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Invision Community Blog

Managing successful online communities

Followers 340

Anonymous Posting

For a very long time Invision Community has allowed community owners to choose how open or private their communities should be. Communities could optionally allow guests to post without registering, they could allow the use of pseudonyms or they could require the use of real names. This covers a diverse range of communities but feedback from our clients made us realize that some use cases hav…
Andy Millne

Andy Millne

28

4.5: Sign in with Apple

Since the feature was announced at last year’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) we have received lots of requests to implement Sign in with Apple in Invision Community. We’re pleased to announce that as of 4.5 this is now available. You will need a paid Apple developer account to use it but once enabled users will be able to sign in using their Apple ID and all the convenience that brin…
Andy Millne

Andy Millne

26

4.5: One More Thing...

Almost ten years ago we launched the Marketplace; a place to connect Invision Community owners with talented developers creating new functionality. Over the decade, the Marketplace has grown to hold thousands of applications, large and small. For many Invision Community owners, the Marketplace has become an essential resource. Our aim was always to have the Marketplace available inside y…
Stuart Silvester

Stuart Silvester

69

4.5: Two feature additions

As the deadline slowly comes down, two last feature additions race towards the descending door and slide in underneath with seconds to spare.  If you've never seen "Raiders of the Lost Ark", then you probably think this is a weird way to start a blog. As we wrap up development for Invision Community 4.5, we squeezed in two extra features that I want to talk about today. Per Topic Po…
Matt

Matt

18

4.5: Commerce Trials

One of the most popular requests we get for Commerce is for a free trial period for subscriptions. We've heard from many clients that wish to allow their members a free, or reduced cost trial period before auto-renewing the full price. I'm pleased to say that we've now added this functionality into Invision Community 4.5. Let us take a look at how it works. Initial Terms In …
Mark

Mark

17

4.5: Everything else

We have announced a lot of new things coming soon with Invision Community 4.5. Most of these are pretty big new features worth a blog on their own. However, we've made a lot of smaller changes that may not deserve their own blog but still have a significant impact. Let's run through some of those. Performance Improvements For every major release, we take some time to run through t…
Matt

Matt

40

4.5: Language System Updates

Ever since Invision Community 4.0, there has been a huge focus on making communities multi-lingual by providing translation features inside the AdminCP. We have received a lot of feedback on our multi-lingual and translation tools over the past year, and we're happy to announce these new features coming to Invision Community 4.5. Pages Phrase Tools If you have the Pages application, you…
Ryan Ashbrook

Ryan Ashbrook

20

4.5: Introducing our updated default theme

If you've been around Invision Community for a while, you'll know our frontend default theme hasn't significantly evolved since the early days of 4.0. Indeed, the last significant refresh came with 4.2. With the upcoming release of 4.5, we wanted to revisit the default theme and give it a facelift for 2020, as well as make incremental improvements to the underlying codebase as a stepping ston…
Rikki

Rikki

72

4.5: Improvements for theme designers

If you've been around Invision Community for a while, you'll know our frontend default theme hasn't significantly evolved since the early days of 4.0. Indeed, the last significant refresh came with 4.2. With the upcoming release of 4.5, we wanted to revisit the default theme and give it a facelift for 2020, as well as make incremental improvements to the underlying codebase as a stepping ston…
Rikki

Rikki

37

4.5: Page Builder Widgets

Invision Community introduced drag and drop widgets many years ago. These widgets allowed anyone to add blocks to existing views, and to build up entirely new pages. These widgets were great for quickly adding content to a page, but they weren't incredibly customizable.  For Invision Community 4.5, we've added three new Page Builder widgets which allow you a little more control. For…
Matt

Matt

42

4.5: Private staff notes

Managing a community as a team makes internal communication an essential part of its successful management. There are times where you want to leave notes for other staff on specific topics that you're watching. Perhaps a member is close to breaking the rules, or it might be that you want to keep the topic focused and on point so wish to split off-topic posts into a different area. Whatev…
Matt

Matt

27

4.5: New Post-Installation Onboarding

Installing Invision Community for the first time is a fun and exciting process. After all, you're about to launch a new community that is going to thrive and attract members from all over, and you want to make sure you set it up just right to facilitate a painless experience for your visitors. If you're new to Invision Community, however, it can be a little daunting when you think about "ok w…
bfarber

bfarber

11

4.5: Forum View Updates

Invision Community has had different view modes for a good number of years. Forum grid view was added to create some visual interest when listing forums, and we've had expanded and condensed view modes in streams since they were introduced. We've taken both of these views a step further in Invision Community 4.5 Forum Grid View To create even more visual interest, the grid view no…
Matt

