Alex

Since IP.Board 3.0.0 was a brand new release, it shipped with a brand new design. This design was intended to be easy-to-use, whilst looking as attractive as possible. However, some may prefer the older versions and this is where our newest community project steps in. For the past few weeks, the skinners from our Community Developer team have been hard at work reviving three classic skins from the IP.Board 2.x range. These are: IP.Board Classic Blue, IP.Board Pro, and IPSBeyond. Each skin has been ported to successfully work with IP.Board 3.0, whilst keeping the look and feel where possible, of IP.Board 2.3. All three skins have the appropriate templates for all the addons, and are available for preview right here on the company forums! Please be aware that this is a preview and there will still be small issues with the skins, try to think of this as a pre-beta. For the IP.Board Classic Blue and IP.Board Pro skins, the button icons have not been finalised and will change between now and the beta. We are hoping to have this preview available for around a week, and expect a beta to follow shortly which you can all install on your own forums and help us find any remaining bugs. We have set up a new forum for questions on this new community project, and there is also a new bug tracker category set up for reporting bugs. This is just the start of the Community Skins project, and we hope to be able to bring you quality, free skins in the near-future. Finally, hats off to the Community Developer team for creating an amazing new project.

We are pleased to announce that the first stable release of IP.Tracker 1.3, the compatibility release of IP.Board 3.0.0, is now available from IPS Resources. About IP.Tracker IP.Tracker is a bug/issue tracking system, it allows members and staff to track certain issues, for examples, bugs within a project you are working on, or even building a house! IP.Tracker supports statuses, severities, and much much more to bring you an extensible Tracker to use however you wish to. IP.Tracker is provided free of charge to current IPS customers with an active support service. As an IP.Board module, it is offered under the IP.Board License agreement and by downloading this file you acknowledge and agree to this clause. Please note that this free module is not included in your IPS support, is only provided as an extra convenience service, and is not guaranteed in any way. Expanding upon what was already there When we originally started 1.3.0, we specifically said that there would not new features, and it was simply a compatibility release to work with IP.Board 3. However, there are several new features which you will find in 1.3.0, some of which are outlined below. Several areas have been changed to fit in with the look and feel of IP.Board 3.0. IP.Tracker now supports the option to return to the issue listing the issue was originally in when replying to an issue. Each status can now have a 'canned message'. If you update a report to a status with a canned message, but do not provide a reply yourself, IP.Tracker will automatically insert this canned message for you. Statuses can now be marked as 'fixed statuses'. If you change the status of a report to a 'fixed status' but forget to fill in the Fixed In version, IP.Tracker will automatically scan the versions for that particular project and mark the fixed in version as the latest version available Each issue now contains its own timeline view. As the name suggests, this view will provide a brief history of the issue. It will outline important changes in the issues history such as status, severity, and version changes. We implemented a change in IP.Tracker 1.2 in preparation of this new view, so that the timeline view has a lot of data to already work from! We spent an extra few weeks testing and fixing bugs found in IP.Tracker to make sure that the end product is as stable as it can possibly be at this stage, we thank you for your support during the beta process. Moving on from 1.3.0 As said above, this is the first stable release, and as such there are bound to be bugs. When software leaves testing phases, more people are prepared to use it. The more people that use it in different situations, the more chance bugs will surface. As such, we are aiming to get 1.3.1 out within a few weeks of 1.3.0. 1.3.1 should sort the majority of the issues reported. From here, IP.Tracker is splitting into two development paths, of which we will post more about nearer the time. It is our intention that later this year, we will expect to release IP.Tracker 1.4.0. There are a few areas in 1.3 which are not integrated fully with IP.Board 3.0.0, for example Tracker still has its own search engine, and still has a few legacy functions coded in. 1.4.0 will be all about removing these particular areas, and utilizing what IP.Board 3 has to offer. Half of the IP.Tracker team will be developing 1.4. Also starting development at the same time, the other half of the team will start IP.Tracker 2.0, 2.0 promises to be an extremely powerful system and highly configurable. We are hoping to branch out into more of a project management system, providing you with everything you need to completely manage your projects: timelines, discussions, tickets, file management etc. More information will come later this year, and a release is expected next year. We hope you enjoy the 1.3 series, and of our plans for the future. To read a more detailed change log for IP.Tracker 1.3.0 from RC 2, please read this topic, or to visit the download please click here.

