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Communication has come a long way since those very early humans grunted at each other to determine if they wanted more mammoth for lunch.
The course of human history has seen cave paintings, hieroglyphics, the written word, emoji and now GIFs.
GIFs have been around since the dawn of the internet. Many websites proudly displayed a 'man at work' animated GIF when they were under construction.
Now, GIFs are now mostly used to express complex thoughts and emotions by showing a short animation.

Mind Blown
 
Invision Community has allowed GIPHY to be used as an embed for a while now, but we craved something much more straightforward.
Behold, the GIF button!
Now your members can reply with the majesty of animation.
Of course, GIFs won't replace real and meaningful conversation, but they are a fun way to express yourself quickly and encourage more engagement.
The GIPHY functionality is enabled via the 'Community Enhancements' page in the Admin CP.

GIPHY is enabled from the enhancements page
All you need to do is grab a key from GIPHY, and you're all set!

Configuration
You'll notice a "MPAA style rating" option.
This allows you to select a maximum rating for the GIFs as some will have adult themes and language that may not be suitable for your community.
For example, you can choose "G" for general audiences, "PG" or "PG-13" to limit what is shown.

Yes!
Drop your favourite GIF below to show us how you feel about this new feature.
This is a blog about our upcoming Invision Community 4.4 release, due later this year.

We're thrilled to announce that Invision Community 4.3 Beta is available to download now.
After months of development, over 2500 separate code commits and quite a few mugs of coffee you can now get your hands on the beta release.

You can download the beta from your client area.
Be sure to read the full information on support and service limits that go along with beta releases. You will see this in client area prior to downloading.
If you need a recap of what was added, take a look at our product updates blog which takes you through the highlights.
If you you find a bug, we'd love for you to report it with as much detail as you can muster in the bug report area.
We'd love to know what you think, let us know below.

As we come close to wrapping up development of Invision Community 4.3, we wanted to let you know of a few smaller improvements we've made to increase engagement to your community.
Email
Despite fancy new things like social media and push notifications, trusty old email has been proven to be highly effective at getting repeat visitors to your website.
It's one of the reasons Invision Community has built in email support for notifications that can be sent instantly, or via daily or weekly digests.
Email should form a part of every community marketing strategy but curating content and building newsletters can often be a labor intensive task.
With Invision Community 4.3 we have added some additional automated email tools to help your users discover more of your carefully crafted content.
Highlight the best content from throughout your community
In 4.2 we introduced the concept of curated content with promotions and “Our Picks”. With 4.3 we’ve taken this a step further and these promoted items will now appear directly in your content related emails. 
This allows for your audience to be enticed back to your community with items that they may not have read but holds interest.

Capture return visits with interesting content
Social media links in email footers
If you look closely in the image above you will also see that you can now optionally include links to all of your social media sites within the footer of all of your outgoing emails.
Both of these new features are enabled by default but can be disabled in the email settings section of your admin control panel.
Email may be as old as the web itself, but it is a very powerful medium to get your audience coming back for more.
Respond to Reviews
We added the ability to leave a review to Pages articles, download files, calendar events and in other areas early on in Invision Community 4. The concept was to allow your members to engage in new ways with your content. Reviews on Commerce store items and purchasable downloadable goods is a great way to inspire others to purchase.
New to Invision Community 4.3 is the ability for the content creator (be that a download file, store owner, etc) to respond to a review. This is a great way to address reviews that may be considered unfair or extreme.

Matt is talking to himself again
One more thing...
Not content with resurrecting the Subscriptions manager from 2009, we've brought back a small detail from previous versions of Invision Community. The famous "this person is typing a reply" indicator in the online list.

 
We can't wait to release this latest update. With new ways to monetise your community, new ways to engage your audience and better promotion tools, we're excited to see how it's going to benefit your community.
 

Videos are everywhere. We shoot them on our smart phones, share them to social media, messengers and more.
Up until now, the only way to share a video to Invision Community was to use a service like YouTube or Vimeo. If you uploaded a video file it would be treated like an attachment, and if the user clicked the link it would download it to their computer.
In Invision Community 4.3 we've improved this. Now if you upload a video file (mp4/3gp/mov/ogg/ogv/mpg/mpeg/flv/webm/wmv/avi/m4v), it will embed similarly to an image.

