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403 - Forbiddeen

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  1. Like
    403 - Forbiddeen reacted to Ehren for a blog entry, Invision Community 5: Live Topic Improvements   
    Live Topics in Invision Community 5
    Introduced last year, Live Topics are an innovative way to host live chat and question-and-answer sessions, complete with the option for live video integration. Live Topics effortlessly transform these events into permanent forum topics once the event concludes, allowing your members to not only interact in real-time with the rest of your community, but also continue the conversation far beyond the events conclusion.
    As part of Invision Community 5, Live Topics will ship with a brand new design, rich-text editors and dynamic reactions. Let’s take a look at all three improvements, starting with the new design.
     

    Full-screen, 3 column layout
    When viewing a live topic, you’ll be taken to a new, minimal, full-screen, 3 column layout which provides plenty of space to simultaneously view your video, question-and-answer list, and live chat columns all at once. The width of the video can easily be adjusted using a simple drag and drop handle, allowing your members to shift their focus between the video or the question-and-answer list depending on the moment.
    Resize.mp4
     
    The second column holds a list of dynamic question-and-answer discussions, while the third column boasts a redesigned chat area that more closely resemble an app-like experience.
      Questions-and-chat.mp4  
    For smaller devices such as tablets and mobiles, the video is always visible at the top of the page. The question-and-answer list and live chat collapse into their own tabbed area to conserve space.
    Mobile.mp4
     
     

    Rich-text editors
    Text fields in Live Topics have been upgraded to CKEditor, allowing for greater flexibility when it comes to formatting text or posting emoji’s.
     
    Richtext.mp4
     
     
    Reactions
    Reactions have been added to live topics for both the question feed and the live chat. Reactions update dynamically in real-time, offering valuable insights into the content your community deems significant in the moment.
    Reactions.mp4
     
    A lot of thought has gone into transforming Live Topics into a much more user friendly experience. The refreshed, modern design combined with new real-time features make Live Topics a fantastic solution for hosting real-time community events, and we're looking forward to shipping these updates alongside Invision Community 5 later this year.
     
     
  2. Haha
    403 - Forbiddeen reacted to Matt for a blog entry, Invision Community 5: New Live Community Features   
    Bring your community to life with the latest live community features coming to Invision Community 5.
    Last year we introduced new features that immediately showed who was currently reading a topic and who was replying. This feature leveraged new technologies to connect members with each other instantly.
    In this blog post, we'll delve into the latest live community features for Invision Community 5 and explore how they enhance our sense of togetherness within our communities. We'll examine how these features instantly notify us about new events, updates, or interactions and how they contribute to a shared sense of presence.
    These features go beyond the static posts and comments we've grown accustomed to and introduce a real-time element. Whether you're part of a support community, a gaming forum, or a professional network, these features will have you feeling like you're interacting with other community members simultaneously, fostering a strong sense of shared experiences. 
     
     
    Posting
    We've all been involved in a busy topic where you're keen to see what replies your latest post has. Select packages on Invision Community 4 can see who is active on a topic and who is typing, but you have to hit refresh to see the new posts added to the topic. If you're anything like me, then you hammer refresh until something new appears.
    With Invision Community 5, this is no longer a problem. As you interact with a topic, new replies are automatically added to the topic without needing to refresh. This one feature brings the conversation to life, and you get a real sense of other members interacting with the topic at the same time as you.
     

     
    Reactions
    Did you drop a razor-sharp GIF or post something applause-worthy? Watch as others react to your content in real time with Invision Community 5. There's no need to refresh or return to the topic later to see who enjoyed what you wrote.
    Getting rewarded for your content is gratifying and encourages you to post more and show your appreciation for other's content via reactions.
    Notifications
    Notifications have long been a valuable way to be notified when anything important happens in your community. It may be that someone has quoted your content, tagged you in a post or started a new topic in a forum you're following.
    With Invision Community 5, you can watch the notification count rack up in real time, alerting you to new events that you may otherwise miss as they happen.
     

