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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!
  • 10,621 views
bfarber

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.
  • 4,939 views
Mark

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.
  • 6,493 views
Mark

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...
  • 4,278 views
Mark

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.
  • 8,119 views
Charles

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!
  • 1,717 views
Charles

IP.Nexus 1.2 Dev Update: License Keys

IP.Nexus 1.1 was released at the beginning of this month bringing a number of new features such as product options, reporting tools, advertisement system improvements and more.
Already we have started work on IP.Nexus 1.2 - while release is still a while away, we'll be posting blog entries during development to show you the upcoming new features.


The first new feature in IP.Nexus 1.2 that we wanted to talk about is a license key system.
Many users are using IP.Nexus to sell digital products, and currently there is no way to keep track of where your products are being used. In IP.Nexus 1.2, you will have the ability to generate license keys and use an API to call back to Nexus to activate and check license keys.


Generating License Keys

When creating a product, there are now a number of options regarding how to handle license keys:


License keys are by default generated either as a random md5 hash or several blocks of random letters and numbers - developers can also upload a simple PHP file to a certain folder to add more methods if you have your own way of generating license keys.

You can also choose an "identifier" for the license keys. Identifiers are provided to the API when activating the license key (for example, your program could ask users for their license key and their name or Email address) - as an additional security measure. Identifiers can be the customer's name, Email address or any custom field with the purchase. This is of course optional.


Managing License Keys

In the Admin CP, there is a new box on the purchase screen which displays information about the license key:



The grey box shows you the license key, when it was generated and it's current status and the table below shows where it's being used (you can set how many times a license key can be used).

The dropdown menu at the top with the other buttons contains options to reset (which will clear uses and generate a new key) or cancel (which will make API calls to check the license key fail) the key.

Of course, all actions related to license keys is also logged in the customer history page.


Users can see their license keys in the client area:



Using the API

The API uses XML-RPC to send and retrieve data. Full developer documentation will be available when Nexus 1.2 is released, but to give you an overview, there are four methods:

activate
This is what you call when the user enters their license key, for example, on an installation screen. You send Nexus the license key, the identifier (if necessary) and any additional information you want to save (for example, the version number). If the license key is invalid, or the key has already been used the maximum number of times, Nexus will return an error - otherwise, Nexus will log the IP address used to activate and the additional information you sent and return a success message along with the "usage id" which is an ID number given to that installation for that license key.

check
This is used to check that a license key is still valid, for example, you may call this periodically from your application. You send Nexus the license key, the identifier and the usage ID (returned from the activate method) and Nexus will return the status of the license key (if it's active or cancelled).

info
This is used to fetch information about a license key. You send Nexus the license key and the identifier and Nexus returns data about the key (when it was generated, how many times it's been used, etc.) the purchase associated with it (it's ID number, when it expires, all custom fields, etc.) and information about any child purchases (that is, purchases associated with the purchase the license key is associated with.

updateExtra
This is used to update the additional information send in the activate method. You send Nexus the license key, the identifier, usage ID and new information and Nexus will update the information locally and return a success message.
  • 6,061 views
Mark

IP.Board 3.2 Development Expectations

We are into the development process for IP.Board 3.2 and wanted to share some general expectations for this release. First of all it won't be out for several months so don't start asking about release dates now :)

In addition to the obvious enhancements to make the software work better, faster, and smarter we are focusing our development toward three key goals:


Community Promotion Front-end Usability Modernization

Let's quickly talk about each of these three goals and what you can expect from IP.Board 3.2. We are dealing with a successful and widely used platform so we do not intend on making sweeping changes but instead picking individual features and areas of our software platform and working to improve them with an eye toward the three goals. For the purpose of this blog entry we are not going to get into specific features planned as you will start seeing blog entries on specific entries starting in early February.

Community Promotion

One could argue that this is the most important goal of IP.Board 3.2 in that our key focus is to help you promote your community and help it grow. Small things like a more streamlined registration process, more attractive emails sent to your users, and core features like view new content or SEO improved. These changes all add up to a community that is more inviting to new users and quicker and easier for new users to register and start participating.

