Dreadknux

This has been flagged for our developers to take a look at, so may take a little longer than a standard support question. Please bear with us

I think this is a bug which has to be solved. When somebody replies to a status update when you hit the " save " button the page does not refresh even the  reply gets posted. Here's a screenshot how it looks like :

I see. So it works essentially the same way as 'Theme Resources' but for Pages. Perhaps that could be renamed then as the term 'media library' implies something more akin to Wordpress' own integrated media library (that works as @Maxxius mentions). Page Resources, perhaps? Thanks for the explanation @opentype, that makes a lot of sense now.
I feel like my suggestion, then, is even more useful:
This is something IPB lacks and is a severe drawback compared to other solutions such as Wordpress, which has an integrated media library where users can upload an image/audio/video to a sandboxed depository, to be re-used/searchable by other editors for multiple pages/articles.
 

I see. So it works essentially the same way as 'Theme Resources' but for Pages. Perhaps that could be renamed then as the term 'media library' implies something more akin to Wordpress' own integrated media library (that works as @Maxxius mentions). Page Resources, perhaps? Thanks for the explanation @opentype, that makes a lot of sense now.
I feel like my suggestion, then, is even more useful:
This is something IPB lacks and is a severe drawback compared to other solutions such as Wordpress, which has an integrated media library where users can upload an image/audio/video to a sandboxed depository, to be re-used/searchable by other editors for multiple pages/articles.
 

Interested to know if anyone from the Invision team would consider adding options like these for a Pages update.

Hi guys
Long time InvisionCommunity user, almost-first-time poster. 🙂 I've been using this software to power my community forums for about 15+ years now and I'm looking to take the next step by building an integrated site for my users. I recently purchased the Pages app to experiment with it - the idea is that, one day, I might migrate a long-running Wordpress blog into Pages. With that in mind, I had a few ideas that would greatly help with improving workflow and ensure more consistent connectivity between Forums and Pages. I hope you'll consider them!
To keep things concise, my ideas here are focused on the 'Copy to Database' feature of Pages (I do have other ideas but this is the biggest area of concern for me - I'll post the other suggestions in a separate thread).
 
My Setup
In AdminCP > Pages > Databases > Articles > Forums, 'Post Topic' and 'Use Forum For Comments' are enabled. Post Topic is enabled because not every article we write will be sourced from a forum topic or Copied to Database, and we want to make sure that all news stories we write have an associated topic posted (i.e. if a topic does not exist already, we want to create a topic, but if a topic does exist we want to Copy to Database and use that particular topic as the news story's associated topic) Use Forum for Comments is enabled because we want to always marry the comments in news stories with the replies in the associated topic. We never want this feature to be disabled.  
My Scenario
A regular user in my community discovers some interesting news that they may have read elsewhere, and posts a topic on a particular forum. A member of my community's "News Team" usergroup sees this topic, notices that our Articles database has yet to cover this news topic. The News Team member chooses to 'Copy to Database' the original topic. The original topic is written in a way that works fine for a community environment, but it needs editing in order to read well as a news article. So the News Team member modifies the original topic content to suit the tone of voice we want to present within our news stories.  
The Issues
When the News Team member posts the news story, a duplicate topic is made (in the forum selected in AdminCP). This has the result of confusing the community as there are now two separate topics in which to submit replies/comments to.
  When rebuilding synchronised topic content, the original topic's content is modified to match that of the news story which was created from it. This is not desired behaviour; if copied to database, the expectation is that the original topic remains the same, with any edits made for the news story living solely on the page record/database.
  There's no topic meta to illustrate to users on the forum that a news story was created from it.  
The Solutions:
1. 'Post Topic' Override (per Record basis)

A simple checkbox could be added to a record creation page, if the 'Post Topic' setting is enabled for that database in AdminCP. What this will do is ensure that a topic is not created when the record is created. This will be useful for users who want to use an existing topic as the basis for a record's comments/replies without splintering it into a duplicate topic elsewhere. However, some users might find posting a duplicate topic useful (for instance, they might want to dedicate a specific forum for record entries), which is why having this as an ad-hoc option is the best solution here.
 
2. AdminCP-level Option to Keep Topic/Record Content Separate

Provide a toggle which allows the content in the Original Topic to remain unaffected/does not sync with the copy written in the Page content. I would have thought that this would be standard behaviour, so it's surprising that it's not. I doubt many community members would appreciate their topics being edited without their consent, so this option would fix that issue. This could be a new setting added to AdminCP, which applies to all records made in a database (as illustrated above).
 
3. Add Topic Meta to Copied Topics
Upon using 'Copy to Database', have a setting/toggle (default setting: On) that automatically inserts a new Topic Meta box in the original/source topic, detailing that a user has used the thread as a basis for a new 'record/story/article'. Clicking the Meta box could dynamically expand it, revealing an excerpt of the new story/record/article (Title, Author, Date, Excerpt, Link to Full Article). Some ideas as to how that would look like below.
Idea 1:

Idea 2:

This could also be a setting in the Database options page in AdminCP. A feature like this would be a more elegant solution when copying topics to databases, instead of simply syncing the topic content and record content to be identical. It can also allow users who create interesting topics to see that their posts have been considered worthy of interest from the moderation/news team. You could even tie Achievements/Points/Rewards to this - users who create topics that a moderating team deems interesting for a story, could be awarded points for 'sourcing' the content.
---------------------------------------------------
Hopefully these suggestions are worth considering and implementing in a future update. I know the next update of the Core app is at the forefront of the development team's minds right now, but I think these would be great QOL updates for the Pages app that can make it even more unified with the Forums/Core. Thanks for reading!

Really enjoying the release of 4.6, now that it's released I wanted to re-suggest this as an important feature to consider for a next version of the Pages app. I think it would really help integrate the Core app and Pages app further, in a way that other solutions (i.e. XenForo + Wordpress bridge - which I'm looking into as an alternative) will be unable to. I'd really love to have a one-stop shop for my users to view and comment on news and forums using a consistent design and account system, and the above suggestions would go far to making Pages the perfect app for this.

For many years I've been using a customised badge/award plugin to assign badges to my community's users (for things like participating in community events), and with the new Achievements feature I'm considering migrating my old awards over to the built-in system. I have a few small suggestions that would really help out admins that want to lean more on custom badges rather than the Rules-based badge approach.
1. Custom Descriptions
It would help a lot if admins were allowed to write unique descriptions for manually-made badges. At the moment there is no such feature and it kind of looks strange when you see manual badges alongside rule-based badges (which do include a description). For example:

Notice how the top badge doesn't include a description? This could be added via the AdminCP > Achievements > Badges page by adding an extra option in the Edit Badge dialog. I'd like to be able to tell users exactly how they earned a particular badge, and it's a little awkward to have to do that in the Badge Name. Something like the below...

