Fast Lane!

Great idea

Hola!
There's an option that's not yet created for Club creation permissions that I'd love to see. A combination of "Closed" and "Read Only"
I would love this:
Everyone can see the club and its posts, but only members can participate. Users need to ask a leader to join.
I want everyone to be able to see Club topics on my homepage (including guests), but instead of needing to be invited my a club leader to join, they request to join (versus just automatically being able to join themselves). 
Thoughts? 

2018-12-30_18-26-10.mp4

This is a GREAT idea.  I've seen it on other sites.   Heck even a landing page with helpful information or a youtube video would be nice.

Hey team, I had an idea for an application...
I would love for when a member logs in for the first time, or something is launched on your forum, to visually show some cues - literally pointing to important parts of the website.
For example, a member logs in, and most of the screen darkens except for the "Create" button at the top and a message pops up saying "This is how to create a new topic." 
Or "This is where to view your profile" or "This is where to leave a comment," that kind of thing. They can click "Got it" and the mini tutorial disappears. 
It would be useful for current members when rolling out a new feature, too. 
I find that new members are overwhelmed with the amount that can be done. I want to make it very easy and clear for them.
Thoughts?

While your competitors add AMP support and jump ahead of you in rankings, they will cheer your defiance all the way to page 2 or 3 of Google's search results.

Exactly. Our community's are supported by advertising which comes from traffic which comes from Google search engine rankings. Like it or not. 

This is true

Google keeps my lights on and my site running financially

While your competitors add AMP support and jump ahead of you in rankings, they will cheer your defiance all the way to page 2 or 3 of Google's search results.

Google disagrees.  And they provide $$ to keep the lights on for the Publishers that run the sites.  That matters. A lot. 
 
Oh and they rank you better too with AMP. 

Google disagrees.  And they provide $$ to keep the lights on for the Publishers that run the sites.  That matters. A lot. 
 
Oh and they rank you better too with AMP. 

Bum bump.  This would be huge!  IPB is sooo heavy on mobile.  This would help a lot. 

To double down, I'm not talking about an interactive page... just page 1.  You can "click to read more:" and go to page 2 or more.  Since page 1 gets all the link juice we want it to be as fast as possible == AMP.

Hi there.  I was invited to Google several times over the last year as part of a group of Publishers and one of my major take aways is that AMP is a big deal in the Google sphere. Both for SEO and monitization. 
Does IPB have any intention to make topics linked from Google Search on Mobile, AMP friendly?  It would be a huge win speed wise and SEO ranking wise, relative to their mobile first approach. Same comment on Pages.
WordPress is killing us since they have a plug-in to bring AMP to their pages with relative ease. Many of my competitors use both that and YOAST quite successfully. 
 
 

Agreed we should have more focus on this area. Would help a lot. 

UserPhoto template... these changes will ad it for basic user photos across the suite.  In post images are TBD on updating...
{{if $member->member_id and \IPS\Member::loggedIn()->canAccessModule( \IPS\Application\Module::get( 'core', 'members' ) )}} {{$memberURL = ( $warningRef ) ? $member->url()->setQueryString( 'wr', $warningRef ) : $member->url();}} <a href="{$memberURL}" {{if $hovercard}}data-ipsHover data-ipsHover-target="{$memberURL->setQueryString( 'do', 'hovercard' )}"{{endif}} class="ipsUserPhoto ipsUserPhoto_{$size}{{if $classes}} {$classes}{{endif}}" title="{lang="view_user_profile" sprintf="$member->name"}"> <img src='{$member->photo}' loading='lazy' alt='{$member->name}'> </a> {{else}} <span class='ipsUserPhoto ipsUserPhoto_{$size} {{if $classes}}{$classes}{{endif}}'> <img src='{$member->photo}' loading='lazy' alt='{$member->name}'> </span> {{endif}}  

Up vote x100. For this if us that send millions of emails a month... this is a HUGE savings. 

I think IPB should migrate to this now since it's a standard versus custom.  Custom requires in-house support of the code which alone is a decent reason to swap over. It also requires additional JavaScript overhead that is no longer required. 

Lazy load is only for images; not ads.  Google would never torpedo their core product.

Do we know when 4.4.5 will be released? I've been tracking many comments by IPB staff that mention upgrades to improve mobile page speed. At least for me, my mobile performance is abismal compared to desktop. Too many uneeded JavaScript and stylesheets being loaded. Also just a DOM heavy pageload. Small things like the notification sound Js/audio loading when it doesn't need to. 