Front-end Usability

As the web evolves so must software like IP.Board that is designed to be a showcase software for the ever-growing presence of online communities. To that end, we will be working on modernizing the default skin that comes with IP.Board. The goals of this redesign are to create a default skin that is clearly updated and modernized without completely scrapping all the great elements we have today. This means that, although skins on 3.1 and below will not work on 3.2, the update process for those older skins will not require a 100% rewrite as many elements will be shared between the old and new versions. To put it another way: version 3.2 will be cleaner, more modern, and slicker but it will still clearly be IP.Board.

In addition to purely cosmetic updates we will also be putting great effort into general usability. Small changes like rewording the name of a button or moving a control to a new area make a world of difference for your member's usability and will encourage them to stick around and participate in your community.

Modernization

There are many features and settings in our software that made sense years ago but today are antiquated, redundant, or simply pointless. We will be evaluating all the various settings in IP.Board to streamline the management of your community. One example is the Question and Answers settings for the registration page. There is a setting to enable this and then a whole separate page to configure the actual questions and answers. Why have both? We can remove the redundant setting without getting rid of any functionality. This is just one example of dozens of settings areas we can streamline without sacrificing functionality.

We are also going to be removing some select features that are a bit antiquated. Specifically the linear+ and outline views will be removed in IP.Board 3.2 as these two functions are relics of the beginning of the Internet and have really outlived their use. We realize a handful of clients may use these features but the vast majority do not.

And speaking of antiquated we will also be putting great effort into areas like the calendar and user profiles to make every part of our software modern and updated.




Of course this is a high-level summary of what to expect from IP.Board 3.2 but everyone at IPS is very excited about our plans for IP.Board 3.2 and cannot wait to show you specifics! Look for frequent blog entries starting in early February to present new features and enhancements. As is always our policy, IPS does not release specific roadmaps but instead posts blog entries about new features once they are completely finished and will definitely be in the next version.
  • 4,888 views
Charles

IP.SEO Update

When we released IP.SEO 1.0, we said that we were going to start small and regularly update with new features based on user feedback and SEO trends. We've been staggered by the response to the first release, and have read all of the feedback topics posted so far. So in the spirit of those regular updates, we're now releasing IP.SEO 1.1 to cover some of the most requested features.

Here's what's new in today's release:


Sitemap pings added for Ask and Moreover, to add to the existing pings to Google, Yahoo and Bing. XML-RPC ping support for services such as pingomatic.com, weblogs.com, blo.gs, etc. when new topics are posted. This will help you build up a few quick backlinks, and speed up the time-to-indexing of new topics. Select a default skin specifically for guests and thus also for search engines, allowing you to cut out features that you don't feel are appropriate for guest/spider visitors. Beta support for Microsoft SQL server. For developers, a new base class for sitemap plugins. Example code for this and other features has been posted in the contributors forum.

This is just the first of many regular updates to IP.SEO, so please keep your feedback coming. We encourage you all to post your thoughts and ideas in the IP.SEO forum.
  • 5,540 views
Guest
Guest

IP.Nexus 1.1 Dev Update: Miscellaneous Enhancements - Part 2

For our final entry on IP.Nexus 1.1, I'd like to sum up some of the additional general tweaks and enhancements since our last blog entry.


Marking an invoice unpaid

In IP.Nexus 1.0, once an invoice has been paid, there is no way to mark it "unpaid". While for most circumstances this makes sense, in the event a check bounces or something similar, you may want to undo everything done when the invoice was marked paid.

In IP.Nexus 1.1, when you attempt to mark a paid invoice unpaid, you'll see a screen like this:



This explains clearly what will happen, including:
Which purchases will be deleted. Which purchases will have their renewal dates changed (if the invoice was a renewal invoice). If anyone will have any commission revoked. Which shipping orders will be deleted.

