Chris Anderson

@Adriano Faria I've tried utilizing the Amazon Affiliate Program settings for both the User and Site with the same results.

None of the books I add will consistently show the "Buy" button. 

Refreshing the browser sometimes makes it visible and sometimes refreshing the browser elicits no results whatsoever.

I looked at the page source code and noticed that when the "Buy this book" button is available you can find the following code:

Quote

<hr class="ipsHr">
                            
<a target="_blank" class="ipsButton ipsButton_medium ipsButton_positive ipsButton_fullWidth ipsSpacer_top" href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0525536221/ref=nosim?tag=affliate-code">Buy this book</a>
<hr class="ipsHr">

--Replaced my affiliate code with placeholder text--

When the "Buy this book" button is not available the code above doesn't seem to be present.

Not sure why your app sometimes includes the Buy button code and sometimes it isn't present.

@InvisionHQ I came up with a partial solution to creating nested menus using custom blocks, see below:

The problem is every new club feature that gets added it gets added to this:

This can become quite confusing to look at once you've added a few.

Could you add a hide feature as shown below?

The feature would still exist if hidden but wouldn't appear in the menu section if enabled.

This would allow for the "appearance" of nested features with minimal additional coding.

I was testing a third-party app and the developer requested I place the following in my constants.php file to help debug an issue. 

<?php
\define('DEBUG_LOG','TRUE');

Upon doing so I noticed a bunch of system log entries pop up. Please note the app is not currently installed and I disabled all installed apps and plugins to eliminate their being the root cause of error messages.  Upon seeing the error messages continue I reenabled the apps again. I copied the constants.php file to the other three sites and they are all exhibiting similar types of errors. Ater reading through some of the error logs I am seeing a variety of different issues being noted.  Heres' one example:

System Logs

------------------------------------
cURL REQUEST: https://invisioncommunity.com/api/marketplace/categories?ips_version=106167
------------------------------------

User-Agent: Invision Community 4
Authorization: Bearer <removed>

NULL

------------------------------------
RESPONSE
------------------------------------

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json;charset=UTF-8
Content-Length: 4433
Connection: keep-alive
Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2022 11:07:27 GMT
Set-Cookie: <removed>
Set-Cookie: <removed>
Server: Apache
Set-Cookie: <removed>
Expires: Wed, 13 Apr 2022 11:07:27 GMT
Cache-Control: max-age=86400, public
Pragma: public
X-IPS-LoggedIn: 0
X-XSS-Protection: 0
X-Frame-Options: sameorigin
Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors 'self'
X-Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors 'self'
Referrer-Policy: strict-origin-when-cross-origin
Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000
Last-Modified: Tue, 12 Apr 2022 11:07:27 GMT
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
Vary: Accept-Encoding,Cookie
X-Cache: Hit from cloudfront
Via: 1.1 538a08eba98551a196e344df4d0dda06.cloudfront.net (CloudFront)
X-Amz-Cf-Pop: LAX50-C1
X-Amz-Cf-Id: QOZ9aKdGDCteRhTgm_kTPcWUICxfEcXUnnHPX2v8eh54uZsvaitMsw==
Age: 14739

{
    "page": 1,
    "perPage": 25,
    "totalResults": 15,
    "totalPages": 1,
    "results": [
        {
            "id": 162,
            "name": "Themes",
            "url": "https:\/\/invisioncommunity.com\/files\/category\/162-themes\/",
            "class": "IPS\\downloads\\Category",
            "parentId": 0,
            "resourceType": "themes"
...

BACKTRACE
#0 /home/m9s5jg1k9m00/public_html/domains/<removed>/system/Log/Log.php(180): IPS\_Log::log('\n\n-------------...', 'request')
#1 /home/m9s5jg1k9m00/public_html/domains/<removed>/system/Http/Request/Curl.php(392): IPS\_Log::debug('\n\n-------------...', 'request')
#2 /home/m9s5jg1k9m00/public_html/domains/<removed>/system/Http/Request/Curl.php(422): IPS\Http\Request\_Curl->_execute()
#3 /home/m9s5jg1k9m00/public_html/domains/<removed>/system/Http/Request/Curl.php(298): IPS\Http\Request\_Curl->_executeAndFollowRedirects('GET', NULL)
#4 /home/m9s5jg1k9m00/public_html/domains/<removed>/applications/core/modules/admin/marketplace/marketplace.php(668): IPS\Http\Request\_Curl->get()
#5 /home/m9s5jg1k9m00/public_html/domains/<removed>/applications/core/modules/admin/marketplace/marketplace.php(58): IPS\core\modules\admin\marketplace\_marketplace->_api('marketplace/cat...', NULL, false, NULL, 1)
#6 /home/m9s5jg1k9m00/public_html/domains/<removed>/applications/core/Application.php(84): IPS\core\modules\admin\marketplace\_marketplace->hierarchicalCategoryTree()
#7 /home/m9s5jg1k9m00/public_html/domains/<removed>/system/Dispatcher/Admin.php(357): IPS\core\_Application->acpMenu()
#8 /home/m9s5jg1k9m00/public_html/domains/<removed>/system/Dispatcher/Admin.php(68): IPS\Dispatcher\_Admin->buildMenu()
#9 /home/m9s5jg1k9m00/public_html/domains/<removed>/system/Dispatcher/Dispatcher.php(110): IPS\Dispatcher\_Admin->init()
#10 /home/m9s5jg1k9m00/public_html/domains/<removed>/admin/index.php(13): IPS\_Dispatcher::i()
#11 {main}

Not sure if these are benign errors or something to be concerned about. But after seeing three pages worth of them in the span of a half hours it appears they are not one-time errors.

