Aiwa

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release
I made a quick video to demo things we have already announced for 4.2 so far.
Enjoy  

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release
IPS Community Suite comes with a default profile photo which is used when members have not set a profile photo for their account. While this model has served the software well for years, we felt it was time for an update to the software to keep pace with current internet trends. This has led to one of the latest changes you can expect to see with version 4.2: letter profile photos
When upgrading you will be asked if you wish to use letter profile photos, or if you wish to stick with the generic per-theme default profile photo that is used presently. You can change your mind any time after upgrading by adjusting the setting in the AdminCP as well.

AdminCP members list
We have tested many languages to ensure maximum compatibility. The font used in the image is automatically selected based upon the characters to be written to the image, so sites that have more than one language will see compatibility for all of the profile photos that are created automatically.
The colors are not set for each letter. You will notice in the screenshot that each "A" letter photo has a different color. They are chosen randomly when generated.

Letter photos in a sidebar widget
We hope that this change helps bring your communities to life with a little more style, flair, and uniqueness for each new user on your site.
 
Developer Note
The code is structured in such a manner that third party developers can further extend the feature with plugins. The methods for writing text to images are exposed through our central \IPS\Image class introducing new possibilities in your own custom code.

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
One of our more technically-oriented features for 4.2, we have added more detailed logs of user logins, and the devices and IP addresses used. This brings several new features:
 
Notification of a new device sign in
If enabled, users can receive an email notification when a new device is used to log into their account:
 

Email sent when a login from a new device is detected
When a user signs in for the first time, a special key is set to recognise the browser on subsequent logins. This mean the notification email does not trigger on a new IP address, which would be annoying when travelling or if using a network where the IP address changes regularly. Instead, the notification is only triggered if someone signs into your account from a new physical device or web browser.
 
UserCP Device Management
If enabled, a new page will show in the user's settings page showing all the devices which have been used to log into their within the last 90 days (which is recent enough that could still be logged in if "Remember Me" was checked).

Recently Used Devices
Users can see the device, browser, physical location (obtained by a GeoIP lookup) and if applicable, how the login was processed (for example, if the sign in was with Facebook or Twitter, this will show). If they chose "Remember Me" when logging in, they can undo that (handy if you realise you accidentally left yourself signed in on a public computer).
If they see anything they don't recognise, a page to walk them through the necessary steps to re-secure their account is available.

Secure Account Information
 
New Two-Factor Authentication Setting
"Logging into the front-end" is one of the options of when to prompt for Two Factor Authentication. In 4.2, this has been separated into two distinct settings:
Logging into the front-end from a new device Logging into the front-end from a known device If you enable the former, but not the latter, and the user has previously logged in devices, the system will automatically show an explanation to users alongside the other available recovery option. This can be useful especially if you do not want to offer other recovery options.
 
AdminCP Device Management
In the AdminCP, administrators can see all the device and IPs a member has used. They can also disable automatic login for any device.
 

Edit member page shows most recently used device and IP address
 
 
Viewing a device's details
The system can also detect if another user is using the same device and will show this in the list of devices.
  
Users sharing the same device
 

We are well into development on IPS Community Suite 4.2 and are excited to start announcing all the new features and improvements.
Our next big release is focused on engagement with your members. You will see enhancements to our Reputation system, new ways to encourage people to register on your community, and enhancements to existing features to make them more interactive. There are also entirely new capabilities we cannot wait to show you ranging from new ways to organize content to tools to help promote your community.
Version 4.2 also features a refreshed AdminCP and default front-end design. Theme changes in 4.2 are mostly in the CSS framework so your existing themes will either work without issue or require minor changes to work in the new version.
Over the next several weeks we will be posting news entries with previews of upcoming features fairly often. Be sure to follow our News section, our Facebook, or Twitter to stay up to date.
We expect IPS Community Suite 4.2 to be out in mid-2017 with a public preview available sooner.
Everyone at IPS has worked very hard on this update and we think you will love it!

We have had a question and answer feature in IPS Community Suite for some time and we are now happy to add Google Authenticator as another option. We have also combined the various options it a new Two Factor Authentication (2FA) section in the AdminCP with many more options.

Two Factor Authentication Settings
There are also new settings to control when a user is required (or not) to setup 2FA:

2FA Setup
You can control what areas will prompt for 2FA authentication:

2FA Area Control
And how the system should recover if a user cannot login via 2FA on their account:

2FA Recovery Settings
An administrator can configure these settings to tailor the security needs of their community. For example, you might want to require 2FA your admins and moderators but keep it optional for your members. 
On the front end your members will see a new Account Security section under their settings area.

Account Security Settings
Once authenticated, a user will then be able to enable various security options. For example, the Google Authenticator setup shows an easy to follow setup.

Google Authenticator Setup
We hope you enjoy this new level of system security. IPS has plans to add additional 2FA providers beyond Question and Answers and Google Authenticator. We will keep you updated!
 
This change will be in version 4.1.18 which is scheduled to be released in late January 2017.