 
2. Multi-User Awarding
As far as I can see, the only way to manually award a user a badge is by searching for their username in AdminCP > Members, clicking 'Manage' within the Badges dialog, and then click 'Add Badge'. It's quite monotonous, if you have many users that you want to award a single badge to manually. There should be an option to award members directly from the 'Badges' section of the ACP. A dropdown can replace the current 'delete' option, or an 'award' option can be positioned next to it. I made a crude mockup of what I mean, below.

A dialog box could appear upon clicking 'Award to Member' which can allow you to type the usernames of multiple users.

 
3. Backdating / Custom Award Dates
Another really useful enhancement would be the ability to set custom dates when awarding badges manually. Using the example above, you could include an optional date field within the award member dialog (either on the Badges ACP page or when managing badges on a User profile via ACP). As a lot of the badges I've previously awarded users date back as far back as 2014, it would be great to be able to add a 'legacy' badge to a user's profile and identify exactly when they received it, instead of relying on the moment it was specifically added to the user's account.

Some smaller (but useful!) suggestions I've made in the past:
Allow Multiple Categories to be assigned to a Page record Options to change URL slug format on a database level (by [YYYY]/[MM]/[record_slug] for example) Remove the "-r" at the end of a record's URL by default (this one is really annoying) Allow Page Categories to be set in Menu Manager Ability to pull records from multiple databases in Widgets/Blocks/Loops But in particular, I'd like to throw in a more inspired idea. I'd like InvisionCommunity to really focus in on the relationship between Pages and the Core community. @Jordan Invision I enjoyed reading about how you were able to migrate your news/blog into the core InvisionCommunity software to great benefit, so I figure you might appreciate this suggestion as well. I think it would really help integrate the two apps together and encourage community activity/contributions. 🙂 
The concept is to improve the 'Copy to Database' feature. Let's say that I run a movie news website/community. Oftentimes, the community will post (and react to) a piece of movie news (a new trailer or celebrity interview) as a Topic in the Forums, before the admin's staff writers get a chance to write a story about it. To avoid duplication of content, Copy to Database can be a powerful tool - admins can import a user's existing topic to a 'news' record in Pages.
But there's a problem; by doing this in the current InvisionCommunity system, you either destroy the original community user's content (if your site editor writes new content when Copying to Database) or you create a duplicate topic in a different forum to where the original Topic lives, creating redundant content (which will return duplicate results in searches).
This can be alleviated in three major improvements to the system:
------------------------------

Step 1: New AdminCP Settings to 'Keep Original Topic Content' & 'Add Post Meta' When Copying to Database
The above image is a mock-up of two new options that could be implemented into the AdminCP. The first makes sure that any content in the original topic/post is not modified in any way when an admin Copies the content to Database - even if the admin decides to write entire new content for the news story.
Why would someone want to rewrite a topic's content when importing to Database, but keep the topic itself the same?
An admin may wish to simply unify Page comments and Topic replies, and keep the tone of both separate It gives the freedom to reword the information in the original topic to reflect the site's "house style" of writing, while keeping the topic's original informal tone It helps to acknowledge the community source of any resulting story (and avoid annoying the community by "censoring/deleting" their posts)... ...which can open the community up to special rewards for helping contribute to the site blog, via custom Achievements or Badges  

Step 2: Add Post Meta
Related to Step 1, there could be additional post meta produced when an admin Copies a Topic to Database (which can be toggled on or off). A mock up of what that might look like is above. The post meta could be situated relative to the exact time an admin takes the Copy to Database action, or it could sit at the top of a Topic much like the Recommended Posts might do. Having this feature will make the community feel like they are contributing to the overall site/blog and that their content is getting noticed.
 

Step 3: 'Post Topic' AdminCP Options Override in Page Creation Form
If an admin creates a new article in Pages, they will often want to have that story re-posted as a Topic in a designated forum. That's where the AdminCP "Post Topic" settings come in real handy. But if that same admin wanted to create an article using Copy to Database, they may not wish to have an additional Topic created. They might think that the existing Topic - and all the comments/replies that may exist in it - is enough. Unfortunately, in InvisionCommunity's current setup, if you set your database category's "Post Topic" settings, it's everything or nothing. You can't tell InvisionCommunity to NOT post a topic on the odd occasion, if you do not want it to.
That's where this Topic Override option comes in. Set at the per-post level, this gives admins the freedom to choose on an article-by-article basis if they want an associated topic to be created when the article is published.
------------------------------
I appreciate the open ears and eagerness to hear feedback! 😄  🙏

Hi guys
Long time InvisionCommunity user, almost-first-time poster. 🙂 I've been using this software to power my community forums for about 15+ years now and I'm looking to take the next step by building an integrated site for my users. I recently purchased the Pages app to experiment with it - the idea is that, one day, I might migrate a long-running Wordpress blog into Pages. With that in mind, I had a few ideas that would greatly help with improving workflow and ensure more consistent connectivity between Forums and Pages. I hope you'll consider them!
To keep things concise, my ideas here are focused on the 'Copy to Database' feature of Pages (I do have other ideas but this is the biggest area of concern for me - I'll post the other suggestions in a separate thread).
 
My Setup
In AdminCP > Pages > Databases > Articles > Forums, 'Post Topic' and 'Use Forum For Comments' are enabled. Post Topic is enabled because not every article we write will be sourced from a forum topic or Copied to Database, and we want to make sure that all news stories we write have an associated topic posted (i.e. if a topic does not exist already, we want to create a topic, but if a topic does exist we want to Copy to Database and use that particular topic as the news story's associated topic) Use Forum for Comments is enabled because we want to always marry the comments in news stories with the replies in the associated topic. We never want this feature to be disabled.  
My Scenario
A regular user in my community discovers some interesting news that they may have read elsewhere, and posts a topic on a particular forum. A member of my community's "News Team" usergroup sees this topic, notices that our Articles database has yet to cover this news topic. The News Team member chooses to 'Copy to Database' the original topic. The original topic is written in a way that works fine for a community environment, but it needs editing in order to read well as a news article. So the News Team member modifies the original topic content to suit the tone of voice we want to present within our news stories.  
The Issues
When the News Team member posts the news story, a duplicate topic is made (in the forum selected in AdminCP). This has the result of confusing the community as there are now two separate topics in which to submit replies/comments to.
  When rebuilding synchronised topic content, the original topic's content is modified to match that of the news story which was created from it. This is not desired behaviour; if copied to database, the expectation is that the original topic remains the same, with any edits made for the news story living solely on the page record/database.
  There's no topic meta to illustrate to users on the forum that a news story was created from it.  
The Solutions:
1. 'Post Topic' Override (per Record basis)

A simple checkbox could be added to a record creation page, if the 'Post Topic' setting is enabled for that database in AdminCP. What this will do is ensure that a topic is not created when the record is created. This will be useful for users who want to use an existing topic as the basis for a record's comments/replies without splintering it into a duplicate topic elsewhere. However, some users might find posting a duplicate topic useful (for instance, they might want to dedicate a specific forum for record entries), which is why having this as an ad-hoc option is the best solution here.
 
