Dreadknux

I'm happy to share my site as an example, @The Allspark. My forum is here: https://board.sonicstadium.org/ and the news/articles side of my Invision Community is here: https://board.sonicstadium.org/news/
I wanted to unify my Wordpress (which has been the main platform for my site since 2008) and my Invision Community (which I've had since mid-2000s but treated very much as a separate world to my Wordpress site) in the same way you're looking to do. I started this whole process a couple years ago, and I'm not quite ready to make the full transition yet but as you can see the Pages/CMS app is really flexible with the templates and what you can do with them.
A few cool things that I was able to do that would have been very difficult to do on Wordpress:
Automatically post news stories/articles into a specific forum as its own topic, so users that are more familiar with your forums (and don't necessarily look at your articles directly that much) will see your articles and can post replies in those topics... which will then be synced with your articles as comments!
  It works the other way too - I have a 'news' forum where my users can post news they find interesting and, if our news writers haven't covered it already, they can copy the topic to the news database, rewrite as they like, and copy any posts in the existing topic into the news article as comments, and sync the two up for future comments/topic replies.
  I was able to add a "Member" custom field in my news article database, where I can search for users in my community and assign their name to a news story. I use this to manually credit my users who post news stories in my forum before our news writing staff can get to it. I want to look into making this crediting work automatically or even tie Achievements into this, but I think that's something that only IPS can do (or a third-party plugin). You can see this at the bottom of this article here.
  I also have another 'wiki' like database (which is heavily WIP atm) and have been able to take advantage of custom fields, database relationships and templates to allow news stories to be paired with records in the wiki database. You can see it at the bottom of this article here - and if you click through to that database link, I created an 'articles' tab in the wiki database to allow users to see any news that have previously been tagged with this database record too.  I do recommend exploring the CMS app for the Invision platform, because as others have said here once you get stuck into the templates and various customisations, you can really make something impressive. It's arguably as important an app as the core forums itself, for me.
However, as you're coming from Wordpress like I am, I figure it's worth advising you of some hurdles you may have to overcome, as there are many functions and features that are different between the two and the last thing you want to do is jump both feet into CMS only to get 'buyers remorse' about how good Wordpress was all over again! Experiences are obviously different for every person, but these were some of the teething problems I have faced/am facing with the suite so far...
The post editor will feel familiar to you if you are used to Invision Board of the past, but that's also its achilles heel as its based on an age-old ckeditor version that doesn't allow for a lot of features/functions that would be obvious in today's content-creating world. You may need to rely on a couple of add-ons for the ckeditor, and that is its own headache as not every plugin ckeditor offers can be installed due to the custom nature of Invision's implementation of the editor.
  Media uploads are not great for content creators. The media uploader in the post editor is adequate for forum use, but if you have a news writing staff that share resources there is no way to easily allow for one accessible media folder that a privileged usergroup has collective access to. AdminCP has a 'Media' section under 'Page Management' within the CMS app, but it's useless for posting content and cannot be accessed through the post editor. I suggest an improvement here.
  One of the big drawbacks to the current editor is the lack of any way to build inline image galleries - or any other content 'blocks' - out of the box. Wordpress is a big obnoxious mess in the CMS side, but you are able to cleanly upload images in bulk to a shared staff media gallery, and insert a number of images into a nice flexbox/gridbox into your post content. At present, if you want to post multiple images in a news story, your only option is to upload them to the Invision post editor media uploader, insert each image (which may be massive) into the space you want, then double-click each image and resize them in a way that they all have the same height values (so as not to look terrible) and then center the entire 'paragraph' of images. Here's an example of this in action - this was a news story featuring lots of images, and it took me WAY too long to manage every single image in this way. I suggest an improvement here.
  While it's a very cool feature, there's a lot of jank with the topic > cms "Copy to Database" function that I hope are fixed/improved in v5. There's currently no way to copy a topic to database and completely rewrite it (so it matches the house style of a news story from your staff) without it replacing the topic OP on sync. I had to create a plugin to stop that sync from happening (so that the community user could feel like their content was still valued and existed, while also allowing staff to leverage the topic as a basis for active comments section).

