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Ryan Ashbrook

Invision Community Team
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Everything posted by Ryan Ashbrook

  1. You've pretty much nailed it. The goal posts will constantly be moving so newer ones, or ones that have existed for a while but not used until recently, may not be identified immediately. As Charles mentioned in todays release chat, this is a constant ongoing battle. I update our blocklist regularly. However, these domains, for example: I can't find on any lists, but I can confirm that they do appear to be disposable. So, I've blocked them manually.
  2. If a user attempts to register and is held for moderation, admin approval, or banned, then it will be noted as the reason in that accounts member history for both Disposable Emails and Geolocation filtering.
  3. Yes, for our built in login methods. Truly custom Single Sign On integrations, which may not use our login handler system / OAuth, may need to implement spam checking, if it's desired (some may have a requirement that no further validation is done outside of their service).
  4. Yes, nothing has changed in that regard - if you mark a user as a spammer, then our spam defense learns from that. 🙂
  5. Spam has always been an ongoing battle for community owners as spammers find new ways to circumvent existing anti-spam practices. We have seen an uptick in new ways spammers are breaking through existing defense. As such, we here at Invision Community continue to look at new ways for community managers to combat against spam. For our September release, we have added several new tools that can prevent spammers from registering in the first place and help combat them even if they register successfully. Let's take a look at these new tools and settings. Geolocation based registration filtering Oftentimes, spam attacks can originate using bots and servers from specific regions. Using our existing Geolocation service, we have now added filters that will allow administrators to hold registrations from specific regions for administrator review, or deny the registration entirely. Using this, administrators whose communities are under a spam attack from a specific region, can temporarily filter registrations from that region. Multiple regions can be defined at once, and each individual region can either be held for administrator review, or denied completely. Disposable Email Filtering We have added an extra option to our spam defense system to filter users registering with throwaway disposable emails, which are often used by spammers to bypass email validation. During Spam Defense checking, we now also check the domain in use for the registration against a frequently maintained list. If the user passes through the normal spam defense checking, but is found to have a disposable email address, then the administrator can define one of the following actions to be taken. Allow the registration to proceed Allow the registration, but moderate all posts (which an option to remove moderation after a certain amount) Flag the account for administrator review Register the account but immediately ban it Completely deny the registration For both Geolocation and disposable email filtering, the existing Spam Defense Whitelist is always honored ahead of these filters. Contact Us Email Verification A common pain point has been the Contact Us page. While the spam does not go to a user facing location, it does still land in the administrators inbox, or other area defined by the sites Contact Us settings. To help with this, if a visitor who is not logged in attempts to use the Contact Us page, then in addition to the existing CAPTCHA, the administrator can optionally require the person to verify their email address before the message is ever sent. This applies to all Contact Us behaviors, including any added by third party applications. Cloud Content Analysis For our Invision Community Cloud customers, we have also added an additional layer of spam prevention after registration. After a user registers, or if the account has been dormant, then the first few content submissions will be analyzed using a custom developed algorithm within our platform. The algorithm takes into factor many different elements of the content, and will rank the post between 1 (not spam) and 5 (definitely spam). The algorithm can be constantly adjusted and improved based on trends without any intervention from the administrator, and without the need to update to new releases of Invision Community. The administrator can then decide one of the following actions to take based on the score that was received. Allow the submission Hold the submission for moderator review Deny the submission completely Of course, specific groups can be made exempt from this and not have their content checked at all, which is useful for sites with subscription based registrations which may not want to have this applied to new subscribers, but do want to have new non-subscribers checked. Spam can quickly become a headache for most community managers, and these new tools will help further combat it at the source. For our enterprise and Invision Community Cloud customers, being able to check for spam when posting is a new tool which will further filter out more of those annoying topics and posts. We hope these new features give you additional tools in the fight against spam. The features and changes presented here are available in the following packages: Geolocation based registration filtering, Disposable Email Filtering, Contact Us Email Verification: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise, Invision Community Classic (Self Hosted). Content Analysis: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise. View full blog entry