2. AdminCP-level Option to Keep Topic/Record Content Separate

Provide a toggle which allows the content in the Original Topic to remain unaffected/does not sync with the copy written in the Page content. I would have thought that this would be standard behaviour, so it's surprising that it's not. I doubt many community members would appreciate their topics being edited without their consent, so this option would fix that issue. This could be a new setting added to AdminCP, which applies to all records made in a database (as illustrated above).
 
3. Add Topic Meta to Copied Topics
Upon using 'Copy to Database', have a setting/toggle (default setting: On) that automatically inserts a new Topic Meta box in the original/source topic, detailing that a user has used the thread as a basis for a new 'record/story/article'. Clicking the Meta box could dynamically expand it, revealing an excerpt of the new story/record/article (Title, Author, Date, Excerpt, Link to Full Article). Some ideas as to how that would look like below.
Idea 1:

Idea 2:

This could also be a setting in the Database options page in AdminCP. A feature like this would be a more elegant solution when copying topics to databases, instead of simply syncing the topic content and record content to be identical. It can also allow users who create interesting topics to see that their posts have been considered worthy of interest from the moderation/news team. You could even tie Achievements/Points/Rewards to this - users who create topics that a moderating team deems interesting for a story, could be awarded points for 'sourcing' the content.
---------------------------------------------------
Hopefully these suggestions are worth considering and implementing in a future update. I know the next update of the Core app is at the forefront of the development team's minds right now, but I think these would be great QOL updates for the Pages app that can make it even more unified with the Forums/Core. Thanks for reading!

I agree - I've been exploring use of Pages as a means to potentially migrate a long-running Wordpress into InvisionCommunity (I've used Invision for my forums for the last 15 years or so), but as much as I adore the concept of having a unified theme/account integration for forums and site content, Pages isn't quite there yet for me and needs some attention. Hopefully now that 4.6 is out the door, Pages can be the next app to get InvisionCommunity's full focus.
I certainly think that being able to splinter longform articles via pagination is a useful idea, as is the ability to dynamically modify a page's layout using different block formats.
I've been thinking about it, and I'd love to see the following improvements implemented into the Pages app in some way too:
1. Multiple Category Selection
It would be great if it was possible to assign a record in a database to more than one category. My Wordpress blog allows me to set a news post as either a ‘Games’ story, a ‘Movies’ story or both if the news concerns both mediums.
2. Change URL Slugs per Database
At the moment, the definition is [domain.com]/[database_name]/[category_name]/[record_slug], and this is true for any and all databases you can create in Pages. Would be good to get some options on this - being able to use [YEAR]/[MONTH]/[record_slug] instead would keep things in uniform with a blog style.
3. Remove "-r" suffix on URL per Database
I can understand the reason for the 'revision' suffix in a record URL if you're using it for a "wiki" like database of some sort. Doesn't really lend itself well for blog-style page URLs, or other potentially interesting uses of the Pages app. Should be a setting on the database-level in AdminCP to automatically remove the "-r" in a Page record slug by default, instead of asking writers to manually remove it after creating each post.
4. Pages Media Library
I still don't really understand the use case for the internal Pages Media Library in AdminCP (Pages > Page Management > Media). What is it for, exactly? I thought it was going to be a 'media gallery' that could be used by Page authors across the entire database (similar to Wordpress' Media Gallery). But its use is extremely limited. It doesn't appear when creating a new article/record. The only way to use an image uploaded to this Media Library is to remember the media tag for each image and include it (and even then it only works in Page templates). It's quite useless, especially when the Theme Resources section exists.
This should be re-imagined as a dedicated Page Database media library, accessible to usergroups with the ability to post records - with editable filenames and support for images, video, files etc. It should be accessible via the WYSIWYG post editor and the media contained here sandboxed from all other media uploaded by users (Gallery entries, Attachments, etc). You could set either a 'global' media library for everything related to Pages, or a separate media library for each Page Database.
5. Allow Categories to be set in Menu Manager
I can set specific Pages as a Primary/Secondary navigation menu item in Menu Manager, but not the categories associated with a particular database. At the moment I have to set them as External Links, which doesn't allow for a consistent design when using CSS to style 'active' secondary nav links.
6. Ability to pull from multiple databases in Widgets/Loops
This might already be possible re: the Loop and it's something I'm not aware of, but I have two databases ('News' and 'Articles') that I want to be able to combine if I wanted to. For example, on a Homepage I might want to build a block that contains latest News specifically, and a second block that pulls all the latest posts from both News and Articles. I feel like that shouldn't be too difficult to do...
7. Do Not Post Duplicate Topics when using Copy to Database Function
8. Do Not Modify Original Topic Content when using Copy to Database Function
9. Add Post Topic Meta when using Copy to Database Function
I explain these last three in more detail in a topic I created a month or so ago, but basically the 'Copy to Database' function doesn't lend itself well to non-wiki style Page-Forum integration. The idea currently is that, if an author decides to write a news story (for example), a Page record and an associated Forum topic is created together, with Page comments and Topic replies merged. However, if an author decides to write a news story based on a topic that exists already, using 'Copy to Database' will result in a Page record, a new duplicate Forum topic AND the existing Forum topic. There needs to be a way to override the Post Topic feature, while keeping the Comments-Replies integration.
When using 'Copy to Database', the existing Forum topic content is also changed to reflect the new Page record. For instance, an author re-writes the text from the Forum topic when developing the Page record, to make it read better as a news story. The original topic should not be modified if this happens; I'm not entirely sure why this is considered normal behaviour in Pages anyway.
The Topic Meta idea just adds a little nice site-forum integration to the Copy to Database feature, and isn't really necessary... but I think it would help make a forum community feel more connected to the news/article side of the website, if they were made aware that their topic contributions were also having an impact on the associated news story.
----------
Sorry for going on and on - there's a LOT to Pages that I like but I think if your ideas and the above ideas are followed through on, I would feel a lot more comfortable taking my Pages install out of a test environment and look to fully building it into a revamped version of my community. 🙂  Thanks for making the topic, great ideas!