You could require an address in order to make an event paid as a work-around if I understand you correctly. 

A board admin could create a venue calendar entry in the ACP for locations that are to be determined (Using the state in which the event will be located or board owner's state to fulfill the requirement that some value is shown for event address) or being hosted online as shown below:

Or they could create an actual venue location if they want to advertise it ahead of the event.  

"If" IPS ever gets around to making the change you requested then you can advise app purchasers that locations are optional going forward.

You might consider reaching out to your members asking for recommendations.  They might know someone from their own personal networks that could assist you.

Many service providers host forums that you might check out to see if anyone could recommend an admin.  One of the challenges you will face is creating an implementation that isn't using software that is close to its end of life and setting everything up to be secure.  Some server configurations allow for upgrading and installing various needed software components and tweaking settings and some don't. 

The cheaper the server the less configuration you are apt to be allowed to do.  An experienced admin may have some tricks up their sleeves to deal with various roadblocks, but they might not be able to deal with some server configurations and provide the kind of results you will want.  

At first glance backup and restore scripts might look daunting, but the process is actually quite straightforward once you see it in action. It's pretty much a matter of substituting place holder values with values pertinent to your unique environment.  

I would recommend reaching out directly to your hosting provider.  Ask them if they can recommend someone to assist you in backing up and restoring your server and provide you with a set of scripts you can use going forward. 

You can request a 14-day free trial of the complete suite here:

Try a Demo (invisioncommunity.com)

This help guide may prove helpful.

You should check out the Members Shop app and the various add-ons and integrations it supports:

You might not be able to duplicate all of the functionality of Reddit, but you might be able to come up with an implementation that offers similar overall value to your community.

1 hour ago, Brian Robinson_47676 said:

Recently I started to get a lot of complaints about slow loading times. As in pictures not loading, or waiting forever for the page to load.

The number of bad actors on the internet has exponentially increased after Russia invaded the Ukraine.  Attacks could be originating from all over the world and could impact internet routing between your members and your server. 

Sometimes data might flow as expected and sometimes the flow could be dramatically reduced for periods of time. Problems might exist within your very own server farm that they might not be detecting or willing to admit to. 

Something you might consider investigating is how large is your connection from your server to the internet. 

Your server might have a very high-capacity network card installed but the service provider may throttle the connection down to several hundred megabytes to support handling thousands of servers at a reasonable price point for one and all. 

Things you might want to look into:

• What kind of connections does your service provider use to connect with the internet?
• Can they increase their overall bandwidth at a moment's notice and downgrade when the peak subsides?
• How intelligent are the routers they are using internally and to connect to their internet providers?
• Do they have employees well versed in network routing to garner every last bit of throughput and reduced latency the hardware can support at the network and server level?
• The internet providers contracted by your service provider might not have the infrastructure and support staff to consistently offer stellar performance for everyone globally connecting to them. 
• Internet traffic can travel down multiple paths to go from one country or countries to another and ultimately make it to your server.  A path taken this hour might not be the same path taken hours or days later.  

You might consider seeing if there are any local network support forums with experience with your server provider. They may be able to help you better investigate the root causes of your problem (or at least eliminate possible causes) and guide you to a path to address it.

9 minutes ago, Nathan Explosion said:

provide how you think a new feature would work.

I'm simply encouraging you not to become "too" Iframely centric in the years ahead.  If a new embed request comes your way you might ask yourself if you could make it work without resorting to Iframely.  Just a couple instances here and there could noticably reduce one's Iframely bill. The less we spend with them the more we have to contribute to your beer fund ☺️

It's great that you have provided support for Iframely but as they charge by the hit it would be ideal to provide functionality throughout your app that minimizes the need to use their service wherever you can easily do so.

Thanks for continuing to refine the app.

Okay I will grant you the difficulty of utilizing the Message Inbox and put that suggestion aside.

The problem starts here:

One problem is that folks are offered one choice as shown above.  People might be interested in being kept abreast of important site issues but not receive a promotional newsletter, so they opt out entirely. Getting them to opt in at a later date is difficult.

If a site admin sends out an important site update email, they will violate the spirit of the agreement if a new member did not select the option.  Splitting out "and updates" to be another trackable option would likely increase participation.  As part of important site update emails, you could soft sell the value of opting into the newsletter as well. 

