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IP.Content 2.1 Dev Update: Template Updates

Improvements to Template Management

Development of IP.Content 2.1.0 is well underway, and we've reached the point where we are ready to start sharing with you some of the things you can expect to see updated in IP.Content 2.1.0. We hope you are as excited as we are about the upcoming update, so without further ado, let's cut to the chase...


Revision Support

Have you ever been editing your page templates and made a change that you wish you could undo, but weren't sure what the template was like prior to making your change? Or maybe a helpful admin on your site made a change to a database template that you later discovered broke some functionality that you had previously added? There are often times when you may wish to review, or possibly even restore, a previous version of one of your templates. With IP.Content 2.1.0 this will be possible through the administrative interface.

Anytime you edit a template in IP.Content 2.1.0, a backup of the template is saved in the database. A new menu option available for each template allows you to easily review all of the stored revisions.





When you click on "Manage Revisions" it brings you to a new page that will list all of the stored revisions for a given template in reverse chronological order.





From this page, you can edit and delete any previously stored revision. You can also restore a revision from this screen. If you restore a revision, the current copy of the template is stored as a revision for future reference. You can also compare a revision from this page against the currently active version of the template, allowing you to pinpoint exactly what has changed.





In addition to all template types (page, database and article templates), revision support is also available for pages! That means if you need to restore an older copy of a page, you no longer have to worry about finding a backup somewhere - just use the revision manager to keep track of all your changes, and backtrack through them as needed.


Sharing Made Easy

Many of our users have asked for an easy way to share templates, and we are pleased to announce that IP.Content 2.1.0 will now include the ability to import and export any of your page, database and article templates.

From the template listing screens, you can now export both individual templates AND entire categories of templates







If you export an entire category of templates, the category and ALL templates in the category will be included with the export. Of course if you export a single template, only that template will be included in the export.

After you export the template, you can then import the template into any IP.Content template screen.





If you import an XML export that contains a category, the category will be inserted if it does not already exist. All templates that do not exist will be inserted as well, otherwise templates that already exist (based on the "template key") will be updated.

We hope that the ability to export and import templates will help customers in 2 primary ways

We hope these template manager updates provide you with useful tools to help you better manage your website. We also hope that the import/export functionality is utilized to build a robust collection of community-contributed templates that everyone can benefit from. If you have any questions or feedback, we'd love to hear from you! Otherwise, stay tuned for our next IP.Content development update blog entry...
[*]It should now be much easier to transfer templates from a development site to your live site. After setting up your database, article or page templates how you want, you can export them and import them into your live site. [*]Skinners can now create IP.Content templates and share them easily through the resource site. This allows for skinners to share free and paid IP.Content templates with users, and allows users who are not as familiar with HTML and CSS an easy way to install templates without having to code them from scratch.




  • 5,465 views
bfarber

IP.Nexus Dev Update

Since we announced IP.Nexus back in May, the interest shown has been phenomenal. We have held two limited pre-sales of IP.Nexus providing participants with a beta version of the product to provide feedback and testing beyond our internal QA team.

The ideas presented by the participants of these pre-sales has been invaluable. By using Nexus in real-world situations, users have provided some great ideas both for putting the finishing touches on 1.0 and for future versions. I wanted to go over some of the bigger things we've improved on since my original development entries so you can see how the feature-set has progressed thanks to these pre-sales.


Improved Tax Classes and Shipping Methods

For users selling physical items, we have improved and expanded on the tax class and shipping method functionality and interface.

It is now easy to set up multiple tax classes with rates dependant on the location of your customers, and flexible shipping methods which are also location-dependant and taxable.

See these short videos for an short overview:







Upsell

Lots of stores offer addon products and services for a product. When a user adds an item to the cart, this is a perfect opportunity to present such addons to customers to upsell.

We've added this to IP.Nexus. This is an example of what you might see now when you add an item to your cart which has addon services:




Improved IP.Downloads Integration

IP.Nexus integrates with IP.Downloads in a way that allows you (or even your users) to add files to IP.Downloads and specify them as being paid.

While this works great if you're selling single files, some users wanted a way to sell items through the IP.Nexus Store, but still be able to take advantage of the great IP.Downloads file handling features like secure non-web-accessible files and version handling.

We've tightened up the integration between IP.Downloads to provide an additional option when uploading a file: the option to associate a download with an IP.Nexus package.

To the administrator, what this means is, if you're setting up a package in IP.Nexus which you'd like to add a download to, you would then go to IP.Downloads and add the file there. You can use a category no users can access to make the process a bit more seamless, but if a user who hasn't purchased the package stumbles across the file in IP.Downloads, they'll simply be redirected to the Store if they try to download.



To the user, when they purchase an item in IP.Nexus which has a file associated with it, they will then see a "Download" button when they view that package in the client area:



Clicking that link will begin the download immediately - the integration is completely seamless to the user.

