Chris Anderson

The release is currently in a "Soft Launch" phase.  If you "really" want to upgrade now you can create a constants.php file and paste the following php script in it:
<?php
\define('USE_DEVELOPMENT_BUILDS','TRUE');
Click on "Check for Updates" and you should get a dialog box letting you know a new update is available.  Please backup your site and read all about "Achievements" and other postings about this release.  There are many things changed, deprecated and added that will likely impact every site in some fashion or another.

I will leave it up to you to read through the release notes and various topics scattered about in regards to this release.  As there will likely be several 4.6.x builds there are always the chance that the next several releases will require software fixes or code be changed as a consequence of customer feedback.  
 

Adding an new entry under Applications for "Achievements" would provide consistency and allow a member to toggle between "Disabled" and "Enabled".  Disabled should be the default setting to allow an admin to decide when they are ready to implement Achievements for their site.  Many site owners will choose to spend months planning, waiting on graphic designers to create a personalized set of badges or wait for Achievements to mature to a point that it fully meets their needs. 

Adding an new entry under Applications for "Achievements" would provide consistency and allow a member to toggle between "Disabled" and "Enabled".  Disabled should be the default setting to allow an admin to decide when they are ready to implement Achievements for their site.  Many site owners will choose to spend months planning, waiting on graphic designers to create a personalized set of badges or wait for Achievements to mature to a point that it fully meets their needs. 

📆 It will be ready when it's ready, and not a moment sooner. 📆

📆 It will be ready when it's ready, and not a moment sooner. 📆

📆 It will be ready when it's ready, and not a moment sooner. 📆

📆 It will be ready when it's ready, and not a moment sooner. 📆

This site has been running 4.6 Alpha for only a few days now.  Based on previous 4.x releases, it will take several beta releases before IPS makes it available for download in your client area.  Once it's available there, it will take several 4.6.x releases before its "really" considered stable and the marketplace developers begin releasing updates to their products. 
If your site doesn't use marketplace apps a stable 4.6 will likely be available 2 to 3 months from now. If you are dependent on marketplace apps it could be many months before they get updated especially if the developer has lots of apps to update. There are a fair amount of apps that haven't yet been updated to 4.5 so it seems that updating isn't as easy to accomplish as it would seem.
This timeline is based on IPS keeping Achievements "as is".  If they should decide to take customer feedback into consideration and include their various suggestions to change, add or delete functionality then the timeline could be extended much further.  Time will tell...

This site has been running 4.6 Alpha for only a few days now.  Based on previous 4.x releases, it will take several beta releases before IPS makes it available for download in your client area.  Once it's available there, it will take several 4.6.x releases before its "really" considered stable and the marketplace developers begin releasing updates to their products. 
If your site doesn't use marketplace apps a stable 4.6 will likely be available 2 to 3 months from now. If you are dependent on marketplace apps it could be many months before they get updated especially if the developer has lots of apps to update. There are a fair amount of apps that haven't yet been updated to 4.5 so it seems that updating isn't as easy to accomplish as it would seem.
This timeline is based on IPS keeping Achievements "as is".  If they should decide to take customer feedback into consideration and include their various suggestions to change, add or delete functionality then the timeline could be extended much further.  Time will tell...

This site has been running 4.6 Alpha for only a few days now.  Based on previous 4.x releases, it will take several beta releases before IPS makes it available for download in your client area.  Once it's available there, it will take several 4.6.x releases before its "really" considered stable and the marketplace developers begin releasing updates to their products. 
If your site doesn't use marketplace apps a stable 4.6 will likely be available 2 to 3 months from now. If you are dependent on marketplace apps it could be many months before they get updated especially if the developer has lots of apps to update. There are a fair amount of apps that haven't yet been updated to 4.5 so it seems that updating isn't as easy to accomplish as it would seem.
This timeline is based on IPS keeping Achievements "as is".  If they should decide to take customer feedback into consideration and include their various suggestions to change, add or delete functionality then the timeline could be extended much further.  Time will tell...

This site has been running 4.6 Alpha for only a few days now.  Based on previous 4.x releases, it will take several beta releases before IPS makes it available for download in your client area.  Once it's available there, it will take several 4.6.x releases before its "really" considered stable and the marketplace developers begin releasing updates to their products. 
If your site doesn't use marketplace apps a stable 4.6 will likely be available 2 to 3 months from now. If you are dependent on marketplace apps it could be many months before they get updated especially if the developer has lots of apps to update. There are a fair amount of apps that haven't yet been updated to 4.5 so it seems that updating isn't as easy to accomplish as it would seem.
This timeline is based on IPS keeping Achievements "as is".  If they should decide to take customer feedback into consideration and include their various suggestions to change, add or delete functionality then the timeline could be extended much further.  Time will tell...