Uploading a video
When viewing an uploaded video, if it is in a format that the user's browser and platform natively supports, it will show an embedded player. This will have all of the features supported by the operating system - for example, almost all browsers support fullscreen, and Safari supports Airplay and picture in picture.

An uploaded video
If the video is in a format not supported, it displays exactly as it does now - as a download link.

An uploaded video in a browser without playback support for that format

One of the advantages of running your own community is that you get to control the branding.
Branding is important as it defines and re-enforces your customer's experience. Branding also promotes recognition, it sets you apart from your competition and it provides motivation and direction for your staff.
Invision Community has many built in tools to change the look and feel of the community. If you are a savvy coder, you can dive right into the HTML and CSS templates to create truly unique themes. You might also look at an off-the-shelf theme from our marketplace. There are some great themes you can use as a base for your branding.
Easy Mode Editor
One tool that is often overlooked is the Easy Mode Editor. It's a great way to make some simple changes to reflect your brand's identity. It offers a great deal of control, but I want to show you how you can brand your community in just a few short minutes without knowing a line of code.
The presentation below takes you through creating a new Easy Mode theme, and using the Easy Mode Editor on the front end to dynamically change the colours. You'll also learn how to upload your logo.

How to brand your community presentation
Email Branding
Another area to consider is outgoing emails. Invision Community leverages emails for notifications, as well as the bulk email system in the Admin CP. These emails look fine by default, but adding your logo and primary color re-enforces your branding.
The presentation below shows you the few simple steps needed to brand your emails.

How to brand your emails presentation
As you can see, Invision Community offers simple tools to change the look of your community without knowing how to code.
We hope you find this useful. If you have any questions, please let us know below!

Emoji: built in to Invision Community 4.3! ?
Invision Community has a long history. We remember the early days of forums, back when graphical "emoticons" or "smilies" were added.
We have always shipped our products with a basic set of emoticons with the ability to add your own images and has supported emoji from mobile devices.
Emoji has become a standard across mobile and desktop devices so it made sense to bring them to Invision Community fully.
You can choose from 3 different styles of Emoji:
The native style provided by the user's operating system (if you choose this option, users on different platforms will see different styles) Twitter style EmojiOne style
Emoji Settings
Once you have chosen one of these options, all of the available Emoji will show in the emoticons selector when making a post. Unlike in older versions, the entire list is scrollable (the categories drop down will jump you to the category rather than filter), you can search, and standard Emoji features like skin tone modifiers are fully supported, and of course, you can make them as big as you like.

Navigating Emoji

Skin Tone Modifier

Make Emoji any size
 
Autocompleting Short Codes
In addition to using the selector, you can also use optionally enable standard :short_codes:. These will be autocompleted as you type.

Autocompleting Short Codes
You can also enable more conventional ASCII emoticons to be automatically replaced too:

ASCII Short Codes
 
Don't Worry: Custom Emoticons Aren't Going Anywhere!
You can use custom emoticons either instead of, or even alongside Emoji. If you give your custom emoticons a text replacement starting and ending with : they will even show in the autocompletion alongside Emoji.

Custom Emoticons
 
Technical Details 
Whichever style you choose, Emoji is stored in the database as the actual Unicode characters, so you can even change the setting and all Emoji, even those in existing posts, will immediately change.
If you choose to use the native style (so the Emoji will match the style provided by the operating system), the system will automatically detect which Emojis are supported and the selector will only try to show the ones the platform can render.

We are happy to announce the new Invision Community 4.3 is available!
Some highlights in Invision Community 4.3 include...
Improved Search
We now support Elasticsearch for scalable and accurate searching that MySQL alone cannot provided. There are also enhancements to the overall search interfaces based on your feedback.

 
Emoji
Express yourself with native emoji support in all editors. You can also keep your custom emoticons as you have now.

 
Member Management
The AdminCP interface to manage your members is all new allowing you easier control and management of your membership.

 
Automatic Community Moderation
You as the administrator set up rules to define how many unique member reports a piece of content needs to receive before it's automatically hidden from view and moderators notified.

 
Clubs
The new Clubs feature has been a huge hit with Invision Community users and we are expanding it to include invite-only options, notifications, exposure on the main community pages, paid memberships, and more.
Custom Email Footers
Your community generates a lot of email and you can now include dynamic content in the footer to help drive engagement and content discovery. 
New Gallery Interface
We have reworked our Gallery system with a simplified upload process and more streamlined image viewing.
 