You can of course, have downloads which are associated with more than one package, and packages that are associated with more than one download (multiple download buttons will show).


IP.Nexus Release Schedule

As we have received so much great feedback from our pre-sale beta testers, we have been implementing many of their ideas and fixing issues they have discovered. This does mean that the first supported release of IP.Nexus has been delayed as we add new requests and then must test those new additions. However, we believe that taking this extra time to mature and expand the product's feature set will benefit everyone in the long run. As IP.Nexus deals with commerce on your community we of course want it to be as stable as possible for its first release.

We are anticipating a final, supported release of IP.Nexus sometime in October at the current time. We may do another pre-sale between now and then for those who cannot wait to try IP.Nexus so keep an eye on our Blog or subscribe to our Blog for updates.

Thank you all for your interest!
  • 6,520 views
Mark

IP.Nexus Second Pre-Sale

We are very excited to be nearing the first public beta release of IP.Nexus! There has been much interest in the community for this new product and we cannot wait to get it out the door so everyone can start to enjoy its ecommerce, support, and other features.

As this product deals with monetizing your community, we are being very careful with its release. We do not want to release a product that might be unstable when it is designed to collect money on your behalf. Therefore, we are going to offer pre-sales for IP.Nexus in two phases. We are now ready for the second pre-sale phase. This second phase is available for purchase now and will be available for 24 hours.

The final, retail price of IP.Nexus will be $74.99 plus an optional renewal of $35 every 6 months for continued support, services, and upgrades. For this second round of limited pre-sale, we will be offering those that purchase during the next 24 hours to buy IP.Nexus at a reduced up-front price of $50 plus no renewals for a full year.

In return for a large discount, those choosing to participate in the pre-sale phase will have access to a beta release of IP.Nexus and a private forum to give us feedback. Please note that if you are one of the pre-sale participants, no ticket support will be offered. You are also going to be using beta software so there will be issues and we will appreciate your feedback and bug reports.

To order, simply login to the client area and click New Purchase. You will see IP.Nexus under IP.Board Optional Addons. Once 24 hours has expired it will disappear so act now! Once you purchase, login to the company forums with same you use in the client area and you will see an IP.Nexus testing forum appear under the Customer Lounge forum.

Promotion Expired

The 24 hour time for this promotion has expired. Thank you!
  • 8,653 views
Charles

Easier Documentation Search

IPS is constantly looking for ways to improve, and one area of focus is documentation. We get a lot of feedback regarding documentation, and quite frequently the feedback we receive is, unfortunately, too vague to act on specifically. It's always a pleasant delight to get specific, focused feedback on how we can improve.

Last week I happened across a topic on our forums with just this kind of feedback, and after reviewing the suggestion and what it would take to implement, we agreed that the work was worth it. Cap'n Refsmmat posted some well-thought-out, clear and concise feedback on a specific action we could take that would make finding documentation easier, and I'm happy to announce that this change has been put in place on our website.

It was pointed out that as a user, it doesn't matter too much where the documentation you are searching for is located specifically. Whether it is a community article, official documentation, or an error code - you just want to find out more information, regardless of where that information is located. Today I built a few Sphinx search indexes of our downloads area, our error codes database, our official documentation, and our community-submitted articles, and then built a search interface to query all of these areas at once. We have replaced the search form in our documentation area with this new search utility.

Feel free to test out the new search tool and let us know what you think! Just head on over to our documentation page and use the search box at the top of the page to look for whatever it is you need to find. We may evolve this new tool further in the future, but for now we hope that it helps you find what you are looking for with less hassle and bouncing around.
  • 2,781 views
bfarber

IP.Nexus First Pre-Sale

We are very excited to be nearing the first public beta release of IP.Nexus! There has been much interest in the community for this new product and we cannot wait to get it out the door so everyone can start to enjoy its ecommerce, support, and other features.

As this product deals with monetizing your community, we are being very careful with its release. We do not want to release a product that might be unstable when it is designed to collect money on your behalf. Therefore, we are going to offer pre-sales for IP.Nexus in two phases. The first phase will be limited to 50 people and will be offered at a generous discount off the retail price. In return for this large discount, these 50 people will have access to pre-beta release of IP.Nexus and a private forum to give us feedback.

The final, retail price of IP.Nexus will be $74.99 plus an optional renewal of $35 every 6 months for continued support, services, and upgrades. For this first round of limited pre-sale, we will be offering the first 50 people to buy IP.Nexus a reduced up-front price of $50 plus no renewals for a full year.

Once this first limited, 50 sale offer is full we will not accept new sales until our second pre-sale which will come when the first, public beta is available. The second pre-sale will be offered to unlimited people for a short time so please keep an eye on our company blog for updates.

Please note that if you are one of the lucky 50 pre-orders, no ticket support will be offered. You are also going to be using pre-beta software so there will be issues and we will appreciate your feedback and bug reports.

