might look like this: /calendar/1/event/47-first-test-event

Additionally, the calendar title itself is now added to all other friendly URLs in calendar. When viewing a single calendar you may see a URL like this: /calendar/1-community-calendar ; when viewing a month, you will see a URL like such: /calendar/1-community-calendar/02-2011 ; and when viewing a day the URL looks like so: /calendar/1-community-calendar/day-2011-01-18 .

Some areas of calendar previously generated URLs with URL components in different positions within the string. The end result of this was that URLs that should have been FURL often weren't, simply because our FURL engine couldn't match them up. We have gone through all such URLs and ensured the consistency of the URL format to make sure that all URLs that support friendly URL formatting now do so correctly.

hCalendar Microformat

We have also taken this opportunity to implement the hCalendar microformat into Calendar. Microformats are basically universally-accepted HTML structuring that, when used correctly, allow software to read the page and parse it like an XML document. In particular, the hCalendar microformat very closely resembles the iCalendar format, allowing some software to read Calendar just as if it were an iCal feed.

While this may seem like a small change on the surface, the more scripts that support universal formats, the higher the likelihood that other tools will be created to interact with these formats. As you can see at the previous link, there are already tools available to convert hCalendar into iCalendar, and vice-versa.

Layout Enhancements

While we are not ready to go into detail about some of these other changes just yet (but we will in a future blog entry!), we are making other changes that closely relate to SEO in the general structure and layout of Calendar. For instance, we have consolidated all event posting pages into one, so there is just one "Add Event" button now, and we are changing the current daily view to less-closely resemble the event view. We feel these two views being essentially duplicates of each other is not only confusing to the user, but may be seen as duplicate pages by some search engines while crawling your site (if you view a day that has one event, and the event directly, the output is nearly identical, even though they are two separate views within Calendar). These changes, while we are not targetting SEO specifically with them, do impact your search engine optimization directly and indirectly. Expect future blog entries to be posted that detail these changes further.

We hope you are excited about IP.Board 3.2, and want you to know we are excited to begin discussing things you can see coming in the next version. As mentioned previously, keep an eye out for our next blog entry on 3.2!

10,493 views

bfarber

January 31, 201115 yr

IP.Nexus 1.2 Dev Update: Payment Improvements & Anti-Fraud Protection

IP.Nexus aims to give you the tools you need to monetize your community, and the core of that is the actual transaction process.

We've made a number of changes in IP.Nexus 1.2 not only to make managing payments and gateways easier but to protect you against fraud, encourage renewals and generally make it easier for you to make more money.

Authorize.Net Recurring Payments

IP.Nexus has since version 1.0 supported the Authorize.Net payment gateway. In IP.Nexus 1.2, we're adding support for two systems which will automatically bill customers renewal charges:

The first is their "Automated Recurring Billing" system. This works very similar to PayPal Subscriptions - a profile is created on Authorize.Net with the payment information. Then when the renewal is due the card is automatically charged, and Nexus is notified.
For more information about Automated Recurring Billing, please see Authorize.Net's website.

The second is their "Customer Information Manager" system. This works by having Authorize.Net store the credit card information. IP.Nexus then calls Authorize.Net to make payments, when renewals are due or manually in the Admin CP.
This system gives greater flexibility as Nexus chooses when to charge, and you don't need to manually cancel recurring payments with Authorize.Net when a purchase is cancelled.
For more information about Customer Information Manager, please see Authorize.Net's website.

For both systems the user sees an option on the checkout asking if they want to be charged automatically:

PayPal Website Payments Pro

PayPal Website Payments Pro is a service provided by PayPal that allows merchants in the US, Canada and the UK to accept credit card payments directly on their website.
We're pleased to say that IP.Nexus will support PayPal Website Payments Pro, including recurring billing support.

For more information about PayPal Website Payments Pro, please see PayPal's website.

Improved Gateways Page

Different payment gateways have different requirements such as HTTPS, supported currencies and maximum transaction amounts. In IP.Nexus 1.2, we've added more information to the gateways page, including a warning box that will notify you of any misconfigurations:

Anti-Fraud Protection

MaxMind offers a Credit Card Fraud Protection, which here at IPS we've been using for years to help audit transactions for fraud.
In IP.Nexus 1.2, we will be adding integration for this service.

MaxMind returns a score between 0 and 100 indicating how likely a transaction is likely to be fraud. All the service needs is the user's address (which you can require on checkout), however it works best with gateways that use credit cards, i.e. Authorize.Net and PayPal Website Payments Pro.
Depending on the score returned, you can choose to manually approve or decline the transaction:

The purchase screen will also contain detailed information indicating the reasoning behind the score:

For more information about this service, please see MaxMind's website.

As always - if there's anything you'd like to see not mentioned here (including other payment gateways), please post in our feedback forum.

4,828 views

Mark

January 27, 201115 yr

IP.Nexus 1.2 Dev Update: cPanel Integration

As was hinted in the blog entry last week, IP.Nexus 1.2 shall bring support for selling hosting packages.
Right away I'd like to mention that this at the moment will work with any server using cPanel and WHM - we will of course gauge interest for other control panels for future versions.

