Richard Arch

Hi Adriano
I believe I have found a few missing language strings in this application when viewing Email Statistics, ACP > Statistics > Activity > Emails

And also one here:

 
All cosmetic issues 🙂 
 

I'm amazed how deep this got and glad the Invision brought support out into the open where people can learn and feed into topics.  Nathan has done a marvellous job on exploring this issue, it obviously peaked his curiosity and kept his interest.
Well done Nathan and the Invision Community Team 👍

I would imagine that the files in the datastore are built using data from the database.  That line 804 in Members.php is within a function called get_group() and the line mentions member_group, I would suspect a member having an invalid group.

 
If you are familiar with running sql on your database you could try this, which will return any members that dont have a valid primary group.  You will need to change xxx to the table prefix you are using or remove xxx_ if you are not using a prefix.
select * from xxx_core_members where member_group_id not in (SELECT g_id from xxx_core_groups);
 
 

I would imagine that the files in the datastore are built using data from the database.  That line 804 in Members.php is within a function called get_group() and the line mentions member_group, I would suspect a member having an invalid group.

 
If you are familiar with running sql on your database you could try this, which will return any members that dont have a valid primary group.  You will need to change xxx to the table prefix you are using or remove xxx_ if you are not using a prefix.
select * from xxx_core_members where member_group_id not in (SELECT g_id from xxx_core_groups);
 
 

I'm no expert but as Adriano pointed out, the issue is normally got to do with the first line in the trace.  That is in member.php line 804 which is something to do with primary groups.
Have changed them recently?  Could you have a member that has an invalid group?

I'd like to see the "Leave event" more prominent, I've had to point it out to members more than once.

 

Welcome to this week's Invision Insight!
Whilst the weather gets warmer Down Under and colder to those in the northern hemisphere, we are nearing the end of our 20th year of Invision Community! So much has been achieved through the years and 2022 specifically is no exception.
I felt it couldn't be a better time to approach our team to participate in this week's Invision Insight. I'll share their take below.
Before we get to that though, if you didn't get a chance to attend yesterday's Content Curation event, don't fret! You can watch the video and discuss your thoughts below.
 