To order, simply login to the client area and click New Purchase. You will see IP.Nexus under IP.Board Optional Addons. Once the first 50 are sold out it will disappear so act now! Once you purchase, login to the company forums with same you use in the client area and you will see an IP.Nexus testing forum appear under the Customer Lounge forum.

First 50 Sold Out

In just an hour we have sold out of the first 50 pre-sale licenses. Please keep an eye on our company blog for the public pre-sale coming soon. Thanks for your support!
  • 11,524 views
Charles

What's new in IP.Board 3.1.2? Incomplete Members

In IP.Board 3.1.0 we added a 'step through' form that users registering via Twitter and Facebook were prompted to complete before being fully registered. This was so that the user could choose their own display name and complete an email address when it wasn't available from the service (such as Twitter).



If a member chose not to complete this form then their registration would not be complete and their account would be missing some data such as a display name and valid email address. This led to some confusion when viewing the member list in the Admin CP.



Was this a bug? Was IP.Board mysteriously deleting member information? To prevent this confusion, we've removed these 'incomplete' members from the member list and added a new section to manage them.



This new section clearly lists those members that are still in the process of completing their registration. It also identifies which service they used to start the account creation process. If you choose to delete these partial accounts, the member can always re-sign in to repeat the process.

We hope this little feature cuts down on confusion and removes 'clutter' from the Admin CP member list.
  • 12,171 views
Matt

What's new in IP.Board 3.1.2? ACP Live Search and Dashboard

One of the most commonly used features in the Admin control panel is the live search feature. This is a great way to quickly locate settings and even Admin CP pages.

In IP.Board 3.1.0, we did have quick search boxes for forums and members on the dashboard but these were not always to hand. Often you need to search for a member or forum and have to navigate through to the correct section.

In IP.Board 3.1.2 we have extended the live search to include matches from forum names, group titles, group settings and members (display name and email address). Simply tapping in a phrase will return all the relevant matches.



In this example, we can see that "admin" has matched a member's email address, a forum name and group settings as well as an Admin CP page and some settings. Simply clicking on the link will take you to the relevant page. In the case of a member, this is the edit page for them; likewise you are taken to the edit page when clicking on a group's name.

By moving these search features into the global search bar, we've created a much cleaner ACP Dashboard.

We've also made the dashboard warnings and new version notifications much more prominent, so you can clearly see when there is an issue requiring your attention.

In addition, in an effort to ensure there are no dashboard warnings on a fresh install, the installer will automatically lock itself (thus not prompting you to delete admin/install/index.php) and new users will be able to (optionally) enter the license key into the installer.

Little usability tweaks such as these really make daily tasks more efficient which makes administrating your IP.Board even more pleasant!
  • 8,351 views
Matt

What's new in IP.Board 3.1.2? (Part 1)

Moved topic redirect links
A common request from our customers over the years is the ability to have those redirect links that are added when moving a topic to automatically 'expire' and be removed. This is one of those features that was on our lists for years but never made it into the feature set due to time constraints and other factors.

Happily, we found time to implement this for IP.Board 3.1.2.



The administrator can specify a number of days before the redirect links expire in the Admin CP settings page.



The daily clean out task now checks for any deletable redirect links and removes them automatically.

Archive Personal Conversations
Another common request we've seen since we introduced the new 'personal conversation' feature was the ability to somehow archive off conversations. Now that these conversations are much like personal topics that can have many replies from many different participants the old system of simply allowing a downloadable text file isn't an option.

In 3.1.2 you'll be able to email yourself a copy of the conversation. This will be sent as a HTML file attached to the email which you can download and store on your computer.

When you're viewing a personal conversation, you'll see a new box: "Archive Conversation"



Clicking this will send the email via 'ajax' meaning the screen doesn't refresh and you don't lose your place on the page.



The email is shown with the attachment



Which is a lo-fi copy of the conversation suitable for printing



Open ID: Email no longer required
We have removed the "email" requirement for OpenID logins, which should allow for many more OpenID services to work (including Google, TypePad and Wordpress).
While this change is in effect immediately for new users, for existing users you will need to edit the login method to enact the change. In the ACP, visit System -> Log In Management. Next to OpenID click the button and choose "Configure Details". Clear "email" from the "Required args to pull", and then add it to the "Optional args to pull" (which should appear as "nickname,dob,email" once you are finished).
Save the configuration and you're all done!
  • 8,766 views
Matt

What's new in IP.Board 3.1.2? SQL Error Logging

It's an unfortunate fact that something may go wrong with your hosting environment at some point. MySQL is sensitive to many things and often this results in an error being thrown. This can be confusing for you and your members and getting support for this can take time as our technicians often have to request FTP details so they can log in and check the error logs written to disk.

A lot of the time, our technicians discover that there isn't an issue with IP.Board but rather something has happened with your MySQL database or server. This can delay you getting your board back up.