A community leader is still a top down leader even if they work hard to be generally accepted as "one of us".
There might be value in also having at least one Community Advocate who advocates for the community leaders and the community members.
A single point of contact the community can interact with to advocate for various site improvements, changes or deletions or anything else the community feels strongly about. This would lighten the load of the the community leaders allowing them to be more present  which should allow them to be seen as 'one of us" more readily. 
Does this sound familiar to anyone?
I'm not advocating for any particular title here, just using them for illustration purposes.
 

It's probably a good idea when in the role of community leader to hit the pause button on any communications you might feel inclined to send to individuals or the community until such a time as you "really" have a feel for your community and you have adopted a communication style that works for them and elicits the responses you are hoping for.
Your initial communication might not be the best approach and once sent can't be retrieved.  
You should consider giving your communication another once over a few hours later or the next day, maybe you might see something in the communication that might be better worded or an entirely different approach might come to mind. I know this is hard as we have become so ingrained to utilizing instant communication. 
You should gauge your community to determine if you should write at the high school or college level as well as how technical they are.
With that knowledge you can better determine which words you could readily use in your communications as well as how detailed you might have to be. 
On the other hand you need to be cognizant aware of the fact that If you are too wordy then you might lose people with extremely short attention spans. Know any Twitter or heavy sms users?

@Jordan InvisionI posted a comment in another forum posting about the fact I have come to know a fair amount of personal details about the staff here.   There was a time when they were more personally vulnerable and open with the community. Heck @Matt was the first blogger I kept tabs on.  That was long before blogs became a "thing". They "were" community leaders here but over time became Admins. 
When you start out as an admin and morph into a community leader its important to not to go back to being an admin as your members will miss the connection they had when they were a community leader.  You might take on lots of extra duties running your site making it difficult to find time to be community leader  an effort should be made to carve out a few moments each day to put on the community leader hat.
Any site bad news you may have to impart onto your community will incur less of a sting if it comes from community leader versus admin.  Community leaders are "one of us" while admins are often seen as cold uncaring individuals who think "it's my way or the highway".
 

It's probably a good idea when in the role of community leader to hit the pause button on any communications you might feel inclined to send to individuals or the community until such a time as you "really" have a feel for your community and you have adopted a communication style that works for them and elicits the responses you are hoping for.
Your initial communication might not be the best approach and once sent can't be retrieved.  
You should consider giving your communication another once over a few hours later or the next day, maybe you might see something in the communication that might be better worded or an entirely different approach might come to mind. I know this is hard as we have become so ingrained to utilizing instant communication. 
You should gauge your community to determine if you should write at the high school or college level as well as how technical they are.
With that knowledge you can better determine which words you could readily use in your communications as well as how detailed you might have to be. 
On the other hand you need to be cognizant aware of the fact that If you are too wordy then you might lose people with extremely short attention spans. Know any Twitter or heavy sms users?

It's probably a good idea when in the role of community leader to hit the pause button on any communications you might feel inclined to send to individuals or the community until such a time as you "really" have a feel for your community and you have adopted a communication style that works for them and elicits the responses you are hoping for.
Your initial communication might not be the best approach and once sent can't be retrieved.  
You should consider giving your communication another once over a few hours later or the next day, maybe you might see something in the communication that might be better worded or an entirely different approach might come to mind. I know this is hard as we have become so ingrained to utilizing instant communication. 
You should gauge your community to determine if you should write at the high school or college level as well as how technical they are.
With that knowledge you can better determine which words you could readily use in your communications as well as how detailed you might have to be. 
On the other hand you need to be cognizant aware of the fact that If you are too wordy then you might lose people with extremely short attention spans. Know any Twitter or heavy sms users?

@Jordan InvisionI posted a comment in another forum posting about the fact I have come to know a fair amount of personal details about the staff here.   There was a time when they were more personally vulnerable and open with the community. Heck @Matt was the first blogger I kept tabs on.  That was long before blogs became a "thing". They "were" community leaders here but over time became Admins. 
When you start out as an admin and morph into a community leader its important to not to go back to being an admin as your members will miss the connection they had when they were a community leader.  You might take on lots of extra duties running your site making it difficult to find time to be community leader  an effort should be made to carve out a few moments each day to put on the community leader hat.
Any site bad news you may have to impart onto your community will incur less of a sting if it comes from community leader versus admin.  Community leaders are "one of us" while admins are often seen as cold uncaring individuals who think "it's my way or the highway".
 

The more successful your customers are the more likely they will purchase additional products and services from your firm. This product could help many sites stick around for the long term or grow to a point that switching to your hosting platform is within their means. As customers many of us have invested thousands of dollars in your company by paying for self hosted licenses and renewals, maybe you could return the favor by investing in your customer's success. I would recommend making it available to self hosted customers with the understanding that they assume responsibility for all support and if they run it on underpowered servers they will experience suboptimal results. 
Right now we 'really' don't know how this product might enhance our communities. It will require lots of experimentation and sharing of what works or doesn't before the community will embrace the value of this new service. Maybe it will turn out this service holds great appeal to the vast majority of your customers or just a handful.  Limiting it's adoption will limit it's potential for attaining that "great appeal".