  6. Spam has always been an ongoing battle for community owners as spammers find new ways to circumvent existing anti-spam practices. We have seen an uptick in new ways spammers are breaking through existing defense. As such, we here at Invision Community continue to look at new ways for community managers to combat against spam. For our September release, we have added several new tools that can prevent spammers from registering in the first place and help combat them even if they register successfully. Let's take a look at these new tools and settings. Geolocation based registration filtering Oftentimes, spam attacks can originate using bots and servers from specific regions. Using our existing Geolocation service, we have now added filters that will allow administrators to hold registrations from specific regions for administrator review, or deny the registration entirely. Using this, administrators whose communities are under a spam attack from a specific region, can temporarily filter registrations from that region. Multiple regions can be defined at once, and each individual region can either be held for administrator review, or denied completely. Disposable Email Filtering We have added an extra option to our spam defense system to filter users registering with throwaway disposable emails, which are often used by spammers to bypass email validation. During Spam Defense checking, we now also check the domain in use for the registration against a frequently maintained list. If the user passes through the normal spam defense checking, but is found to have a disposable email address, then the administrator can define one of the following actions to be taken. Allow the registration to proceed Allow the registration, but moderate all posts (which an option to remove moderation after a certain amount) Flag the account for administrator review Register the account but immediately ban it Completely deny the registration For both Geolocation and disposable email filtering, the existing Spam Defense Whitelist is always honored ahead of these filters. Contact Us Email Verification A common pain point has been the Contact Us page. While the spam does not go to a user facing location, it does still land in the administrators inbox, or other area defined by the sites Contact Us settings. To help with this, if a visitor who is not logged in attempts to use the Contact Us page, then in addition to the existing CAPTCHA, the administrator can optionally require the person to verify their email address before the message is ever sent. This applies to all Contact Us behaviors, including any added by third party applications. Cloud Content Analysis For our Invision Community Cloud customers, we have also added an additional layer of spam prevention after registration. After a user registers, or if the account has been dormant, then the first few content submissions will be analyzed using a custom developed algorithm within our platform. The algorithm takes into factor many different elements of the content, and will rank the post between 1 (not spam) and 5 (definitely spam). The algorithm can be constantly adjusted and improved based on trends without any intervention from the administrator, and without the need to update to new releases of Invision Community. The administrator can then decide one of the following actions to take based on the score that was received. Allow the submission Hold the submission for moderator review Deny the submission completely Of course, specific groups can be made exempt from this and not have their content checked at all, which is useful for sites with subscription based registrations which may not want to have this applied to new subscribers, but do want to have new non-subscribers checked. Spam can quickly become a headache for most community managers, and these new tools will help further combat it at the source. For our enterprise and Invision Community Cloud customers, being able to check for spam when posting is a new tool which will further filter out more of those annoying topics and posts. We hope these new features give you additional tools in the fight against spam. The features and changes presented here are available in the following packages: Geolocation based registration filtering, Disposable Email Filtering, Contact Us Email Verification: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise, Invision Community Classic (Self Hosted). Content Analysis: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise.
  7. It depends on your server. As long as those directories are writable by the software, then you will be fine regardless of what the actual permissions are.
  8. It would be the core of PHP doing any alterations, so would be out of our control in this case.
  9. Yes, the file will be compressed. If you need less compression to happen, you can change this in your Admin CP > Files > Image Settings > JPG and WebP Quality. Setting that to 100 will provide the least amount of compression, however the image library (which is necessary for things like cropping, orientation, resizing, and so forth) may still alter the image slightly. You may also get better results by using ImageMagick, if you aren't already, however that would require your host to install it if it hasn't been already.
  10. It will be on the purchase page for each individual license, at the bottom of the page.
  11. These are a part of the converters application. conv_password misc
  12. This should be resolved now. If you are still seeing an error, please go to your Admin CP > License Key and click Resync License Data.
  13. We had a temporary error with the license server, which we have now resolved. If you go to your Admin CP > License Key and Resync License Data, the message should go away.
  14. With the exception of deleting - you can optionally send an Alert to the member when hiding or moving their content. When sending the alert, you can also optionally allow or force them to reply, which will prompt them to start a PM conversation with you.
