Sonya*

4 hours ago, Tania Abdul said:

I have custom upload (image) fields. I do not see any way to delete the older content (images) I've uploaded.

There is actually a bug in Pages that does not clean/delete uploaded record images and images uploaded via fields of type Upload. The images are indeed orphaned. I have reported the bug and this should be fixed in the next release.

Hi,

I have an old community here, grounded about 20 years ago. There are over 250 000 registered users over the time. The nature of the community is that the users are only active for some years and leave then. My issue now is that over the half of email addresses (estimated) are not valid anymore. I would like to "purge" the database setting users with invalid emails on validating to prevent sending emails to them. At the end of the day I need a "clean" database to send out newsletter to valid emails only. What is the best way to achieve it?

Right now I am using G Suite Business to send out and receive e-mails. I pay around 45 Euro monthly. This is my email stats from ACP:

Any advice of what is the best solution in this case? 

Thank you,
Sonya*

6 minutes ago, Jordan Invision said:

When you send a bulk email, what if you excluded the group of people who subscribed? So they don't get that particular email. 

This is about notifications. They all include ads if you set them once 😒

2 minutes ago, Antoinette Westberry said:

I'll have to create a new database each time since it needs to post to a different forum each time. 

No, you don't. You can overwrite the forum setting for each database category. Just edit a category and switch to Forum tab. This way you only need a new category and not the complete database.

7 minutes ago, Adriano Faria said:

Still, visible to 1 or 70 will generate duplicated content. 

When I hear "duplicate content" I always think about SEO 🙂 There is no duplicate content regarding SEO.

However, you are right, the user who created the article with future publish date will indeed see the article AND the post. To prevent this, a custom solution (like redirecting every article to its assigned post) will be required. In this case, they will not see anything else as the post itself.

8 minutes ago, Antoinette Westberry said:

Some of them are not at all technical. 

I can understand. This is indeed something that should be considered if you have non-technical users. Redirecting article to the assigned post can be solved within the article template, so that they will never see the original article after it is created.

1 minute ago, Adriano Faria said:

A user needs to post an article using a future date, right? When it gets visible, it creates a topic in the selected forum. At this point you will have an article and a topic with same content. It will require a manual action from a moderator later: either to delete or move the article to a hidden area.

If the database (not forum) is only visible to the those 70 team members, then nobody else would be able to see the database. So, why should they delete or move something that is only visible to those who have created it? Or do you mean those 70 team members should not be able to see their articles afterwards? The posts visibility depends on the forum permission and not on database.

2 minutes ago, Antoinette Westberry said:

Regardless though, we really do need this as an actual function. We have nearly 70 team members that should be using this function and we simply cannot give them access to create pages

This is simple permission like creating new posts in forum, though. You can create a secondary group where all these 70 team members are. Give the ability to create articles within one database, not pages as single page. There is no really a great difference if you allow them creating scheduled posts in forum vs. allow them creating new entries in a database, where future publish date is enabled. The posts in forum are created automatically upon articles are created. 

3 minutes ago, Adriano Faria said:

Duplicate content seems pretty weird. So members would post an article to get a topic and in the end would have an article and a topic? Then request to delete the article later? 🥴

There is no duplicate content if the database is only visible to the moderators, though. 

Just now, Antoinette Westberry said:

These are posts that must be forum-style;

Pages creates real posts in your forum. Articles are just for scheduling. When article is published (future published date is reached) then a new post is created in forum. 

You can do it if you have Pages. Just create a database, that is only visible to moderators. Create your posts in a database as articles, connect the database to a forum, where the posts should be post and set the future publish date. No extra feature is needed to accomplish it. Unless you do not have Pages.

1 hour ago, 403 - Forbiddeen said:

I own the pages too... but never work fine the articles for me. Maybe i edit the blog source to get a better results. About articles and content... normally i publish tutorial on tutorials system and uploads on Downlods addon.

This is also fine. The checklist above was general. You can also create tutorials with Pages. Admin blog, like this of IPS is made with Pages too. Every way to create useful content is good. Just avoid creating articles, news, tutorials and so on as forum posts. This is what ranks not so good because of the template "noise" and "false" markup.

49 minutes ago, 403 - Forbiddeen said:

I own the articles addon, but i prefer to use BLOG to upload news. That have the same effect right?

I have no experience with Blog, but I guess it is the same. It is important to avoid using the forum to primarily post articles as there is just too many noise around the content in the template. User areas, answers, topic summaries and so on. I prefer a clean article template where I can control almost anything about HTML, meta tags, title, content structure and so on.

42 minutes ago, 403 - Forbiddeen said:

Hello. I want to know what more i need to do to grow up my forum on google. Which page i can avoid index? Which plugin/addon i can help me with this? I've create custom title/description for all pages/forums.

And especially for the project in your signature, check your site speed. I do not know why, but it is very slow. This is killer for SEO. I am not an expert for loading though, try @Adlago 😃 

I have some checklists.

Technical:

• HTTPS - right from the start and redirect 301 for non-HTTPS
• The domain should be either with WWW OR without WWW. But not both. Again redirect with 301.
• Set up Friendly URLs
• Translit plugin to replace ö, ä, ü (no idea if it helps for SEO, but I don't like special characters in URLs, especially if there are only special characters like Cyrillic 😃).
• Connect Google Search Console to see what Google thinks about you
• Load sitemap.php in Search Console, here I can see nicely if something is not running correctly, not indexed or whatever.
• Change the title of the start page (no Home or Forums), but so that every user understands what it's all about.
• If you have some important landing pages, then change title on them as well
• A welcome block on the home page, short and to the point, what this is all about. (I've seen many forums where I have not understood what they are about).
• NO huge header/image slider, so that every page looks the same and the content begins below the fold.