The full list follows. Enjoy!
Content Discovery
We now support Elasticsearch which is a search utility that allows for much faster and more reliable searching. The REST API now supports search functions. Both MySQL and Elasticsearch have new settings for the admin to use to set search-defaults and default content weighting to better customize search logic to your community. Visitors can now search for Content Pages and Commerce Products. When entering a search term, members now see a more clear interface so they know what areas they are searching in and the method of search. Member Engagement
Commerce can now send a customizable account welcome email after checkout. You can whitelist emails in the spam service to stop false-positives. REST API has many enhancements to mange members. Ability to join any OAuth service for login management. Invision Community can now be an OAuth endpoint. Wordpress OAuth login method built in. Support for Google's Invisible ReCaptcha. Groups can be excluded from Leaderboard (such as admins or bot groups). All emails generated by Invision Community can now contain admin-defined extra promotional text in the footer such as Our Picks, and Social Links. Admins can now define the order of Complete Your Profile to better control user experience. Clubs
Option to make a Club visible but invite-only Admins can set an option so any Club a member is part of will also show in the parent application. So if you are in a Club that has a Gallery tab then those image will show both in the Club and in the main Gallery section of the community. Club members can now follow an entire Club rather than just each content section. There is a new option on the Club directory page for a list view which is useful for communities with many Clubs. If you have Commerce you can now enable paid memberships to Clubs. Admins can set limits on number of Clubs per group. If a group has delete permission in their Club, they can now delete empty containers as well. Members can ignore invitations. Moderation and Administration
Unrestricted moderator or administrator permission sets in the AdminCP are visually flagged. This prevents administrator confusion when they cannot do something as they will be able to quickly see if their account has restrictions. You can choose to be notified with a new Club is created. Moderators can now reply to any content item with a hidden reply. Download screenshot/watermarks can now be rebuilt if you change settings. Support for Facebook Pixel to easily track visitors. Moderators can now delete Gallery albums. Automatic moderation tools with rules to define when content should auto-hide based on user reports. Totally new member management view in AdminCP. More areas are mass-selectable like comments and AdminCP functions for easier management. New Features
Commerce now has full Stripe support including fraud tools, Apple Pay, and other Stripe features. Commerce packages can now have various custom email events configured (expiring soon, purchased, expired). Full Emojii support in the editor. Complete overhaul of the Gallery upload and image views. Announcements system overhaul. Now global on all pages (not via widget) and new modes including dismissible announcements and top-header floating bar option. Many new reports on traffic and engagement in the AdminCP. Blog has new view modes to offer options for a traditional site blog or a community multi-member blog platform. The content-starter can now leave one reply to Reviews on their item. Commerce now makes it much easier to do basic account-subscriptions when there is no product attached. Useful Improvements
Forums has a new widget where you can filter by tags. If tags are not required, the tag input box now indicates this so the member knows they do not have to put in tags. Member cover photos can now be clicked to see the full image. Any item with a poll now has a symbol on the list view. Twitch.tv embed support. You can now update/overwrite media in the Pages Media Manager. Mapbox as an additional map provider to Google Maps. Technical Changes
Direct support for Sparkpost has been removed. Anyone currently using Sparkpost will automatically have their settings converted to the Sparkpost SMTP mode so your email will still work. Your cache engines (like Redis) will be checked on upgrade and in the support tool to ensure they are reachable. Third-party applications will now be visually labeled to distinguish them from Invision Community official applications. The queued tasks list in the AdminCP is now collapsed by default as queued tasks are not something people need to pay much attention to during normal operations. When upgrading from version 3 series you must convert your database to UTF8 and the system saves your original data in tables prefixed with orig. The AdminCP now alerts you these are still present and allows you to remove them to reclaim storage space. On new installs there are now reasonable defaults for upload limits to keep people from eating up storage space. Categories in all apps (forums, gallery albums, databases, etc.) no longer allow HTML in their titles. This has been a concern both in terms of security and usability so we were forced to restrict it. Large improvements to the Redis cache engine including use for sessions. The login with HTTPS option has been removed and those who were using it will be given instructions to convert their entire community to HTTPS. Images loaded through the proxy system now honor image limits for normal uploads. We now consider BBCode deprecated. We are not removing support but will not fix any future issues that may come up.
 