If you go down this route of leveraging forums for news creation, like I have, you may find that multiple topics will be created by multiple users (and sometimes your staff may write a story without realising there is an existing topic), meaning you could end up with two or three topics to merge. Usually this isn't a problem, but if one of the topics you're merging happens to be the one auto-created by your news staff when they wrote a news story, it causes all sorts of problems.

I suggest a number of improvements here. ------
Overall, I think you'll find that the Invision platform will do what you're looking for really nicely! Especially if you're happy to get into the nitty gritty of template/theme design, you could make something really special. And the ability to connect your articles to your community and help reinvigorate the comments section is well worth the jump.
Just be aware of some of the QOL issues mentioned above (I'm hoping IPS will make some serious improvements to the above for the upcoming v5!), and prepare yourself for a different experience to Wordpress in terms of content creation. If you manage your expectations, you'll be more than fine.
Hope this post helps give you some insight! 🙂 

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.

There is not a “task” that runs at a pre-determined schedule. It happens as the user interacts with the site. For example, if you have a rule that moves them into a new member group, it would happen the next time they login or use the site. If they never login for 3 months, it won’t happen till then.  If they never login again, the change would never occur. 

You would need to check your rules there. For example
47509 - Has no content count, so doesnt match the content >10 rule 47508 - Reputation level 16, so doesnt match the reputation count > 25 rule 47506 - Post count of 1, so doesnt match the content> 10 rule  

Yeah just to clarify/reinforce Randy's point in case it helps other people as well... you need to enable Push Notifications for EACH device you have in order for it to work. You can't just set it once on a desktop/mobile browser and expect it to work once the PWA is set up.
I realised this myself when I had enabled push notifications on my community within the iOS Safari app (before I PWA'd it), but didn't get anything come through when I set up the PWA after. It treats the PWA as its own, separate "browser", so you will need to log in on the specific app instance, go to Settings > Notifications and scroll down to the bell to ensure that your PWA is specifically set up for push. Then it works. 🙂
I'm guessing this is some quirk with iOS, but figured I'd share just in case anyone else is pulling their hair out at this.

Would it be possible to have a notification in mobile safari telling folks they can save the site to their home screen for a better user experience? I think most folks won't know that they can save the page to their home screen to have an app experience.
Example like what a real app does.

 
 

This is unbelievably cool. Thank you Matt and IPS Team for this new feature (and thanks Apple In a way I guess).
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t really sure what all the options in the Icons & Logos / Manifest were all about (and I don’t touch Android so it’s benefits would have been wasted on me) so I just left it all alone. This has given me an opportunity to look into this more and offer a way for our community to stay more connected. Having a Home Screen app definitely helps lessen the pressure when dealing with competition via other platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Thanks again!

This is unbelievably cool. Thank you Matt and IPS Team for this new feature (and thanks Apple In a way I guess).
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t really sure what all the options in the Icons & Logos / Manifest were all about (and I don’t touch Android so it’s benefits would have been wasted on me) so I just left it all alone. This has given me an opportunity to look into this more and offer a way for our community to stay more connected. Having a Home Screen app definitely helps lessen the pressure when dealing with competition via other platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Thanks again!

This is unbelievably cool. Thank you Matt and IPS Team for this new feature (and thanks Apple In a way I guess).
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t really sure what all the options in the Icons & Logos / Manifest were all about (and I don’t touch Android so it’s benefits would have been wasted on me) so I just left it all alone. This has given me an opportunity to look into this more and offer a way for our community to stay more connected. Having a Home Screen app definitely helps lessen the pressure when dealing with competition via other platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Thanks again!

