Real Hal9000

Welcome to the second video of our sneak peak series! Today we'll be taking a closer look at the new Invision Community interface, including dark mode, accessibility improvements, performance improvements and the mobile layout! Before we begin, I should mention that this is a pre-alpha version of Invision Community 5, so some areas of the design may change before the official release.
 
New traditional header design
In our previous video, we showcased our new, optional side panel which formats your navigation into a vertical list. For those who prefer a traditional, horizontal header, here it is!

A much more compact header compared to version 4, the new design condenses the navigation bar into a single row, moving all sub-navigation items into dropdown menus. A new, optional area below the text logo allows you to add your website slogan or announce events such as anniversaries or holidays, and our new search modal provides convenient access to the advanced search filters from any page on your community.

 
Accessible interface
The main content area has been designed with accessibility as a priority. High contrast text colours and larger font-sizes help to make reading more comfortable and clickable table rows (which can be enabled or disabled via the Theme Editor) allow you to navigate between pages more easily. A visible focus ring significantly improves navigation for visitors who find it more comfortable to browse with their keyboard TAB key, instead of using their mouse (ie. visitors with conditions such as Parkinson's disease, or those who have temporarily lost function due to a broken arm).
 
Focus.mp4
Elements are highlighted while navigating with the keyboard
 
Dark mode
Dark mode has become increasingly popular over the past few years - so it's no surprise that Version 5 has been designed from scratch with both light and dark mode in mind. With version 4, it was necessary to manage two themes in order to provide a light and dark colour scheme. In version 5 though, all of that is handled by a single theme.
By default, your members will be able to choose their own color scheme preference: either light, dark, or system. System assigns a color scheme based on your system preferences - so if your device automatically switches to dark mode at night, your community will too! With that said, as an administrator, you also have the option to restrict your site to a single color scheme - so if you ONLY want to offer a dark theme, that's easily achieved.

 
 
Performance
Despite all of these new inclusions, the version 5 UI has been coded with significant reductions in both CSS and Javascript. We'll dive deeper into code reductions in a future blog entry, however two great examples are:
- Grids: which have had a 100% removal of Javascript and are powered by only a few lines of CSS, resulting in a faster rendering time, especially for users on slow connections.
- And carousels: which have had a 95% reduction in Javascript and now rely on native browser scrolling, for a much smoother experience on both desktop and mobile!
Additionally we've removed a number of helper libraries that are no longer needed with modern browsers saving even more.
 
Mobile UI
With an incredible amount of mobile visitors accessing the web, we’ve placed a huge priority on redesigning the interface to ensure it lives up to todays standards.
A new navigation bar at the bottom of the page provides convenient access to your activity feed, notifications, messages, a search panel, and navigation links. A conscious effort was made to ensure that this information was available within a single tap, and we found that a bottom bar like this was easier to interact with compared to icons in the header.

The mobile navigation bar from Invision Community 5
 
A goal of the mobile UI was to display elements that were previously only available on larger devices, while still maintaining a clean interface. For example, to improve navigation, we've added a scrollable breadcrumb list to the top and bottom of the page. To improve guest participation, we added Sign In and Sign Up links to the bottom navigation bar. These links were previously hidden within the hamburger menu, so we feel like this will really benefit those looking to improve registrations. And as demonstrated in last weeks video, profile information is now available within posts, comments and reviews on small devices.
We’re really excited for you to literally have a hands on experience with the new mobile interface of Invision Community 5, and we're interested to hear your feedback in the comments!

View full blog entry

In addition to Matt’s post, each of your members (where a new group permission allows) can also choose their own preference out of the views. So if you’d prefer to use the traditional table view for the forum index and the traditional column view for topics (even if the admin has assigned other layouts), that’s of course possible. We’re absolutely not forcing change, just offering more options than before 🙂 