IPS Community Suite allows for integrations with quite a few third party systems and also can embed content from external sites. We have added a whole new list of embed providers where you can just paste in a link to that site and a nice box will show up. For example, if I paste this link in normally:
https://twitter.com/invisionps/status/799269691579449344 I get:
You can do that will many popular sites already and we are adding a lot more:
codepen.io coub.com deviantart.com docs.com funnyordie.com gettyimages.com iFixit.com kickstarter.com meetup.com mixcloud.com mix.office.com on.aol.com reddit.com reverbnation.com screencast.com screenr.com slideshare.net smugmug.com ustream.tv Google Maps Once you enable Google Maps under Community Enhancements by entering your Google API key you can them just paste in a link to a Google Map location. So when you paste a link to a Google Map in an editor it shows like this:

Google Maps in Editor
The maps are also interactive on the screen.
REST API
We have also added quite a few more endpoints, particularly in member management, to our REST API. If you are not already familiar with the REST API it is a great way to integrate external systems with IPS Community Suite. You can both fetch and modify data in the Suite via the API. REST API documentation...
Third Party Diagnostics
This is a bit more of a technical feature so feel free to skip if it does not interest you. If you use third party plugins or applications from our Marketplace or from other sites you may occasionally encounter issues in the Suite caused by those items but it is often hard to know the root issue. There are now tools in the AdminCP to show all places in the code that third party items are modifying to help with diagnosing issues. The Suite will now also try to detect if an error it encounters is referencing a third party plugin and suggest you disable it to see if the issue is resolved.
New Support Tool

Simplified Support Tool
Though not specifically about embeds or integrations, the new Support Tool does better help diagnose issues so I thought I would give it a nice shout out. It really does help to find server problems, database issues, or outdated files that might interfere with your site. It also makes support so much easier if you submit your ticket to us via the Support Tool as it sends along a temporary login (if you allow it) for us to use. The new design simplifies the tool down to just one step and it gives you a report and suggested actions.
 
This change will be in version 4.1.17 which is scheduled to be released in early December 2016.

We are improving our integration options with analytics tracking services to better track and credit all page views. Our focus here was to add the ability for IPS Community Suite to communicate with your analytics tracking provider of choice when it does page change events that do not otherwise get tracked.
Some tracking providers do not understand that an inline AJAX page load (one that loads new content without a full page refresh) should still count as a new page. Even though your browser did not do a full reload, all your content is different so it should count in your metrics.
To solve this issue, IPS Community Suite can now automatically put in custom code to execute on pagination. We include Google Analytics and Piwik code by default and there is also an option to include your own custom pagination event code for other services.

Analytics in AdminCP
If you already have your Google Analytics code in our existing (basic) analytics system then the Suite will detect this on upgrade and automatically enable the new pagination tracking. The screenshot above shows the "Other" option if you do not use Google Analytics or Piwik. If you have other providers you want us to consider just post a feedback topic.
Note: be sure that you embed Google Analytics into your Suite using the built-in analytics system. If you simply pasted the code into your theme templates then we cannot automatically enable the new tracking.
We hope this new feature allows for easier integration with analytics tracking providers and also gives you much better insight into your traffic by properly counting all the page views you may currently be missing out on!
 
This change will be in version 4.1.17 which is scheduled to be released in early December 2016.

I'm pleased to announce we're finally ready to open our new Developers area. The aim of this project has been to improve our existing developer documentation by building a central place to contain it, as well as update and expand the content available.
As of today, we have the regular documentation and REST API documentation ready to use. Over the coming weeks and months, we'll be expanding what's available further, going into more detail about the tools available within the framework. We've also started work on comprehensive Getting Started guides, that will walk you through simple developer projects from start to finish - these will be available soon, once they're complete.
If there's a particular aspect of IPS4 development that you don't feel is adequately catered for right now, please let us know! This will help us direct our efforts to the most useful places.
Enjoy!

In line with our aim to make incremental improvements in each release, I wanted to go over a few of the small but useful changes to the personal messenger that you'll find in our next release, 4.1.13.
 
Read/unread filtering
The first improvement is that you can now filter the message list by read and unread, making it a little easier to browse through just the messages you're interested in.
 
Search improvements
Next up, the messenger search has been improved in a couple of ways; first, you can now also search the names of both the recipients and the senders, and second, we've added a menu so you can specify which fields in particular you want to search by.
 
Easier moving
Finally, we've added a popular request - the ability to use the mass-move tool inside the messenger. You can now check multiple messages, and the usual mass-action toolbar will appear that will allow you either move them to another folder, or, has been the case in the past, delete them.
 
While these are each small improvements by themselves, we hope the incremental changes in each release add up to a more pleasant experience for users. 

Our Pages CMS is one of our most popular applications as we are continuing to improve it based on feedback. New in 4.1.13 includes:
Designer’s Mode HTML Editing
This update allows you to edit your HTML mode pages inside the designer's mode file system. Any edits you make, once saved in your text editor are instantly available which makes it much faster to build HTML pages with Pages.

 
Database Template Improvements
We listened to a lot of feedback about templating within the AdminCP for Pages and one common request was for a way to delete a group of database templates and to rename those groups. When you import databases, the template group names are created unique but you may want to change this to something more memorable. You will see here that the dialog also shows you which databases this template is used.