With this in mind, IP.Board 3.1.2 separates out "server level" errors such as a crashed table, 'out of memory' issues and more into its own error page which is displayed.



This instantly informs you of the problem and directs you to contact your host or troubleshoot the issue further if you run a dedicated server.

In the Admin CP, we have written a log viewer which lists all the generated SQL error logs. It also keeps a record of the latest error of the day which is displayed above the list of logs.



Of course, these logs can get quite large, so when you view a log, it is "tailed" and only shows the most recent 300 lines.



We hope these features help speed up getting the correct support for when you need it most.
  • 10,569 views
Matt

IP.Nexus Dev Update: Customer Page

In previous blog entries, we've talked about various things the user can do: generate and pay invoices, purchase packages, have custom packages, purchase advertisements, file support requests, etc. IP.Nexus features a centralised customer page from which you can view all the data the user has made.

This is what it looks like:


The buttons you see along the top allow you to send the user an Email, view the customer's history (which shows a chronological log of actions made to the user account, even if items have been deleted, discussed in more detail here) or go to the IP.Board edit member page.

Wherever a member name is mentioned in the Nexus part of the Admin CP, it will link to this customer page. You can also access this customer page from the IP.Board edit member page via a link in the "Actions" dropdown menu.
You can also search for a customer in the Nexus Admin CP.


Details



This box shows the customer's account details. You can edit these by pressing the edit button.



Alternate Contacts



This box shows all alternate contacts on the account and which purchases they are associated with. You can remove an alternate contact or manually add contacts.

For more information on alternate contacts, see this blog entry.


Notes



This box contains miscellaneous notes made by staff members on the account.
Staff members can (where they have permission) add, edit and delete notes.


Purchases



This box contains all purchases the customer has made.
This will include items from the store, custom packages, IP.Downloads files, advertisements and any purchases made through third party applications.

The icon on the left indicates the type of purchase (mouse over will provide a text description). You can see when the item was purchased, and when it expires, and you can edit, cancel or transfer the purchases.
Purchases which have expired are highlighted amber, and purchases which have been cancelled are highlighted red.

If a purchase is associated with another purchase, it will display in a tree format.

For more information on managing purchases, see this blog entry.


Invoices



This box shows all invoices that have been generated on the customer's account.
You can click on the invoice title to be taken to detailed information about the invoice, and can generate a new invoice by clicking the "Add Invoice" button.

For more information on managing and generating invoices, see this blog entry.


Support Requests



This box shows all support requests created under the customer's account.
You can visit the support request by clicking on the title.
The icon on the left uses the same icons as topics on the forums to indicate if you have read the support request and if you have posted a reply to it.

You can log a support request on behalf of the customer by clicking the "Log Support Request" button.

For more information on support requests, see this blog entry.


Referrals



This box lists all members which have been referred by the customer (and only shows if there are any).
It also lists how much commission the member has earned from each, and the total commission earned.

For more information on referrals, see this blog entry.
  • 3,510 views
Mark

IP.Nexus Dev Update: Advertisements

IP.Board 3.1 has a great advertisement system. Administrators can specify code to appear in certain locations around the community to display banner ads.
With IP.Nexus, it seemed logical to expand this to allow members of a community to purchase advertisement space.

In order to do this, when you install IP.Nexus, the advertisement system in IP.Nexus will override the system in IP.Board. Even if you're not planning on selling advertisement space, the system in IP.Nexus allows you to set up multiple advertisements (for rotation), automatic expiry, per-ad permissions and other features.


Setting up your own Advertisements

The Admin CP has a page which lists all advertisements currently running on your community. These could be ones created yourself, or ones purchased by a user.


Here you can add your own advertisements. You can specify either raw HTML code, or an image URL and link URL. The latter is required for click tracking.
You can also specify which groups cannot see the advertisement and if it should expire after a certain number of clicks or impressions.

The table indicates how many clicks and impressions each ad has received. When it has reached its limit, it will expire and become inactive.
You can manually edit the current number of clicks or impressions the advertisement has by editing it.


Advertisement Packages

In order for a user to be able to purchase advertisement space, you will have need to created at least one advertisement package. These define the terms such as where the ad will show, who it should not show to and how many clicks/impressions it will last.


You can manage your packages in the Admin CP.



Purchasing Advertisements

A user can purchase advertisements in their User CP.


They can select a package, provide the URL for the target link, and either upload or provide a URL to an image.
For security reasons, and to allow click tracking, users cannot provide raw HTML.

Once a user has purchased an advertisement, it must be approved by an administrator. An Admin CP dashboard notification appears if there are pending advertisements, and unapproved advertisements will be highlighted on the listing page.

To approve an advertisement, you would just click the cross indicating it is not currently active.

When a user selects his purchase in the client area, a page will display the status (approved, pending approval, expired) and the current clicks/impressions of the advertisement.