Honestly, the process was fantastic, and the discussions were numerous. While IPS does want the CIC product to be their primary product, they see the value in being the best self-hosted product on the market as well.
But as they've said for a while, the self-hosted market is changing.  Sites that are "just forums" are not likely to survive long going forward, which is a position I've held for years back when I added IP.Content/Pages as the article management system on my site.  As such, it doesn't make sense to keep the apps as individual products anymore and instead sell the suite as a whole.  It allows IPS to integrate the apps even tighter. 
In my view, site owners who run "just a forum" need to sit back and reflect on where the world is today and if such a site makes sense to continue self-host, or just migrate it to Reddit instead. If you are a "just forums" site owner, I would encourage you to look at this change as a chance to grow in new ways with the new apps that you didn't have access to before.  The only limit is your imagination.
IPS published several drafts of the upgrade language to us in the group and we all took turns making suggestions and modifying the language.  While IPS certainly set the guidelines, it was a very collaborative effort between IPS and those of us in the customer focus group. I think every person in the focus group submitted a modification suggestion to IPS and IPS was very receptive towards them. 
With regard to how the licensing changes work, especially regarding renewals, it's clear that in order to make sure the self-hosted product is a viable, ongoing product, people who use the software need to chip in. The pool of self-hosted customers has shrunk dramatically over the last years. Making the renewals and catch up fees mandatory was the only way to do that in a fair manner but IPS counters that with lower renewal fees for any site with 2 or more apps.
My relationship with IPS over the last 20-ish years has been strained from time to time, but I have to say that this has been a fantastic experience for me personally.

I can see how you might look at it that way in terms of saving money. But we spent a lot of time, resources, and money in development of those 3 years of features and other clients have an expectation from us.
The only way to make self-hosted viable for the future is to ensure people are paying for the effort put into developing it. Otherwise we really should just get rid of it. If you are not willing to do that, there are cheap or low cost alternatives out there but you don't get the owners of the company replying to you and you most certainly do not get monthly updates and constant improvements. Look at literally any other community platform and you will see many are at worst dead and at best barely supported.
It is also very, very common. I'm not sure where you have been living in 30+ years of the software world. It's very normal for software to require a subscription fee or to require a re-purchase at major versions. I get emails all the time from software I own that says "new version pay up!"
We are not requiring people to re-purchase for v5 as other platforms would. The "catch up" renewals only apply to the monthly option as it is basically a finance version of the annual fee. You may wish to review the new terms in the client area as you seem incorrect here.
We are growing and, if you are actually serious about your community, a few more dollars a year to get a platform that is actually alive must be worth it. If having something that is actively developed is not worth it to you, then your community will probably suffer with another platform.
But, as has been said a lot already in this topic, you don't have to do anything. You can stick right where you are on your current terms.
 
TL;DR: We are committed to our clients using Classic, self-hosted who are committed to their communities being a success. It is a joint venture.
 
And to your examples:
1. Insurance companies actually do charge you more if you have a huge gap in coverage. They see you as a greater risk. Same idea here.
2. Microsoft does not do upgrade fees they just make you buy the new version outright. If you would prefer that, I would be HAPPY to do that as it would make our software cost way more.

Could you please clarify what you mean by "Copy a topic to a frontpage?" What is "frontpage?"
This post may help to outline why it isn't available on edit, however, and may answer your other question: 
 

Welcome to the very first Invision Insight, hosted by yours truly! 😎
I'm excited to connect with you each week to share what's happening inside Invision Community. For those that haven't yet seen me making my way around this community, I'm Gary, and I have just recently joined the Customer Service team at Invision Community.
We are currently working hard to close out our 20th year in business on a high note!
There are still so many things to look forward to before the year is done though, and I wanted to give you all a few things to keep your eyes out for. It truly is a testament to the hard work, motivation and dedication of the entire team, and we thank each and every one of you for your contributions, suggestions, feedback and overall engagement within the Invision Community space. We have you to thank for the past 20 years, and we hope to still bring you a dynamic community platform for the next 20 (and beyond)!
New Version
Invision Community have released their most recent beta, 4.7.5 Beta 1.
This release is our December release and focuses mainly on providing bug fixes and improving stability in the software. This will be our last release for the year as we prepare ourselves for some new features in 2023!
Please click here to read up on the full release notes.
Blog
Earlier this week, I posted my first blog entry providing insight on how keeping it simple provides the best experience for the users of your community. It would be awesome if you could check it out if you obviously haven't already done so!
This makes up the first of a mini-series of blog entries I have planned, so stay tuned to read more in the next few weeks.
Upcoming Event
Want to hear from Olivia, Charles and Matt as they discuss what we have delivered this year? How about getting your eyes on the roadmap and what we have planned for next year? Join us for this very special December Release and Year in Review Chat, due to kick off in just a week's time!
It'll be 2:30 am my time, but I'll try my best to be there too!
Changelog
And just to keep you all in the loop, and because we know you love what our outstanding development team are doing each week, I thought I'd steal @Jordan Miller's idea (😈) in providing you all with a list of updates and fixes made to Invision Community in the last seven days:
See you in the community and next week right here for another Invision Insight! I look forward to hearing from you all!
On a side note, if you have any ideas for future Invision Insight content, I'm all ears! Feel free to send me a private message if you don't want it mentioned publicly.
Thank you everyone! 🦘

In 4.7.0 the file \system\Helpers\Form\Upload.php now uses \IPS\Image::$imageExtensions instead of \IPS\Image::supportedExtensions() to retrieve the list of supported image formats. Because of this change the webp format is not available anymore.

