SoloInter

We can provide the tools and you can decide how to use them. Google taking forum content seriously after years of "user generated content" being rated down can only be a good thing overall.

I suppose it depends on point of view. Personally, I find I click things more when I see what may be an answer to the question I've put into google, to ensure thats what Im looking for

As much as I like the idea but Google has a habit of snarfing the content to remove the need for people to click the link which would result in less traffic and members to the site.
I kinda fear this is a bit of a trojan horse.

See the links in the original post. Google are making large changes to how forum posts are presented in their search results and they include more data on the author including a link to their profile page.

If you do not want to have profiles indexed, then you can simply adjust the robots.txt via the ACP to exclude them again.
We would still add 'noindex' meta tags to profile without any valuable content to avoid loads of thin pages being indexed and sucking up the crawl budget.

Does it still make sense to disallow profile page crawling in invision optimized robots.txt settings?
# Block profile pages as these have little unique value, consume a lot of crawl time and contain hundreds of 301 links Disallow: /profile/  

We are chatting about this internally and I think we agree that there is now value in letting most profiles be indexed. We still want to avoid 'thin' content pages for members who haven't posted, or perhaps haven't posted in years.

We’re already providing support for  ProfilePage and DiscussionForumPosting.
I have also made recently some adjustments to the QA stuff which will be included in a future release.

We have already fixed this for an upcoming release.

Some questions and / or observations: 
- the Sidebar Menu offers a lot of links.  The (regular) browse menu on mobile offers much less links.  I'm guessing you have an option per link on whether to show on mobile? 
- Bottom mobile menu is nice.  This is a well established design theory by Luke Wrobleski from Google product design, but I actually thought many mobile apps were moving away from the bottom menu because it overlaps with some built in browser or phone options.  Thoughts? I don't think there's one right answer, just more interested in your perspective.  

- traditional view of menu only offers single row.  I already do this on my primary community today (not because of any special study on design theory, but for simplicity!) but would be interested in your perspective in why you're imposing this approach.  The current Menu structure already encapsulates this and more. Why change it? 
- performance improvements.  You removed JavaScript and a lot of CSS.  But then we also need splashy grid pictures of our latest trip to Australia and croc suit for the new Forum Feed / Big Grid view!

So, to me, this is absolutely bonkers. 

IPS' team has noticed that their plugin community is a fraction of what it used to be, thinks this is because everyone has switched to bespoke work (You sure it's not the other way around? People using bespoke work /because/ the plugin community has a fraction of the size it did back when there was a free version and before IPS was trying to be everything for every person by default?). 

So they /murder/ pre-made plugins. No, we're not going to see thriving new marketplaces. Excited devs will start some, none of these will be as active as the current one, most if not all of these efforts will peter out quickly. Not having the marketplace in the panel, not having them vetted by IPS, not having people browse over them prior to purchasing IPS (and plan out a setup with plugins), not having their plugins listed on IPS' websites are all small cuts that together, cut deep. IPS' website was never a limiter on other marketplaces (they've always existed for themes and some plugins), but free advertisement to those who did have those. You're merely taking away an option and your stamp of approval. 

And you do this brilliant move in the middle of a version, announcing it to your costumers roughly a month up-front. 

Definitely not obvious you're springing it this way to ensure customers don't either, mass-hug a former major version to keep their plugins, or start planning migrations away from IPS between the time of announcement and release. 

Now, months after it happened, I google 'Invisionpower plugins marketplace' and find nothing on the first page. 

Sincerely, as someone who was a fan once of IPS, you people suck.

Will the database record view template be updated to something usable? Perhaps, something like what you use here?

You shouldn't be editing any files directly. It's controlled by the 'CACHE_PAGE_TIMEOUT' constant for self-hosted customers. Using constants.php: https://invisioncommunity.com/4guides/advanced-options/configuration-options/using-constantsphp-r25/
 

Similar to how RESTful APIs are implemented using versioning for external clients, will there be an option for users to switch between v4 and v5 UIs pointing to the same database?
For instance, the new v5 UI could be pointing to same the doc-root while the v4 UI could be relocated to /old. Users could still use /old for v4 UI until they get used to v5 UI for which /old is not required. Or more ideally, the /old could be stored in the session as a preference so both UIs can be pointed to doc-root. Site owners could set up an Announcement deadline by which the /old version will not be available to users and they should get used to the new version before that.
Sites like Google offer such feature with an option to switch back-n-forth whenever they release new versions -
New UI Switch to Classic UI That would make the transition seamless for site owners and users.