How advertisements are displayed

IP.Nexus will display whatever ad is appropriate for each location. If there are no advertisements set up for a location, none will show, and if multiple are set up, one of the appropriate advertisements will be selected at random to show. This is calculated on each page load, however, advertisements are cached based on the appropriate location, so advertisements are not pulled on every page load to save resources.
Each time an advertisement is used, it's impression count is increased. When an advertisement is clicked on, it's click count is increased. IP.Nexus will automatically disable an advertisement after it has reached it's allocated number of impressions or clicks.
  • 6,389 views
Mark

IP.Nexus Dev Update: Customer History

In an application like IP.Nexus, it is important to have verbose logging features. Frequently you may wish to look over a the past actions of a customer to assist them, to check for suspicious activity or just for your own records.
In IP.Nexus, every action taken on a customer account is logged and can be viewed from the customer's information page.

IP.Nexus features a customer page in the Admin CP (which will be discussed more in a future blog entry). From here, you can access their history page. This is what it looks like:

Please note that the interface shown in this screenshot is not finalised and subject to change.

The log can be sorted so that newer actions show first, or older. You can also filter the log by event type, so for example, if you just wanted to see the transactions made for the account, you could uncheck all the boxes apart from transactions. As soon as you check or uncheck a box, the results list is immediately updated to reflect this (no page refresh).


The actions logged are:
Account Changes - if a member changes their name, address, telephone number, EMail address or password (or a member of staff does) the action is logged along with the previous values. If the change was made by a member of staff, which staff member is logged. A purchases is made (i.e. a package is added to the customer's account). The information for a package (such as the custom fields information) is edited. If the change was made by a member of staff, which staff member is logged. A member of staff (and who) cancels, reactivates or deletes a purchase from the customer account. A purchase is transferred to or from the account, the account it was transferred to or from is also logged along with the member of staff performing the transfer. A member of staff (and who) changes the purchase to a different package (this is done when a package is deleted from the Admin CP). A purchase expires. An invoice is generated. Whether the invoice was generated by the member (store purchase), the system (renewal invoice) or a member of staff (and who) is also logged. A member of staff (and who) resends, changes the status of or deletes an invoice. A coupon or account credit is used against an invoice. An invoice expires. The system automatically processes an invoice because the total to pay is zero. The customer makes a transaction. It is also logged if the transaction was automatically approved, held for review, or failed. A member of staff (and who) approves or denies a transaction. A support request is filed. If filed by a support member, it will be noted who, and if the support request was filed because of a received Email, this will also be noted. A staff member (and who) adds, edits or deletes a note on the customer's account. A staff member (and who) sends the customer an Email, and the content of that Email. The member requests a credit payout. A member of staff (and who) dismisses a credit payout request.
  • 3,810 views
Mark

IP.Nexus Dev Update - Incoming Emails [Updated]

Updated 25th June: Due to popular demand, we have added support for POP3 account polling as well as Email Piping


As mentioned in a previous blog entry, IP.Nexus supports Incoming Emails to be parsed as support requests.


Technical Requirements

In order for Incoming Emails to function, you will either need to configure your server to pipe Emails to a script, or a mail account which supports POP3.

Customers using our hosting service who are paying $5 for IP.Content and IP.Nexus will be happy to know their accounts support piping.
We strongly recommend piping over POP3 and customers not using our hosting service should check with their provider if either service is offered.

If piping is not available, most EMail accounts (including GMail) support POP3.
If using POP3 over piping, it is strongly recommended that you use a CRON job to poll the account. Check with your hosting provider if you are able to set up CRON jobs.


How it works

For Email piping:
The user sends an Email to a special Email address which you have configured on your server to be piped to a script in IP.Board. Your server hands the Email to that script. If the Email is a reply, the script will detect this from the subject line and add the content of the Email as a reply. If it is a new request, the script will look for support departments with the Email address the Email was sent to and create a new request in that department.

For POP3 polling:The user sends an Email to a special Email address which you have configured on your server to be piped to a script in IP.Board. IP.Board periodically checks (by default every 30 minutes, but this can be configured) if there are any new messages on your server. If a message is found, it is pulled back to a script in IP.Board. If the Email is a reply, the script will detect this from the subject line and add the content of the Email as a reply. If it is a new request, the script will look for support departments with the Email address the Email was sent to and create a new request in that department.

If the user does not have an account, IP.Nexus will still create the support request and they will receive replies by Email.
If the user then decides to create an account, IP.Nexus will recognise that they already have support requests and assign them to the new account so they can view them in the client area.

Attachments are parsed as per the normal IP.Board attachment settings so you can Email images, zip files, etc. but any file types IP.Board wouldn't normally allow you to upload will be ignored.
They will be displayed in the support request, and treated as normal attachments, just as if they had been uploaded in the client area.