IP.Converge is designed to be an open platform allowing any application to share a common authentication method. This allows sites on different servers, and using different products, to let users access it with a 'global' login. Unfortunately due to limitations within IP.Converge, only a handful of IPS applications utilised it. However, with the recent introduction of IP.Converge 1.1, functionality has been added to allow 3rd-party applications which use a different password hashing system, to integrate with Converge itself. Being able to integrate popular products seamlessly was an opportunity we simply could not miss! We have noticed that modifications integrating products such as Joomla and Wordpress with IP.Board were so commonly requested, that we had to do something about it. Introducing IP.Converge Modules As many of you will be aware of, we have a team of Community Developers who actively develop and maintain our community-projects; IP.Tracker and IP.Shoutbox. We now have a new project that has been in development for some time, IP.Converge Modules. We are starting off with modules for integrating Joomla, WordPress and WordPress MU with IP.Converge and further modules will follow in the near future. You may have read our community developers talking about the development of these on the forums already. This new range of community projects should prove a popular addition. Available for beta testing, we currently have IPC.Joomla and IPC.WordPress, a separate module is available for WordPress MU users (IPC.WordPress MU). These Converge-ready applications will integrate your existing Converge applications with these popular products. If you wanted to, you could link up multiple Joomla/WordPress installations with your IP.Board, as Converge supports this very well. For the first release, the modules will offer simple integration compatible with IP.Converge, however in the near future more extension sets will be available for download. These extension sets will each offer a different level of integration for the products, but for now we are simply focusing on integrating these popular products. To avoid confusion surrounding the products named 'JIB' and 'WIB' developed by Brandon D, IPC.Joomla, IPC.WordPress and IPC.WordPress MU are in fact the new 'JIB' and 'WIB'. Brandon D has been leading this new community project, and therefore work on his two old projects has been carried over to this community project. You can download the beta releases of these Converge modules here, and the new forums have now been revealed, please feel free to ask any questions there! The Resource site's community project page has also been updated to reflect this new addition! Finally, a new bug tracker project has been set up to allow you to report bugs in these modules. These converge modules require the PHP version that the product requires, for example to install IPC.Joomla, you will need a PHP version which is compatible with Joomla itself. IP.Converge 1.1.0 RC 2 To go alongside this release, the second release-candidate of IP.Converge is now available for download for those with an active IP.Board license. Please continue to report any bugs you find in the IP.Converge bug tracker. In order to install the Converge modules, you must be using at least IP.Converge 1.1 RC 2. We hope that these new two projects will go a long way and prove to be a very popular addition.

We are pleased to announce that the beta releases of IP.Shoutbox 1.0.0 and IP.Tracker 1.2.0 are now available for immediate download! IP.Tracker IP.Tracker is a bug/issue tracking system, it allows members and staff to track certain issues, for examples, bugs within a project you are working on, or even building a house! IP.Tracker supports statuses, severities, and much much more to bring you an extensible Tracker to use however you wish to. IP.Tracker 1.2.0 builds upon what was available in previous releases, whilst adding vital features such as sub-projects, custom fields, an advanced search library, and better database recognition of when an issue has been read. IP.Tracker 1.2.0 has been developed by the Tracker team (krocheck, Jaggi, and Alex) but as stated in a previous blog entry, we will be introducing ways so that you, the community, can assist coding features, and fixing bugs. Here is a list of the main changes in IP.Tracker 1.2.0 Subprojects - We have added functionality allowing you to add subprojects to an existing projectCustom Fields - Custom fields have now been implemented, and are very advanced, you can choose to only show a custom field in a certain project, and in the project edit screen, you can edit how custom fields are display in that particular project. Custom fields now also support permissionsAdvanced Search - We have now added advanced search to IP.Tracker, and you can also search within a particular issueDatabase recognition - We have changed how the database records if an issue is read, and there are no longer issues with it, as cookies are no longer used. We have also changed how issue changes are recorded to allow better recognition (statuses, severities etc.)Last post information on project overview - A rather simple, but informative feature. Projects will now display last posts on the right hand column, just like IP.Board As said, these are the main features in 1.2.0, however when we are nearer a stable release, we will post a full changelog. We hope you like the changes in IP.Tracker, we certainly do! To discuss IP.Tracker 1.2.0, please use this topic. IP.Shoutbox IP.Shoutbox is our feature-rich chat room for your IP.Board without the need for Java, Flash or any other browser dependency! One of the main concerns people had about the base we chose for IP.Shoutbox was server load, and query counts. We are pleased to inform you that the two developers, myself, and Brandon have been going through the code to try and reduce this as much as possible, and we think you will be impressed. Wherever possible, the majority of the content is cached, and this has rapidly shown in the query count. The original base code has 16 queries per page load, IP.Shoutbox has as little as 8, 5 of those being IPB queries themselves. We have got IP.Shoutbox down to three queries per page load, we said you'd be impressed! 1.0 is mainly a code rewrite, however more features will be added in future releases once the new code base is complete. There are a few changes from the base modification, outlined below: No file edits - We promised we would do this, and we have, all that is needed is a simple skin edit, which also gives you the power of limiting the global shoutbox to certain skins!Moderators - IP.Shoutbox now supports both groups and individual members, whilst the base only supported individual members To discuss IP.Shoutbox, please use this topic. Lastly we would like to express huge thanks to the developers for these two, amazing products: krocheck, Jaggi, Alex, vadim88, and terabyte! As we said, this blog entry is a bit vague, but we will be posting more details over at the Community Projects page at IPS Resources when the time comes!

