IPCommerceFan

To clarify: The possibility to install 3rd party apps wasn't removed in v5!
Plugins were deprecated, but applications can still be created, exported, imported, etc.. Hooks were replaced with Code Listeners and several new Extensions But all in all, 3rd parties will still be able to create new apps like Member Garage, Member Maps, Classified Ads, Member Info blocks etc..
More information about the upcoming changes can be found in our Dev Blog: https://invisioncommunity.com/developers/devblog/blog/

Content will of course. In terms of layout/theming etc, of course, you would need to visit that once v5 is out to update anything required. But that would apply to any area.
Its based on permissions, so if they have permission yes.
We would then need to an example. I would advise creating a new topic with your issue though, rather than in this topic

Stipe works now in production environment. Probably server host blocks in the test environment, incident opened. Cloudflare pause didn't help.
 

This is added in .15 but it isn't working properly. As you're ordering it by record_time DESC, I have to upload them in reverse order if I want to keep them in a specific order.
 
All the files have the same record_time (1704826851) so it doesn't make any sense to order by time.
record_id ASC would be more appropriate.

A final supported release is unlikely before 2024 just because we are heading into three consecutive months where there are holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year) so releasing a brand new version would increase workload at a time where we want our team to relax and enjoy those holidays. I've patched releases on Christmas Day before and it's not the best time. 🙂 
I think we can expect a public preview and some beta releases before then, though.

I have a lot of thoughts on this which I’ll put in a blog at some point but we as a platform service two different community needs; transactional and social. The transactional topics benefit most from helpful/solved. Less useful for social conversational topics where notes and moderator tools come in. 

Ok grandpa.

☀️ Welcome to this week's Invision Community Insight! ☀️
Thank you for checking out our weekly, round up post. I hope you have had a wonderful week. Below are a few announcements to bring to your attention. 
 
Current Happenings
For our Cloud customers, I did want to draw your attention to our post: Changes to traffic control. Please ask any questions that you have there. 
 
Our Marketplace Closure announcement was posted this week. We will follow up with more information.
 
On Deck
We have postponed our next release a bit which now makes it our September Release. Spam Improvements and bug fixes are to be expected. You can check out our Spam Improvements Blog for more information. 
Changelog
With that said, changes for version 4 are limited for now but for those that like to see what we are up to line by line, here is the changelog for the week for version 4. 
 
 

To Marketplace developers and the Invision community as a whole, I will be happy to host an independent and collaborative Marketplace directory.  It's already in the works.
I fully support a thriving ecosystem of developers and clients: to extend, to inspire, and to push the boundaries of our platform. Technology is an important differentiator more than ever in the modern web, and working with developers (either privately or through their public mods) can help fine-tune your platform. 
 
More information and invitations will be sent out to active Marketplace devs.  You are also welcome to send me a direct PM.  
Follow this topic for any future updates.  

This sounds like a net positive for developers.   Two primary issues (based on observation) have always been how long it takes for IPS to approve an app, and the fact IPS takes a cut.   This knocks them both out, so it seems like a win to me.

I wonder though, since the Marketplace is essentially a portal for paid downloads, will this change affect the need/desire for IPS to continue developing/maintaining the Downloads or Commerce apps in the long run (V5)?

Yes, we have many clients doing really interesting things with Downloads+Commerce.
I think for developers that are serious about what they are doing, they can really thrive with us out of the way 🙂 

This sounds like a net positive for developers.   Two primary issues (based on observation) have always been how long it takes for IPS to approve an app, and the fact IPS takes a cut.   This knocks them both out, so it seems like a win to me.

I wonder though, since the Marketplace is essentially a portal for paid downloads, will this change affect the need/desire for IPS to continue developing/maintaining the Downloads or Commerce apps in the long run (V5)?

Not at all; both apps are very popular outside of our own use. 