It will also warn you of any unexpected circumstances, such as if a purchase has been transferred to a different member, commission earned from the purchase has already been spent, or if any shipping orders have already been shipped:




Purchase Page

In IP.Nexus 1.0 there are specific pages in the Admin CP for viewing invoices, transactions and shipping orders. In 1.1, we've also added a page for viewing all the information about to a purchased item.



This allows you to view all information about a purchase which could sometimes be difficult to find previously, such as the invoice which created it, any renewal invoices, if the member will be returned to a different group when the purchase expires, and more.


Cancelling a Purchase

It could sometimes be confusing what "cancel" means when referring to a purchase. Sometimes you just want to disable renewals, sometimes you want to revoke any privileges gained by owning a purchase, and sometimes you want to delete it entirely.

In IP.Nexus 1.1, when you select cancel, it will present all of these options to you, explaining which does which, so that you can decide what action to take:




Share Links

We have added share links to the Store's product pages.


Print Invoice

While customers could always print invoices from their client area, we've also added a print button to the invoice page in the Admin CP.


Usability tweaks

We've made a few small tweaks to the interface to make things easier to use, including:We've added a "duplicate" button for packages, to save you having to select the same settings for similar packages. We've added a link to the customer page when viewing a shipping order. We've added a "Save and Reload" button when editing packages. We've added a button when viewing your purchases in the client area to submit a support request associated with a purchase right from the list.
  • 3,106 views
Mark

Welcome to IP.Gallery 4.0

IP.Gallery 4.0 is now available to use on our forums!

Please keep in mind that this is beta software and still very much work in progress so expect to come across bugs and such. As there is bound to be a lot of feedback, I'll close this blog for comments and kindly ask that you post any feedback in the Gallery forum

Please report all bugs in the tracker as usual

Please let us know your thoughts!
  • 1,545 views
Matt

IP.Nexus 1.1 Dev Update: Miscellaneous Enhancements

Email on new order

You can now set packages to send an email when a member purchases that package.




Usergroup Discounts

You can now provide discounts to users in a particular group.




Auto-resolve Support Requests

You can now set support requests to automatically be set to resolved after a given time of inactivity.




Group Name Limit

We've increased the length package group names can be to 255 characters.


https

In IP.Nexus 1.0, there was a setting which when enabled would make the payment screen server over https. The scope of this setting has been extended to the entire checkout process, the client area when providing information and support requests.


Delete Transactions

Transactions can now be deleted.


Support Request API

We have introduced two central models for handling support requests, one for support requests and one for support replies.

This allows you to create support requests and replies using a simple API. For example, to create a support request:

supportRequest::create( "Title", 1, 1, NULL, 1, NULL, NULL, supportReply::create( supportReply::REPLY_MEMBER, 1, "Message" ) );






Complete developer documentation can be seen here.
  • 2,553 views
Mark

IP.Nexus 1.1 Dev Update: Advertisement Enhancements

IP.Nexus has an advertisements feature, allowing administrators to display advertisements on their community and sell advertising space to third parties.

We've spent some time going over some of the suggestions we've received for the advertisements system and have made the following enhancements for IP.Nexus 1.1.



Start/End Time

Advertisements can now be specified with start and end times for time-specific campaigns.




Advertisement Packages: Expire by length

In hand with the option to set a start/end time, you can now specify that purchased advertisements last a certain length of time, opposed to a number of clicks or impressions.




Advertisement Package Descriptions

You can now specify a description for advertisement packages which will display on the purchase screen.



Admin Image Upload

Currently, when an administrator adds an advertisement they must specify a URL to an image (or HTML code).
As of Nexus 1.1, administrators will see an option to upload an image too.




Circulation Mode

In IP.Nexus 1.0, if there is more than one advertisement per location, a random advertisement is selected from the pool.
In IP.Nexus 1.1, we've added a setting which allows you to continue using this behaviour, or to always use the most recently added advertisement. This is useful if you want to have a generic advertisement set up by the administrator but allow purchased advertisements to override that for their duration.