Hosting Packages

You set up hosting packages just like regular products and advertisement packages. There is a contextual settings tab which displays hosting-specific settings, and these packages then show up in the store:

Each package is assigned what we call a "Server Queue" - this is a collection of servers which the account may be created on.
So for example, you could have your "advanced" packages only use higher-powered servers. Servers can be part of multiple queues.

When the account is created, the server in the queue which has the least accounts is chosen to create the account on.

Purchasing a Hosting Package

When purchasing, users will be asked if they want to choose their own domain or use a subdomain of one of your domains. You can of course make only one of these options available.
If the customer chooses their own domain, they'll be shown your nameservers, and if they choose a subdomain, they'll be shown a list of options - both of these you can set up in the Admin CP.

Client Area Management

Customers can view their account information in the client area along with all other purchases:

From here they can also launch the control panel, FTP and change their password.
You can also configure options to allow users to purchase additional bandwidth for that billing cycle, if their bandwidth limit is reached.

Admin CP Management

The purchase page in the Admin CP shows the same information that is available in the client area, along with the control panel and FTP buttons:

Clicking the edit button will allow the administrator to edit specific allowances on the account, without the need to log into WHM:

The administrator of course, does not need to manually suspend and terminate accounts. If the customer does not renew their account, it will be suspended, and, after a certain number of days (configureable in the Admin CP), terminated.
Of course, using the normal package cancel function allows administrators to manually suspend accounts.

Server Management

In the Admin CP, you can view all of your servers along with the current load. From this page you can also reboot a server.

Clicking on a server will show you a list of accounts on that server. You will also see an overview of how much diskspace is in use and how much is allocated (so you can see if you're overselling). Nexus will also check all the accounts in it's local database against the server to check for any discrepancies:

Discrepancies can include an account not on the server but in the database (and vice versa), domain names not matching and account is suspended on the server but active in the database (and vice versa):

In addition to auditing each server, there is an "Audit All Servers" button which will check all servers for discrepancies.

We're sure that there will be many questions and comments about this new functionality - if there's anything you'd like to see not mentioned here, please post in our feedback forum.

6,303 views

Mark

January 24, 201115 yr

IP.Nexus 1.2 Dev Update: Advertisements In Store

IP.Nexus features an advertisement system which allows administrators not only to set up circulating advertisements on their community, but sell advertising space too.
Currently in IP.Nexus, advertisements are purchased through a special location in the client area. In IP.Nexus 1.2 we will be removing this area and moving advertisements into the store.

When adding a package to the store, you will be shown a screen which asks you what type of package to add:

Then, when filling in the settings, there will be a contextual tab which shows settings for that package type. For products you'll see options about shipping and license keys, and for advertisements you'll see the usual advertisement package settings:

Users can then purchase advertisements through the store just like a normal product. They will be asked to provide their advertisement link and image on the same screen that custom package fields appear:

And view information about the advertisement on the normal purchase screen:

Not only does this make the process of purchasing advertisements easier, but all of the options available to packages are now also available to advertisements, including:
Only make certain advertisement packages appear to certain groups. Give discounts on advertisements to certain members, for example, members who have purchased advertisements in the past. For time-base advertisements, use renewal price settings to allow members to continuously pay for advertisement space. Move users who purchase an advertisement into a different usergroup. Allow users to upgrade to a higher package (for example, with more clicks) from within the client area.

Finally, this change opens the door for us to add more types of packages all of which display in the store. Like, for example, hosting packages...

4,162 views

Mark

January 20, 201115 yr

Spam Monitoring Service Statistics

We thought everyone might find a few statistics from our Spam Monitoring Service interesting. Since the rate of spam registrations has greatly increased since the first of the year we are of course seeing greater activity on the service.

All stats are since 1 January 2011 to 13 January 2011.

The spam service has processed 300,000 requests and the rate is accelerating as more people are activating the service since spamming has increased over the last couple weeks.
About 30% were marked as spam accounts and therefore prevented from registering on IP.Board's that use the service. This is of course a much higher percentage then even a few weeks prior to the influx of spam registrations.
The service has "learned" from the activity and permanently black listed about 5000 emails and IP addresses.
Of those the service blocked, about 10% were due to IP.Board administrators and moderator using the "flag as spam" feature which tells the service that an account is from a spammer. So keep reporting!

It's our hope that Google's reCAPTCHA service will soon be improved. In the mean time be sure to follow the tips in our announcement to prevent spam registrations.

We can never 100% stop spam but our Spam Monitoring Service is another tool to help prevent registrations from impacting your community. The service is a free IPS Extra for anyone with an active IP.Board license or IPS Community Hosting client.

7,848 views

Charles

January 13, 201115 yr

IPS Staff Opening

IPS is currently seeking a self-motivated individual to join our general support team. Requirements:

Excellent communication skills Advanced knowledge of IP.Board and related applications Ability to work in a fast-paced, team-oriented environment and be self-starter Linux, cPanel/WHM experience strongly preferred, but not required

You must be 18 years or older to apply for this position. US residency required.

For more information about this position, please e-mail [email protected]. Be sure to include your background with IPS products and how you feel you could benefit the team.

Thank you for your interest!

1,655 views

Charles

January 12, 201115 yr

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