Invision Community Team Insight
During the week I took it upon myself to annoy our busy Invision Community staff members and take them away from their work (momentarily of course). All for good reasons! 😇
I asked them to weigh in on one of three questions. This gives us a glimpse into their minds and is a fun opportunity to hear directly from those that make Invision Community great. As usual, we are all very proud of the work they have produced; the results really do speak for themselves. Team, a huge thank you for playing along and taking the time to get your answers to me.
What is your favourite thing or feature we delivered this year?
@Jim M - My favourite feature we delivered this year was the real-time viewing/typing. I feel like this added a whole new level to our software to know in real-time that someone is viewing/replying the same time as you. Really helps with continuing the conversation, as if I reply and see someone else replying back, I'll stick around a few more seconds rather than moving on. For our support usage, it is also nice because we can see if another staff member is already replying and follow up with them internally before going to the client if we have something to collaborate.
@Lindy - The new Image Scanner (https://invisioncommunity.com/news/invision-community/our-new-image-scanner-and-discoverability-ai-keeps-your-community-safe-video-r1263/) is my favourite feature/service that we've rolled out in 2022. I have been in the technology sector for 30 years (ouch!) and have watched the evolution of so many incredible technologies, but AI-driven technology continues to blow my mind, truly. I love that we are among the first to begin developing AI-based features within community platforms and I look forward to our brilliant team incorporating more of this technology as we move forward.
@Mark H - I'd have to say my favourite enhancement was the "Who's Typing/Viewing" feature that others have already mentioned. It encourages more engagement among both members and staff, and for us techs, also reduces doubling up on an issue. A runner-up favourite would be the Image Scanner feature. It's quite effective when pre-moderation of content is a necessity and reduces the workload of community managers.
@Marshall Slemp - My favourite feature that was delivered this year has to be the Live Features (Who's Typing and Who's Viewing). It's really cool seeing new technologies being introduced into the platform and being leveraged to add that real-time experience. I think it's been mentioned before that even though the outcome seems simple, there is a lot of work involved in getting to this point and this is just the beginning. The devs (not me) have been working tirelessly to further utilize these new technologies to bring more real-time features such as Live Topics. Also, JavaScript is heavily involved and who doesn't love JavaScript?
@Matt Finger - Obviously Live Topics. It has taken up like the last third of the year for me and I am super excited for it to go live. This year though, I think my favourite thing as a developer was the existing real-time stuff; Who's Viewing and Who's Typing. From the user's perspective, they seem small and simple, but from my perspective we had to put in place a lot of newer technologies (new to IPS at least) such as Node.js, WebSockets, and dozens of AWS tools. With that robust, performant and secure foundation it opens up all sorts of avenues for where we can take our software in the future.
@Olivia Clark - We have such a great team! Our ability to work and deliver great product and service with togetherness only continues to improve. I know that sounds cliche but we are improving processes, getting the software is ready for those next great things, and testing new waters - together. Our customer support team serves our customers so well and is always looking for ways to do that better. It is fun to hear the developers working on projects that they cannot wait to sink their teeth into, areas that have been a paint point of theirs for years and areas where they see potential. I love the enthusiasm, the willingness to help those of us that are not as technical and the genuine passion for Invision Community. So, that's my favourite 'thing' delivered this year - greater cohesion and even more enthusiasm amongst our team.
What are you most excited for in 2023?
@Ehren - Funnily enough, one of my favourite features from this year is something that'll actually be available in early 2023, our refreshed Gallery. Andy and I spent a few months giving the Gallery a much-needed makeover, deleting a bunch of redundant code and replacing it with a far more modern approach; one example is the new masonry grid, powered completely by CSS! We worked on a new UI with a better focus on features images, we improved support for videos and added some nice new features such as a NSFW filter. My very biased opinion thinks we've made some really nice improvements that our customers will love, so fingers crossed they agree! Just like a Spring clean, I've always found it quite satisfying diving into an old framework and refactoring it using modern techniques. Looking towards 2023 and beyond, I'm really excited to take things even further with not only other application updates (I'm looking at you Downloads and Commerce), but Invision Community as a whole!
@Marc Stridgen - I'm looking forward to that next jump forward in look for the suite. It always amazes me that just as you think the software looks modern, that next evolution comes along and makes everything before it feel old. It gives a real feeling of moving forward and can pump a new lease of life into every community.
@Ryan Ashbrook - I think I am most excited for our infrastructure improvements we have planned for 2023. Our development of things like live community, real-time trending content, image scanning and so forth has allowed us to learn and grow how we deliver new features efficiently. But, in addition to that, I am looking forward to improvements to the overall software as a whole - such as the upcoming Gallery refresh. I'm really excited to see all of the applications get the same treatment as Calendar did (which is also one of my favorite things we've done this year).
@Stuart Silvester - The most exciting thing for 2023 for me is the new Live Topics feature, it's really awesome. The team working on that are doing a great job and I cannot wait for us to share it with you. Besides that, I feel like 2023 is going to be another great year, we've got lots of things coming to the software in the foreseeable future and I'm excited to be able to get new features out to our customers.
What was the most challenging obstacle you overcame this year?
@Andy Millne - It seems like more than a year ago but implementing Trending Content was challenging. We wanted to make sure trending items were not just ranked on dumb count of views. What we came up with is really quite clever and takes account of a number of metrics like replies and reaction but also recency. Doing this in a way that reflected real time results and was still performant was challenging but rewarding when it was proven to work.
@Matt - The biggest obstacle we overcame this year was the PHP 8 transition which impacted our self-hosting clients. Invision Community is built upon several server level software languages, and occasionally there are major updates which cause breaking changes. PHP 8 is a significant upgrade from PHP 7 as it is stricter on how to work with it. Given the size of the Invision Community codebase and the flexibility it affords for after-market code additions, it was a step we had to plan well for. We built tools to assist third party developers and created a multi-step process over many months to ease into the final step of cutting off PHP 7 support. It took a big, coordinated approach with several Invision Community teams and our third-party authors.
 
Forum Showcase Prune
In an effort to ensure we give our community the most accurate examples of the Invision Community product suite in practice, I spent a few hours going through this topic. All links to communities that have since moved on to another software and/or contained links to blatant advertising and explicit content have been hidden or removed (I went the extra mile and removed the same links from quoted posts). If you find something that isn't quite right that I may have missed, please do shout out so I can sort it out.
Otherwise, feel free to post a link to your own communities below! We would love to see what you have done! Going through the topic made me realise just how far some communities have come from the very beginning, sharing links to their communities for the first time.
 