Information for Developers

This is actually a feature of IP.Board 3.1, we just haven't previously announced it since there was no application until now.
You can however, add incoming email support to your own application, and we have written a developer article here which explains how to do it: http://community.invisionpower.com/resources/documentation/index.html/_/hidden-staff-only/incomingemailsphp-r371
  • 7,307 views
Mark

IP.Nexus Dev Update - Alternate Contacts

IP.Nexus allows account holders to create alternate contacts who can submit support requests on your behalf.

On my account I have a package called "Basic Widget". I can create an alternate contact assigned to this package, and we will then both be able to submit support requests related to it, and view requests each other have submitted.

This is the alternate contacts page:


You can add a contact by pressing the button at the bottom, which will allow you to select which packages to assign them to.

And of course can remove contacts by pressing the button in the list:


When the alternate contact logs in and visits their client area, they will see, and can reply to, existing support requests, or create new requests associated with the package assigned to them:


When viewing a support request in the Admin CP, support staff can identify who is the main account holder, and who is the alternate contact:

  • 2,954 views
Mark

IP.Nexus Dev Update - Handling Support Requests

In our previous blog entry, we showed the front end for submitting support requests.
In this entry, we'll show how staff members deal with support requests from the Admin CP.



This is what the support listing in the Admin CP looks like:

Staff members can select which departments and statuses to show using the filters at the bottom. Of course, only the departments they are allowed to access are shown.
Support requests are sorted by the date of the last reply, ignoring any replies made by the same member (so if a member replies to their support request with more information, they remain in the same position in the queue).

If there are any requests you are tracking or are assigned to you, buttons will appear at the top to allow you to view these requests, regardless of your current filter settings.
Support requests you are tracking or are assigned to you are marked in the list with an icon.

You can set the status on multiple requests at a time by selecting the checkbox for each one and using the dropdown menu at the bottom. For example, if you see duplicate tickets or spam.


This is what the request screen looks like:


The box at the top indicates the properties of the request. When you mouse over any of these, they will change to a dropdown menu allowing you to change them. After selecting an option, it will immediately be saved.
The box below this indicates the package associated to the request. If the request is in a department which requires an associated package and there isn't one, or it isn't the correct type, an warning will be shown:


When you change any of the attributes, such as department, the status of this will be updated via AJAX.
If the associated package has custom fields or subpackages, clicking on the package name will reveal this information:

You can change the associated package by clicking the link which will show a list of all the user's packages - the currently associated package will be highlighted:


You can reply to a request using the box at the bottom. At the same time as replying, you can edit any of the attributes.
You can also select a stock action, which will automatically fill in the reply and select the appropriate attribute values for you. You can then customise these or send the reply.

You can add a hidden note to a request by pressing the button at the top, which will display a popup for you to type your note:

The note will be displayed inline in the request:

Notes only show to staff members in the Admin CP - the customer will not see them.

You can control who is notified of replies to the support request using the "Notifications" tab at the bottom.
This is handy if the customer requests another person to be CCd on replies.

  • 3,669 views
Mark

IP.Nexus Dev Update - Support Requests

In our previous blog entry, we discussed the management of the support desk.
In this blog entry, we'll be showing the front-end to creating support requests from the client area.


Members can view all of their support requests in the client area:


Members can submit a support request by clicking the "New Request" button.
The member can select a department, and if the selected department requires an associated package, they will be prompted to select one.
IP.Nexus automatically works out which departments are available to a member based on their active packages and your department settings.

Members can of course upload attachments to support requests.

This is what a support request looks like:

Members can reply to a support request right from the page, or, if enabled, set the status from the dropdown menu.
  • 4,537 views
Mark

iPhone App: Push Notifications

We have a big update coming soon and we wanted to tell you about all the new features you can expect. In a previous blog post we talked about the new Directory feature, which will help people using the app discover your communities. We also talked about some interface improvements, such as the new forum quick list, which gives you fast access to common areas of your forum. We have one last big feature to tell you about in this new version and that's Push Notifications!

Push Notifications

Push notifications have been integrated into the existing notification system, so any event that can generate a notification can also generate a push notification. You can have notifications sent to your phone for subscribed forums and topics, new personal conversations, reported posts, and much more.



You will find a new settings group in your ACP "iPhone App", from here you can enable or disable support for push notifications. You can also restrict which group has access to push notifications, making it possible to use the subscription service to sell this feature to your users.



Once you have enabled notifications for your forum, your users will see a new 'mobile' column in their notification settings:



These same settings can also be updated directly from the iPhone App:



The Quick List feature that we showed in the previous blog post has been expanded to show your unread notifications. When you receive a notification on your phone, the Quick List for the forum that sent it will be automatically opened so that you can see the notifications:



Tapping the notification will take you directly to that area of the forum.

This feature will be available to everyone with a active support license, hosting account, or service addon package. If you would like to find out if your license qualifies, please visit the license key section of your ACP and refresh the license data, look for this message:



iPad Support (beta)

This version also includes preliminary support for the iPad, the application will now properly resize to use the entire screen. We'll be further enhancing this functionality in the future by providing a more customized interface and using the regular skin instead of the mobile skin.