I've been using IPB since 2006 with the MSSQL driver.   I was always attracted to the flexibility of the platform with minimal programming.
Recently tech support has become more difficult.  It's harder to find code examples and removing the marketplace killed a creativity source for me.   I had a stroke a few years ago, so my development skills are retarded, but still I believe this is one of the poorer organized forms in regards to technical documentation.
A wiki, kept up to date by your community, would really help in development IMHO.
Good luck all!
Martin

Hi,
One important addition to the platform would be to add support for gmail's feedback loop, so we could easily identify which emails are being marked as spam by our users. Currently, our email server is with a low reputation on Gmail's Postmaster Tools, as many users are marking our transactional emails as spam insteading of unsubscribing from the topics they are following, for example. It would be nice to see exactly the kind of emails that the users are marking as spam, so we can improve our server's reputation and deliverability.
More info: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6254652
Thanks.

I really can't wait to hear about it, that sounds great! 🙂 

Just six short weeks ago, Ehren hit record on a video that changed everything for Invision Community.
The blog was called "Introducing a fresh new vision for Invision Community 5," and it ripped up the rule book on what forums should look like and revealed a slick new look featuring a new forum home feed view and sidebar navigation.
A lot has been discussed, but we're not even close to done!
Before we bring you news of more features after Thanksgiving, I wanted to take a mid-season break to recap what we've seen so far.
First up was the introduction video, which gave a broad overview of the new UI Invision Community 5 would be sporting. Ehren takes us through many new elements, including the sidebar navigation, forum feed view, simplified post view and more.
 
 
Up next was a focus on dark mode, accessibility and mobile views. Invision Community 5 features the ability to have native dark mode without additional themes or complex variables to set up. Our aim with Invision Community 5 is to hide the complexities and technology and just let you focus on creating a great community experience for your audience.
 
 
Bringing complex theming to everyone was the message in the blog talking about the new theme editor. Now, you can make wide-ranging changes to your theme without the need to edit CSS or manage HTML templates, all driven by a smart and simple interface.
 
 
Next, it was my turn to talk about a new feature. I introduced two new features designed to help those who run support-based communities. Finding the most helpful answers and identifying community experts help your members do more with less time and frustration.
 
 
Last week, Ehren demonstrated our new icon and badge builder, which is an amazingly powerful tool to produce slick and professional badges along with the ability to customize your community further with emojis and icons for menus, reactions and more. Building ways to reduce the barrier to customization has been a strong theme for Invision Community 5.
 
 
Phew!
We can all agree that we've showcased a lot of impressive functionality coming with Invision Community 5 already.
But what does the future hold?
Lots! We have a lot of new functionality that we're putting the finishing touches on, and we can't wait to show you more. These new features further help to reduce noise in topics, make the community feel alive and bring long-needed updates to core components such as the editor. Not to mention, there is a significant update to Pages underway.
We also have a lot of less flashy updates, such as the new consolidated Feature/Our Picks feature, which is now a single feature.
 
Feature-window.mp4
 
An improved Moderators Control Panel brings a more uniform experience across deleted, hidden, and content waiting to be approved.
 

We're still on course for a release of Invision Community in early 2024 and can't wait for you to experience the future of forums.
What has been your favourite feature so far? I'd love to know; drop a comment below!

View full blog entry

Already did on our community.
On our world, rythmed by social medias and whatsapp, icons/smileys had to be a implemented like that. Nice job, can not wait nexts updates

We will have something tomorrow. 😬🎉

Latest weeks we got spoiled with a v5 teaser in the middle of the weeks . it's Thursday . wake up guys

 

😁😇🤣😂 

Just kidding . Can't wait 😉 

Cheers

Perfect, it works. Thanks!

Hello,
We have released an optional patch to address this issue. It can be applied from the 'Support' page of your AdminCP.

Hi,
Thanks for letting us know, we'll look into it further.

Great job done here. Can not wait. 
2024 right ?

Great job done here. Can not wait. 
2024 right ?