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LaCollision

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  1. Like
    LaCollision reacted to Ryan Ashbrook for a blog entry, New: Complete Your Profile   
    Completing long and complex forms online is tedious. It can be off putting having to fill in a lot of information before you can join a site or service. You may find that potential members never bother to convert from a visitor.
    How to convert guests into regular members is an often asked question. The simple answer is to lower the barrier to entry. Invision Community 4 already allows you to register with Facebook, Twitter, and other networks with ease.
    "Complete My Profile" is a system that will lower the barrier of conversion. Guests only have to complete a very basic form to gain membership. Members are then asked to complete any custom profile fields you require.
    You can also set up steps that group items together to encourage existing members to add more information to their public profile.
    Members with a complete profile and user photo provide others with much more engagement and personality.
    Registering
    If we look at registering first. Clicking "Sign Up" will only show a simple modal form with as few fields as possible.

     
    If you have required steps, and after any member validation flow, the complete your profile wizard is shown.

     
    This enforces required fields and the member cannot skip them or view other pages until completed.
    Of course, you may have steps that are not set to required. These are available too, but are skippable. Members can complete skipped steps later.

     
    A dismissible progress bar shows to members that have uncompleted steps. Once dismissed, it no longer displays in the header of the site.

     
    This same progress bar is always shown in the members' settings overview panel, in the user control panel. This will prompt members with incomplete steps.

     
    If you set up a new required step, members have to complete the step before being able to browse again. This will ensure that all regular members have completed profiles.
    Admin Control Panel
    You will create new steps in the Admin Control Panel. Each step can contain multiple elements of a single group. This step can be set to required to enforce completion or suggested to allow it to be skipped.

     
    The basic profile group contains things like user photo, birthday and cover photo. Choose any of these for this step.

     
    The custom profile field group contains any fields you have set up already.

     
    You can switch off this system if you feel it does not fit your needs. When disabled, you get the normal registration form.

     
    Reducing the complexity of membership can only help convert more guests into contributing members. Enforcing required steps ensures that you capture data across your membership.
    We hope you enjoy this feature and you see an increase in guest conversion with Invision Community 4.2.
     
  2. Like
    LaCollision reacted to Rikki for a blog entry, New: Richer Embeds   
    This is an entry about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
    You are probably already familiar with our content embedding feature in IPS Community Suite. When a link to content in the community is pasted into the editor (e.g. a topic, or a post, or a gallery image, etc.) it is automatically expanded into a preview of the content, usually with an accompanying image, allowing users to click through to that content if they are interested.

    An embedded Gallery image in IPS Community Suite 4.1
    While it has proved a useful feature to members, each embed used essentially the same structure - a small thumbnail on the left, a title, and a few lines of text. This works fine for topics, but isn't ideal for other kinds of rich content that might be posted.
    In IPS Community Suite 4.2, we greatly improved upon our embedding handling, giving every type of content within every application its own customized embed style, allowing that content to be displayed however works best. This means larger high-res previews of Gallery images, a button to download a file right from the embed for Downloads files, showing a map for Calendar events, and so on. We worked to keep a consistent overall style between apps, but allow each to display its own relevant information.
    For users, things will work exactly as they do now - they simply paste a link to content, and it will continue to expand automatically. The changes are also backwards compatible. Any existing embeds in your community will automatically show the new styling you see below - no rebuilding necessary.
    So with that in mind, let's take a look what the new embeds look like! I won't show every single embed here because there's a huge number, but I'll try and give you a feel for how we approached the embed styles for each app.

    Gallery Image

    Comment on a Gallery Image

    Gallery Album

    Forum Topic

    Downloads File

    Review on a Downloads File

    Calendar Event

    Comment on a Calendar Event

    Commerce Product

    Record from a Pages database
    I hope that gives you a good overview of what to expect when your users try out the new embeds for themselves. As always, please share your feedback in the comments below!
     
  3. Like
    LaCollision reacted to Mark for a blog entry, New: Editor Uploading   
    This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release
    IPS Community Suite has supported drag and drop uploading to the attachments area at the bottom of the editor since 4.0. In 4.2 we're pleased to add the ability to drag and drop right into the editor, so you can drop your attachment exactly where you want it to show without having to add it afterwards.