     
    We hope that you've enjoyed reading about these new features and look forward to them coming to select packages for Invision Community 5. They provide a sense of togetherness and immediacy, making it feel like we're interacting with fellow community members simultaneously. 
    We're keen to hear what you think, please leave a comment below.
    The features discussed in this announcement will not be available for Invision Community Classic. Click here to learn more about switching to our platform to get this and other benefits.
     
  3. Haha
    403 - Forbiddeen reacted to Marshall Slemp for a blog entry, Introducing Courses   
    Courses is a new, lightweight learning platform designed to help you provide a new learning experience for your members. 
    Courses are perfect for requiring your community to read and understand documentation and to deliver training and lessons to your community.

    Let's take a look at how it works!
    Instructor led courses are comprised of separate modules, each containing lessons. New courses are created and managed through the AdminCP under Community. Each course has the option to be assigned one or more instructors. Instructors play a crucial role in developing the course content via the frontend, and they are available to assist members throughout their learning journey in the course.
    Courses can be set to be optional, or required meaning members must complete this course before progressing to others. Furthermore, courses tie into Achievement Rules, so you have the ability to grant points and/or badges to a member once they finish a course.
    Courses can be free or paid, and comprise of one or more modules, each of which contain multiple sessions and an optional quiz.
    Modules and Lessons
    Courses wouldn't be much without some lessons! Lessons are grouped into modules, that can have an optional quiz. Quizzes are a great way to verify members' learning progression and understanding.
    You have the option to configure modules to be completed sequentially. This pairs nicely with quizzes as you would need to complete the current module before moving on to the next one, ensuring a structured and progressive learning experience!

    The lessons themselves are the main content of Courses. Lessons are comprised of the material that students will engage with during their learning journey. Lessons can be designated as optional, so they can be skipped. This is handy when you want to provide organised supplemental information that is not essential.

    Managing Enrollments
    As an administrator or instructor, you may need to manage course enrolments from time to time. This can involve enrolling a member on their behalf, withdrawing a member from a course, or deleting an enrollment altogether. There are two ways for managing those enrolled in courses, either through the administrative control panel or the course roster on the frontend.
    To access the course roster via the frontend - just click on 'View All Members' when on the course homepage.

    Course Manager
    Managing a course is handled via the frontend. Individuals such as instructors, admins, and other authorized members can create and edit modules, lessons and quizzes for a course. You manage quizzes and lessons from within the module view.

    I hope that you have enjoyed this overview of Courses. This is just the beginning, we're already considering various possibilities such as integrating with Live Topics, incorporating discussion sections within a lesson, and enhancing the required courses feature so stay tuned!
    The features discussed in this announcement are not available for Invision Community Classic. Click here to learn more about switching to our platform to get this and other benefits.
  4. Like
    403 - Forbiddeen reacted to Matt for a blog entry, Invision Community 5: The story so far...   
    Just six short weeks ago, Ehren hit record on a video that changed everything for Invision Community.
    The blog was called "Introducing a fresh new vision for Invision Community 5," and it ripped up the rule book on what forums should look like and revealed a slick new look featuring a new forum home feed view and sidebar navigation.
    A lot has been discussed, but we're not even close to done!
    Before we bring you news of more features after Thanksgiving, I wanted to take a mid-season break to recap what we've seen so far.
    First up was the introduction video, which gave a broad overview of the new UI Invision Community 5 would be sporting. Ehren takes us through many new elements, including the sidebar navigation, forum feed view, simplified post view and more.
     
     
    Up next was a focus on dark mode, accessibility and mobile views. Invision Community 5 features the ability to have native dark mode without additional themes or complex variables to set up. Our aim with Invision Community 5 is to hide the complexities and technology and just let you focus on creating a great community experience for your audience.
     
     
    Bringing complex theming to everyone was the message in the blog talking about the new theme editor. Now, you can make wide-ranging changes to your theme without the need to edit CSS or manage HTML templates, all driven by a smart and simple interface.
     
     
    Next, it was my turn to talk about a new feature. I introduced two new features designed to help those who run support-based communities. Finding the most helpful answers and identifying community experts help your members do more with less time and frustration.
     
     
    Last week, Ehren demonstrated our new icon and badge builder, which is an amazingly powerful tool to produce slick and professional badges along with the ability to customize your community further with emojis and icons for menus, reactions and more. Building ways to reduce the barrier to customization has been a strong theme for Invision Community 5.
     