🤯 Can't thank you enough for taking the time to offer all this great feedback! 
I love this idea because I personally can relate. The community 99% of the time will post information before the official team/staff does. It would be pretty cool to plug the already-existing comments into a news article. Writing this idea down :] 🤲 

I agree - I've been exploring use of Pages as a means to potentially migrate a long-running Wordpress into InvisionCommunity (I've used Invision for my forums for the last 15 years or so), but as much as I adore the concept of having a unified theme/account integration for forums and site content, Pages isn't quite there yet for me and needs some attention. Hopefully now that 4.6 is out the door, Pages can be the next app to get InvisionCommunity's full focus.
I certainly think that being able to splinter longform articles via pagination is a useful idea, as is the ability to dynamically modify a page's layout using different block formats.
I've been thinking about it, and I'd love to see the following improvements implemented into the Pages app in some way too:
1. Multiple Category Selection
It would be great if it was possible to assign a record in a database to more than one category. My Wordpress blog allows me to set a news post as either a ‘Games’ story, a ‘Movies’ story or both if the news concerns both mediums.
2. Change URL Slugs per Database
At the moment, the definition is [domain.com]/[database_name]/[category_name]/[record_slug], and this is true for any and all databases you can create in Pages. Would be good to get some options on this - being able to use [YEAR]/[MONTH]/[record_slug] instead would keep things in uniform with a blog style.
3. Remove "-r" suffix on URL per Database
I can understand the reason for the 'revision' suffix in a record URL if you're using it for a "wiki" like database of some sort. Doesn't really lend itself well for blog-style page URLs, or other potentially interesting uses of the Pages app. Should be a setting on the database-level in AdminCP to automatically remove the "-r" in a Page record slug by default, instead of asking writers to manually remove it after creating each post.
4. Pages Media Library
I still don't really understand the use case for the internal Pages Media Library in AdminCP (Pages > Page Management > Media). What is it for, exactly? I thought it was going to be a 'media gallery' that could be used by Page authors across the entire database (similar to Wordpress' Media Gallery). But its use is extremely limited. It doesn't appear when creating a new article/record. The only way to use an image uploaded to this Media Library is to remember the media tag for each image and include it (and even then it only works in Page templates). It's quite useless, especially when the Theme Resources section exists.
This should be re-imagined as a dedicated Page Database media library, accessible to usergroups with the ability to post records - with editable filenames and support for images, video, files etc. It should be accessible via the WYSIWYG post editor and the media contained here sandboxed from all other media uploaded by users (Gallery entries, Attachments, etc). You could set either a 'global' media library for everything related to Pages, or a separate media library for each Page Database.
5. Allow Categories to be set in Menu Manager
I can set specific Pages as a Primary/Secondary navigation menu item in Menu Manager, but not the categories associated with a particular database. At the moment I have to set them as External Links, which doesn't allow for a consistent design when using CSS to style 'active' secondary nav links.
6. Ability to pull from multiple databases in Widgets/Loops
This might already be possible re: the Loop and it's something I'm not aware of, but I have two databases ('News' and 'Articles') that I want to be able to combine if I wanted to. For example, on a Homepage I might want to build a block that contains latest News specifically, and a second block that pulls all the latest posts from both News and Articles. I feel like that shouldn't be too difficult to do...
7. Do Not Post Duplicate Topics when using Copy to Database Function
8. Do Not Modify Original Topic Content when using Copy to Database Function
9. Add Post Topic Meta when using Copy to Database Function
I explain these last three in more detail in a topic I created a month or so ago, but basically the 'Copy to Database' function doesn't lend itself well to non-wiki style Page-Forum integration. The idea currently is that, if an author decides to write a news story (for example), a Page record and an associated Forum topic is created together, with Page comments and Topic replies merged. However, if an author decides to write a news story based on a topic that exists already, using 'Copy to Database' will result in a Page record, a new duplicate Forum topic AND the existing Forum topic. There needs to be a way to override the Post Topic feature, while keeping the Comments-Replies integration.
When using 'Copy to Database', the existing Forum topic content is also changed to reflect the new Page record. For instance, an author re-writes the text from the Forum topic when developing the Page record, to make it read better as a news story. The original topic should not be modified if this happens; I'm not entirely sure why this is considered normal behaviour in Pages anyway.
The Topic Meta idea just adds a little nice site-forum integration to the Copy to Database feature, and isn't really necessary... but I think it would help make a forum community feel more connected to the news/article side of the website, if they were made aware that their topic contributions were also having an impact on the associated news story.
----------
Sorry for going on and on - there's a LOT to Pages that I like but I think if your ideas and the above ideas are followed through on, I would feel a lot more comfortable taking my Pages install out of a test environment and look to fully building it into a revamped version of my community. 🙂  Thanks for making the topic, great ideas!

Yep - and that's where we (or at the very least, I) see the future of Pages - but those apps also have huge open-source communities or a large development team focusing only on that product. It's not something we can click our fingers and bring to life, but it is in our minds.
Speaking personally, I have a pretty clear picture of what Pages could be and what would set it apart from the other visual page builders out there, but for the time being that'll stay internal until a definite roadmap is planned out.

All of this is on our radar - it's obviously not trivial though. Trust me, I probably use Pages more than anyone else, so I'm certainly aware of the pain points and potential future for it 🙂 

For many years I've been using a customised badge/award plugin to assign badges to my community's users (for things like participating in community events), and with the new Achievements feature I'm considering migrating my old awards over to the built-in system. I have a few small suggestions that would really help out admins that want to lean more on custom badges rather than the Rules-based badge approach.
1. Custom Descriptions
It would help a lot if admins were allowed to write unique descriptions for manually-made badges. At the moment there is no such feature and it kind of looks strange when you see manual badges alongside rule-based badges (which do include a description). For example:

Notice how the top badge doesn't include a description? This could be added via the AdminCP > Achievements > Badges page by adding an extra option in the Edit Badge dialog. I'd like to be able to tell users exactly how they earned a particular badge, and it's a little awkward to have to do that in the Badge Name. Something like the below...

 
2. Multi-User Awarding
As far as I can see, the only way to manually award a user a badge is by searching for their username in AdminCP > Members, clicking 'Manage' within the Badges dialog, and then click 'Add Badge'. It's quite monotonous, if you have many users that you want to award a single badge to manually. There should be an option to award members directly from the 'Badges' section of the ACP. A dropdown can replace the current 'delete' option, or an 'award' option can be positioned next to it. I made a crude mockup of what I mean, below.