Since our recent updates to the resources site the feedback received has been great. We have managed to address a lot of the feedback, and we hope you like the changes we have made. One of the changes was the new Featured Resource. We have now revealed the featured resource for July, as usual, this page will go into a lot of detail about the resource, the author, and will also feature screenshots. We have also implemented the archive section which allows you to go back in time and view all previous featured resources we have had at IPS Resources. Now that is out of the way, we go onto the main part of this blog post, information regarding our two community projects: IP.Tracker, and IP.Shoutbox. IP.Tracker IP.Tracker 1.1.0 has been received brilliantly, and we recently released an update to address issues found in 1.1.0, we would like to thank everyone that took their time to help test the release and make it as good as possible! IP.Tracker is now splitting into two stages: 1.2.0 will be available for IP.Board 2.3.x as 1.1.0 was and will also be ported for IP.Board3. Shortly after that time, a new release will be out for IP.Board3 with new features (2.0.0), however it will only work on IP.Board3. Development has been rolling onto a stage where, in the next few weeks, we will be able to open up the beta testing process once again. IP.Tracker 1.2 builds and improves upon what was there in 1.1. Vital features such as sub-projects and custom fields are included with this release and we have finally rewrote the 'issue read' code. IP.Tracker can now tell whether you have read an issue or not, with no cookies! Other features included in this release include latest post information (the same as on the main board index). We are also implementing a few new changes to the system to better record when a status, severity, etc. has been changed, however, there is nothing new on your end for it at this present stage. We have implemented the changes to the system now to prepare us for 2.x.x. A couple of features which will be introduced need the code implementing now so the features have a lot of information to work off when they arrive. As it stands, IP.Tracker 1.2 is featured locked, and is again being worked on by the developers: Alex, krocheck, and Jaggi. However, we invite you to help us code the 2.x.x series, please read below to find out more! IP.Shoutbox Our community-driven shoutbox, IP.Shoutbox, is moving along nicely. We do not know of a release date for the first beta, and therefore we cannot give you much information about it. We'd like to make one thing clear, we have had a few users asking about the security of this modification because of the base we chose, please note, that said modification is a base for the project, and the end result will not resemble it at all in terms of code. The two developers, myself, and bfarber will be going through the code to make sure its safe, secure, and doesn't have high server loads. That's as much as we can really say on Shoutbox at this stage, but stay tuned for more updates! Community Projects - Redefining what 'community' means When we first announced the community-driven project scheme, we wanted it to be just that: community-driven. Many developers have told us that the main reason they cannot contribute to the projects is due to lack of up-to-date code. Over the past few weeks, we have been adding functionality to allow license holders to view the SVN code allowing you to code as we code. You will not be able to commit to our code, but upon release of IP.Tracker 1.2.0, there will be a subcategory setup for you to submit code changes, and bug fixes. This process is not yet complete and is still in development and will only start when IP.Tracker 1.2.0 is installed here at the company forums. We will keep you updated with news about this process and we hope this may encourage more of you to contribute to the community projects. Hopefully this blog entry has been of interest to you and we can't wait to be able to show you the previews of IP.Tracker, and IP.Shoutbox. They are shaping up to be brilliant products!