Maximum Number of Advertisements

You may only want one advertisement in each location at a time, so that advertisements don't circulate at all. In IP.Nexus 1.1, we've added a setting allowing you to specify the maximum number of advertisements per location.
Administrators of course can oevrride this, but if there is the specified number of advertisements in a given location, users will not be able to purchase advertisement packages which add advertisements to that location.




Alignment

We've added a new setting which allows you to choose how to align your advertisements.




Size Restrictions

You can now specify in an advertisement package the maximum size for advertisements created by that package.




External Access

Currently, IP.Nexus displays advertisements in pre-set locations on your community. As of IP.Nexus 1.1, you can include advertisements in other areas of your skin, in IP.Content blocks and even in external pages and applications outside of IP.Board.


To place an advertisement in a template or IP.Content block, you can simply use the tag:


{parse advertisement="1"}
The tag can take either the ID number for the advertisement to display, or the key for the location, which will use IP.Nexus' normal logic for fetching the advertisement. For example, using this tag:


{parse advertisement="ad_code_board_index_header"}
Would display whatever advertisement is configured to show in the board index header - if more than one is configured, Nexus will either pick a random one, or the most recent one (as per the circulation setting described above).


To place an advertisement on an external site, you can call a new REST API which will out put the contents - the file is located at:


http://www.yoursite.com/interface/advertisements.php
You simply need to pass a single variable in the query string which is the same as the parse tag above (ID number or location key).

For example, you might use something like this to add your advertisement to a website outside of IP.Board:


<?php echo file_get_contents( "http://localhost/ipbdev/interface/advertisements.php?ad_code_global_header" );



If you have more in-depth feedback or ideas please use our feedback forum so your suggestions can be given proper attention. Otherwise, feel free to comment on this entry below.
  • 8,270 views
Mark

IP.Nexus 1.1 Dev Update: Guest Support Requests

IP.Nexus 1.0 has the ability for users to send in support requests via Email. Nexus handles these internally as "Guest" support requests and the users can reply by responding to the Email notifications Nexus sends when a staff member replies.

In IP.Nexus 1.1, we've added a web-based interface for guests to create support requests too. This makes it easier for users to submit pre-sales questions without having to create an account, and is particularly useful if you are unable or unwilling to use incoming Emails.

Guests can now access the new support request screen like regular members, where they'll be prompted for, in addition to normal support request information, their Email address. They'll also need to fill in a Captcha verification if you have that setting enabled.


IP.Nexus will then send them a confirmation Email which will contain a link where they can retrieve their support request to reply later. This then displays as a normal support request:



They can also of course reply to this notification if you have that incoming Emails enabled.


If a user has created support requests as a guest then registers, support requests with their Email address will become associated with their account.
  • 3,115 views
Mark

Introducing IP.SEO

As anyone with an interest in it will know, search engine optimisation is a difficult and contentious field, not least because of the amount of different opinions and the lack of any definite answers. There are a few things we all know to be good, and a few things that we all know are definitely bad, but the rest is a bit of a gray area. We've done a lot of work to make sure that all of the definite things are covered in IP.Board, and feel we've done a great job at this. Until now however, there's been a selection of features and additions we simply couldn't add to IP.Board core (due to being too resource intensive for many, or too niche), and thus were missing from the product. IP.SEO fills that gap.

IP.SEO is the combination of two applications we've already built: IPS Sitemap Generator and Search Activity - with the addition of some new features. It's designed to be an application we can add all those missing SEO features to, for those that want them, without overloading those users who do not. Here's some of what it does:

Sitemap Generation

Just like in the IPS Sitemap Generator, IP.SEO will build a sitemap for each of your applications that support it, including the forums, IP.Blog, IP.Downloads, IP.Content and more. It will then ping your sitemap to all of the major search engines to let them know what's new.

Search Activity Statistics

This area of IP.SEO is designed for those who love to track what's going on with their forum. It'll tell you just how many times you've had search spiders visit your site, how many users have come to your site from search, their keywords and what pages they landed on.