You can still just create a forum or Pages database called “Support Tickets” and use this mode if you need privacy:

@Matt Finger Hi, are there any plans to bring the dataLayer support to the other Invision apps? Especially commerce? Cheers

Ok... so as promised I am sharing some learning back to the community.
First - while I am not new to Google Analytics, I am new to Google Analytics 4 / GA4... and there is a lot of confusing information out there. GA4 is infinitely superior in my opinion, so it's worth the effort to dig into it so that I can get the metrics I want.
I found that there was so much information out there on the internet, and a lot of it was out of date. So to bring me up to speed I went to Udemy, and subscribed to their Personal Learning subscription. The first month is free, and the rest is around $26/mth... an amazing deal since there is so much content there.
I then started working my way through this course... it included free in that first month:
Master Google Analytics 4 Reports and GTM Basics in 2022
https://www.udemy.com/course/google-analytics-4-with-tag-manager/
This gave me some background information and was extremely helpful.
Then - I fixed the mistake that I had made... I had put my GA4 config on my site.
What you actually need to do is create a GTM (Google Tag Manager) account, and create a special tag that routes events from GTM through to GA4.
In all the reading I have done, it seems mixed as to whether you should also create a Universal Analytics account and also route those events. I chose not to as I want to craft the reports I get out of it and wanted to keep it 'clean'.
The next big trick is to work out how to get Invision events from GTM through to GA4. That was nontrivial as well... and while I know what I wanted to do ... I was still a bit confused... and then I found this web page... excellent!

Track Events with Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Google Tag Manager (analyticsmania.com)
The Invision events are non-standard from GA4. As this is new, and GA4 is the future of analytics from google, then why not use their standard events - the whole thing would largely have just worked.
So I routed the account_login event from invision through to the GA4 login event, and the account_register event from invision through to the GA4 sign_up event. Flick to debug view... and finally, the more detailed events I wanted to see are flowing through!
It's been quite the learning journey... and my recommendation for the invision team is to create a video tutorial where you take people through this from end to end.
Now... for the Invision team when will we be getting commerce events... which among other things is kind of the point of all of this?
Please also, do not make subscriptions a second-class citizen. It's the primary way I want to run my site.
Another thing with subscriptions that I get all the time is a request from my customers to get a special deal on them (as we want to encourage our existing customers to come over to our invision site). I am happy enough to do this, but I do not want this listed on my main page as then it would massively devalue our normal subscription. So an 'unlisted' version for subscriptions as well would be awesome... something where I can approve the subscription before it is switched on for the customer.
Great work from the Invision team... once you work your way through all of this, it opens up many cool use cases for the platform!

What’s the use case to prevent them using it?

I know many of you are very curious how our cloud services work and how we manage things when we service thousands of Invision Community-powered sites on our platform.
I am writing this quick post because I just got an alert from our monitoring systems and signed on to see what was happening.
We use AWS WAF with both managed rules and our own, custom rule sets. With those both combined, we are able to filter a lot of malicious traffic. Sometimes people do attempt a direct attack on one of the communities we host. That is what is going on today.
As I am typing this, our WAF setup is blocking 10 million requests per minute on our network. Yet, even with that huge amount of inbound traffic, our actual operations are not impacted at all. This is one of the advantages  of a robust network backing your community.

I just thought I would share because 1. our monitoring summoned our team to look at "abnormal traffic" and 2. I thought you might find this interesting.
 

☀️ Welcome to this week's Invision Community Insight! ☀️ 
Thank you for checking out this weekly round up post. I hope you have had a lovely week and are looking forward to the weekend! 
As a reminder, during the summer, we slow down a bit on releasing new things and the releases will come a bit later in the months. Also, this year, we are working on Invision Community version 5. We look forward to sharing more about version 5 in the coming weeks and months. 🎉
 
This week's updates from the Invision Community team are below. 🙂 
 
Current Happenings

Our June beta is ready! Upgrade to the official June release later this month. 
As with all beta releases, upgrading your community is at your own risk. Please make sure you backup before upgrading! 
Here is what is slated for the June release, version 4.7.11. https://invisioncommunity.com/release-notes/
 
New Privacy and PII Data features and Statistics and Reporting are both available in our June release. 
 