There's a lot to talk about here so we are going to lock this entry to comments so things do not get confusing. Feel free to comment on upcoming feature-specific entries or start a topic in our Feedback forum.
 

As we make our final commits, merge in the last of our branches and wait for Charles to move more tasks to the development list, we pause to reflect on our year together as a company.
Pour some egg nog, grab some snacks and lets take a look at our journey this year.
Our year in numbers
In 2017 we made 72 Invision Community releases, 6584 code commits, read 157,203 customer replies and made an average of 177 staff replies to tickets per day.
Our year in dates
We were certainly busy this year. We launched Invision Community 4.2, started work on Invision Community 4.3, started two new blog series and a newsletter. Lets take a look at the key dates.
March 10th
We started talking about our upcoming release, Invision Community 4.2 which saw us drop "Invision Power Services" in favour of the sleeker and less awkward "Invision Community".
March 28 - 30th
During our series of blogs on 4.2, we launch a triple whammy of blog entries outlining reactions, clubs and social media promotions. Three new tent-pole features that drove 4.2 to be our most successful release.
July 19th
We release Invision Community 4.2 to deafening applause (most of it was our own, but it still counts). We give the development team a 15 minute break and then drop the 4.3 task list internally.
September 15th
We start a new blog series "Team Talk". The idea is to show that we're not a bunch of code writing robots, but we're real people with personalities, hopes and dreams. So far, it's proved that we're mostly a bunch of code writing robots without personalities. The irony.
October 18th
Not content to just talk about silly things in Team Talk, we launched our new long form blog series "Community Management". Here we give our many years of community building insight to help you become successful in running your communities. We've tackled a number of subjects from SEO to security so far with many more planned for 2018.
October 30th
Our development team have been busy working on Invision Community 4.3 and we announce it to the world. And being the huge tease we are, we've said nothing since. Rest assured, we've got a lot done and its shaping up to be another great release. We'll be talking about it in more detail next year.
It's all about you
Of course, we couldn't finish without saying a massive THANK YOU to all our customers. We are so lucky to do something we love for a living and that is only possible because you choose to use us to build your community.
We are committed to keep moving forward to ensure that we serve you in the best way possible. We'll keep innovating to give you the tools you need to succeed and we'll keep posting blogs packed full of tips and advice.
Here's to 2018 and all the adventures it brings.

 
 

Our recent release of Invision Community 4.2 was the most well-received version ever! The feedback we received on new features like Clubs, Reactions, and Promotes was better than we could have hoped and we really enjoyed seeing all the creative uses as people implemented them on their own communities.
We have been hard at work on version 4.3 with a goal of improving on all the great new features. It is well under way and we are happy to able to start announcing what's new over the next few weeks.
Invision Community 4.3 will not only contain new features but also have a core focus on refinement from 4.2's new features. You will see many improvements to Clubs, new integration options, large application improvements, new promotional features, and more changes large and small.

 
You can expect to see news posts about new features and changes very soon with a release date in early 2018. Follow our news section or subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates.

Here is the roundup of what's new in Invision Community 4.2!
Highlights
There's a lot of new feature in 4.2 but here are a few of the highlights:
Promoting Content - A new way to promote content in your Community internally, on Facebook, and on Twitter.

 
Clubs - Clubs are a brand new way of supporting sub-communities within your site. Many people have requested social group functionality in the past and Clubs are our implementation of this concept.

 
Reactions - 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.

 
Complete Your Profile - Encourage or require members to fill out the details on their profile. Also now allows for quick registration to encourage joining.

 
And a whole lot more..
It goes on... here is the full list!
Leaderboard Enhancements Richer Embeds Group Promotion Improvement Fluid Forum View Member History Editor Uploading Improvements Authy Integration Commerce Improvements New REST API Endpoints Gallery Improvements Statistic Reporting Copy Topic to Database Downloads Index Page Blog Sidebar Promoting Content Clubs Reactions Calendar Venues Social Sign In Streamlining Calendar Add Similar Event Gallery Lightbox Navigation Letter Profile Photos SEO Improvements Device Management Delayed Deletes Calendar Event Reminders Content Messages Recommended Replies Complete Your Profile Be sure to visit each entry above for more information and screenshots. We hope you enjoy Invision Community 4.2!