Meta Tags - Anywhere

This feature is new to IP.SEO - You can now add meta tags (and, as an added bonus, change title tags) on any page of your site. It works as follows:



Once you've configured all of your various meta tags on the above page, you can see them in action straight away:



You can even include the "original" page title (without the board name on the end) in your custom titles by doing entering something like: "My Great Content: {oldTitle}", or simply "{oldTitle}". As you can see above, you can also use * as a wildcard anywhere in your URL to apply meta tags a whole section, or your whole site.

SEO Guidance

Also new in IP.SEO, we've added an "Items Requiring Attention" area that will give you guidance on potential problems with your IP.Board configuration. This serves as our guidance to improving your site for search, you can choose to ignore individual notices.




We intend to update this application regularly, both to add new features and to update our checks for "items requiring attention", to make sure we're always delivering the best SEO performance we can for you. We've already got some great changes planned, including the much-requested HTML sitemaps functionality. If you've got any questions or requests, please drop them in our IP.SEO forum.

The great news is, this new application is already built! We're just doing our final testing, and will be releasing the application for free in the next day or two, so be sure to keep an eye on the IPS Marketplace for it!
  • 5,729 views
Guest
Guest

IP.Nexus 1.1 Dev Update: Guest Checkout

In IP.Nexus 1.0, when a user visits the store and tries to make a purchase, they are redirected to the login screen where they can register or log in. Once logged in, they are redirected back to the checkout screen.

While this works well, it can be confusing to some users to be removed from the checkout process. In IP.Nexus 1.1, we've made this process a little smoother.


First of all, if a guest attempts to make a donation, they will not be prompted to log in - guests will be able to make donations without registering an account first.
You can disable this in the Admin CP so users must be logged in to make a donation if you prefer.


For normal purchases, when a user attempts to make a purchase when not logged in, rather than being redirected to the login screen they will simply see a few extra fields on the personal information screen:

By simply filling in those details, IP.Nexus will create an account, log them in, and the checkout process will continue as normal.
They can also click the login link, which will take them to the login screen, and will be immediately returned to checkout after logging in.


Some notes on this:

You will notice the screenshot is not prompting for a username. IP.Nexus will automatically set their username based on their real name. You can choose to prompt the user for a username if you prefer. The setting specifying whether or not a user should enter personal information when registering is still honoured. If that is not enabled, and they are not purchasing a physical item, Nexus won't ask them for their address. You can enable Captcha on this screen. Validation settings are still honoured. If you have Email or Admin validation enabled, Nexus will put the user in the "Validating" group and send out the validation Email and/or admin notification Email. If you have disabled registrations, users can still register through this method - this allows you to only allow users who are purchasing items to create accounts. You can of course disable guest access to the store if you do not want this. The Spam Monitoring Service settings are honoured. If COPPA is enabled, they must use the normal registration process since they will need to fill in the COPPA form before the account can be created. Nexus will continue to function as it does in 1.0 if COPPA is enabled.
  • 4,743 views
Mark

IP.Chat 1.2.0 Dev Update: It's the Little Things That Matter

Next up in our round-up of changes you can expect to see in our application releases this holiday season: IP.Chat 1.2.0. For IP.Chat 1.2.0 we decided to hold back on some of the larger changes we would like to implement, in order to better evaluate the server requirements on our side and ensure we implement the big features in a resource-friendly manner for all involved.

In the mean time, we hope you like the changes you can expect to see in IP.Chat 1.2.0!

Friendly URL

While IP.Chat really only has one URL, we've gone ahead and added FURL support for the IP.Chat page. This means instead of "site.com/index.php?app=ipchat" you can now access chat on your site at "site.com/chat". As search engines generally won't be supported by IP.Chat anyways, this change is more for the benefit of your users rather than for search engine optimization reasons.