A dialog box could appear upon clicking 'Award to Member' which can allow you to type the usernames of multiple users.

 
3. Backdating / Custom Award Dates
Another really useful enhancement would be the ability to set custom dates when awarding badges manually. Using the example above, you could include an optional date field within the award member dialog (either on the Badges ACP page or when managing badges on a User profile via ACP). As a lot of the badges I've previously awarded users date back as far back as 2014, it would be great to be able to add a 'legacy' badge to a user's profile and identify exactly when they received it, instead of relying on the moment it was specifically added to the user's account.

For many years I've been using a customised badge/award plugin to assign badges to my community's users (for things like participating in community events), and with the new Achievements feature I'm considering migrating my old awards over to the built-in system. I have a few small suggestions that would really help out admins that want to lean more on custom badges rather than the Rules-based badge approach.
1. Custom Descriptions
It would help a lot if admins were allowed to write unique descriptions for manually-made badges. At the moment there is no such feature and it kind of looks strange when you see manual badges alongside rule-based badges (which do include a description). For example:

Notice how the top badge doesn't include a description? This could be added via the AdminCP > Achievements > Badges page by adding an extra option in the Edit Badge dialog. I'd like to be able to tell users exactly how they earned a particular badge, and it's a little awkward to have to do that in the Badge Name. Something like the below...

 
2. Multi-User Awarding
As far as I can see, the only way to manually award a user a badge is by searching for their username in AdminCP > Members, clicking 'Manage' within the Badges dialog, and then click 'Add Badge'. It's quite monotonous, if you have many users that you want to award a single badge to manually. There should be an option to award members directly from the 'Badges' section of the ACP. A dropdown can replace the current 'delete' option, or an 'award' option can be positioned next to it. I made a crude mockup of what I mean, below.

A dialog box could appear upon clicking 'Award to Member' which can allow you to type the usernames of multiple users.

 
3. Backdating / Custom Award Dates
Another really useful enhancement would be the ability to set custom dates when awarding badges manually. Using the example above, you could include an optional date field within the award member dialog (either on the Badges ACP page or when managing badges on a User profile via ACP). As a lot of the badges I've previously awarded users date back as far back as 2014, it would be great to be able to add a 'legacy' badge to a user's profile and identify exactly when they received it, instead of relying on the moment it was specifically added to the user's account.

I agree - I've been exploring use of Pages as a means to potentially migrate a long-running Wordpress into InvisionCommunity (I've used Invision for my forums for the last 15 years or so), but as much as I adore the concept of having a unified theme/account integration for forums and site content, Pages isn't quite there yet for me and needs some attention. Hopefully now that 4.6 is out the door, Pages can be the next app to get InvisionCommunity's full focus.
I certainly think that being able to splinter longform articles via pagination is a useful idea, as is the ability to dynamically modify a page's layout using different block formats.
I've been thinking about it, and I'd love to see the following improvements implemented into the Pages app in some way too:
1. Multiple Category Selection
It would be great if it was possible to assign a record in a database to more than one category. My Wordpress blog allows me to set a news post as either a ‘Games’ story, a ‘Movies’ story or both if the news concerns both mediums.
2. Change URL Slugs per Database
At the moment, the definition is [domain.com]/[database_name]/[category_name]/[record_slug], and this is true for any and all databases you can create in Pages. Would be good to get some options on this - being able to use [YEAR]/[MONTH]/[record_slug] instead would keep things in uniform with a blog style.
3. Remove "-r" suffix on URL per Database
I can understand the reason for the 'revision' suffix in a record URL if you're using it for a "wiki" like database of some sort. Doesn't really lend itself well for blog-style page URLs, or other potentially interesting uses of the Pages app. Should be a setting on the database-level in AdminCP to automatically remove the "-r" in a Page record slug by default, instead of asking writers to manually remove it after creating each post.
4. Pages Media Library
I still don't really understand the use case for the internal Pages Media Library in AdminCP (Pages > Page Management > Media). What is it for, exactly? I thought it was going to be a 'media gallery' that could be used by Page authors across the entire database (similar to Wordpress' Media Gallery). But its use is extremely limited. It doesn't appear when creating a new article/record. The only way to use an image uploaded to this Media Library is to remember the media tag for each image and include it (and even then it only works in Page templates). It's quite useless, especially when the Theme Resources section exists.
This should be re-imagined as a dedicated Page Database media library, accessible to usergroups with the ability to post records - with editable filenames and support for images, video, files etc. It should be accessible via the WYSIWYG post editor and the media contained here sandboxed from all other media uploaded by users (Gallery entries, Attachments, etc). You could set either a 'global' media library for everything related to Pages, or a separate media library for each Page Database.
5. Allow Categories to be set in Menu Manager
I can set specific Pages as a Primary/Secondary navigation menu item in Menu Manager, but not the categories associated with a particular database. At the moment I have to set them as External Links, which doesn't allow for a consistent design when using CSS to style 'active' secondary nav links.
6. Ability to pull from multiple databases in Widgets/Loops
This might already be possible re: the Loop and it's something I'm not aware of, but I have two databases ('News' and 'Articles') that I want to be able to combine if I wanted to. For example, on a Homepage I might want to build a block that contains latest News specifically, and a second block that pulls all the latest posts from both News and Articles. I feel like that shouldn't be too difficult to do...
7. Do Not Post Duplicate Topics when using Copy to Database Function
8. Do Not Modify Original Topic Content when using Copy to Database Function
9. Add Post Topic Meta when using Copy to Database Function
I explain these last three in more detail in a topic I created a month or so ago, but basically the 'Copy to Database' function doesn't lend itself well to non-wiki style Page-Forum integration. The idea currently is that, if an author decides to write a news story (for example), a Page record and an associated Forum topic is created together, with Page comments and Topic replies merged. However, if an author decides to write a news story based on a topic that exists already, using 'Copy to Database' will result in a Page record, a new duplicate Forum topic AND the existing Forum topic. There needs to be a way to override the Post Topic feature, while keeping the Comments-Replies integration.
When using 'Copy to Database', the existing Forum topic content is also changed to reflect the new Page record. For instance, an author re-writes the text from the Forum topic when developing the Page record, to make it read better as a news story. The original topic should not be modified if this happens; I'm not entirely sure why this is considered normal behaviour in Pages anyway.
The Topic Meta idea just adds a little nice site-forum integration to the Copy to Database feature, and isn't really necessary... but I think it would help make a forum community feel more connected to the news/article side of the website, if they were made aware that their topic contributions were also having an impact on the associated news story.
----------
Sorry for going on and on - there's a LOT to Pages that I like but I think if your ideas and the above ideas are followed through on, I would feel a lot more comfortable taking my Pages install out of a test environment and look to fully building it into a revamped version of my community. 🙂  Thanks for making the topic, great ideas!