Everything is posted in my first reply is set up once and then it runs automated. The only thing manual is if you have direct sales that you manage via DFP (Admanager).  I would always use Admanager up front since you will end up there if you scale.  AdSense is integrated. You can set it up to keep your reporting in AdSense. 

Here is what we do, at a high level.  We are fairly optimized but there are many alternate routes that can obtain great performance.  Ezoic is a good example.  Avoid passbacks -- use header/server-server bidding.  Passbacks kill CPM.
We leverage Google Ad Manager as our ad server (previously known as DFP).  We use header bidding via the opensource prebid.js script.  We have roughly 5 header bidding partners in the stack.  You have to negotiate these deals one by one and can get better splits with them (20-25%).  In addition to this we fold server-server bidding into the prebid header via both Amazon (UAM in this case, https://aps.amazon.com/aps/index.html) and Media.net.  Google adsense competes with everything on a price priority level.  Basically, Adsense has incredible fill (every impression almost always filled) but not always the highest rates (and they take a ~32% cut).  ref: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en
If you are not familiar with header bidding (or server to server) it works like this.  On every page load the header bidding code (prebid.js for example) will query all your header bidding ad partners for them to "bid" on your on-page inventory in a "blind" fashion (best bid without knowing what anyone else bids).  As a part of your header, the server-server auction occurs as well where those ad networks/partners will provide their bids.  After a set time (typically you set to around 700ms or so) the auction ends and all bids are passed back to Google Ad Manager.  Google also then bids on your inventory (blind to the other bids).  The highest bid wins.  Since your header bidding ad partners typically pay more but have less "fill" you end up with a situation where they win say 10-30% of the time and pay you a lot more on a CPM basis (and you may negotiate a cut of 20-25% with them versus 32% to Adsense).  The rest of the time adsense will win and fill the remaining inventory.  The net effect is you make more.
If I had to pick one network to use if you don't have time for many others, then I'd probably pick Amazon UAM in concert with Admanager, with adsense set up in price priorty.  AUM has a solid set of ad networks they pull in, and they also allow direct Amazon ads (re-targeting, yay!) to your users which convert and hence pay well.  There are no pass-backs since in this config its actually all server-server bidding w/ Admanager and adsense competing on price priority.
So back to the forum.  Some ideas.
Mobile:
320x50 (or 100) ad above the topic but under the topic title.  300x250 ad under post 1.  Another 300x250 ad somewhere around post 8 (assume 15 posts per page).  300x250 ad under the last post but before the reply box.  On the index and forums pages, put a 320x50/100 at the top and one at the bottom.  On the forum index if you have tons of forums then place an ad in the middle between categories.
Desktop:
Do the above, but use 728x90 ads instead of 320x50/100 and 300x250.  Also ad a 160x600 ad unit on topic pages on the right.  Make sure (this is important) that in the Admanager code you have custom ad sizes for each browser width. This is important so when someone shrinks the screen and IPB hides the right column in the responsive view, that ad is not called on a page load.  That can be a major no no. You do this as follows in the page header (ref Google docs for more info.. this is just the key code elements):
for browsers wider than 980 pixels show the 160x600 pixel ad.  Else show nothing (no ad)
var mapping_skyscraper = googletag.sizeMapping(). addSize([980, 200], [160, 600]). addSize([0, 0], []). build(); googletag.defineSlot('/123456/Forums-Topic-Side', [160, 600], 'div-gpt-ad-123456-1').defineSizeMapping(mapping_skyscraper).addService(googletag.pubads()); Also, to show mobile ads versus desktop it is as simple as mapping like below, where above 768 pixels wide will show the 728x90 ad and below that will show a 300x250 ad unit (on page load):
var mapping_leader_rectangle = googletag.sizeMapping(). addSize([768, 200], [728, 90]). addSize([0, 0], [300, 250]). Now more advanced, you can do things like put conditional statements in the templates to not show certain ad units to members with post counts higher than some amount.  I find that useful to reward frequent posters.  Or you can filter by groups.  This is all custom but not that hard.
Hope that helps some.  I didn't proof my above notes too well so pardon any short hand or typos!
 