Auto-Kick Inactive Users

We felt this requested change was especially relevant to IP.Chat, given that chat packages have a maximum online users limit. We have implemented a feature in IP.Chat where-by a user will be automatically kicked from the chat room after a specified period of inactivity. You can specify the period (in minutes) in the ACP, and if a user sits in chat but does not submit any messages or perform any moderation activities the user will be kicked after the number of minutes you specify.

This can be useful if you have users that will visit your chat room at the end of the night, and forget to leave before leaving their computer in the evening. Instead of the user sitting in chat all evening long (even though they are not really present at their computer), the software will kick them, and show the normal "You have been kicked from chat" message, freeing up more space in your chat room without you having to upgrade your chat package unnecessarily.


Shut Off User Messages

We have added a setting that allows you to disable the "User X has entered the room" and "User X has left the room" messages that IP.Chat automatically show when users enter and leave, respectively. This new setting was added based on direct user requests.


Ability To Hide Recent Chats

When you enter the chat room, the most recent chats are shown to the user who has entered. This allows them to quickly catch up on the current conversation so they know what is being talked about at present. Some users have requested a setting to NOT show this chat "buffer" when new users enter the room, and in 1.2.0 such a setting has been added. Instead, when the user enters the room (and the setting is enabled), they will start with a blank slate and none of the recent chat messages will be shown to the user if the setting is enabled.


Launch Chat In A Popup

Probably the most heavily requested feature since we launched IP.Chat, you will now be able to launch chat in a minimalized popup window. There is a setting in the ACP that, when enabled, will automatically force the chat tab to launch a popup window instead of showing chat in the page with the full IP.Board wrapper. Additionally, if a user is viewing the chat room on a regular page, there is a new button (near the sounds toggle button) that will launch the chat room in a popup window, allowing you to leave the full chat page in IP.Board and continue navigating the forums.


Wrap Up

We have also performed some miscellaneous code cleanup to better optimize the code, and provide for better developer documentation for our third party developer community. We have intentionally kept this IP.Chat update scaled back so that we will be better positioned to deliver some bigger features for you in the next major release. We hope you find the features coming in 1.2.0 useful, and look forward to your feedback, as always!
  • 4,344 views
bfarber

IP.Nexus 1.1 Dev Update: Support Severities

IP.Nexus contains a powerful support desk allowing staff members to provide support to customers. In IP.Nexus 1.1 we are adding an enhancement to this feature called Support Severities.

Severities allows members to mark the importance of their support request. This allows support staff to triage incoming requests and give priority support to particular customers.

You can create multiple severities, and specify which ones can be set by customers.
Here I have set up two severities: one is for regular requests, and one is for critical issues:


Each severity can be configured to display an icon and be displayed in a particular color when viewing the support request list in the Admin CP so that staff can easily identify important requests. You can also choose for each severity if members are allowed to select it.


User-selected severities

When a user submits a new request they will be prompted to select their severity.
The selection box will only show if there is at least 2 severities for the user to choose between, and if there is only the default and one other, it will automatically change to a checkbox:



You can also configure in the Admin CP a message to display below the severity selection:




Support requests will be sorted in the Admin CP by severity in the order you specify - so in this example, critical support requests will display above normal support requests.


When viewing a support request the staff member can of course change the severity. They can also click the icon to the right of the severity selection which will revoke the member's permission to set severity in future (instead, all support requests will have the default severity) - this is useful if a member abuses the severity feature.



There is a setting in the Admin CP to allow members to view and edit the severity after their request has been submitted - if this is on, they will see a selection box when viewing their request to change the severity.




Auto-selected severities

In addition to having severities that the user can select, you can also create severities which are automatically selected when the user submits a support request for a particular package.

I have created a new severity called "Priority Support". Under the settings for packages, you will notice a new setting called "Support Severity". I am going to create a new package and set this to "Priority Support".


Now, when a user with this package creates a support request associated with this package, the severity will automatically be set to Priority Support:


  • 1,916 views
Mark

IP.Nexus 1.1 Dev Update: Mass Payments

IP.Nexus allows members to earn account credit using referrals and the IP.Downloads integration. Members can then (if you allow) request payouts in their client area.