Sometimes you have to take a longer route to express your desires for the application to provide for.  Everything you mentioned I agree with and I am not under the illusion that this is something that can be cobbled together and added quickly.  The whole Page application needs a complete overhaul and revamp.  It's showcased as potentially the most powerful application in the suite, but its use cases are incredibly limited, especially for novices who would probably love to use the application but user experience is sadly lacking for this group of users. Not everyone is a coder, not everyone can manipulate backend code and CSS to achieve a desired outcome, so for the uninitiated Pages is taken out of their reach.  
With some imagination and seeing what other page builders can do, especially with drag and drop, Pages could become the most sought after application in the suite.  Let's see what the dev team come back with in response to our observations and request 🙂

Hi guys
Long time InvisionCommunity user, almost-first-time poster. 🙂 I've been using this software to power my community forums for about 15+ years now and I'm looking to take the next step by building an integrated site for my users. I recently purchased the Pages app to experiment with it - the idea is that, one day, I might migrate a long-running Wordpress blog into Pages. With that in mind, I had a few ideas that would greatly help with improving workflow and ensure more consistent connectivity between Forums and Pages. I hope you'll consider them!
To keep things concise, my ideas here are focused on the 'Copy to Database' feature of Pages (I do have other ideas but this is the biggest area of concern for me - I'll post the other suggestions in a separate thread).
 
My Setup
In AdminCP > Pages > Databases > Articles > Forums, 'Post Topic' and 'Use Forum For Comments' are enabled. Post Topic is enabled because not every article we write will be sourced from a forum topic or Copied to Database, and we want to make sure that all news stories we write have an associated topic posted (i.e. if a topic does not exist already, we want to create a topic, but if a topic does exist we want to Copy to Database and use that particular topic as the news story's associated topic) Use Forum for Comments is enabled because we want to always marry the comments in news stories with the replies in the associated topic. We never want this feature to be disabled.  
My Scenario
A regular user in my community discovers some interesting news that they may have read elsewhere, and posts a topic on a particular forum. A member of my community's "News Team" usergroup sees this topic, notices that our Articles database has yet to cover this news topic. The News Team member chooses to 'Copy to Database' the original topic. The original topic is written in a way that works fine for a community environment, but it needs editing in order to read well as a news article. So the News Team member modifies the original topic content to suit the tone of voice we want to present within our news stories.  
The Issues
When the News Team member posts the news story, a duplicate topic is made (in the forum selected in AdminCP). This has the result of confusing the community as there are now two separate topics in which to submit replies/comments to.
  When rebuilding synchronised topic content, the original topic's content is modified to match that of the news story which was created from it. This is not desired behaviour; if copied to database, the expectation is that the original topic remains the same, with any edits made for the news story living solely on the page record/database.
  There's no topic meta to illustrate to users on the forum that a news story was created from it.  
The Solutions:
1. 'Post Topic' Override (per Record basis)

A simple checkbox could be added to a record creation page, if the 'Post Topic' setting is enabled for that database in AdminCP. What this will do is ensure that a topic is not created when the record is created. This will be useful for users who want to use an existing topic as the basis for a record's comments/replies without splintering it into a duplicate topic elsewhere. However, some users might find posting a duplicate topic useful (for instance, they might want to dedicate a specific forum for record entries), which is why having this as an ad-hoc option is the best solution here.
 
2. AdminCP-level Option to Keep Topic/Record Content Separate

Provide a toggle which allows the content in the Original Topic to remain unaffected/does not sync with the copy written in the Page content. I would have thought that this would be standard behaviour, so it's surprising that it's not. I doubt many community members would appreciate their topics being edited without their consent, so this option would fix that issue. This could be a new setting added to AdminCP, which applies to all records made in a database (as illustrated above).
 
3. Add Topic Meta to Copied Topics
Upon using 'Copy to Database', have a setting/toggle (default setting: On) that automatically inserts a new Topic Meta box in the original/source topic, detailing that a user has used the thread as a basis for a new 'record/story/article'. Clicking the Meta box could dynamically expand it, revealing an excerpt of the new story/record/article (Title, Author, Date, Excerpt, Link to Full Article). Some ideas as to how that would look like below.
Idea 1:

Idea 2:

This could also be a setting in the Database options page in AdminCP. A feature like this would be a more elegant solution when copying topics to databases, instead of simply syncing the topic content and record content to be identical. It can also allow users who create interesting topics to see that their posts have been considered worthy of interest from the moderation/news team. You could even tie Achievements/Points/Rewards to this - users who create topics that a moderating team deems interesting for a story, could be awarded points for 'sourcing' the content.
---------------------------------------------------
Hopefully these suggestions are worth considering and implementing in a future update. I know the next update of the Core app is at the forefront of the development team's minds right now, but I think these would be great QOL updates for the Pages app that can make it even more unified with the Forums/Core. Thanks for reading!

Hi guys
Long time InvisionCommunity user, almost-first-time poster. 🙂 I've been using this software to power my community forums for about 15+ years now and I'm looking to take the next step by building an integrated site for my users. I recently purchased the Pages app to experiment with it - the idea is that, one day, I might migrate a long-running Wordpress blog into Pages. With that in mind, I had a few ideas that would greatly help with improving workflow and ensure more consistent connectivity between Forums and Pages. I hope you'll consider them!
To keep things concise, my ideas here are focused on the 'Copy to Database' feature of Pages (I do have other ideas but this is the biggest area of concern for me - I'll post the other suggestions in a separate thread).
 