When I searched, free solutions had a ridiculous limit per pageviews so we had to implement our own solution.

Hello,
I feel we should revisit the platform’s compliance with GDPR, in light of the latest developments and clarifications issued by the EU. Had some discussions, read a lot about this and it's clear to me that the classic Cookie strip with one button (I accept) simply doesn't cut it anymore and would make the website owner liable for not fully following the current regulations.

It's been brought to my attention from the ad network we use, that we should provide a full Consent message to every visitor of our site, and give them the option to choose which cookies, if any, they would want to be used during their visit. There are already many services out there like Cookiebot, Quantcast and OneTrust which can scan one’s site and automate the process by creating this banner. Of course even if they have limited free packages, my main concern is that there are limitations to styling, speed, translation, etc. I feel that such features must be provided from the platform itself, which must integrate the IAB Consent Framework. 
A valid cookie consent banner has to look like the one Cookiebot provides, offering the ability to choose the type of cookies the visitor wants. If you’d like to see a live example, visit this page.

Cookiebot Consent Banner

analytic view
Two links from the Cookiebot site, which I really feel that they offer a full picture of what is the proper way to have a GDPR Consent banner in your site.
GDPR and cookies | GDPR cookie consent | Is my use of cookies compliant? Active consent and the case of Planet49 | CJEU | GDPR & ePR I’d very much like to read your thoughts on this and particularly whether such options are included in the roadmap.

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention! I can confirm this should be further reviewed and I have logged an internal bug report for our development team to investigate and address as necessary, in a future maintenance release.
 

Updated a forum to 4.6.9 yesterday, and at the same time updated Elastic to the highest supported version - 7.16.3.
Woke up to lots of these errors in the log caused by a stream periodically fetched as RSS.
 
[error] => Array ( [root_cause] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [type] => x_content_parse_exception [reason] => [1:8714] [bool] failed to parse field [should] ) ) [type] => x_content_parse_exception [reason] => [1:8714] [bool] failed to parse field [filter] [caused_by] => Array ( [type] => x_content_parse_exception [reason] => [1:8714] [bool] failed to parse field [should] [caused_by] => Array ( [type] => illegal_state_exception [reason] => expected value but got [START_ARRAY] ) ) ) The issue in the JSON appears to be here:
{ "bool": { "should": [ { "bool": { "filter": [ { "terms": { "index_class": [ "IPS\\forums\\Topic\\Post" ] } }, { "terms": { "index_item_id": [ 657215, .......... 785214 ] } } ] } }, [<--- HERE, this is 1:8714 { "terms": { "index_author": [ 61654, 151262, 204067, 204990, 272358, 503699, 554475 ] } } ] ] } }, The latter "terms" should not have been in brackets.
This is caused by too many array()'s added to the condition in Elastic\Query.php
/* Are we including content posted by followed members? */ if ( $includeMembers and $followed = iterator_to_array( \IPS\Db::i()->select( 'follow_rel_id', 'core_follow', array( 'follow_app=? AND follow_area=? AND follow_member_id=?', 'core', 'member', $this->member->member_id ), 'follow_rel_id asc' ) ) ) { $conditions[] = array( array( 'terms' => array( 'index_author' => $followed ) ) ); } I've removed one of those arrays and that seems to have solved the issue.

Hello,
I feel we should revisit the platform’s compliance with GDPR, in light of the latest developments and clarifications issued by the EU. Had some discussions, read a lot about this and it's clear to me that the classic Cookie strip with one button (I accept) simply doesn't cut it anymore and would make the website owner liable for not fully following the current regulations.