     
    Phew!
    We can all agree that we've showcased a lot of impressive functionality coming with Invision Community 5 already.
    But what does the future hold?
    Lots! We have a lot of new functionality that we're putting the finishing touches on, and we can't wait to show you more. These new features further help to reduce noise in topics, make the community feel alive and bring long-needed updates to core components such as the editor. Not to mention, there is a significant update to Pages underway.
    We also have a lot of less flashy updates, such as the new consolidated Feature/Our Picks feature, which is now a single feature.
     
    Feature-window.mp4
     
    An improved Moderators Control Panel brings a more uniform experience across deleted, hidden, and content waiting to be approved.
     

    We're still on course for a release of Invision Community in early 2024 and can't wait for you to experience the future of forums.
    What has been your favourite feature so far? I'd love to know; drop a comment below!
  5. Like
    403 - Forbiddeen reacted to Ehren for a blog entry, Invision Community 5: Badge creation and icon customization   
    Invision Community offers fantastic ways of customizing the user experience for your members, and today, we’re excited to introduce some new and really simple ways of customizing Invision Community 5 even further using our new icon tools.
     
    Icon Picker
    Lets begin with our brand new icon picker. Containing both Font Awesome icons and emojis, the new picker allows you to easily search and assign icons to specific areas throughout your site. Lets take a look at some examples!
    icon-picker.mp4  
    Navigation icons
    Adding icons to the navigation list has been a highly requested feature, so we're happy to announce that you can now use this new picker to do exactly that, for both the horizontal and vertical navigation panels, without needing to modify your theme.

     
    Forum icons
    Uploading forum icons is a great way to personalize individual areas of your community. In the past, these icons have typically been images, uploaded via the admin panel. In addition to the upload form, the icon picker now makes it a breeze to assign icons to forums - and if a Font Awesome icon is chosen, it'll even inherit the featured forum color.

     
    Forum Feature Color
    We have brought the existing forum feature color to feed view allowing for a flash of color and personalization that helps associate a color with a specific forum. The feature color pairs really well with the card image to lift the forum display.

     
    Icon creator for badges, ranks and reactions
    Creating unique badges, ranks and reactions is a great way to boost activity within your community by encouraging members to share more engaging and frequent content - but designing these icons from scratch using a graphics program often comes with hurdles of its own.
    With our new icon creator, you can now design your own custom icons for badges, ranks and reactions straight from your Admin panel, using a combination of colors, icons and shapes.
    icon-creator.mp4  
     
    We think this new icon creator will make the rank, badges and reactions features even more accessible for everyone, allowing you to create a user experience that is uniquely yours. With Invision Community 5, bringing in customization and personalization moves beyond adding new themes.
    We're excited to see how you can take advantage of these new tools, and we look forward hearing your feedback in the comments below!
     

  6. Like
    403 - Forbiddeen reacted to Matt for a blog entry, SEO: Improving crawling efficiency   
    No matter how good your content is, how accurate your keywords are or how precise your microdata is, inefficient crawling reduces the number of pages Google will read and store from your site.
    Search engines need to look at and store as many pages that exist on the internet as possible. There are currently an estimated 4.5 billion web pages active today. That's a lot of work for Google.
    It cannot look and store every page, so it needs to decide what to keep and how long it will spend on your site indexing pages.
    Right now, Invision Community is not very good at helping Google understand what is important and how to get there quickly. This blog article runs through the changes we've made to improve crawling efficiency dramatically, starting with Invision Community 4.6.8, our November release.