My Setup
In AdminCP > Pages > Databases > Articles > Forums, 'Post Topic' and 'Use Forum For Comments' are enabled. Post Topic is enabled because not every article we write will be sourced from a forum topic or Copied to Database, and we want to make sure that all news stories we write have an associated topic posted (i.e. if a topic does not exist already, we want to create a topic, but if a topic does exist we want to Copy to Database and use that particular topic as the news story's associated topic) Use Forum for Comments is enabled because we want to always marry the comments in news stories with the replies in the associated topic. We never want this feature to be disabled.  
My Scenario
A regular user in my community discovers some interesting news that they may have read elsewhere, and posts a topic on a particular forum. A member of my community's "News Team" usergroup sees this topic, notices that our Articles database has yet to cover this news topic. The News Team member chooses to 'Copy to Database' the original topic. The original topic is written in a way that works fine for a community environment, but it needs editing in order to read well as a news article. So the News Team member modifies the original topic content to suit the tone of voice we want to present within our news stories.  
The Issues
When the News Team member posts the news story, a duplicate topic is made (in the forum selected in AdminCP). This has the result of confusing the community as there are now two separate topics in which to submit replies/comments to.
  When rebuilding synchronised topic content, the original topic's content is modified to match that of the news story which was created from it. This is not desired behaviour; if copied to database, the expectation is that the original topic remains the same, with any edits made for the news story living solely on the page record/database.
  There's no topic meta to illustrate to users on the forum that a news story was created from it.  
The Solutions:
1. 'Post Topic' Override (per Record basis)

A simple checkbox could be added to a record creation page, if the 'Post Topic' setting is enabled for that database in AdminCP. What this will do is ensure that a topic is not created when the record is created. This will be useful for users who want to use an existing topic as the basis for a record's comments/replies without splintering it into a duplicate topic elsewhere. However, some users might find posting a duplicate topic useful (for instance, they might want to dedicate a specific forum for record entries), which is why having this as an ad-hoc option is the best solution here.
 
2. AdminCP-level Option to Keep Topic/Record Content Separate

Provide a toggle which allows the content in the Original Topic to remain unaffected/does not sync with the copy written in the Page content. I would have thought that this would be standard behaviour, so it's surprising that it's not. I doubt many community members would appreciate their topics being edited without their consent, so this option would fix that issue. This could be a new setting added to AdminCP, which applies to all records made in a database (as illustrated above).
 
3. Add Topic Meta to Copied Topics
Upon using 'Copy to Database', have a setting/toggle (default setting: On) that automatically inserts a new Topic Meta box in the original/source topic, detailing that a user has used the thread as a basis for a new 'record/story/article'. Clicking the Meta box could dynamically expand it, revealing an excerpt of the new story/record/article (Title, Author, Date, Excerpt, Link to Full Article). Some ideas as to how that would look like below.
Idea 1:

Idea 2:

This could also be a setting in the Database options page in AdminCP. A feature like this would be a more elegant solution when copying topics to databases, instead of simply syncing the topic content and record content to be identical. It can also allow users who create interesting topics to see that their posts have been considered worthy of interest from the moderation/news team. You could even tie Achievements/Points/Rewards to this - users who create topics that a moderating team deems interesting for a story, could be awarded points for 'sourcing' the content.
---------------------------------------------------
Hopefully these suggestions are worth considering and implementing in a future update. I know the next update of the Core app is at the forefront of the development team's minds right now, but I think these would be great QOL updates for the Pages app that can make it even more unified with the Forums/Core. Thanks for reading!

Hi guys
Long time InvisionCommunity user, almost-first-time poster. 🙂 I've been using this software to power my community forums for about 15+ years now and I'm looking to take the next step by building an integrated site for my users. I recently purchased the Pages app to experiment with it - the idea is that, one day, I might migrate a long-running Wordpress blog into Pages. With that in mind, I had a few ideas that would greatly help with improving workflow and ensure more consistent connectivity between Forums and Pages. I hope you'll consider them!
To keep things concise, my ideas here are focused on the 'Copy to Database' feature of Pages (I do have other ideas but this is the biggest area of concern for me - I'll post the other suggestions in a separate thread).
 
My Setup
In AdminCP > Pages > Databases > Articles > Forums, 'Post Topic' and 'Use Forum For Comments' are enabled. Post Topic is enabled because not every article we write will be sourced from a forum topic or Copied to Database, and we want to make sure that all news stories we write have an associated topic posted (i.e. if a topic does not exist already, we want to create a topic, but if a topic does exist we want to Copy to Database and use that particular topic as the news story's associated topic) Use Forum for Comments is enabled because we want to always marry the comments in news stories with the replies in the associated topic. We never want this feature to be disabled.  
My Scenario
A regular user in my community discovers some interesting news that they may have read elsewhere, and posts a topic on a particular forum. A member of my community's "News Team" usergroup sees this topic, notices that our Articles database has yet to cover this news topic. The News Team member chooses to 'Copy to Database' the original topic. The original topic is written in a way that works fine for a community environment, but it needs editing in order to read well as a news article. So the News Team member modifies the original topic content to suit the tone of voice we want to present within our news stories.  
The Issues
When the News Team member posts the news story, a duplicate topic is made (in the forum selected in AdminCP). This has the result of confusing the community as there are now two separate topics in which to submit replies/comments to.
  When rebuilding synchronised topic content, the original topic's content is modified to match that of the news story which was created from it. This is not desired behaviour; if copied to database, the expectation is that the original topic remains the same, with any edits made for the news story living solely on the page record/database.
  There's no topic meta to illustrate to users on the forum that a news story was created from it.  
The Solutions:
1. 'Post Topic' Override (per Record basis)

A simple checkbox could be added to a record creation page, if the 'Post Topic' setting is enabled for that database in AdminCP. What this will do is ensure that a topic is not created when the record is created. This will be useful for users who want to use an existing topic as the basis for a record's comments/replies without splintering it into a duplicate topic elsewhere. However, some users might find posting a duplicate topic useful (for instance, they might want to dedicate a specific forum for record entries), which is why having this as an ad-hoc option is the best solution here.
 
2. AdminCP-level Option to Keep Topic/Record Content Separate

Provide a toggle which allows the content in the Original Topic to remain unaffected/does not sync with the copy written in the Page content. I would have thought that this would be standard behaviour, so it's surprising that it's not. I doubt many community members would appreciate their topics being edited without their consent, so this option would fix that issue. This could be a new setting added to AdminCP, which applies to all records made in a database (as illustrated above).
 
3. Add Topic Meta to Copied Topics
Upon using 'Copy to Database', have a setting/toggle (default setting: On) that automatically inserts a new Topic Meta box in the original/source topic, detailing that a user has used the thread as a basis for a new 'record/story/article'. Clicking the Meta box could dynamically expand it, revealing an excerpt of the new story/record/article (Title, Author, Date, Excerpt, Link to Full Article). Some ideas as to how that would look like below.
Idea 1:

Idea 2:

This could also be a setting in the Database options page in AdminCP. A feature like this would be a more elegant solution when copying topics to databases, instead of simply syncing the topic content and record content to be identical. It can also allow users who create interesting topics to see that their posts have been considered worthy of interest from the moderation/news team. You could even tie Achievements/Points/Rewards to this - users who create topics that a moderating team deems interesting for a story, could be awarded points for 'sourcing' the content.
---------------------------------------------------
Hopefully these suggestions are worth considering and implementing in a future update. I know the next update of the Core app is at the forefront of the development team's minds right now, but I think these would be great QOL updates for the Pages app that can make it even more unified with the Forums/Core. Thanks for reading!