It's been brought to my attention from the ad network we use, that we should provide a full Consent message to every visitor of our site, and give them the option to choose which cookies, if any, they would want to be used during their visit. There are already many services out there like Cookiebot, Quantcast and OneTrust which can scan one’s site and automate the process by creating this banner. Of course even if they have limited free packages, my main concern is that there are limitations to styling, speed, translation, etc. I feel that such features must be provided from the platform itself, which must integrate the IAB Consent Framework. 
A valid cookie consent banner has to look like the one Cookiebot provides, offering the ability to choose the type of cookies the visitor wants. If you’d like to see a live example, visit this page.

Cookiebot Consent Banner

analytic view
Two links from the Cookiebot site, which I really feel that they offer a full picture of what is the proper way to have a GDPR Consent banner in your site.
GDPR and cookies | GDPR cookie consent | Is my use of cookies compliant? Active consent and the case of Planet49 | CJEU | GDPR & ePR I’d very much like to read your thoughts on this and particularly whether such options are included in the roadmap.

Hello,
I feel we should revisit the platform’s compliance with GDPR, in light of the latest developments and clarifications issued by the EU. Had some discussions, read a lot about this and it's clear to me that the classic Cookie strip with one button (I accept) simply doesn't cut it anymore and would make the website owner liable for not fully following the current regulations.

It's been brought to my attention from the ad network we use, that we should provide a full Consent message to every visitor of our site, and give them the option to choose which cookies, if any, they would want to be used during their visit. There are already many services out there like Cookiebot, Quantcast and OneTrust which can scan one’s site and automate the process by creating this banner. Of course even if they have limited free packages, my main concern is that there are limitations to styling, speed, translation, etc. I feel that such features must be provided from the platform itself, which must integrate the IAB Consent Framework. 
A valid cookie consent banner has to look like the one Cookiebot provides, offering the ability to choose the type of cookies the visitor wants. If you’d like to see a live example, visit this page.

Cookiebot Consent Banner

analytic view
Two links from the Cookiebot site, which I really feel that they offer a full picture of what is the proper way to have a GDPR Consent banner in your site.
GDPR and cookies | GDPR cookie consent | Is my use of cookies compliant? Active consent and the case of Planet49 | CJEU | GDPR & ePR I’d very much like to read your thoughts on this and particularly whether such options are included in the roadmap.

Hello,
I feel we should revisit the platform’s compliance with GDPR, in light of the latest developments and clarifications issued by the EU. Had some discussions, read a lot about this and it's clear to me that the classic Cookie strip with one button (I accept) simply doesn't cut it anymore and would make the website owner liable for not fully following the current regulations.

It's been brought to my attention from the ad network we use, that we should provide a full Consent message to every visitor of our site, and give them the option to choose which cookies, if any, they would want to be used during their visit. There are already many services out there like Cookiebot, Quantcast and OneTrust which can scan one’s site and automate the process by creating this banner. Of course even if they have limited free packages, my main concern is that there are limitations to styling, speed, translation, etc. I feel that such features must be provided from the platform itself, which must integrate the IAB Consent Framework. 
A valid cookie consent banner has to look like the one Cookiebot provides, offering the ability to choose the type of cookies the visitor wants. If you’d like to see a live example, visit this page.

Cookiebot Consent Banner

analytic view
Two links from the Cookiebot site, which I really feel that they offer a full picture of what is the proper way to have a GDPR Consent banner in your site.
GDPR and cookies | GDPR cookie consent | Is my use of cookies compliant? Active consent and the case of Planet49 | CJEU | GDPR & ePR I’d very much like to read your thoughts on this and particularly whether such options are included in the roadmap.

Hi @Jordan Invision
we use Pages a lot I think. On my wishlist are still
more possibilities for interaction with our community in articles - polls, surveys, forms etc. Schema.org markers as FAQ or How-to SEO features – more than meta keywords and meta description as now, but also SEO title, settings for no-follow etc. per article or Pages database entry a "Table of content" by default, which can be switched off per article additional fields for images (alt text, title, caption, credit, license, image source as URL and so on) better management and SEO options for images background images for categories as for forums grid viewtext area for category descriptions (and not only one text field) an option to show category descriptions only on category sites and not in categories overview. widgets per category and not for all categories together (yes, there's an app for that) the option to set multiple authors for one article snippet preview at least in ACP better options in menu manager to include a single entry from a Pages database (an article for example). So many menu entries are "external links" but actually "things" in Pages. Before we switched from WordPress to Pages, our pain point was for a long time the ugly standard template. I think you give away a lot of potential with the developer driven, more technocratic template. If you want to convince people about Pages, you need a nice article template out of the box. (You should hire @opentype completely 🙂) Once Pages is understood, the many possibilities become more accessible.

