Hatsu

I would rather say calling it a “hosting issue” is the unfair assessment, when having such limits is essentially a default in the entire hosting industry.
https://kb.mailpoet.com/article/150-lists-of-hosts-and-their-email-sending-limits
And even if I would go through the trouble of moving everything to a paid service like for example Amazon SES (just to get bulk mails out without issues despite having a perfect email delivery otherwise), I then have their sending limits per day. The issue remains, just with different limits. 
It’s not some edge-case issue on a cheap shared hosting environment that we are asking to “work around”. It’s just a reasonable way to deal with email delivery in standard hosting environments. And in contrast, it feels rather unreasonable, that I can have a perfectly working local SMTP delivery; in my full technical and legal control; highly optimized delivery through DNS settings; no privacy issues because no 3rd-party services are needed; working perfectly fine for all transactional mails; all at no extra costs … and then potentially have bulk-mails fail in an unpredictable manner because the background tasks may or may not take the right amount of time. 

Please keep the extension's behavior consistent across all the functions. Some extensions first check if the extension implements a certain function before calling it, while others expect the function to exist at all times and throw errors if they're missing.
 
For example, the core/ModeratorPermissions currently has 4 functions available (preSave, getPermissions, onChange, onDelete) but only preSave checks if the function is available before calling it:
/* Allow extensions an opportunity to inspect the values and make adjustments */ foreach ( \IPS\Application::allExtensions( 'core', 'ModeratorPermissions', FALSE ) as $k => $ext ) { if( method_exists( $ext, 'preSave' ) ) { $ext->preSave( $values ); } }  
The other functions instead are called without any check:
foreach ( \IPS\Application::allExtensions( 'core', 'ModeratorPermissions', FALSE, 'core' ) as $k => $ext ) { foreach( $ext->getPermissions( array() ) as $name => $data ) { // ... } } === foreach ( \IPS\Application::allExtensions( 'core', 'ModeratorPermissions', FALSE ) as $k => $ext ) { $ext->onChange( $current, $changed ); } === foreach ( \IPS\Application::allExtensions( 'core', 'ModeratorPermissions', FALSE ) as $k => $ext ) { $ext->onDelete( $current ); }  
While I understand that getPermission() must be always implemented (the extension would have no meaning otherwise), the other 2 functions onChange() and onDelete() are completely optional and cause empty functions to be left around. For example, this code below comes from the Blog's extension:
/** * After change * * @param array $moderator The moderator * @param array $changed Values that were changed * @return void */ public function onChange( $moderator, $changed ) { } /** * After delete * * @param array $moderator The moderator * @return void */ public function onDelete( $moderator ) { }

As showcased in our past blogs, Invision Community 5 introduces a brand new, modern interface which brings improvements to performance, aesthetics and mobile usability.
An optional side navigation panel, new view modes, light/dark modes, customizable header layouts, a search modal and a mobile navigation bar are some of the things we've showcased previously. Today, lets take a closer look at some other miscellaneous changes that we've been working on while developing Version 5, including some of the code reductions and performance improvements that we've been able to achieve in the process.
For those of you who are developers, we'll also give some simple explanations of how (and why) we've implemented these changes.
 
Widgets
Sidebar widgets are perfect for displaying content feeds, featured members, announcements, advertisements and more on your page. In version 4 however, the widget column would often become an empty space once the widgets had been scrolled past:
  widgets-v4.mp4  
In version 5, widgets now stick to the screen once the last widget has been reached, ensuring your readers have more convenient  access to your widgets rather than a void space:
  sticky-widgets-v5.mp4  
 
Messenger
The Messenger is a great way to reach out to members when a private chat is more appropriate than a topic. Inspired by modern email clients, the messenger in Version 5 has been revamped with a full-height, sticky inbox, a longer message snippet, mini profiles and a more polished UI - all with a 25% reduction in CSS and a 100% reduction in Javascript.
messenger-v5.mp4
 
Sticky elements
We've mentioned sticky elements a couple of times now, so lets take a look behind the scenes at how they're created, and some of the performance improvements with Version 5. Traditionally, sticky elements were created using Javascript which would calculate the position of the element on the page and adjust it's stickiness every time the page was scrolled. Scroll events can be quite taxing for browsers, and when it comes to Javascript, the less, the better (especially when aiming for great page speed scores)!
With that in mind, all sticky elements are now handled using sticky positioning via CSS, which is a native and much more performant way of controlling these elements. We've been able to replace an entire 400 line Javascript component with just 3 lines of CSS.
 