 
Page titles when using databases
Currently, when you add a database to a page, the page title is replaced with the database name. This may not always be desirable, and you may want the page title to remain in all database URLs (such as record view). There is now an option for this per database.

Relational Field Improvements
Now when you create a relational link between databases, you can opt to show which records link to the relational record. To give you an example, say you had a database for actors, and a database for movies, and you created a link on the actors record to show which movies they star in; now when viewing the movie, it will show you a list of the actors.

 
More Filterable Fields
We added both "Date" and "YesNo" field types to be filterable when viewing a list of records. When you use the Date type, you can select a date range for listing articles.

We also added the ability to use any custom field set as filterable to be used when creating a database feed widget.

 
Unique Fields
Another popular request was to allow a way to force unique entries for custom fields. This means that when enabled, only one record per database can have the same value. This is enabled when creating or editing a field.

 
Other improvements
You can now quickly delete an entire media folder via the AdminCP.

You can now quickly see which databases are used on which pages via the AdminCP page list.

 
And we added a way to programatically fetch a custom field value via the $record object. Currently, you need to use something like $record->field_12 which works well until you import that database to another installation. The fields are renumbered so this syntax no longer works. We made it possible to use the field key like so $record->field_{my_key_name_here}. Not only does this solve the issue when importing databases, it is also much more readable and easier to remember!

Often when you are reading a topic, comments, or other posts, you will see team members replying. Although IPS Community Suite already allows groups to set up custom images and member titles, these replies can get lost in the noise.
Version 4.1.13 now allows you to switch on post highlighting per member group. This makes sure the reply stands out from the rest of the replies.

 
Of course, this feature works everywhere; from calendar comments to article replies.

 
The feature is switched on via the Group form in the ACP.

 
You can edit the look of the highlighting via the theme’s settings which allows for different color schemed per-theme.

 
We have also ensured that theme designers can get the most out of the system by embedding a data attribute noting the group of the author. This means that you can add custom CSS to use different colours per member group.

 
 
 
We think post highlighting will be a simple way to bring attention to member posts in groups that you define.
 
 

We are currently beta testing our next release, 4.1.12, which contains hundreds of bug fixes, dozens of improvements, as well as a handful of new features. I wanted to introduce one of those new features: post preview.
Long-time users of our software will know that a post preview function was a standard feature, but we took the decision to not include it in the initial IPS4 release. It had a couple of drawbacks:
it only applied to certain pages, such as topic view - other WYSIWYG editors simply didn't get a preview the workflow wasn't very good for modern web apps, requiring a round-trip to the server and a full page refresh When IPS4 was released, we felt that the built-in rendering of the editor was a sufficient preview of how the end result would appear. However, while analyzing ongoing customer and user feedback for IPS4 in its first year of release, we have seen that a preview still has a use. There are some circumstances when a true WYSIWYG experience is just not possible such as using more advanced formatting (like LaTeX) or when admins create certain custom editor plugins.
As a result, we rethought post preview. We wanted to ensure that all editors could be previewed, and that it didn't have a clunky workflow. In addition, since IPS4 uses a responsive theme, we wanted to give users the opportunity to preview how their post would look on different devices.
Here's the result, and what will be available in 4.1.12:

Post preview in IPS Community Suite 4.1.12
The preview is shown by clicking a new button on the toolbar (meaning it can be moved, removed, etc. just like the other default buttons). When the preview loads, the toolbar allows the user to resize it to different device sizes. If they are on desktop, they can also view it at tablet at phone sizes; on a tablet, it can also be viewed at phone size.
So now we not only show a true preview of what content will look like when posted, but we also allow you to preview how it will look on other devices. Of course that preview is just a best-guess since different devices have different window sizes but it does give you an idea.
We hope this reimagining of an old feature for a more modern web will please end-users and make posting content a more accurate process. Stay tuned for more updates on what's included in 4.1.12!
Version 4.1.12 is currently in beta testing and should be released in the next two weeks.

When IPS4 encounters an error (be it a simple 404 Not Found or a more complex configuration issue), the user sees a standard built-in error page. That's fine in many cases, but did you know you can create your own error page using our Pages app?
This is a particularly good approach for communities that use Pages for their website too. If you have built a website theme, the standard error page may not fit with your visual style, so building your own error page allows you to improve it. You might want to show some helpful links to other parts of your website, for example.
 
Creating your error page
The first step is creating your error page in Pages. Note that for this page, you must create a manual page - the Page Builder tool can't be used in this case.
In order to show the error on your page, there's two special tags you should insert in the page content. When your page is shown in response to an error, Pages will swap out these tags for the relevant text. They are:
{error_code}
Replaced with the technical error code for this error. This code identifies the exact piece of code that triggered the error, and can be given to IPS support technicians to help diagnose problems. {error_message}
Replaced with a human-friendly description of the error that occurred.  
Configuring Pages to use the error page
Next, set Pages to display the error page. You do this in the Pages section; click the Advanced Settings button, and select your page from the list. Note that this will replace all error pages across the suite - not just errors triggered by Pages itself!
 
Have a request for a theme tip? Let us know in the comments and we'll try and help out in a future tip!