  15. The problem is the two engines are vastly different, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to support both. Oracle themself recommends InnoDB. https://blogs.oracle.com/mysql/post/still-using-myisam-it-is-time-to-switch-to-innodb
  16. Our June release includes enhancements to our various statistics and reporting features included within the community. Statistics are important for a community platform because they provide valuable insights about user engagement, preferences, and behaviors, which directly inform the platform's strategy and design. Furthermore, statistics enable the monitoring of the platform's growth and user retention, which are essential for maintaining a vibrant and active community. In our June release, we have made some enhancements to those features that will allow you to more quickly monitor those trends. Saved Charts In Invision Community 4.3, we introduced the ability to save charts to allow you to view them multiple times without needing to reset your filters each time. This works well, however there are three notable downsides. You could only save a chart if there were filters to apply, such as Warning Types, Device Types, Member Groups, etc. Any specified timescale was not retained in your saved chart. There was no centralized location to view every chart you have saved. In our June release, we have resolved both of those issues. Now, every chart can be saved regardless of if there are filters or not, and when saved, will now also retain your timescale as well. In addition to that, we have added an additional My Saved Charts page. This page will show you every chart you have saved, including all filters and timescales that have been selected. From this page you can quickly review all charts, temporarily adjust their timescales and filters to quickly see other information, as well as download each individual chart as a CSV directly from this page. Don't worry, though - your saved charts will also still show in their original locations just as they have in the past. Content Level Statistics Later on, in Invision Community 4.5, we introduced an improved Topic View that included various statistical information about the topic including the top comments, popular days, top commenters, and more. This, however, was only limited to topics in the forums, and not the rest of the community. In our June release, we have taken this and expanded it to content in every application. This includes Blog Entries, Gallery Albums, Gallery Images, and more. Each content item (such as a topic, blog entry or image) will show a new button for those with moderator permissions which opens a full statistics and analytics modal, providing expanded statistical information related to that particular piece of content specifically. Clicking this new button opens up the statistics and analytics modal. Our Classic customers will see the following view: Cloud Powered Historical View Tracking For our Invision Community cloud customers, we have expanded our infrastructure to allow for storing historical views for all content. On the previously mentioned Statistics and Analytics modal, a chart will be shown that outlines the amount of views that content has gotten every single day over a period of time, to allow you to see when specifically content was popular. This chart allows you to view trends for up to a year in the past. Additionally, we have expanded this to content containers Forums, Downloads Categories, Blogs, Blogs Categories, Gallery Categories, and more will all report their own historical view trends. Finally, these trends can be exported as a CSV file for your own personal processing if desired - and if needed, you can choose to only include certain types of content if you are focusing on one particular section. We hope these changes help you to identify trends from within your own community to help you promote and grow it further. The features and changes presented here are available in the following packages: Saved charts and content item level statistics: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise, Community Classic (Self Hosted). Saved charts, content item level statistics, analytic report generation, content level historical view tracking, container level historical view tracking: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise. If you do not see your product or package listed, please contact us to talk about upgrading your Invision Community.
  17. Our June release includes enhancements to our various statistics and reporting features included within the community. Statistics are important for a community platform because they provide valuable insights about user engagement, preferences, and behaviors, which directly inform the platform's strategy and design. Furthermore, statistics enable the monitoring of the platform's growth and user retention, which are essential for maintaining a vibrant and active community. In our June release, we have made some enhancements to those features that will allow you to more quickly monitor those trends. Saved Charts In Invision Community 4.3, we introduced the ability to save charts to allow you to view them multiple times without needing to reset your filters each time. This works well, however there are three notable downsides. You could only save a chart if there were filters to apply, such as Warning Types, Device Types, Member Groups, etc. Any specified timescale was not retained in your saved chart. There was no centralized location to view every chart you have saved. In our June release, we have resolved both of those issues. Now, every chart can be saved regardless of if there are filters or not, and when saved, will now also retain your timescale as well. In addition to that, we have added an additional My Saved Charts page. This page will show you every chart you have saved, including all filters and timescales that have been selected. From this page you can quickly review all charts, temporarily adjust their timescales and filters to quickly see other information, as well as download each individual chart as a CSV directly from this page. Don't worry, though - your saved charts will also still show in their original locations just as they have in the past. Content Level Statistics Later on, in Invision Community 4.5, we introduced an improved Topic View that included various statistical information about the topic including the top comments, popular days, top commenters, and more. This, however, was only limited to topics in the forums, and not the rest of the community. In our June release, we have taken this and expanded it to content in every application. This includes Blog Entries, Gallery Albums, Gallery Images, and more. Each content item (such as a topic, blog entry or image) will show a new button for those with moderator permissions which opens a full statistics and analytics modal, providing expanded statistical information related to that particular piece of content specifically. Clicking this new button opens up the statistics and analytics modal. Our Classic customers will see the following view: Cloud Powered Historical View Tracking For our Invision Community cloud customers, we have expanded our infrastructure to allow for storing historical views for all content. On the previously mentioned Statistics and Analytics modal, a chart will be shown that outlines the amount of views that content has gotten every single day over a period of time, to allow you to see when specifically content was popular. This chart allows you to view trends for up to a year in the past. Additionally, we have expanded this to content containers Forums, Downloads Categories, Blogs, Blogs Categories, Gallery Categories, and more will all report their own historical view trends. Finally, these trends can be exported as a CSV file for your own personal processing if desired - and if needed, you can choose to only include certain types of content if you are focusing on one particular section. We hope these changes help you to identify trends from within your own community to help you promote and grow it further. The features and changes presented here are available in the following packages: Saved charts and content item level statistics: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise, Community Classic (Self Hosted). Saved charts, content item level statistics, analytic report generation, content level historical view tracking, container level historical view tracking: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise. If you do not see your product or package listed, please contact us to talk about upgrading your Invision Community. View full blog entry
  18. Unfortunately, from everything I can see, this is happening on Twitter's end. I'm not entirely sure there is much we can do for this right now.
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