We will be submitting this new version to Apple very soon, so you won't have long to wait for all of these new features. Note that they do require IP.Board 3.1.1 to work. We hope you're excited for this update and we look forward to your comments, suggestions, and feedback!

(Yes, there is an Android app coming in the future still!)



We will post a full announcement when the iPhone app update is approved by Apple and available to download.
  • 5,490 views
Josh

IP.Nexus Dev Update: Support Desk Management

One feature we're really excited about in IP.Nexus is the Support Desk. Many administrators selling products on their site will need to offer support services to members.
In this blog entry, we'll go through some of the settings available allowing you to control the Support Desk.

Please note, the design of some areas shown in the screenshots shown are not finalised and subject to change.


Departments

IP.Nexus supports any number of departments. Each department can be:
Private - members cannot submit support requests directly (for example, an "advanced support" department). Public - any member can submit support requests (for example, a "sales" department). Package associated - members who have purchased selected products can support requests (for example a "general support" department).



Staff

You can control which staff can access which departments. For example, you could have your customer service staff only see the sales and customer service departments, and your technicians only see the support departments.
You can define a member or an entire group's access. If a member is in a group which one access level, and they also have their own access level, their own will override the groups.



Statuses

IP.Nexus allows you to customise the statuses for support requests. A set of standard statuses are in by default, but you can customise, remove or add your own.

There are a number of settings allowing you to control the behaviour of a status, which you can see in this screenshot:



Stock Actions

One thing we really like about the Support Desk in IP.Nexus is something we call Stock Actions.
Many Support Desks feature stock replies or canned responses. We find when we do technical support, than often a stock reply comes with an action. For example, if a support request needs to be escalated to Tier 2 support, we will give a stock reply, change the department to "Tier 2", change the status to "Open", and release control.
Stock Actions in IP.Nexus allow this process to be automated. They can give a reply, and at the same time, set the status, department and assigned staff member on the support request.



Incoming Emails

IP.Nexus not only allows a member to reply through the client area, they can Email a new request or a reply to a request and IP.Nexus will process it.
We will discuss a little more about the requirements for this feature and how it works in a future blog entry.

You may have noticed in the earlier screenshot showing the department settings that each department can have an incoming Email address. For example, you could set IP.Nexus so Emails to "[email protected]" go to your sales department, while EMails to "[email protected]" go to your support department.

IP.Nexus also allows you to define rules to filter incoming Emails. For example, if you are receiving spam from a certain address, you could instruct IP.Nexus to discard that Email.
  • 4,961 views
Mark

IP.Nexus Dev Update: Credits

In several of our previous blog entry about IP.Nexus, we've mentioned "credits".

Credit, is simply money which is stored on the account. When IP.Nexus "pays" a users (commission for a referral purchase, for example) it adds credit to their account.
The administrator can of course award credit manually from the customer page in the Admin CP.



A user which has credit on their account can use it against purchases. On the checkout screen, they will see a link like this:

Clicking that will deduct the user's credit amount from the balance to pay.
If the amount of credit is greater than the balance, IP.Nexus will recognise that payment has been received and display the thank you page (or redirect the user to the download page for IP.Downloads purchases).


In addition to using credit for purchases, if the administrator allows, users can request that their credit be paid to them.


In the client area, users will see an "Account Credit" section from which they can request a payout.



The user will then be alerted on the Admin CP dashboard that there is a pending payout request. They can view all payout requests in the Admin CP.

Clicking the Pay option will allow admins to complete the payout request. For PayPal, this will take the admin straight to PayPal and the request will automatically be removed upon completion.
  • 4,079 views
Mark

IP.Board 3.1.1 - What's New?

With the release of 3.1.1 scheduled for next week, I thought I'd take a moment and outline some of the bigger changes.

We're very pleased with how well IP.Board 3.1.0 has been received and how stable it has been. We've been working hard to iron out some common issues and we've been reading a lot of your feedback. Based on that, we've made the following changes for IP.Board 3.1.1:

Facebook
The new Facebook APIs have been very successful in allowing registered Facebook users to log into your own forums and start contributing right away. The "like" button has also been very popular and great for driving traffic to your board. There's been a lot of feedback on these features so we've improved upon this functionality.

First of all, you can now set your own 'locale' for the Facebook social widgets. We prefer to use Facebook's javascript rather than the iFrame methods directly as the javascript methods are easier to maintain.


You can now also choose how you want to handle importing the user's 'real name'


You can automatically generate a display name based on the user's Facebook real name and suggest this as the display name:


Alternatively, you can enforce the user's real name if you have a trusted community:


This provides a more seamless experience when logging in via Facebook


You can also now choose to disable new accounts from being created via Facebook and Twitter when you disable registrations globally:


This is the error screen shown when trying to create a new account via Facebook or Twitter when new accounts have been disabled:


Merge Center
The merge center has been a great starting point for updating your custom skins but many people found it confusing. We've taken that feedback on board and made the following changes.