The longest awaited iPhone feature is almost here, native iOS notifications, and we couldn't wait to ensure it is enabled for your Invision Community.
Invision Community 4.7.9 is iPhone push notification ready for when Apple release their latest iOS update later this month. This means you'll finally get notifications on your phone, even when you do not have your browser open, to alert you of new content on followed items and more. A feature Android owners have enjoyed for a while.

With notifications, you can have an authentic native app experience with built-in Invision Community features such as the manifest editor.
The manifest editor allows you to edit your theme icons, colours and URL for when your members add your community to their phone's homepage. This manifest file helps mobile devices understand how to display your community site when launched from the home screen.

Your members can add your community to their home screen with the share button. Once it has been added, it looks and feels like a native app downloaded from the App Store.
With Apple finally allowing native notifications and Invision Community's mobile-ready UI coupled with the manifest editor, you can have a real app experience without needing a mobile app.
iPhone PWA.mp4
We intend to bring more functionality and ease of use to mobile devices over the coming releases.
We hope you're looking forward to iOS native push notifications as much as we are!
The features discussed in this announcement are available in both Invision Community and Invision Community Classic.

View full blog entry

Agreed! The way things are going with my community, the CMS/Pages content will likely be some of the most valuable we will have (with collaborative databases etc), would be great to have an extra layer of backup security for this app.

It would be very nice if we can have an option to Backup "Download" and "Reupload" everything in Pages database because right now "Records are not included.".

Yes, then we'll remove it and put it back, then remove it again then put it back. It's now a tradition.

We expect this limitation to be removed in our April release.
We have merged two different concepts into one. We previously had "Publish Date" in pages, but "Future Publish Date" everywhere else.
Merging them did cause some issues which we've been resolving. The final one was when you have Pages records (any publish date) synchronised with a forum (only future publish date).

We are aware of this. Unfortunately it was causing some more widespread issues, so had to be removed in the immediate term. This is not to say it will be removed on a permanent basis.

Decided to unmark my own solution and keep the topic open because of the above issue. While future posting doesn’t affect me too much at the moment (although it likely will later as I too work with embargoes) I think there is a problem here that needs addressing. I can fix my backdating issue with plugins but it might not be so easy for admins looking to publish stuff in the future.
It’d be great to get some clarity on this, because IPS’ messaging over the last six months regarding the whole publish date issue hasn’t been clear or consistent.

No more future publish when the record is linked to a forum?
Please say it isn't so.

Can confirm.  After the latest upgrade, the publish date field is gone.
arg!  This is completely unacceptable.  I get the reasoning for not wanting to be able to move it to the past with a forum involved, but future posting is a must.  I only used the backdating feature occasionally, but being able to schedule content posts is an absolute must.  I get embargoed content all the time that I am not allowed to post until some day/hour in the future (usually inconvenient, like 1 am or something) .
Now you're saying I have to give up future content posting if I want comments to be in a forum? 
This worked fine for a decade and now you've taken it away.
Please IPS... consult with your users before arbitrarily removing features!

Thought about this some more and it's not a huge issue for me so much anymore, as I found a plugin that allows me to change the publish date of a record:
So the solution here is to install the above, set as 'hidden' any records I'm creating that I want to backdate, then use this plugin to change the record date before unhiding (it even changes the associated forum topic when using forum sync, which is perfect). That does exactly what I've been asking for this whole time, so no need to worry spending any more resources on publish dates in future versions now. Thanks!

I like to use the Events/Calendar app to mark upcoming release dates for games/movies etc. But it would be great if there was some kind of support for a product’s release date anniversary.
At the moment, I can add an event specifically for a game’s past release anniversary (ie. “Release Date for Super Mario Bros on NES”) and state in the event description / event title that it is the game’s Xth Anniversary on that day. But I need to manually edit the event every year to update the details, and I’d rather that be automated in some way - especially if there are lots of event entries created for this purpose.
Maybe it could take the form of a “show anniversaries” checkbox or something. But I think something like this would be super useful.