Hello,
I feel we should revisit the platform’s compliance with GDPR, in light of the latest developments and clarifications issued by the EU. Had some discussions, read a lot about this and it's clear to me that the classic Cookie strip with one button (I accept) simply doesn't cut it anymore and would make the website owner liable for not fully following the current regulations.

It's been brought to my attention from the ad network we use, that we should provide a full Consent message to every visitor of our site, and give them the option to choose which cookies, if any, they would want to be used during their visit. There are already many services out there like Cookiebot, Quantcast and OneTrust which can scan one’s site and automate the process by creating this banner. Of course even if they have limited free packages, my main concern is that there are limitations to styling, speed, translation, etc. I feel that such features must be provided from the platform itself, which must integrate the IAB Consent Framework. 
A valid cookie consent banner has to look like the one Cookiebot provides, offering the ability to choose the type of cookies the visitor wants. If you’d like to see a live example, visit this page.

Cookiebot Consent Banner

analytic view
Two links from the Cookiebot site, which I really feel that they offer a full picture of what is the proper way to have a GDPR Consent banner in your site.
GDPR and cookies | GDPR cookie consent | Is my use of cookies compliant? Active consent and the case of Planet49 | CJEU | GDPR & ePR I’d very much like to read your thoughts on this and particularly whether such options are included in the roadmap.

Still searching for a viable solution
 

Hello,
I feel we should revisit the platform’s compliance with GDPR, in light of the latest developments and clarifications issued by the EU. Had some discussions, read a lot about this and it's clear to me that the classic Cookie strip with one button (I accept) simply doesn't cut it anymore and would make the website owner liable for not fully following the current regulations.

It's been brought to my attention from the ad network we use, that we should provide a full Consent message to every visitor of our site, and give them the option to choose which cookies, if any, they would want to be used during their visit. There are already many services out there like Cookiebot, Quantcast and OneTrust which can scan one’s site and automate the process by creating this banner. Of course even if they have limited free packages, my main concern is that there are limitations to styling, speed, translation, etc. I feel that such features must be provided from the platform itself, which must integrate the IAB Consent Framework. 
A valid cookie consent banner has to look like the one Cookiebot provides, offering the ability to choose the type of cookies the visitor wants. If you’d like to see a live example, visit this page.

Cookiebot Consent Banner

analytic view
Two links from the Cookiebot site, which I really feel that they offer a full picture of what is the proper way to have a GDPR Consent banner in your site.
GDPR and cookies | GDPR cookie consent | Is my use of cookies compliant? Active consent and the case of Planet49 | CJEU | GDPR & ePR I’d very much like to read your thoughts on this and particularly whether such options are included in the roadmap.

Happy new year,
I really like some posts I get from services like Spotify and Hootsuite which shows my use of the service during the year. For example I'm sure you know Spotify shows you every December (it's calling it Wrapped 2020) which songs were your favorites one, which genre you liked more, how many minutes you heard music and so many other interesting stats. 
It will be interesting to have a similar feature where a user of our community could visit a page and see specific stats about him and his presence in the site. Some examples could be "how many posts/topic you've creates", "how many reactions you've used", "how many pm's you've send", "which forum category you posted most of your messages", "which file you downloaded more", "your most popular message" etc. It could also be nice if the feature could be expanded in order to support 3rd party apps.
Just my 2 cents.

Happy new year,
I really like some posts I get from services like Spotify and Hootsuite which shows my use of the service during the year. For example I'm sure you know Spotify shows you every December (it's calling it Wrapped 2020) which songs were your favorites one, which genre you liked more, how many minutes you heard music and so many other interesting stats. 
It will be interesting to have a similar feature where a user of our community could visit a page and see specific stats about him and his presence in the site. Some examples could be "how many posts/topic you've creates", "how many reactions you've used", "how many pm's you've send", "which forum category you posted most of your messages", "which file you downloaded more", "your most popular message" etc. It could also be nice if the feature could be expanded in order to support 3rd party apps.
Just my 2 cents.

Still searching for a viable solution
 

Hello 🙂
(This is a community guide on how to setup Backblaze and Cloudflare, as a significantly cheaper replacement for Amazon S3 and Cloudfront.  The author has no affiliate arrangement with any of the companies listed in the guide and offers the guide as a free community resource.  You should consult with your hosting provider and / or server administrator before proceeding with the guide.)
The tutorial is tested with the latest version of Invision 4.5.4 !