Grids and Masonry
Grids have previously been handled in a similar fashion. Javascript would scan all elements within a grid to determine how many could fit on a single line, and would then shuffle these elements into position after the page was loaded or resized. CSS has since introduced its own grid properties, which has allowed us to replace more than 350 lines of Javascript with just a few lines of CSS, resulting in more performant page rendering and nicer looking grids (especially on small-medium displays such as mobiles and tablets).
 

 
Fun fact: We first introduced a similar performance improvement to "masonry grids" in our Gallery update from January this year, by replacing more than 400 lines of Javascript with, you guessed it, just a few lines of CSS.
 

 
 
 
Click targets
We wanted to make Version 5 as simple as possible to navigate, and one way of doing that has been by implementing larger click targets. Clicking anywhere inside an entry in a table or grid will now take you to that entry (you can still click on other links like normal within the click target, such as subforums or profile links). Click targets are optional and can be disabled via your theme settings if necessary.
 
click-targets.mp4
 
Data Lists (tables)
Speaking of tables, they too have been revamped. Tables automatically adapt to the space they've been assigned to (for those curious, this is done using CSS container-queries), so they're always neat regardless of the screen size, with no overflow or squashed layouts. Behind the scenes, the two columns below are created with identical code, yet they're quite different visually due to the size which they've been allocated. Even with these improvements, tables have received a 25% reduction in CSS.
 

 
Profiles
Profiles have been polished for Version 5 and include some nice improvements such as sticky widgets and tabs. 
profile-desktop.mp4
 
On mobiles, the side column collapses into a carousel, and the sticky tabs allow you to easily flick between content types without scrolling to the top of the page.
profile-mobile.mp4
 

Tabs
You may have noticed in the above clip that tabs on mobiles are now scrollable, compared to a dropdown menu from version 4. We made this change to ensure that tabs are given more equal exposure on small devices, and have managed to reduce the CSS by a whopping 80%.
 
Carousels
Last and certainly not least, are carousels. Carousels are great for displaying large amounts of data in a confined space and they've been rewritten from scratch for version 5. Previously, a Javascript library was used to create the "scroll effect", however this has never been the smoothest experience on laptop trackpads and touch devices.
In version 5, carousels are powered by native smooth-scrolling and scroll-snapping, which results in a much nicer user experience, especially on touchscreens. We've been able to remove a staggering 95% of the Javascript, substituting it with just a few lines of CSS.
 
carousel.mp4
 
To be honest, we've only just scratched the surface here! In addition to these changes, we've modernized (and reduced code) in almost every component throughout the suite including avatars, cover photos, dropdown menus, forms, inputs, buttons, lists, off-canvas menus, side menus, columns and more!
Combined, these changes result in not only a significant reduction in code, but also a polished UI that performs smoothly on desktop and touch devices. We're excited to continue modernizing Invision Community well into the future as new technologies and techniques become available to us, and are looking forward to getting it in your hands in 2024.

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Hi @Dreadknux
Funnily enough, this is something we discussed internally a few weeks ago. We're working hard on revamping Pages at the moment, so we'll be able to provide more information in the future about widget customizations 🙂 

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!
 


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Looking at my sites, it seems like spammers are already using it. I get more and more replies to old topics which somehow are on topic but still somehow make so little sense that I can’t believe a human registered to post it. 
I’m not afraid of AI and use it myself, but only like a brainstorming partner, where I judge which replies are actually useful and correct. I can’t imagine having AI (auto) reply/publish anything on my sites at the moment. And I think it would only dilute the value of a community. Because the AI answers will soon be available directly within search engines and other apps and services. I rather run the place where answers can be different and better than that. 

Ok grandpa.

I'll be honest when I saw this thread, I almost went for the popcorn, but this is actually a pretty big W for self-hosted licenses.
Removing the ability to select apps is actually smart. While it may greatly restrict your ability to budget on smaller orgs, it kind of pushes you into trying them and finding ways to monetize.
Both of my licenses were missing apps, so having access to them all while still paying less kind of blows my mind. This was not on my "what will IPS do next" bingo card. A step in the right direction and much appreciated by us self-hosted customers!

Well, updated mine, got 2 month on top of it. It's a very long time a got an offer which lets me pay less... Thank you 🙂
 

Glad you see the benefit 🙂 

Improvements are nice, but my main concern is maintaining existing projects. I would want to know everything that is not possible anymore and learn if there are alternative ways. This includes hacky solutions like putting a MySQL query in a theme template and things like that. I have lots of customized installations and I don’t want them to be stuck with 4.x.