Thank you for your patience while we made our improvements to the resource site! There are some exciting changes we would like to point out to help you navigate through the new features. Homepage Updates We've made a few improvements to the homepage, with more to come. Immediately, you will notice we have separated the left column to show 'Top' listings and the right column to show 'Latest' listings. We've also separated out modifications and skins to help you more quickly find the latest updates you are interested in. Featured Resources Once a month we will be posting a resource spotlight in the new 'Featured Resources' section. In each spotlight we will give you an overview of the resource with some basic statistics and a link to view or download it, a list of features or highlights for the resource, some screenshots, and a short interview with the author. The resources will include anything submitted to the Downloads or Articles areas. Please be sure to check out the featured resource for June! Community Projects IP.Tracker has been out for some time and has been a huge success. As a result, we will slowly be introducing more community projects to our customers. Next up will be IP.Shoutbox - a fully functional and comprehensive shoutbox system for your forum. The project is based on Dean's "D22-Shoutbox" and he is working closely with us on updating and preparing it for release. More information to follow soon... In the mean time, please check out our new Community Projects page for more information on our community projects. IP.Tracker 1.1.0 The first, stable release of the 1.1 series for one of our community projects, IP.Tracker, is now available to download. Over the past few months, this new version has been tested among many of you and we would like to thankyou for your help in finding all the bugs in this release. Huge thanks to krocheck and Jaggi for doing their work on IP.Tracker, you've done a great job! Paid Resources There are hundreds of resources available for sale from many authors who contribute to this site, and many of our users are interested in these resources. There are some drawbacks here The user may have a hard time vouching for the trustworthiness of a paid resource The user may not know a specific resource they are interested in exists Paid resources are often not welcome on sites that host free resources for download, so authors have a hard time getting the word out about their work A user may not be sure which paid resource they are interested in if more than one solution fits their needs The resources site will now allow mod and skin authors to list paid resources in our download manager. The authors have to agree to certain guidelines, and if the guidelines are not met or maintained their work will be de-listed and not allowed back on the site. This helps users to verify that a solution is being properly maintained, fixed, updated and supported. Paid resources will show up with a small symbol in our downloads database so you will more quickly know if a file is for sale or not. Filters have been added to the bottom of the download pages so you can easily filter out (or in!) paid resources in the event you don't want to see them (or only want to see paid solutions). Payment for a third-party solution is handled by the third party directly, and the download link will take you to their site to complete the transaction and download the work. Consider our database a helpful listing so you can better realize what kind of options are available to you. Authors can consider our database a useful tool to help them advertise the work they've put so much time and effort into. Miscellaneous Our company forums have undergone a slight re-organization in the resource sections to help you better identify where topics should be posted and found. We've also added a "Most Recent Resources" feed at the top of the resource forums so you can stay up to date on new works submitted to the resource site. Additionally, at long last, the resources site is now linked from the main company website at http://invisionpower.com - we hope this helps everyone discover all of the resources we have available to them that they may never even have known existed. Finally, we would like to extend our sincerest thanks to our IPS Resources team for all of their hard work and dedication in expanding the resource site! We look forward to your feedback and hope you enjoy the updates!

In our efforts to improve the services offered to you through IPS Resources, we will soon be releasing another community-driven project, IP.Shoutbox. Much like IP.Tracker, this will be an IPS-sponsored project written by you, the community. We have approached two people who we feel will do a great job on IP.Shoutbox, these two are currently working very hard to produce a beta of the modification. The developers we have chosen are vadim88, and Shawn Dean. These two will keep you up-to-date regarding the status of this project via the IP.Shoutbox forum. IP.Shoutbox is based on Deans modification 'D22-Shoutbox', and he will be working very closely with us on this component. IP.Shoutbox has been written with IPB3 in mind, for example, the javascript uses the prototype library to allow the move to IPB3 be all that much easier, the code will be commented throughout so people looking to get involved will know what function is doing what, please remember, even though we have two developers who will start this project off, this is a community-driven project, if and when you find bugs, and you know how to fix them, please provide the fix as it makes it all that much easier for the developers! If you have code contributions, please feel free to submit them in the IP.Shoutbox forum, we welcome your input! As with all community projects, IP.Shoutbox will be offered for free via IPS Resources for current license holders. We will be posting more updates about this project and the updates coming to IPS Resources shortly.