Invision Community allows a file storage configuration with Amazon S3 and a content distribution network (CDN) of your choice:
 
WHAT IS BACKBLAZE?
 

 
Backblaze is an infinitely Scalable B2 Cloud Storage. Backblaze B2 is enterprise-grade, S3 compatible storage that companies around the world use to store and serve data. Backblaze's service works with native APIs, CLI, and GUI; you can move and manage data with minimal coding. Their service provides fast access all the time; there is no need to accept delays or pay speed surcharges. It can also support HIPAA compliant storage with their Business Associates Agreement (BAA). B2 is compatible at ¼ the cost of AWS S3 with no hidden fees or minimums.
 
Backblaze is an award winning cloud storage provider for 2020 !
 

 
Pricing:
 

Based on their latest pricing, it is very cheap at around 5$ per 1TB storage per month! There is a cost for direct downloads (bandwidth) at 0.01$ per GB but it will not affect us as we will use Cloudflare and all files will be served from Backblaze to Cloudflare and then to users that is totally free 🙂
Be careful if you have any custom direct downloads that bypass Cloudflare. If you link to custom downloads directly, you will be charged for bandwidth. All default Invision files should go through Cloudflare. I am using Backblaze for a few of my clients and they never charged anything extra as all Invision files are going through Cloudflare as expected. Please monitor your balance after a few days just to be sure!
 
GUIDE:
BEFORE PROCEEDING, PLEASE BACKUP YOUR DATA FIRST!
 
STEP 1: Create a bucket on Backblaze
First we need to sign up at Backblaze Cloud: https://www.backblaze.com/b2/sign-up.html
You will need a phone number to activate your account:

After the activation of the account we will need to create a bucket that will host our files.
 
On the Buckets sections we click on Create a Bucket:

 
Then we add a name for our bucket. Recommendation: avoid dots (.) in the bucket name.
 
On the next screen we type a Bucket name and we select Public and then we click at Create a Bucket.

 
 
After that under the Create a Bucket we should have our Bucket.
 
Now we must keep a note of the ENDPOINT:

 
 
Now we need to get our Bucket access keys from the App Keys menu. At the bottom we click at Add a New Application Key:

 
 
At the new screen we select a anything as a key name and we keep selected the Read and Write access and wee click at Create New Key:

 
 
Then you will see there only once the KeyID and the Application Key that we must keep a note of them as we will need them later !

 
As a last step we need to go to our bucket that we just created and upload an image. From the menu on the left we click on Browse Files and then we click on our bucket:

 
Then we click on upload and we upload a simple file like an image...

 
On the right side of the uploaded image we have to click at the info icon:

 
At the pop up screen we need to keep a note for that part so copy it with the other notes that wee have already:

 
That's it ! We created our bucket and we got the access info that we will need !
 
STEP 2: Create a CNAME dns record at Cloudflare
 
Now you have to login to Cloudflare and go to your DNS tab from the top menu and then click Add record:
 

 
We use as Type the Cname and as Name the cdn and as Target the info that we got from the pop on the previous step in the tutorial above:

 
After saving that DNS record we should have that:

 
Now for security reasons we have to go to the page Rules on the top menu and create two rules:

RULE 1:
Just replace your domain and the bucket name that you create:

 
RULE 2:
Just replace your domain:

 
The final result should be like this:

 
Keep in mind the order of the rules as if you set the second rule as 1 it will not work and your forum images will not work as page rules uses priority. This is important!
That's it for the Cloudflare part!
 
STEP 3: Configure Invision to use the Backblaze Cloud
From Invision Admin Control Panel, go to System -> Files -> Storage Settings

 
Then we click on Configurations:

 
and then on Create New on the right side.
Then we select Amazon S3 and we fill the needed info as:

 
When you click Save if you get any warnings or errors then you have to check again the tutorial as you may forgot something or may have a typo somewhere...
If you save it without any issues then you are ready to use it by going to: System -> Files -> Storage Settings
and select a category with not many images for example Icons & Logos or anything else with a few images and from the drop down options the: Amazon S3:superbucket
 

 
Then wait for the automated task to transfer your files to the Cloud and check if all are ok !
If yes then you can proceed with the rest categories.
 
*Keep only at your server your theme resources:

 
Keep in mind that if you have a lot of GB of files it may take a long time for the transfer !
 