By changing notification settings as shown below you could more readily encourage more folks to opt into your newsletter, receive important site updates or ideally both.

Wording and formatting are for illustrative purposes only.  

I suggest adding the ability for a member to choose from one of two options to receive newsletters:

A fair amount of folks opts out of receiving newsletters as it gets sent to their email address.  Newsletters can be an extremely useful to the membership but if a large portion opt out of receiving them then it limits their effectiveness.

Offering the option to have newsletters sent to their Message Inbox would increase the amount of people that receive and read them.

Reducing the amount of newsletter emails being sent out should reduce costs if you are outsourcing that functionality or reduce server load if it is done via your own server.

This could be offered as a plugin so only those sites that could benefit from such utility install it.

It would be nice if you added a page impression count in the ACP so that the self-hosted crowd could gauge which cloud package they would have to purchase if they switched.

How do I exclude Admin Accounts from showing up as a connection?

@Bethanyrayne

You might think that I was attempting to spin a negative into a positive and you would be completely wrong. I was simply relaying some points of view that “some” developers adhere to. 

Please don’t assume comments are meant to be either positive or negative in nature.  Occasionally they can be neutral and meant to be helpful. With that in mind your comment to me could have been framed in a more positive fashion.  

@MattI did check the sales page and help guides for mentions of branding. If I had seen something I would have provided a link. Some companies provide for personalized branding some don't, some charge and some don't.  As such, you might consider letting potential customers know your policy and pricing before purchase.

Customers:

Some third-party developers charge an extra fee to remove their branding some don't brand their apps at all.  To replicate the functionality of the IPS suite and third-party add-ons it would take a dedicated development team and a very, very large budget.  Paying to remove branding can give the appearance of a custom site while only having to pay pennies on the dollar.  The reality is few members will be fooled that you designed and built the site from scratch.

Increased sales for IPS and third-party apps via branding links insures they continue to have the development budget to continue releasing new and useful updates. They need every win they can to continue to develop.  

Instead of looking at personalized branding simply as another fee, think of it as an investment in your community.

I would recommend reaching out to the sales team for any company you wish to do business with to find out what is or isn't included and pricing for various add-ons prior to making any purchases.

If you mean removing the Invision Community branding as shown below:

Then navigate to your Client Area and choose and pay for Branding Removal as shown below:

@Adriano FariaI appreciate the quick turnaround but you forget to address the upload tracks dialog issue.

Beyond improving the look of the dialog box by having the entire choose files button showing, it could benefit from the extra space to put a disclaimer not to upload copyrighted content.

Having a customizable player color scheme would be a nice value add, but as you mentioned you've already fixed the two issues shown below, I wonder if you would "please" release an update that includes them.

Increased the size of the popup. Now it shows the whole button caption:

Check out the following guide:

You can add the following to your constants.php file:

Constant - CP_DIRECTORY

Use - Name of your admin CP directory when changed from the default of 'admin'

Example value - 'newcpdirectory'

IT's hard to know the overall value of any particular thread.  Just because it has lots of comments and some posts have some likes it's hard to gauge its overall value.

Having a visual que that a topic has an overall positive value would be helpful (like a Rotten Tomatoes score for movies), this might be thought of as a sentiment score.  Does each new contribution increase the sentiment score or not?  This might be attained by helping to keep the conversation on point and bringing useful insights and knowledge into play

Instead of "liking" a post you might instead acknowledge the value that post brings to the conversation and community as a whole.  Maybe this type of "liking" wouldn't' be publicly viewable but is tracked to determine an overall sentiment score. 

Is it worth my time to read through the comments and participate further or should I ignore it and skip onto the next forum topic?  It's really hard to know for sure. Sometimes a topic for discussion will have multiple instances being commented upon at the same time.  Which one do you participate in, well if one has a higher sentiment score that might be the better one to participate in.

Tracking member likes has value, but there might be even more value in tracking their contributions to topic sentiment scores.  The more they contribute and get acknowledged for their contributions the higher their score becomes.

The score could reset on a yearly basis. This would encourage people to keep returning on a continuous basis so that they can continuedly be seen as a valuable contributor to the site.

On 2/4/2022 at 7:52 PM, nodle said:

I am running 8.1 without any problems whatsoevr.

There are portions of the codebase that doesn't get utilized by the average site owner. There could be certain settings that get enabled that utilize a section of code that might not play well with new PHP releases. It's in the realm of possibility that one site might not encounter any compatibility issues. 

One site claiming that all is well in the world doesn't necessarily mean that everyone's world will be peachy.  It's quite possible that there might be problems yet to be discovered.

Although some folks step us to beta test each build its pretty much a free for all. People will randomly test things likely leaving portions of the suite untested.  

With "some" structure thrown around client beta testing a larger amount of the code could be tested minimizing the amount of follow up releases needed to be fully compatible with each new PHP release. 

Helping marketplace developers better address future PHP releases would be a worthy conversation to have between IPS and the community.