First up, we've reworked the feature labelling, improved the work flow and added text box prompts.

The first screen you see after the processing has finished is this one. Note, all the items that do not need your attention are hidden by default which makes it very clear what you need to do to finish the process. The box at the top briefly explains the next step you should take.


We've removed the "Select all checkboxes" from the drop down menu and placed it as a global checkbox which should be very familiar as IP.Board uses this method elsewhere:


We've redesigned the view options box to allow you to filter out what you don't want to see rather than it be 'all or nothing'. This is the default filter:


We've also update the labelling in the drop down box to make it clearer what each option does:


Once you have merged and resolved your templates, you'll see this screen which again prompts you what the next step is:


Finally, when you have saved all your changes, you'll see this screen:


SEO Updates
In Dan's previous blog entry he wrote about correcting our board index "canonical" meta tag, to ensure that search engine spiders correctly recognised "http://www.myforums.com/" as your board index and not "http://www.myforums.com/index". This was an important step, but users could still view and link to that page. More importantly, it also served a "200 OK" HTTP header, meaning search engines would also still index it as a page in its own right - causing potential duplicate content issues. The same problem applied to accessing /index.php and the IPB 2.x style: /index.php?act=idx.

We've now made a change that will automatically redirect you back to just "/" if you (or a search engine) try to access any of those URLs. The search engines should quickly drop any duplicate pages they have in their index and your "real" board index page will begin to carry the weight it should.

We've also gone through IP.Board and all of the applications and standardized the page title format. All page titles now use the format "{Content Title} - {Board Name}", meaning that your most relevant keywords are at the beginning of your title tag, whilst still carrying your board name for easy user recognition in the search results.

These updates are an example of just how much we value your feedback. Please keep it coming!
  • 12,235 views
Matt

IP.Nexus Dev Update: Referrals

IP.Nexus is designed to give administrators the tools to monetize their community. Not only is this about selling products and services (or accepting donations) but promoting your site as well.
Many customers have asked us about a referral system. Until IP.Nexus, there would have been little incentive for members to use such a system. With IP.Nexus, not only can members refer their friends using banners you create, but they can receive commission on products and services that members they refer purchase through IP.Nexus.


You can enable referrals and configure the commission percentage in the Admin CP.


You can also set up the banners that members can use.

If you don't set any up (or in addition to any that you do), a simple text link will be available.
Banners can be uploaded images, or you can supply an image URL.


In the Client Area, members can view all the banners you've set up and the HTML and BBCode to display them.


If somebody then clicks a banner posted on a website by one of your members and registers on your community, IP.Nexus will create a link between the two members.
If that member then proceeds to make any purchases, and you have defined a commission percentage, IP.Nexus will award commission to the referring member in the form of account credit (we will discuss account credit in a future blog entry).

The customer page in IP.Nexus indicates who a members was referred by and any members they have referred. In addition, you can see how much commission a members has earned through referrals:

  • 5,432 views
Mark

IP.Board Community Directory

The new IP.Board Community Directory is a great place to list your community to get more traffic and members on your site.

It's free for all license holders and IPS Hosting customers to submit their community in the directory. As this is brand new it is still growing and we are taking suggestions for new categories and enhancements so please let us know how we can improve it.

The directory has been online for a few weeks in a preview testing form and 206 listing have been made. These 206 listings have received over 4100 clicks: that's nearly an average of 20 clicks per listing! This is a great way to drive traffic to your community.

Be sure to list your community in the directory...

In addition to being listed on the official IPS Community, the community directory will be available in the next version of our iPhone App for IP.Board. This means members can browse the directory, find your community, and register on your community all while on their iPhone!


The directory is powered by IP.Links: one of our great, free Community Projects for IP.Board. The IP.Links software is written by Brandon D here on our community.
  • 5,576 views
Charles

IP.Nexus Dev Update: Donations

Not only can IP.Nexus be used to sell specific items on your community. IP.Nexus can accept open donations targetted to any number of goals.

Please note that the interface shown in the screenshots is not finalised and subject to change.


A donation goal can be open-ended, that is, it has no target. For example, a personal community could accept donations towards the cost of maintaining the site. A donation can also have a specific target amount if you are asking donations towards a specific total.


Donation goals can be managed in the Admin CP.

When creating a goal you specify a name, description and if desired, a target.
You can create as many goals as you like.


Users can then donate towards goals in the User CP.

As you can see, all goals are listed and a progress bar is shown for goals that have specified targets.
To donate, a user simply enters in the amount they wish to donate and they are taken straight to the payment screen.

After payment, the user is shown a thanks page where they will see the progress meter again:

  • 6,995 views
Mark

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