    Drag and drop into editor
    If your browser and OS supports it you can also copy and paste, either from the desktop or from other content on the web:

    Copy and Paste
    Naturally this works for ordinary files as well as images:

    Drag and drop a file
     
  4. Like
    LaCollision reacted to Matt for a blog entry, New: Promoting Content   
    There are many strategies for growing your community, such as newsletters, mailing lists and advertising on other sites.
    IPS Community Suite 4.2 puts a new tool at your disposal: promotions.
    There’s no denying the popularity of social media. Worldwide, Facebook has 1.86 billion users active monthly. Every day, millions of people are using Facebook to speak with friends, to talk about their interests and to find new people to connect with.
    Of that 1.86 billion people, a good portion of those are actively discussing topics your forum covers. There is a huge opportunity to tap into social media to join in the discussion and to promote your community and provide a venue to carry on the discussion.
    For a while, we’ve had social media log in extensions, which means that your users can sign into your community simply by clicking a relevant button. We’ve also had the ability to share things to a personal Facebook account. These tools are great for your users, but how do they help you, forum owner?
    IPS Community Suite 4.2 introduces a way to promote your content directly to your brand’s Facebook page and your brand’s Twitter account.
    You can curate fun and engaging topics and share them. The workflow is simple. Simply browse your community and queue up interesting topics, comments, gallery items, blog posts or database articles for posting throughout the day to your brand’s social media accounts. You choose the schedule, the hashtags and the wording to send.
    Let’s look at the feature set in more detail.
    Your first stop is to set up the feature from the admin panel. The system will guide you through the necessary steps of connecting your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Once Facebook has been set up, you can select any page that you are an administrator of on Facebook.
     

    The admin panel also offers scheduling options and permissions.
     

    You can pre-set the times for when content will be posted. Facebook and Twitter both have analytic tools to determine when your visitors are most frequently online. A good tip here is to set the time to a slightly odd number, so 11:45am is better than 12:00pm as you are likely to catch the attention of someone waiting for lunch, or a lunchtime meeting.
     

    You have full control over who can promote items to your social media accounts. You can specify by group or pick individual members who may not be in those groups.
    Now that you’ve set up the backend, we can get promoting.
    Each item, that is a topic, gallery album, blog entry or article has its own Promote button.

     
    Each post and comment can also be shared individually, which is an easy way to share great content your visitors add to existing conversations.

     
    Clicking this brings up the sharer.

     
    This is where you can customize the text that is sent out to each social media channel. You’ll also notice space to promote this item within your own community in addition (or instead of) Facebook or Twitter, we will explore that shortly.
    The sharer is smart enough to pull attachments already added in the post, and you can upload your own images to be sent. Generally, shared items that have an image get better organic reach than just text alone so you’ll almost always want to choose or add an image. Twitter can use up to 4 images, and Facebook allows 1000 pictures per album, but you’ll never want to upload that many!

     
    Once you’ve filled out your content and picked your images, you can schedule the promotion. Generally, you’ll want to use the auto schedule option as this allows you to just stack up multiple items and let the auto scheduler post the items according to your pre-set schedule. You can also set a specific date and time if you are looking to run a promotion or other time sensitive event.


    The promoted content viewed in Facebook and Twitter
    It’s easy to see the status of your queued and sent items from the moderator view.

     
    This area allows you to see previous promotions and modify pending promotions.
    Earlier, we mentioned that the system has the ability to promote content internally. Promoting items to your own community lets you, the community manager, curate interesting items and comments and present this to your community. This is a great way to allow your visitors to explore content you think they’d enjoy.

     
    Promoting content to your community via Our Picks also allow you to promote content if you cannot or choose not to use social networks. It has the advantage that social networks do not have over a community platform like IPS Community Suite: consistency. The content on your community is always there whereas a social network is all about right here right now. Miss it and you miss out. On your community you can engage and re-engage a subject all you want. 
    Of course, we’ve built a widget that you can drag and drop to most pages to make this curated list more visible.
    IPS Community Suite 4.2 gives you, the site owner and community manager the tools you need to reach out and engage new users already discussing the topics on social media your community covers. With single click sign in and the built in retention functionality the suite offers, you’ll have a powerful way of growing your user base. It furthers that goal by created a list of that promoted content for continual reference and promotion for visitors already on your site.
    We’ve got lots more to discuss on this subject, and in the coming months we’ll be putting together some guides on social media best practices and how to leverage Facebook’s excellent post promotion / pay per click tools to further boost your site’s visibility to social media users.
    We’re here to help you make a success of your community and to give social media users a venue for when they outgrow Facebook.
  5. Like
    LaCollision reacted to Rikki for a blog entry, New: Reactions   
    This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
    IPS Community Suite has long had a reputation system; first we had a simple up/down system, later updated to introduce a Likes system as an alternative. Whichever system you chose to use, it tied in with our reputation system.
    We're pleased to introduce the latest updates to the reputation system, and it's something that has been requested for quite some time: Reactions.
    Quite simply, reactions allow users to offer more fine-grained sentiments towards content than a simple up/down or 'like'. They are now in common usage on social networks, and so users expect to be able to be more nuanced in their response to something they see.
    Let's see how they work in a post, and then cover the options you'll have available.