Thanks for the quick response. The Sunday patch seems to have fixed the worst for the time being. 👏

Our June release of Invision Community introduces several new improvements for your community to increase privacy controls and consent of personally identifiable information.
In today's digital age, privacy and the protection of personally identifiable information (PII) have become increasingly important. By incorporating improved privacy and PII data features into Invision Community, we are creating a more secure and inclusive environment within your community. In this blog post, we will take a quick look at what PII is, and the new features Invision Community has to improve privacy within your community.
What is PII?
PII, or personally identifiable information, refers to any data that can be used to identify, contact, or locate an individual member. When users sign up and visit your community, they may provide various types of PII, either voluntarily or as required by the platform's registration process. For example, an email address is required to complete the registration, and in some cases and IP address may be logged to authenticate a session, or to provide some context to the person posting content. 
Invision Community introduced new data control tools in a previous release, so let's take a look at the improvements coming in our June release that improves cookie management, IP address management, PII data requests, and the right to be forgotten.
PII Data Request and Right to be Forgotten
Your members now have the ability to request their Personally Identifiable Information (PII) data directly from their account settings page. Upon submitting a request, administrators will receive a notification alerting them to the new inquiry, where they can choose to either approve or deny it.
If approved, the member will be notified and provided information on how to download their requested data.

 
Additionally, members now have the option to request account deletion. After submitting this request, they will receive a confirmation email to verify their intent. Once confirmed, the request is forwarded to administrators, who can then decide whether to approve or reject the account deletion.

IP Address Management
Invision Community has had tools to prune IP addresses within a timeframe for a while, but we have conducted a thorough evaluation of the data framework in Invision Community to ensure that all recorded IP addresses are systematically purged according to the designated timeframe.
Cookie Management
Empowering members to control which cookies are stored is an important aspect of fostering trust and security within an online community. By granting users the autonomy to manage cookie preferences, you demonstrate a commitment to respecting their privacy and protecting their personal data. This level of transparency not only helps build a strong sense of trust between the community and its members but also helps with compliance, ultimately contributing to a more engaging and responsible user experience.
The Invision Community cookie consent page has been revamped and now displays a list of essential cookies. Visitors have the option to opt out of non-essential cookies for a more customized browsing experience.

Additionally, we've introduced a new feature that allows for the inclusion of an optional third-party Cookie Description on the cookie consent page, further enhancing transparency and user control.

We trust that these enhancements to privacy and data collection practices will simplify compliance with various regulations and, most importantly, ensure that your community members feel secure and well-protected while engaging with your platform.
The features and changes presented here are available in the following packages:
Beginner Creator Creator Pro Team Business Enterprise These features are also available in the Invision Community Classic (self-hosted) product.
If you do not see your product or package listed, please contact us to talk about upgrading your Invision Community.

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I have set it up to run every minute. Depending on your community and server load you can adapt the time interval.

I suggest adding Deprecation Tracker to the main menu under the "More" tab.

Way too expensive. Currently, I pay 300$ yearly. I would need your Creator Pro and this is 1788$ a year (the cheap option). Even if I count in my hosting costs it's more than double the price tag. And I would have to pay my server anyway because I run more applications on it than only Invision Community.

You can use a test site which must not be available to public (so protect it with htaccess or something similar). You have to set the domain here in the client area. Then you can test your upgrade as often as you want to.
 

I've called this Databases and Tiers, but I might have also called it Databases and Tears! 
I understand there's been a recent change to the way in which the tiered pricing structure works at Invision. I've just started a brand new site which I'm confident is going to grow rapidly simply because it is serving a clearly focussed niche group (church ministers in the UK), for which there is nothing like this provision out there. ... and I have a very strong network of people to tap into and they're all excited about it. So here I am beavering away at building the site. I start on the free trial and check out the functionality etc etc. Confident it's the right platform for me I buy in at the lowest tier because I'm not making any money from this site yet - hopefully I will, but not yet and not for a while. 
So I'm busy customising it and buying in some apps from the marketplace when suddenly I realise that some of these customisations aren't working. It takes me a good while before I realise it's all down to one thing ... Database access. On the Creator package (lowest tier) full database access isn't available. So there's a bunch of applications in the marketplace which just don't work on that tier ... only that's about as transparent and obvious as a needle in a haystack. Sure, if you know what you're looking for you can see that maybe it's mentioned, but so vaguely and not in any kind of way that a beginner like me could be expected to understand that it feels like a con. 
So I look at the Creator Pro tier and think about upgrading. It's another $70 a month!!! $70 just so I get to customise the databases a bit. That's almost double what is already a brilliant, but expensive platform to commit to. 

Things I have absolutely no interest in ... EVERYTHING ELSE ON THE CREATOR PRO LIST! Don't care about coming soon Live Topics. Nope. Don't care about SSO. Don't care about API access or Live who's viewing. I just want to be able to customise some layouts a little bit to make it look nicer using the add-ons I foolishly bought on the marketplace thinking they'd work just fine ... because who knew "Full Page Builder Access" meant the same thing as vague mentions of "databases" on the app pages? 