 
Note, I'm not sure on the UAM minimum page views to be accepted.  If they don't let ya in then you can certainly find many header bidding partners that will let you in.  
https://www.google.com/search?q=best+header+bidding+partners

Here is what we do, at a high level.  We are fairly optimized but there are many alternate routes that can obtain great performance.  Ezoic is a good example.  Avoid passbacks -- use header/server-server bidding.  Passbacks kill CPM.
We leverage Google Ad Manager as our ad server (previously known as DFP).  We use header bidding via the opensource prebid.js script.  We have roughly 5 header bidding partners in the stack.  You have to negotiate these deals one by one and can get better splits with them (20-25%).  In addition to this we fold server-server bidding into the prebid header via both Amazon (UAM in this case, https://aps.amazon.com/aps/index.html) and Media.net.  Google adsense competes with everything on a price priority level.  Basically, Adsense has incredible fill (every impression almost always filled) but not always the highest rates (and they take a ~32% cut).  ref: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en
If you are not familiar with header bidding (or server to server) it works like this.  On every page load the header bidding code (prebid.js for example) will query all your header bidding ad partners for them to "bid" on your on-page inventory in a "blind" fashion (best bid without knowing what anyone else bids).  As a part of your header, the server-server auction occurs as well where those ad networks/partners will provide their bids.  After a set time (typically you set to around 700ms or so) the auction ends and all bids are passed back to Google Ad Manager.  Google also then bids on your inventory (blind to the other bids).  The highest bid wins.  Since your header bidding ad partners typically pay more but have less "fill" you end up with a situation where they win say 10-30% of the time and pay you a lot more on a CPM basis (and you may negotiate a cut of 20-25% with them versus 32% to Adsense).  The rest of the time adsense will win and fill the remaining inventory.  The net effect is you make more.
If I had to pick one network to use if you don't have time for many others, then I'd probably pick Amazon UAM in concert with Admanager, with adsense set up in price priorty.  AUM has a solid set of ad networks they pull in, and they also allow direct Amazon ads (re-targeting, yay!) to your users which convert and hence pay well.  There are no pass-backs since in this config its actually all server-server bidding w/ Admanager and adsense competing on price priority.
So back to the forum.  Some ideas.
Mobile:
320x50 (or 100) ad above the topic but under the topic title.  300x250 ad under post 1.  Another 300x250 ad somewhere around post 8 (assume 15 posts per page).  300x250 ad under the last post but before the reply box.  On the index and forums pages, put a 320x50/100 at the top and one at the bottom.  On the forum index if you have tons of forums then place an ad in the middle between categories.
Desktop:
Do the above, but use 728x90 ads instead of 320x50/100 and 300x250.  Also ad a 160x600 ad unit on topic pages on the right.  Make sure (this is important) that in the Admanager code you have custom ad sizes for each browser width. This is important so when someone shrinks the screen and IPB hides the right column in the responsive view, that ad is not called on a page load.  That can be a major no no. You do this as follows in the page header (ref Google docs for more info.. this is just the key code elements):
for browsers wider than 980 pixels show the 160x600 pixel ad.  Else show nothing (no ad)
var mapping_skyscraper = googletag.sizeMapping(). addSize([980, 200], [160, 600]). addSize([0, 0], []). build(); googletag.defineSlot('/123456/Forums-Topic-Side', [160, 600], 'div-gpt-ad-123456-1').defineSizeMapping(mapping_skyscraper).addService(googletag.pubads()); Also, to show mobile ads versus desktop it is as simple as mapping like below, where above 768 pixels wide will show the 728x90 ad and below that will show a 300x250 ad unit (on page load):
var mapping_leader_rectangle = googletag.sizeMapping(). addSize([768, 200], [728, 90]). addSize([0, 0], [300, 250]). Now more advanced, you can do things like put conditional statements in the templates to not show certain ad units to members with post counts higher than some amount.  I find that useful to reward frequent posters.  Or you can filter by groups.  This is all custom but not that hard.
Hope that helps some.  I didn't proof my above notes too well so pardon any short hand or typos!
 
 
Note, I'm not sure on the UAM minimum page views to be accepted.  If they don't let ya in then you can certainly find many header bidding partners that will let you in.  
https://www.google.com/search?q=best+header+bidding+partners

My vote is to follow the web standard versus having a "heavy" native/custom solution. It's easier on IPB to maintain and better for speed overall. 

That's pretty awesome.  We have a fairly tech neutral audience and chrome is nearly 50% of our users.