Finally, for those that like to see what we are up to line by line, here is the changelog for the week for version 4. Changes are limited for now as we focus attention on version 5. More information will be shared about version 5 at a future date. 
Changelog
 

☀️ Welcome to this week's Invision Community Insight! ☀️ 
Thank you for checking out this weekly round up post. I hope you have had a lovely week and are looking forward to the weekend! 
During the summer, we slow down a bit on releasing new things and the releases will come a bit later in the months. We use this time to step away and take those much needed breaks. Also, this year, we are working on Invision Community version 5. We look forward to sharing more about version 5 in the coming weeks and months. 🎉
 
This week's updates from the Invision Community team are below. 🙂 
 
Current Happenings
Our June beta is being prepped for release next week. The June release will be available a bit later in the month.
 
New Privacy and PII Data features will be included in our June release. 
 
On Deck
Statistics and Reporting will be included in a release this summer. 
 
Finally, for those that like to see what we are up to line by line, here is the changelog for the week for version 4. Changes are limited for now as we focus attention on version 5. More information will be shared about version 5 at a future date. 
Changelog
 

Update: I did hear back from rebraf via PM - as his license has currently expired he is unable to reply to the support message.  He says he will continue support for Email Drip Campaigns through 4.x but will have to evaluate the situation as 5.x approaches, depending on Invision's plans and the subsequent changes which may need to be made.
So stay tuned, I guess.

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.

View full blog entry

This is worrying...I spent a bit of time convincing myself to splash the cash on Email Drip Campaigns and have come to rely on it as it's a very important part of any business workflow.
I'd like to hear from @rebraf about the future of this app....?  Will development and updates continue into IPS 5?

🌷 Welcome to this week's Invision Community Insight! 🌷 
Thank you for checking out this weekly round up post. I hope you have had a wonderful week and for the Star Wars fans, that the force was with you for our holiday! 😉 In the comments below, I'd love to hear what is happening with you and your community. Are you trying any new features or functionality for your members or maybe you want to and don't know where to start? We'd love to hear.
 
From the Invision Community team, this week ...
 
Current Happenings
Our May beta is ready! Upgrade to the official May release next week. 
As with all beta releases, upgrading your community is at your own risk. Please make sure you backup before upgrading! 
Here is what is slated for the May release, version 4.7.10. https://invisioncommunity.com/release-notes/
 
@Charles and I talked about the release in our May Release Chat on Wednesday.
You can watch the video and participate in that discussion in the converted live topic.
 
Courses is here as part of the May release! 🎉
What a powerful feature! Want to create a short onboarding experience for your members? This could be a Welcome note, Did you know? bullets to help members know where to start, and then a mandatory acknowledgement piece if that is required for your community. This is all possible with the new Courses application. How are you hoping to use this feature? Check out our latest blog post for the details:
 
 
Email Bounce Management in the May release. 🎉
For Cloud customers, we are adding the ability for you to view reports on bounced/complaint emails, take action on member accounts (purge them or mark them as no notifications), and unblock emails that our platform may be refusing to email. Check out our latest blog post: 
 
On Deck
Join us for our upcoming live topic event where we will cover Statistics and Reporting, including the new additions coming soon!
 
Finally, for those that like to see what we are up to line by line, here is the changelog for the week for version 4. Changes are limited for now as we focus attention on version 5. More information will be shared at a future date. 
 
Changelog
 

That's correct, v5 won't have a concept of stand-alone plug-ins. But there's two things to keep in mind:
1) v5 will have numerous changes to how applications are developed (significant changes to template hooks and code hooks)
2) v4 will still allow plugins, and will be supported and heavily used for at least a few more years.
So moving plug-ins into applications for v4 is a waste of time unless you have a major update or other compelling reason. Just moving the code from a plug-in into an app because a different version of the software with a different set of development tools won't support plug-ins is not helping you or us.
Moving v4 code based plug-ins into applications for v5 will not help, as the code will not work with v5, so right now it's a waste of time.