Matt

21

4.5: Zapier Brings Integration with Over 2,000 Web Apps

Zapier is a service that allows you to connect over 2,000 web apps. In Invision Community 4.5 we are launching a beta service of Zapier integration for Invision Community in the Cloud. What does Zapier do? Zapier acts as a bridge between Invision Community and other apps, such as Google Docs, Twitter, Facebook, Slack, Trello, Facebook Ads, ActiveCampaign, Zendesk, Asana, Salesforce, Hubs…
Mark

Mark

41

4.5: Topic view summary and more

A topic is more than a collection of posts; it's a living entity that ebbs and flows over time. Evergreen topics can see month-long gaps between posts and longer topics spanning numerous pages can end up hard to navigate through to find useful content. With this in mind, we've added numerous improvements to the topic view to bring context and summaries key areas within the topic. …
Matt

Matt

41

4.5: ACP Dark Mode

A short while ago we revealed the new look Admin CP for Invision Community 4.5. The focus was on increasing the workspace, brightening and modernising the look. However, for some this new look was perhaps a little too bright, especially when setting your OS to use dark mode. Rather than cause an increase in sales for sunglasses, we went ahead and implemented a dark mode for the Admin CP.…
Ehren

Ehren

23

4.5: Marking as solved

Invision Community has had a question and answer mode for a good few years now. This mode transforms a forum into a formalized way to handle your member's questions. Members can upvote answers, and the topic starter and your community management team can mark a reply as the "best answer". This is great when you want to add rigour to specific forums which encourage your members to find so…
Matt

Matt

20

4.5: Notification Improvements

Notifications are a crucial feature in enticing members back to your community to read updates and post their replies. It makes sense that there should be as little friction as possible when setting up notifications. We want to encourage members to enable notifications relevant to them. The current notifications form in Invision Community is functional but overwhelming and confusing for …
Matt

Matt

31

4.5: Identify Statistical Trends

One of the benefits of using Invision Community as your community platform is that you control and own your data. There are several ways to review this data. One of which is via the Admin Control Panel which offers a suite of statistic views which helps to convert the raw data into something easily understood. However, it's not always easy to determine trends and community sentiment from…
Matt

Matt

10

4.5: User Interface Improvements

Invision Community has certainly changed a lot over the years as we've moved through major updates and large user interface changes.  While large scale changes offer a dramatic difference, it is sometimes the smaller changes that bring the most satisfaction when using your community daily. This blog entry rounds up some of the UI improvements Invision Community 4.5 brings. Content V…
Matt

Matt

33

4.5: Club Statistics

Statistics can help you manage and monitor the direction of your community, giving you valuable insight into how your visitors are interacting with your site and what areas of your community deserve the most of your attention. With the popularity of Clubs in Invision Community, we determined that some statistics aimed at helping administrators review how this feature is being received by their end…
bfarber

bfarber

6

iOS & Android Apps: Open Beta

Since we announced native Invision Community apps for iOS and Android, the response has been incredible. Hundreds of customers registered interest in joining the testing process, and for the initial round we selected around thirty users, roughly split between iOS and Android. Thank you to those testers for their work in reporting issues and providing feedback over the past couple of months. …
Rikki

Rikki

69

4.5: Security Enhancements

Although we continuously review security within Invision Community, a major release such as 4.5 allows us to be especially proactive when it comes to keeping your community safe. This blog entry outlines several enhancements to improve security in Invision Community 4.5. Password Handling Keeping your member's passwords secure is the simplest way to keep accounts safe and out of the wr…
Matt

Matt

17

4.5: Search Insights

Every single day, your members are searching your community for answers or interesting conversations to join. Wouldn't it be great if you could learn what is being searched for to identify hot issues, commonly asked questions and discover trends? We thought so too, which is why Invision Community 4.5 comes with search statistics. For the first time, Invision Community gathers anonym…
bfarber

bfarber

24

4.5: Simple Stock Photo Picker

We have come a long way since the late 90s when someone had the genius idea of using a small yellow smiling face image instead of the more common colon-bracket representation of a smiling face. In Invision Community, there are various places that photography can be used to create visual interest. From uploads in topics, to cover photos for blogs and members. The humble upload field has s…
Matt

Matt

41
Followers 340

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