Content:

• Create articles in Pages (quality over quantity), you do not need 100 articles with 1 click a day. Write 5 with 20 clicks a day 😉
• Fill out ALT tags for all images in the articles (double-click on the image, even if it's annoying, it helps)
• Use H2-H5 tags in the articles via editor plugin, create TOC at the beginning if the article is too long
• Link to trust sites, like Wikipedia, Unis, studies etc. This would give you more trust and Google like if you are trustworthy
• Sign all articles with real names and put short BIO of the author if possible, photo is even nicer
• If you enable Forum for articles, make sure that no duplicate content is created (article page itself plus forum topic that repeats the same thing again - this is IPS default and bad for SEO!). The best idea is not to show the forum to the guests, they can see the article and comments, there should be enough, forum only for members
• for Google E-A-T: add an about-page in the footer of the project, where the project is described in more detail, best to mention names and achievements of the people involved.
• See where you can place a link. Less is more. Better 2-3 trustworthy sites than 100 links from junk sites.
• Watch the search terms in Search Console and Analytics. If a search term is on the second page of the search result, it is worth to write an article about it. In this case, Google already considers the project relevant for this search term. It needs just a little push.

Social Media:

• Create channels/pages in all relevant social media
• Regularly promote new content (it can give additional links if people share it somewhere else)

Add this to your constant.php

define('DEV_DISABLE_ACP_SESSION_TIMEOUT', TRUE);

Check your moderator permissions in ACP: Community -> Clubs -> Settings. The permission to delete content should be checked. Even if you are club owner and site administrator, you cannot delete content unless moderators are not allowed. Is not logical but true 🙃

41 minutes ago, Davyc said:

We are restricted to three possible layouts; 1 column, 2 column and 3 column, but even these are rigid. 

You are actually not. Create a new page template (Page Builder), e. g. with following code:

<div>
	<div class='ipsGrid ipsGrid_collapsePhone'>
		<div class='ipsGrid_span3'>
			{template="widgetContainer" group="pages" app="cms" params="'col1', $widgets, 'vertical'"}
		</div>
		<div class='ipsGrid_span3'>
			{template="widgetContainer" group="pages" app="cms" params="'col2', $widgets, 'vertical'"}
		</div>
		<div class='ipsGrid_span3'>
			{template="widgetContainer" group="pages" app="cms" params="'col3', $widgets, 'vertical'"}
		</div>
      		<div class='ipsGrid_span3'>
			{template="widgetContainer" group="pages" app="cms" params="'col4', $widgets, 'vertical'"}
		</div>
	</div>
  <div class='ipsGrid ipsGrid_collapsePhone'>
		<div class='ipsGrid_span6'>
			{template="widgetContainer" group="pages" app="cms" params="'col5', $widgets, 'vertical'"}
		</div>
		<div class='ipsGrid_span6'>
			{template="widgetContainer" group="pages" app="cms" params="'col6', $widgets, 'vertical'"}
		</div>
	</div>
</div>

This would give you four columns in the first line and two columns in the second line. Change ipsGrid_spanX to whatever you like, and you have a flexible layout. Or play with columns instead of grid. 

Is there any reason that we cannot have expanded view along with fluid list in forum?

If I select Expanded view, it is ignored if my forum set to Fluid. Is it an oversight?

5 minutes ago, borangeatx said:

Any idea why I can’t add an article in Pages from the front-end?  It allows me to add an image but doesn’t show me the WYSIWYG Editor or even give me a place to add a title.

Works if I go through the admin CP and manage records.  

Thought I would ask. 

Check fields permissions in your database. 

1 minute ago, borangeatx said:

Thanks Sonya - I saw that option.  If it is hidden, does it show up in search engines?

No. Hidden means, only administrators and those with moderator permissions can see it. It is not accessible for public, it is not included in sitemap. 

You can check Hidden (right column) when saving the article:

Or you activate the field Publish Date in your database fields settings. This way you can set a date when the article should be published. Until it is published, it is a draft.

28 minutes ago, Haku2 said:

This is very disappointing, but I can't say I'm surprised. It seems like it's always the most useful features that get removed.

I am convinced, IPS does not remove "most used features". They have their stats and see how often apps are used. I have never used Web Hosting & Domain support in IPS, neither I ever had a customer who has used it. I can imagine it is disappointing for you. But if a feature is used by only tiny number of IPS customers, then it is legit to not support it in the future to get free resources for something that is needed by majority. 

5 minutes ago, Matt said:

How about an extra option for Pages > Record custom fields to not allow Pixabay?

Custom fields are not integrated in search snippet and activity streams, so that they look beautiful with the record image. For me, I would appreciate if we could apply option to the default record image field 😊

31 minutes ago, Matt said:

Just out of interest, why?

We use Pages database as a kind of user image gallery. Record image is a field where a user/guest can submit his own photo to the gallery. If we enable Pixabay it will not make sense at this place. This is only for users' pictures, not for stock photos.

At the same time we would like to allow users to use stock photos as cover for their events in Calendar. So, generally we need not only per user group but also per app permission 🙃

Please extend pixabay (stock photo) permissions for the uploads field as well:

This is not consistent not to allow using stock images in the editor but uploading them via extra field. I do not want guests to see this option at all, even if they are allowed to upload own images.