Welcome to this week's Invision Insight!
The changelog has had a significant hit this week with bug fixes by the amazing dev team, and a special thanks to @Ehren for all the amazing UI changes! The majority may go unnoticed by the odd individual, but it has definitely made things look so much nicer.
We have had a very productive week and ran a live preview of Live Topics right here on Invision Community! 🥳 More on that below.
 
Live Topics
In a nutshell, Live Topics is a hosted live chat and question and answer event that is converted into a forum topic upon completion. Check out the blog post below for more info!
And if you were one of the lucky few to participate, the IPS Team came together to give a live preview of this new feature; the very first time Live Topics has been shown and used by our community. Check it out and give us your feedback.
 
New Beta Version
Invision Community 4.7.8 Beta 1 is here, bringing you an array of improvements for your communities!
For those of you interested in trying it out, please follow the steps below. There are instructions for both Invision Community Platform and Classic clients.
Please ensure you backup your communities. It's better safe than sorry. 😉
For a full list of what's new, you can visit the official Release Notes.
 
Upcoming Event
A reminder on next month's March 2023 Release Chat.
There are quite a few questions coming through already which is great to see everyone, keep it up!
 
Changelog
See you in the community and next week right here for another Invision Insight! I look forward to hearing from you all.
Thank you everyone! 🦘

It's difficult right now given the AdminCP interface for editing colours. We'd need to duplicate that to offer a dark option, then update all the CSS which would be a lot. When we build a new interface, it's something we'll consider.

I wanted to provide some background on why we've made this change. We were experiencing some reliability issues with the future publishing functionality across the platform in 4.7.7, and we had to revert some recent fixes for bugs and go back to a known state. During that testing, we repeatedly ran into issues with publishing new items with dates in the past, which is why we made the decision to disable the ability to add new items to the past. In older versions, setting a publish date was something specific to Pages, then we expanded it to cover more areas.
If you have any specific use cases for this feature, please let us know. Your input will help us determine the best way to move forward and ensure that our platform meets the needs of all our users. I did see how @Dreadknux uses this functionality to backdate press releases and articles for legacy consoles.

The theme select should already be available on mobile view, at the bottom of the page like on desktop by default. But if you want to move it to the header, and are familiar with template editing on the HTML level, you can find the code for displaying the theme select dropdown in the 'footer' template bit. This is the code:
{{$themes = \IPS\Theme::getThemesWithAccessPermission();}} {{if \count( $themes ) > 1 }} <li> <a href='#elNavTheme_menu' id='elNavTheme' data-ipsMenu data-ipsMenu-above>{lang='skin'} <i class='fa fa-caret-down'></i></a> <ul id='elNavTheme_menu' class='ipsMenu ipsMenu_selectable ipsHide'> {{foreach $themes as $id => $set }} <li class='ipsMenu_item{{if \IPS\Theme::i()->id == $id}} ipsMenu_itemChecked{{endif}}'> <form action="{url="app=core&module=system&controller=theme" noprotocol="true" csrf="true" seoTemplate="theme"}" method="post"> <input type="hidden" name="ref" value="{expression="base64_encode( (string) request.url() )"}"> <button type='submit' name='id' value='{$id}' class='ipsButton ipsButton_link ipsButton_link_secondary'>{lang="$set->_title"} {{if $set->is_default}}{lang="default"}{{endif}}</button> </form> </li> {{endforeach}} </ul> </li> {{endif}} You could feasibly copy this code and paste it into the mobileNavBar template bit. You would probably need to work with it a little bit to get it the way you like it - perhaps nest it in the UL list tag for best results - but that should offer the same drop-down functionality as on desktop.

I believe you may have read my previous response incorrectly. The intention of the feature is for delaying the publication of items. Feesability within the scope, and ability are not one and the same there. 
We do of course appreciate the suggestion there