Changelog
Here's what the dev team have been working on over the last seven days:
See you in the community and early in January right here for another Invision Insight! I look forward to hearing from you all! Have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year! 🎄
Thank you everyone! 🦘

I'm sure it used to green which I agree was a better colour.

I love the new Events system and the look of the interface. 
There's only one thing that I find confusing: on future events that I haven't signed up to yet, it says "✔ Going" - which I find confusing: the checkmark seems to indicate that I've already signed up, and the word "Going" seems to indicate a current status, as if I'm already "Going" to this event. Put that in perspective with the "✖ Decline" button that is an action word, and not a status. 

So to make it clear I suggest that the button that lets you sign up for an event is named "Sign Up". Ideally it should have the color green IMO (like the "New Topic" button). And the icon should be some sort of a standard sign-up icon like for example: 
 or
Like this: 

Any news on this?  It would be useful to us too.

Hmm, I'll have a look and see if I can add this into the plugin I released recently related to banned members. It seems like a perfect fit for it:
 
EDIT: My plugin can also change the member's group but it would be nice to have the option to still hide them without changing their group if needed.

Thanks Gary And thanks Randy for that tip

Hi @Richard Arch,
I will put this up to our dev team to see if it is something we can include in a future release. I'll come back to you with any feedback. 😉

Take a look at the following plugin. It will move a banned member to a specific member group which you could set to not be searchable/findable. 
 
 

Yes, thats a good idea.
Also could you add scheduling so the bulk mail can be sent out at some future time.

Dear folks, at this point we are unable to save a newly created bulk email without sending it first. It would be nice if we could save draft, some of our emails can be involved and it takes time to create, such as a newsletter. Thanks for your consideration

We don't have enough info so I've made a lot of assumptions here.
It seems your back does not contain any DROP statements which would be fine if you were to restore to a new database but it seems in this case you wanted to overwrite the existing tables/data.  You could drop all the tables in this database and use your backup OR create a new database and use your backup to create the tables and add the data.
At a guess, it sounds like you did a custom backup using phpMyAdmin without the Add DROP option checked.


 
As Gary hinted, an online search will find lots of suggestions and help.  PhpMyAdmin is very powerful, it takes the complexity out of working with databases but we need to learn how to use it as we do on how to drive a car.
I suggest stay away from your live database, for now, and that you create a new database to play with.  Check out the Operations tab and the "Copy Database to" option.  Make sure you are viewing the database you want to copy, then enter what you want to call it and press the Go button.

 

Thanks for the update Gary

Thanks for the update Gary

Hello,
would it be possible to provide some improvements in the future for the purpose of GDPR? Unfortunately, some of the awesome features of Invision are not usable or limited in European countries. 😞
The following points would be especially interesting:
Disable saving of IP addresses completely. Load external embeddings only after the user has agreed. The possibility to run services like twemoji or if feasible the spam defense service locally on the own server. Best regards,
Vakarian

As I understand it (very new to the software) if you create a custom Primary Menu item that will have a number of Secondery Menu items that you have to declare the type of the Primary Menu item as "External Link" and you are forced to enter a link to somewhere.   Then when a user accesses the site and clicks on the Primary Menu (an instinctive action if you don't realise you just need to hover over it) then they are sent to whatever link you have entered.   I would prefer it if the Primary Menu item ignored the click and simply continued to show the Secondary Menu items.
Hope that makes sense, or maybe I have missed something and that option is already available ?
Thanks

Ah, look this is a more universal date format.

But not Release Notes page.

Oh look, v4.6.12.1 is being released next month 😛
 
 

Yes, this fix is in 4.7.4.

Hi @Richard Arch,
Thanks for your suggestion!
I have added this to our list of new features to be reviewed by our team. I will follow up once I hear back from the team. 🙂

Can you use an international format to display dates?
This looks like 2nd of February to me and others this side of the Atlantic ocean.  Using a format like 2022/11/02 or 02 November 2022 would make the whole site easier to read.

This just looks like an old update to me 🙂