Feedback aka Feature Suggestions needs to be improved. As the definitive location for your clients to post any and all feedback for consideration by the company, it is by far the most important forum for our collective futures.  You literally tell retail clients to post their suggestions in Feedback, but because it's so unorganized and so unmanaged, your own company follow-through on client feedback is embarrassingly non-existent over the years.  
Feedback is a combination of site feedback, company feedback, feedback on seven apps, the admin control panel, clubs, community enhancements and integration, product guidance because people don't know where to post, and the personal planning of kmk on using community software in literally every way except as a community. Feedback needs to be broken-out per app, to be actively collated and tallied and merged, and non-feedback needs to be moved out.    
There is zero incentive for clients to search for past feedback when everything is jumbled together, zero guidance on how clients can bump or lend weight to a prior suggestion, and finally zero transparency to your client base on how our aggregate suggestions are flowing through the suggestion pipeline. Probably because it's a hot mess.  
 
If you had simply tasked Jordan to organize this section with clearly defined workflows, I would have applauded. Something like:
Prequalify all posts in Feedback: Ask for poster to provide minimum specifications as defined by the company. Until those are submitted by the poster, the suggestion shouldn't be accepted.  One of community management's best practices is realizing that great suggestions aren't written by the poster, they're elicited by the asker.      If bug, give poster instructions for sending in a support ticket.  Close and mark as resolved. If non-feedback, give poster instructions on proper navigation of site for reference.  Move as needed. If feedback that meets minimum specs, then move, organize, and merge as needed.   For site feedback: If valid, escalate to site management team. Follow-up and mark as resolved when done.   If not valid, follow-up and mark with a thanks but no thanks.   For company feedback: If positive, ask for permission and promote on social media.  Follow-up and mark as resolved when done.        If negative, escalate to company management as needed.  

The more successful your customers are the more likely they will purchase additional products and services from your firm. This product could help many sites stick around for the long term or grow to a point that switching to your hosting platform is within their means. As customers many of us have invested thousands of dollars in your company by paying for self hosted licenses and renewals, maybe you could return the favor by investing in your customer's success. I would recommend making it available to self hosted customers with the understanding that they assume responsibility for all support and if they run it on underpowered servers they will experience suboptimal results. 
Right now we 'really' don't know how this product might enhance our communities. It will require lots of experimentation and sharing of what works or doesn't before the community will embrace the value of this new service. Maybe it will turn out this service holds great appeal to the vast majority of your customers or just a handful.  Limiting it's adoption will limit it's potential for attaining that "great appeal".

The more successful your customers are the more likely they will purchase additional products and services from your firm. This product could help many sites stick around for the long term or grow to a point that switching to your hosting platform is within their means. As customers many of us have invested thousands of dollars in your company by paying for self hosted licenses and renewals, maybe you could return the favor by investing in your customer's success. I would recommend making it available to self hosted customers with the understanding that they assume responsibility for all support and if they run it on underpowered servers they will experience suboptimal results. 
Right now we 'really' don't know how this product might enhance our communities. It will require lots of experimentation and sharing of what works or doesn't before the community will embrace the value of this new service. Maybe it will turn out this service holds great appeal to the vast majority of your customers or just a handful.  Limiting it's adoption will limit it's potential for attaining that "great appeal".

Your advice is great Jordan, unfortunately, a very small percentage of individuals lending toxicity to a site are having a bad moment or moments.  They are simply jerks, they know they are jerks and nothing you or I or anyone reading this blog post is likely to change them for the better via “kindness and vulnerability”.  Not that I’m not advocating you not give your suggestions the ole college try.  As the saying goes, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”.
It really comes down to the value of your individual forums and the topics and subsequent comments posted by your members.  In other words, what is the “real” value of the interactions taking place on your site in the grand scheme of things… The higher the “perceived” value the more likely a culture of “caring” (that kindness and vulnerability thing you mentioned) will spring up among your members.
Elevating the conversations to ever higher levels will get people to slow down and think a moment before responding to posts or creating new ones. This is where moderation can be handy.  If you have moderators or willing members help steer conversations that veer off into tangents back on topic or pose thought provoking comments to get others to “really” engage their brains (and never, ever feed the trolls) the jerks will quickly see this isn’t the place for them and they will move on.

Setting expectations will be paramount to successfully utilize this forum software and this new feature in particular.
 

I know there is an ACP toggle to force users to acknowledge new terms of service or privacy policy before being allowed to use the board. Could a similar process be created for this new feature? Have a dialog box appear with an explanation of the new feature and a list of who will be able to ascertain user name and for what purpose.  User clicks on an accept button and only then can they post anonymously.