Until now, these payouts had to be handled manually one by one. PayPal supports a feature called Mass Payments which allows you to make multiple payments at once.
The way Mass Payments works is in your PayPal account you simply upload a "Mass Payment File" which instructs PayPal to send out multiple payments.
In IP.Nexus 1.1 we have added a feature to generate Mass Payment Files.


When viewing the payouts screen in IP.Nexus 1.1, you'll notice 2 new buttons:


When you click the "Mass Payment" button you'll be shown a list of payouts that are eligable for Mass Payments (that is, payout requests requesting to be paid by PayPal). Simply check the checkboxes for the requests you wish to fill and click the button at the bottom:


A file will download to your computer which is the Mass Payment File that you will supply to PayPal.


In your PayPal account you then simply go to the Mass Payment page and upload this file:

PayPal will then allow to review and send out payments.



Note that this feature requires a PayPal Business Account.
  • 4,306 views
Mark

IP.Gallery 4.0 - Media Uploading

I've seen a few topics in our feedback forum asking how media uploads are handled in IP.Gallery 4.

The current version allows you to upload certain video files via a separate upload interface and displays them using basic embed tags which may ask the viewing user to download special plug-ins such as Quicktime to view them.

Video encoding is beyond the scope of IP.Gallery 4.0 as such functionality would need server level software to be installed. Similarly, to fetch a keyframe or thumbnail from a video file needs the same server level functionality.

However, media uploading and viewing has been much improved in Gallery 4.0. You can upload videos alongside normal photos and quickly add a thumbnail to the video. If you upload a m4v, certain mov files and flv files, these are played in a Flash video player much like YouTube.

I've recorded a quick screencast of the process used to upload a video taken from my iPhone to IP.Gallery 4.0.



As always, full screen HD is recommended.
  • 9,186 views
Matt

IP.Nexus 1.1 Dev Update: Charts & Graphs

As mentioned in my blog entry last week, even though IP.Nexus 1.1 is still very much in development, we're going to be posting periodic blog entries throughout development to keep you up to date with the latest new features.

In IP.Nexus 1.1, we're going to be adding reporting features for a number of different statistics:
The number of items sold (grouped by package). The amount of income made (grouped by payment method). The number of new support requests created (grouped by department). The number of staff replies made in support requests (grouped by staff member).

All of these charts can be viewed as a Bar Chart a Line Chart or a Pie Chart. Bar and Line Charts will show the results against time, while a Pie Chart will allow you to compare different groups.


All charts allow you to customise the series shown, allowing you to have any number of series and to group results together as a series.


All charts can also be viewed accross a number of different time scales:Results for a single day (On Bar and Line Charts, results will be shown for each hour of the day) Results for a week (On Bar and Line Charts, results will be shown for each day of the week) Results for a month (On Bar and Line Charts, results will be shown for each day of the month) Results for a year (On Bar and Line Charts, results will be shown for each month of the year) Results for all time (On Bar and Line Charts, results will be shown for each year)


Of course, you can select which time period to focus on - so you could for example, view the amount of income made last year, or the number of support requests created 2 weeks ago (or whatever).

(The options are contextual depending on the view - so if the chart you're looking at is for an entire year, only the dropdown for year will show.)




Here are some screenshots:

This is a line chart showing income for the year 2010:


This is a bar chart showing the purchases for two different packages over the course of a week:


This is a pie chart showing the number of replies different staff members have made in a month:


This is a line chart showing the number of support requests for two different departments over the course of a day:
  • 2,936 views
Mark

IP.Gallery 4.0: Interface Overview

It's been a while since the last video so I wanted to take a moment to run through the interface and explain a little more about the album types we have in IP.Gallery now.

The video below takes you through the major screens and notes some of the important functionality available.