    What you see above is the default setup for a site that has used the Like system in version 4.1. We include 5 reactions by default:
    Like Thanks Confused Sad Haha If you currently use the older style up/down reputation system, don't fret - you'll still get the new reactions on upgrade, but they'll be disabled by default and instead the new reaction UI will show up/down reactions. This gives you the flexibility to decide which of the new reactions, if any, you want to allow.
    So, those are the basics - but what configuration options can you expect to see? First, you can of course add your own reactions! We expect that beyond the default reactions you'd expect to find, some sites will want reaction types specific to their use-case. On an intranet, you might want to have 'agree' and 'disagree' reactions for staff to use when responding to discussions. On a gaming community, you might replace the icons to be some graphic from a video game that means something to your particular userbase. There's a wealth of possibilities.
    Each reaction you set up can be configured to adjust the original author's reputation count - a reaction can be positive (i.e. award a reputation point), negative (i.e. subtract a reputation point), or neutral (i.e. leave the reputation count unchanged). Our default set won't include any negative reactions, but you are free to configure these and new reactions to suit your own use-case. A user's total reputation count is still shown alongside their content and in their profile, of course.
    If you don't want to use the new reactions for whatever reason, you can disable all of them except Like, and it'll behave just the like 4.1-and-earlier system:

     
    Sites that currently use the up/down system don't show a list of names of users, and instead show an overall reputation score for the content. With the new reaction system, you can enable this even if you don't use up/down reactions. This is great if you plan to use reactions as, for example, an agree/disagree system, or where the content score is more important to your site than the individual reaction types.

    How the reaction UI looks with the 'count only' setting enabled
    As you'd expect, you can click individual reaction counts (or the overall reputation score, if you enable that setting) to view who reacted to the content. This remains a permission setting that you can apply per-group.

    On touch devices, on-hover functionality is not suitable, and so for these devices the reactions UI looks like this:

    Reactions play well with all areas of the suite, including Recommended Replies:

    ...and activity streams...

    ...and a couple of places we aren't quite ready to reveal yet  
     
    We hope you're looking forward to this new feature as much as we are. It's already been a hit on our internal testing site, and we're looking forward to seeing how clients customize it for use on their own community.
    Developer note: Reactions are one of two new features (the other currently unannounced) so far that make use of PHP Traits.
  6. Like
    LaCollision reacted to bfarber for a blog entry, New: Gallery Lightbox Navigation   
    This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release
    Improvements to our Gallery application, both in terms of new functionality and minor enhancements, are coming in 4.2. One area that was identified early on for improvement was the Gallery image view page and specifically how the lightbox feature available on this page behaved.
    We adjusted the buttons that overlay the main Gallery image to use icons instead of text

     
    If you click to view an alternative image size, we improved the header styling of this page as well for clarity and to allow easier downloading of the image you are viewing

     
    When viewing an image, you can open the image in a lightbox by clicking the icon at the very top far right corner. When doing so, there was previously a button at the bottom left hand corner of the lightbox if you wanted to download the image. We modernized this experience by implementing an overlay that you can click on in order to download the full size image instead.

     
    You will notice there are now left/right arrows in the lightbox view here. You can click left/right to scroll through the images in the container, just as if you clicked through the images in the photostrip immediately below the image on the main page. You can also use the left/right arrow keys on your keyboard. While this would navigate through the photostrip previously, it will now also navigate through the images in the lightbox as well.
    When viewing on your mobile device, the lightbox has been cleaned up allowing more image to display which is a welcome change for your mobile users.
    We have more changes coming to Gallery in 4.2 which we will be revealing soon but in the mean time we hope you enjoy these useful improvements.
  7. Like
    LaCollision reacted to Charles for a blog entry, Video: 4.2 So Far   
    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  
  8. Like
    LaCollision reacted to Charles for a blog entry, IPS Community Suite 4.2 Coming Soon   
    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!
  9. Like
    LaCollision reacted to Charles for a blog entry, New: Embeds and Integrations   
    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.
  10. Like
    LaCollision reacted to Charles for a blog entry, 4.1.16 Beta Available   
    Our own site on invisionpower.com is now running version 4.1.16 with all the new features. Have a look around and see what you think! My personal favorite is being able to press cmd/ctrl+enter to submit a reply. It is a small change but sometimes small changes make all the difference.
    We have also released a beta for any clients who are interested in using the latest release before it is officially available. The alpha and beta forum has more information (clients only) if you want to learn more about using beta releases.
  11. Like
    LaCollision reacted to Rikki for a blog entry, New in 4.1.13: Personal Messenger Improvements   
    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. 
  12. Like
    LaCollision reacted to Charles for a blog entry, Post Color Highlight   
    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.
     
     
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