    The short version
    This entry will get a little technical. The short version is that we remove a lot of pages from Google's view, including user profiles and filters that create faceted pages and remove a lot of redirect links to reduce the crawl depth and reduce the volume of thin content of little value. Instead, we want Google to focus wholly on topics, posts and other key user-generated content.
    Let's now take a deep dive into what crawl budget is, the current problem, the solution and finally look at a before and after analysis. Note, I use the terms "Google" and "search engines" interchangeably. I know that there are many wonderful search engines available but most understand what Google is and does.
    Crawl depth and budget
    In terms of crawl efficiency, there are two metrics to think about: crawl depth and crawl budget. The crawl budget is the number of links Google (and other search engines) will spider per day. The time spent on your site and the number of links examined depend on multiple factors, including site age, site freshness and more. For example, Google may choose to look at fewer than 100 links per day from your site, whereas Twitter may see hundreds of thousands of links indexed per day.
    Crawl depth is essentially how many links Google has to follow to index the page. The fewer links to get to a page, is better. Generally speaking, Google will reduce indexing links more than 5 to 6 clicks deep.
    The current problem #1: Crawl depth
    A community generates a lot of linked content. Many of these links, such as permalinks to specific posts and redirects to scroll to new posts in a topic, are very useful for logged in members but less so to spiders. These links are easy to spot; just look for "&do=getNewComment" or "&do=getLastComment" in the URL. Indeed, even guests would struggle to use these convenience links given the lack of unread tracking until logged in.  Although they offer no clear advantage to guests and search engines, they are prolific, and following the links results in a redirect which increases the crawl depth for content such as topics.
    The current problem #2: Crawl budget and faceted content
    A single user profile page can have around 150 redirect links to existing content. User profiles are linked from many pages. A single page of a topic will have around 25 links to user profiles. That's potentially 3,750 links Google has to crawl before deciding if any of it should be stored. Even sites with a healthy crawl budget will see a lot of their budget eaten up by links that add nothing new to the search index. These links are also very deep into the site, adding to the overall average crawl depth, which can signal search engines to reduce your crawl budget.
    Filters are a valuable tool to sort lists of data in particular ways. For example, when viewing a list of topics, you can filter by the number of replies or when the topic was created. Unfortunately, these filters are a problem for search engines as they create faceted navigation, which creates duplicate pages.

    The solution
    There is a straightforward solution to solve all of the problems outlined above.  We can ask that Google avoids indexing certain pages. We can help by using a mix of hints and directives to ensure pages without valuable content are ignored and by reducing the number of links to get to the content. We have used "noindex" in the past, but this still eats up the crawl budget as Google has to crawl the page to learn we do not want it stored in the index.
    Fortunately, Google has a hint directive called "nofollow", which you can apply in the <a href> code that wraps a link. This sends a strong hint that this link should not be read at all. However, Google may wish to follow it anyway, which means that we need to use a special file that contains firm instructions for Google on what to follow and index.
    This file is called robots.txt. We can use this file to write rules to ensure search engines don't waste their valuable time looking at links that do not have valuable content; that create faceted navigational issues and links that lead to a redirect.
    Invision Community will now create a dynamic robots.txt file with rules optimised for your community, or you can create custom rules if you prefer.

    The new robots.txt generator in Invision Community
    Analysis: Before and after
    I took a benchmark crawl using a popular SEO site audit tool of my test community with 50 members and around 20,000 posts, most of which were populated from RSS feeds, so they have actual content, including links, etc. There are approximately 5,000 topics visible to guests.
    Once I had implemented the "nofollow" changes, removed a lot of the redirect links for guests and added an optimised robots.txt file, I completed another crawl.
    Let's compare the data from the before and after.
    First up, the raw numbers show a stark difference.

    Before our changes, the audit tool crawled 176,175 links, of which nearly 23% were redirect links. After, just 6,389 links were crawled, with only 0.4% being redirection links. This is a dramatic reduction in both crawl budget and crawl depth. Simply by guiding Google away from thin content like profiles, leaderboards, online lists and redirect links, we can ask it to focus on content such as topics and posts.

    Note: You may notice a large drop in "Blocked by Robots.txt" in the 'after' crawl despite using a robots.txt for the first time. The calculation here also includes sharer images and other external links which are blocked by those sites robots.txt files. I added nofollow to the external links for the 'after' crawl so they were not fetched and then blocked externally.

    As we can see in this before, the crawl depth has a low peak between 5 and 7 levels deep, with a strong peak at 10+.

    After, the peak crawl depth is just 3. This will send a strong signal to Google that your site is optimised and worth crawling more often.
    Let's look at a crawl visualisation before we made these changes. It's easy to see how most content was found via table filters, which led to a redirect (the red dots), dramatically increasing crawl depth and reducing crawl efficiency.