I recommend you watch in HD and at full screen. Feel free to comment below or make a topic in the Gallery feedback forum.
  • 6,604 views
Matt

IP.Nexus 1.1 Dev Update: Product Options

Since the release of IP.Nexus 1.0 we've had a great amount of feedback. Even though the next version of IP.Nexus 1.1 is still a ways off, I'm going to be introducing new features as we go along so that you know what to expect.

One of the most frequent suggestions is some way to have multiple stock and pricing levels for products. IP.Nexus already has custom package fields to allow the user to select different variations of products, and now with Nexus 1.1, you can control stock and pricing based on those values.

For example, you could specify how many of each size T-Shirt you have, or have options for additional services on a product which increase price.

To demonstrate, I've created a short video (best viewed in full screen):




As an aside while we're on the topic of product options, some of you will know that in Nexus 1.0, if a user adds a product with custom fields to the cart, the quantity cannot be altered on the "view cart" page. This has been changed in IP.Nexus 1.1 so each configuration is grouped with an update quantity box:



I'll be blogging a lot more about IP.Nexus 1.1's new features over the coming months - if you're an IP.Nexus customer haven't done so already, please fill in our short feedback survey.
  • 5,131 views
Mark

IP.Downloads 2.3 Dev Update: Wrap Up

Since applying IP.Downloads 2.3 to our company forums this month, we've noted a few features that we felt would be really handy to add. Given the fact that all of these features have been requested by customers recently, we took the time to add these features now, for IP.Downloads 2.3.0, in an effort to ensure we release a solid product that has everything you need to manage your file repositories. We hope you enjoy these few small but useful changes coming in IP.Downloads 2.3.

Featured Files
Beginning with IP.Downloads 2.3, you will now be able to designate a single file as a "featured" file. This featured file will be highlighted on the IP.Downloads portal page for everyone to see. This is useful for pointing out a file that is of particular importance to your community, or to highlight a file of exceptional quality that has been recently submitted. Here at IPS, we will be using this new functionality to feature files we feel our customers will be interested in using, be they skins, applications or hooks.

Note that there is also a new moderator setting in the ACP moderator management area to allow you to control which moderators can feature files. All super moderators will automatically have this ability.




Pinned Files
In addition to "featured files", we have also added the ability pin and unpin files in the file listing. When you pin a file, much like a topic, it forces the file to be listed at the top of the category listing no matter what sort order you choose to use to list the rest of the files in a category. You can pin (and unpin) files to help users find commonly requested or downloaded files quickly. For instance, if you use your IP.Download installation to host car manuals, and you find that a large portion of users are downloading a specific car manual, you may wish to pin this file to the top of the category listing so that it is easier for them to find. Or if you have advertisers on your site that also submit files, you can charge your advertisers a fee to pin their file at the top of the listing for a specified period of time.

As with featured files, there is a new moderator setting in the ACP to control which moderators can pin and unpin files. All super moderators will automatically have this ability.


Redesigned Category View
Continuing from Rikki's last blog entry where he showed you all of the other redesigned areas, we have now updated the category listing page to bring it more in line with the rest of IP.Downloads modern look and feel.



At the top, you will now have some quick filters that allow you to easily re-sort the category in various ways. Additionally, if IP.Nexus is installed (it is not, in this screenshot), you will be able to quickly filter "All files", "Paid Files" and "Free Files" in the category via a filter option at the top of the screen.

If a file is reported broken, this will now be highlighted with an alert icon in the category listing like so:



(Note in the first screenshot we opt to display screenshots in the category, while the second screenshot is taken of a file where screenshots are not displayed in the category listing)

The download count can be clicked on to view who downloaded the file (for those with permission to see this information). When you view a category with subcategories, the category bar on the left changes slightly to indicate this.



In this picture, we are inside "Empty" and you can see there are two subcategories within this category in the left hand block.


Conclusion
We have a few small areas to touch up still, but for the most part things are now wrapping up. We hope you like the update and we look forward to your feedback regarding the changes to come.
  • 5,157 views
bfarber

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