Hi guys
Long time InvisionCommunity user, almost-first-time poster. 🙂 I've been using this software to power my community forums for about 15+ years now and I'm looking to take the next step by building an integrated site for my users. I recently purchased the Pages app to experiment with it - the idea is that, one day, I might migrate a long-running Wordpress blog into Pages. With that in mind, I had a few ideas that would greatly help with improving workflow and ensure more consistent connectivity between Forums and Pages. I hope you'll consider them!
To keep things concise, my ideas here are focused on the 'Copy to Database' feature of Pages (I do have other ideas but this is the biggest area of concern for me - I'll post the other suggestions in a separate thread).
 
My Setup
In AdminCP > Pages > Databases > Articles > Forums, 'Post Topic' and 'Use Forum For Comments' are enabled. Post Topic is enabled because not every article we write will be sourced from a forum topic or Copied to Database, and we want to make sure that all news stories we write have an associated topic posted (i.e. if a topic does not exist already, we want to create a topic, but if a topic does exist we want to Copy to Database and use that particular topic as the news story's associated topic) Use Forum for Comments is enabled because we want to always marry the comments in news stories with the replies in the associated topic. We never want this feature to be disabled.  
My Scenario
A regular user in my community discovers some interesting news that they may have read elsewhere, and posts a topic on a particular forum. A member of my community's "News Team" usergroup sees this topic, notices that our Articles database has yet to cover this news topic. The News Team member chooses to 'Copy to Database' the original topic. The original topic is written in a way that works fine for a community environment, but it needs editing in order to read well as a news article. So the News Team member modifies the original topic content to suit the tone of voice we want to present within our news stories.  
The Issues
When the News Team member posts the news story, a duplicate topic is made (in the forum selected in AdminCP). This has the result of confusing the community as there are now two separate topics in which to submit replies/comments to.
  When rebuilding synchronised topic content, the original topic's content is modified to match that of the news story which was created from it. This is not desired behaviour; if copied to database, the expectation is that the original topic remains the same, with any edits made for the news story living solely on the page record/database.
  There's no topic meta to illustrate to users on the forum that a news story was created from it.  
The Solutions:
1. 'Post Topic' Override (per Record basis)

A simple checkbox could be added to a record creation page, if the 'Post Topic' setting is enabled for that database in AdminCP. What this will do is ensure that a topic is not created when the record is created. This will be useful for users who want to use an existing topic as the basis for a record's comments/replies without splintering it into a duplicate topic elsewhere. However, some users might find posting a duplicate topic useful (for instance, they might want to dedicate a specific forum for record entries), which is why having this as an ad-hoc option is the best solution here.
 
2. AdminCP-level Option to Keep Topic/Record Content Separate

Provide a toggle which allows the content in the Original Topic to remain unaffected/does not sync with the copy written in the Page content. I would have thought that this would be standard behaviour, so it's surprising that it's not. I doubt many community members would appreciate their topics being edited without their consent, so this option would fix that issue. This could be a new setting added to AdminCP, which applies to all records made in a database (as illustrated above).
 
3. Add Topic Meta to Copied Topics
Upon using 'Copy to Database', have a setting/toggle (default setting: On) that automatically inserts a new Topic Meta box in the original/source topic, detailing that a user has used the thread as a basis for a new 'record/story/article'. Clicking the Meta box could dynamically expand it, revealing an excerpt of the new story/record/article (Title, Author, Date, Excerpt, Link to Full Article). Some ideas as to how that would look like below.
Idea 1:

Idea 2:

This could also be a setting in the Database options page in AdminCP. A feature like this would be a more elegant solution when copying topics to databases, instead of simply syncing the topic content and record content to be identical. It can also allow users who create interesting topics to see that their posts have been considered worthy of interest from the moderation/news team. You could even tie Achievements/Points/Rewards to this - users who create topics that a moderating team deems interesting for a story, could be awarded points for 'sourcing' the content.
---------------------------------------------------
Hopefully these suggestions are worth considering and implementing in a future update. I know the next update of the Core app is at the forefront of the development team's minds right now, but I think these would be great QOL updates for the Pages app that can make it even more unified with the Forums/Core. Thanks for reading!

Now I understand that changes have to be made to the core codebase whenever a new version of IPB is written. But in the last couple of updates (3.0.3 and now 3.0.4) I have had skins that I have developed during the 3.0.1 era break completely on me, because of deprecated skin code and a complete disregard of the skin's CSS on browsers (possibly as a result of deprecated skin code). Now, as I have worked very hard on my unique themes and they are vastly different from the IPB default skin, simply implementing the Skin Differences published is easier said than done, nor should I expect to constantly update my skins in this manner.

I was led to believe that when 3.0.0 was released, that custom skins could be created without fear of them breaking in future releases. This has turned out to be a false belief. Skins made the second a brand new version is released should be supported 100% until the very end of that version's life cycle. If nothing else, I would expect the money I paid for this software (and services) to reflect this, considering I have no time in my life now to micro-manage my skins whenever an incremental update comes out.

IPS, figure out where you want to be with your skin design and stick to it, please! Stop changing your mind every twenty seconds and invalidating my custom skins. I would like some confirmation that this issue will not occur again in future updates, otherwise I might as well just not make skins for my forums again (what would be the point?).

Regards,
Svend Joscelyne.

Now I understand that changes have to be made to the core codebase whenever a new version of IPB is written. But in the last couple of updates (3.0.3 and now 3.0.4) I have had skins that I have developed during the 3.0.1 era break completely on me, because of deprecated skin code and a complete disregard of the skin's CSS on browsers (possibly as a result of deprecated skin code). Now, as I have worked very hard on my unique themes and they are vastly different from the IPB default skin, simply implementing the Skin Differences published is easier said than done, nor should I expect to constantly update my skins in this manner.

I was led to believe that when 3.0.0 was released, that custom skins could be created without fear of them breaking in future releases. This has turned out to be a false belief. Skins made the second a brand new version is released should be supported 100% until the very end of that version's life cycle. If nothing else, I would expect the money I paid for this software (and services) to reflect this, considering I have no time in my life now to micro-manage my skins whenever an incremental update comes out.

IPS, figure out where you want to be with your skin design and stick to it, please! Stop changing your mind every twenty seconds and invalidating my custom skins. I would like some confirmation that this issue will not occur again in future updates, otherwise I might as well just not make skins for my forums again (what would be the point?).

Regards,
Svend Joscelyne.