    Compare that with the after, which shows a much more ordered crawl, with all content discoverable as expected without any red dots indicating redirects.

    Conclusion
    SEO is a multi-faceted discipline. In the past, we have focused on ensuring we send the correct headers, use the correct microdata such as JSON-LD and optimise meta tags. These are all vital parts of ensuring your site is optimised for crawling. However, as we can see in this blog that without focusing on the crawl budget and crawl efficiency, even the most accurately presented content is wasted if it is not discovered and added into the search index.
    These simple changes will offer considerable advantages to how Google and other search engines spider your site.
    The features and changes outlined in this blog will be available in our November release, which will be Invision Community 4.6.8.
  7. Like
    403 - Forbiddeen reacted to Jordan Miller for a blog entry, Drum roll please… announcing Achievements!   
    One of the overarching goals for any community leader is to shine a bright light on your members. Their contributions should be publicly recognized. Now with Invision Community’s new Achievements system... you can!
    Achievements is Invision Community’s native gamification system baked into our latest update, 4.6. 
    We’ve dreamed up innovative actions for community leaders to publicly recognize members who show up and participate in meaningful ways.
    Award Points and badges based on conditional Rules!
    Here’s what you need to know...

     

    Points
    Our Achievements Points system keeps a running tally of Points. Members may earn Points in a multitude of ways. Essentially, it’s achieved by participating in the community. 
    Create a topic? Points! Post a reply? Points! Follow another member? Nothing. Just kidding… Points!!!
    This is done through creating Rules.

     

    Rules
    Rules are actionable processes set up in the admin panel. 
    Here are what members can earn Points for:
    When a...
    Member joins a club Reaction is given New poll is created User follows a content item Review is posted Member logs in for the first time that day New club is created Content item/comment is promoted or featured Comment/reply is posted User follows a forum, blog, gallery, category etc User votes on a poll User is followed New content item is posted Post is marked as best answer There are also corresponding When/Then Rules for each item listed above. 
    When this action happens, then this subsequent action happens.
    Example: when a member posts 10 times, then this Badge is awarded.
     

     
     

    Badges
    Community leaders can also create specific Rules when deciding what actions earn Badges. 
    For example, reward your members with a Badge for visiting your community for 20 days.
    Once a member reaches 20 visits or more over 20 days, the Achievements system will automatically award them a ‘20 Visits’ Badge you’ve previously created.
     

     
     
    Ranks
    In 4.6, we’ve completely revamped our Ranks system to communicate with Achievements. 
    Achievements’ Ranks system will replace our previous Ranks system*
    Set up different Ranks based on how many Points a member earns. Ranks display a members’ perceived value to the community. The higher a members’ Rank, the greater their influence because the more they’ve participated. 
    Ranks are currently for prestige at the moment. 
    Here's our example for a pretend Coconut community:
     
     

     

    There’s a lot of information to absorb here, but if there’s anything to take away from this blog post it’s this: empower your contributing members with Achievements and watch your community grow. It creates an immersive and elevated experience for your die-hards. And hey, who doesn’t love to earn? 
    When 4.6 and Achievements is officially released for all, we’ll hold a live Q&A event for you to join and ask any questions you may have.
    Props? Concerns? Comments? Questions? We’d love for you to sound off in the comments! Not only because we want to hear from you, but because it’ll earn you some sweet, sweet Points, too!
  8. Like
    403 - Forbiddeen reacted to Matt for a blog entry, Trial Invision Community 4.5 Now   
    If you're preparing to upgrade to Invision Community 4.5, there's now an easy way to test it out.
    We have updated our Invision Community demo system to use Invision Community 4.5! This is a quick and easy way to take 4.5 for a test drive and test all the new functionality before making your upgrade plans.