So this is me asking the guys at invision to think again about their tiered structure. I know this is a costly and brilliant platform to build, run and maintain. I know that. I'm hugely grateful to you for it. BUT ... is there honestly such a significant impact on your servers and services that pushing "Full Page Builder Access" into the Creator tier isn't possible, or indeed sensible? No way I can afford to cough up an additional $70 a month, I can barely afford the $99 a month I'm already paying. 

When I was on the trial I understood that full page builder access was part of the deal. That's what I thought I was getting when I signed up. Not because I'd read the words anywhere, just because that's what I had in the trial I had. 

If you can't push page builder down into the bottom tier, can you at least give a justifiable reason why not? Again, not interested in all the other stuff in the Creator Pro tier, just databases. Would it really be problematic to you - given how this move has screwed up app compatibility in the marketplace - and given how your trial period version includes it and then you do a bait and switch when someone buys in ... to include it as standard on all packages? 

Thanks. 

I’m not judging in any way, just listing some observations about the developer/Marketplace situation in the recent years. 
4.5 tightened the rules drastically. Result: several developers left for good. price increases. Developments needs a self-hosted installation and possibly a demo website. It’s now 850 + 300 annually. Someone starting out as developer really needs some killer products to earn that back and then generate profits. Cloud testing of resources would make it even more expensive (+1,788 annually).  Shift/changes to cloud. The lower tiers don’t have the ability to install third-party products. This decreases the reach and makes running independent third-party shops less useful/profitable.  Signatures turned off. No possibility for passive advertisement through community posts.  Limited compatibility field. Sales can only be created for one version, limiting the income.  I have no magical solutions to offer, but are improvements for this something we could put on the table for 2023?
Currently, I am not very optimistic. We only have a handful of active developers left with continued announcements of departures. If it is still working well for some (?), it’s probably because of a large set of files and existing customers with renewals. But I can’t see how new developers would want to get involved in the current situation, replacing the ones who left or even growing the marketplace. 
I understand the costs and downsides for IPS. Paying for code reviews, chargeback fees and of course all the support issues with third-party resources. But then again: Looking at the broader field of online software: all the big players strive with and in part because of a flourishing third-party marketplace. So, improvement could easily be a “win-win-win” situation for IPS, developers and IPS customers. 
 
(I would have some suggestions myself but I don’t want to push the topic in a specific direction, so I am leaving it at the problem statement for now.)

He added this.

Did you change anything on your setup? For me it was Encryption Standards.
 

Depending on your set up for cronjobs it can be that your path in the cronjob (config) still points to the 7.4 executable. If you use Plesk f.e. and you use their menu for cronjobs where you have to provide the absolute path to PHP this can happen. It happened for me when I changed my PHP version and forget about the cronjobs. But you can't see this in ACP.

Depending on your set up for cronjobs it can be that your path in the cronjob (config) still points to the 7.4 executable. If you use Plesk f.e. and you use their menu for cronjobs where you have to provide the absolute path to PHP this can happen. It happened for me when I changed my PHP version and forget about the cronjobs. But you can't see this in ACP.

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

I really don’t understand what is going on. 
For the last several years I had a $30/month package covering the entire software suite. 
It was discontinued and I looked at a $54 plan, but it introduced new limitations like “no external apps”. 
Just months later, that plan is gone as well, and it’s at least a $99 plan. But that again removed crucial features. 
So just to keep the existing site going as it was, I would have needed to go from $30 to $169 now. That’s a price increase of over 560%! That is insane. 
To be clear: I fully understand that private companies choose their market segment. They don’t owe it to the public to be cheaper, offer free service or anything like that. Not even if other products in the same field are cheaper or free. 
But a company does owe something to their existing client base, especially with a company like IPS where 100% of the revenue comes from one product and therefore entirely from the existing client base.
There needs to be some kind of trust that both business partners are in a win-win partnership and that there is a willingness to keep it this way. We are your existing clients. We pay for the product, so it should be built for us and around our needs and at least somewhat around our financial abilities.
Because, at the moment, I honestly feel like an idiot if my license fees pay for the development of features today, which I will not be able to use tomorrow, because they are reserved for some higher plan for a future big corporation client. I should at least be able to keep using the product I know with roughly the same features and roughly with the same price I knew and accepted when I made the original purchase. Otherwise there is no reason to have any trust in the software provider. And even if I try to stick with the software, how am I supposed to plan for the future of current and new licenses, when price increases of over 500% can happen at any time? It’s easy to say one cares about their customers, but everything that happened since last year regarding plans and pricing betrays any such promises.