It may help to go to the Dashboard and run manually the process to get the files transferred faster.

*Attachments and Downloads may not work out of the box (don't use them on my test forum and i don't know for sure) and you may need to use the addon S3 Compatible Downloads:
 
I hope that you will benefit from this tutorial and get better performance while saving space on your main server and a lot of money 🙂
Backblaze is much more stable than Wasabi!
It also includes up to 10GB free storage, so you can test it easily !
Credits to: @Joel R and @Martin A.
Enjoy !

Hello,
I feel we should revisit the platform’s compliance with GDPR, in light of the latest developments and clarifications issued by the EU. Had some discussions, read a lot about this and it's clear to me that the classic Cookie strip with one button (I accept) simply doesn't cut it anymore and would make the website owner liable for not fully following the current regulations.

It's been brought to my attention from the ad network we use, that we should provide a full Consent message to every visitor of our site, and give them the option to choose which cookies, if any, they would want to be used during their visit. There are already many services out there like Cookiebot, Quantcast and OneTrust which can scan one’s site and automate the process by creating this banner. Of course even if they have limited free packages, my main concern is that there are limitations to styling, speed, translation, etc. I feel that such features must be provided from the platform itself, which must integrate the IAB Consent Framework. 
A valid cookie consent banner has to look like the one Cookiebot provides, offering the ability to choose the type of cookies the visitor wants. If you’d like to see a live example, visit this page.

Cookiebot Consent Banner

analytic view
Two links from the Cookiebot site, which I really feel that they offer a full picture of what is the proper way to have a GDPR Consent banner in your site.
GDPR and cookies | GDPR cookie consent | Is my use of cookies compliant? Active consent and the case of Planet49 | CJEU | GDPR & ePR I’d very much like to read your thoughts on this and particularly whether such options are included in the roadmap.

Hello,
I feel we should revisit the platform’s compliance with GDPR, in light of the latest developments and clarifications issued by the EU. Had some discussions, read a lot about this and it's clear to me that the classic Cookie strip with one button (I accept) simply doesn't cut it anymore and would make the website owner liable for not fully following the current regulations.

It's been brought to my attention from the ad network we use, that we should provide a full Consent message to every visitor of our site, and give them the option to choose which cookies, if any, they would want to be used during their visit. There are already many services out there like Cookiebot, Quantcast and OneTrust which can scan one’s site and automate the process by creating this banner. Of course even if they have limited free packages, my main concern is that there are limitations to styling, speed, translation, etc. I feel that such features must be provided from the platform itself, which must integrate the IAB Consent Framework. 
A valid cookie consent banner has to look like the one Cookiebot provides, offering the ability to choose the type of cookies the visitor wants. If you’d like to see a live example, visit this page.

Cookiebot Consent Banner

analytic view
Two links from the Cookiebot site, which I really feel that they offer a full picture of what is the proper way to have a GDPR Consent banner in your site.
GDPR and cookies | GDPR cookie consent | Is my use of cookies compliant? Active consent and the case of Planet49 | CJEU | GDPR & ePR I’d very much like to read your thoughts on this and particularly whether such options are included in the roadmap.

Hello,
I feel we should revisit the platform’s compliance with GDPR, in light of the latest developments and clarifications issued by the EU. Had some discussions, read a lot about this and it's clear to me that the classic Cookie strip with one button (I accept) simply doesn't cut it anymore and would make the website owner liable for not fully following the current regulations.

It's been brought to my attention from the ad network we use, that we should provide a full Consent message to every visitor of our site, and give them the option to choose which cookies, if any, they would want to be used during their visit. There are already many services out there like Cookiebot, Quantcast and OneTrust which can scan one’s site and automate the process by creating this banner. Of course even if they have limited free packages, my main concern is that there are limitations to styling, speed, translation, etc. I feel that such features must be provided from the platform itself, which must integrate the IAB Consent Framework. 
A valid cookie consent banner has to look like the one Cookiebot provides, offering the ability to choose the type of cookies the visitor wants. If you’d like to see a live example, visit this page.

Cookiebot Consent Banner

analytic view
Two links from the Cookiebot site, which I really feel that they offer a full picture of what is the proper way to have a GDPR Consent banner in your site.
GDPR and cookies | GDPR cookie consent | Is my use of cookies compliant? Active consent and the case of Planet49 | CJEU | GDPR & ePR I’d very much like to read your thoughts on this and particularly whether such options are included in the roadmap.