    Taking out a demo is very simple, just head over to our demo sign up page, follow the instructions and within a few minutes you'll receive your own private demo log in.
    We'd love to know what you think! Please let us know in the feedback forum.
  9. Like
    403 - Forbiddeen reacted to Matt for a blog entry, Welcome to Invision Community 4.5   
    We've been on a little journey together since we announced the first Invision Community 4.5 feature way back in November 2019.
    The first feature we announced was a revamped Admin Control Panel interface which created more visual space and brightened it up. Actually, we made it so bright that the first feature request was to add a dark mode (which we did).
    In the space of three short months, we had spoken about Club improvements, invites and referrals, RSS feed improvements, blog categories, the simple stock photo picker, search insights, security enhancements, user interface updates, new statistic views, and notification improvements.
    Most will agree that March and April seemed to last months, thanks to a global pandemic. We used these extra days to talk about marking posts as a solution, topic view summary, Zapier integration, forum view updates, post-installation onboarding, private staff notes, page builder widgets, theme designer improvements, a new default theme, language system updates and everything else we missed.
    We have also revamped the front end user interface to modernise the look and feel but also to introduce new CSS frameworks, variables and other time-saving features our design team have been eager to implement.

    On the subject of modernisation, we've deprecated some legacy functionality. We've given up trying to make anything look good with IE11 which last saw an update in 2013. We've also deprecated older caching engines like Memcache, APC and Wincache and recommend using Redis instead. The web hosting and domain management features of Commerce are also deprecated as is BBCode. BBCode has its roots in the earliest bulletin-board systems long before rich text editors were common use. It's 2020; we should no longer be asked to type in special codes in square brackets to format text. BBCode is still functional in Invision Community 4.5, but it is likely to be removed in a future version.
    Now that primary development has finished, we move onto the beta testing stage. This is where you get to try it out and evaluate the new features before scheduling your own upgrades.
    As always, we do recommend that you only test early betas on staging sites or simple test sites. Many a weekend has been ruined by over-enthusiastic upgrading of live sites; so we don't recommend that.
    You'll also notice that we're running Invision Community 4.5 on our own site. If you do spot an issue, please let us know in the bug tracker.
    I've been creating and releasing products for close to twenty years now, and I still get a real buzz out of hitting the release button. It's always a pleasure to see the result of hundreds of hours of coding, dozens of meetings and numerous passionate exchanges among the team.

    You can access the beta in your client area.
    We hope you enjoy Invision Community 4.5!
  10. Like
    403 - Forbiddeen reacted to Stuart Silvester for a blog entry, 4.5: One More Thing...   
    Almost ten years ago we launched the Marketplace; a place to connect Invision Community owners with talented developers creating new functionality.
    Over the decade, the Marketplace has grown to hold thousands of applications, large and small. For many Invision Community owners, the Marketplace has become an essential resource.
    Our aim was always to have the Marketplace available inside your Admin Control Panel to make it even easier to purchase and install extra functionality.

    I'm pleased to say that as of Invision Community 4.5, this is now a reality. You can browse the Marketplace and install new add-ons without leaving the Admin Control Panel.

    Obtaining Resources
    Paid resources can be purchased directly from the Marketplace and are available to install immediately after the payment is complete. You no longer need to download and install the files yourself.
    You may also notice some additional information with the resource listing, we'll be introducing a new 'tab' to marketplace resources to allow the authors to provide more useful information such as answers to frequently asked questions, or configuration instructions etc.

    The video below takes you through the purchase and installation of a Marketplace application.
    marketplace-install.mp4
    Installing an Application
    Updates
    Some of the eagle-eyed among you may have noticed in the first screenshot that there are more 'bubbles' showing in the menu on the left. These are supported for Applications, Plugins, Themes and Languages.
    In Invision Community 4.5 every resource available via the AdminCP is automatically versioned, you will see update notifications for everything you have installed (previously, you would only see update notices if the resource author supports them).
    Installing an update is as simple as clicking on the update notice, then clicking 'update' on the Marketplace listing.

    Installing Updates
    Downloads Changes
    Our Marketplace is built on our Downloads application, during development of this feature we needed to add new functionality. We have included as many of these improvements as possible in our software for the benefit of our customers, some of these are:
    Custom Fields can now be set to only show to members that have purchased a file. Files can now be set to accept a single file upload instead of multiple. New file versions can now be moderated without hiding the current version from view. Downloads REST API Performance Improvements New /download endpoint that counts the download Added more data to the /downloads/file/{id} response Ability to sort file results by last updated date We hope you're as excited about this feature as we are.
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