The Old Man

The individual posts need to be promoted manually. Your question sounds like a reasonable feature request though. 

In case someone runs into this: I had a modified globalTemplate in 4.1. So after the upgrade I now had to revert that to see the new features such as the Complete Your Account progress bar. 

What a superb implementation of social groups. Clearly a lot of thought has gone into this. You promised member engagement and you are delivering. Nice work IPS, it looks great!

Very nice, thank you for this.
Setting up Facebook for my website communities has been such a nightmare in the past, I gave up and stuck with Twitter. I don't have time to nurture Twitter so my IPS just feeds new content which gets automatically tweeted. I lie the idea of being able to also cherry pick content using this system.
I recently saw in your Facebook guide it's got even more complex to intergrate. My communities ideally do need that Facebook presence and although Facebook wouldn't accept that I was really me (despite sending I them personal information, card details etc) preventing me from creating the necessary API keys etc, I'd be willing to give it another try but I don't want a personal Facebook account for myself, just Facebook pages for the websites/communities I admin.
It would be great if there was a complete built in wizard using their API to take you through Facebook setup and linking to their systems.
I'm wary but can see how it will benefit many Admins.

Very nice, thank you for this.
Setting up Facebook for my website communities has been such a nightmare in the past, I gave up and stuck with Twitter. I don't have time to nurture Twitter so my IPS just feeds new content which gets automatically tweeted. I lie the idea of being able to also cherry pick content using this system.
I recently saw in your Facebook guide it's got even more complex to intergrate. My communities ideally do need that Facebook presence and although Facebook wouldn't accept that I was really me (despite sending I them personal information, card details etc) preventing me from creating the necessary API keys etc, I'd be willing to give it another try but I don't want a personal Facebook account for myself, just Facebook pages for the websites/communities I admin.
It would be great if there was a complete built in wizard using their API to take you through Facebook setup and linking to their systems.
I'm wary but can see how it will benefit many Admins.

I thought 1st record was 
A question
Why blocks have different settings?
Featured Downloads. Show and Number. Where is a Categories?
What's New. Show and Categories. Where is a Number?
Highest Rated. Show and Categories. Where is a Number?
Most Downloaded. Show and Categories. Where is a Number?

Yes, thank you! Great to see some of Gallery's issues being addressed. There has been so much feedback for Gallery over the years like better image navigation to take it to the next level, and to address some glaring omissions.
Please can you advise if the image sorting issues have been resolved? I.e. that prevent you from uploading a series of photos in a chronological sequence from start to finish in the correct logical order (for me, it's annual carnival parades, for many, it's other races or events). After uploading they currently display backwards when viewed, so visitors are stuck with seeing the end of the parade/event first instead of the start of the parade first, and vice versa.
The ability, also long requested, to finally embed YouTube, Vimeo and other 3rd party hosted videos in the Gallery 'off the shelf' and hence have Gallery become more of a complete Media Gallery without having to buy third party apps, would be great.
 
 

I think what you are wanting is for the club owner (or club admis) to be able to, within reason, drag and drop content boxes to their own liking, with control over background, coloring, etc.
 
It wouldn't surprise me if a future update allows the selecting of an included skin/theme to be chosen, that wouldn't necessarily be shown on the rest of the community.  Also, wouldn't surprise me if customizable club pages were to become a thing as well, though I image it would be limited on what can be included and where it can be used.  (For example, main content blocks may be limited to the main area, where as summary blocks, ie, latest topics, list of members, etc, are limited to a sidebar.)
 
I think the best bet for people will be third party vendors, who provide plugins/etc that provide the desired functionality, though I would recommend keeping it simple, instead of becoming dependent on functions that may not continue to be updated.

I see the point that Pages (as it currently stands) could be a bit complicated for non-Admins, but I do think that Clubs at some point needs the ability to create a more robust environment which doesn't necessarily have to be a "mini website" (although I'm not sure how blocks would function without the concept of the page).  One could limit the amount of "pages" (let's call them pages for the sake of argument) a Club (or any Club) can have; one can charge a subscription fee to create a Club; or if one wanted to one could manage all the Clubs on one's site, depending on how many there are.
It's really the issue of multiculturalism transferred to the idea of the website: how much do you want other Clubs/"cultures" to be able to articulate themselves on your site before there is a crisis of identity?  There is no one right answer of course, but I think it's better to have the tools for expansion than not.
For me, the philosophical issue is that successful clubs will grow and evolve, and while one can control this growth like for example limiting pages or whatever, it isn't clear to me how blocks will cut it without the potential to narrativize one's Club content through, for example, consecutive pages (with or without blocks).  As I said, I agree that Pages on the Admin side is not for the beginner, but maybe there's an alternative for the Club owner side of things - in the future.

I've changed my mind, I no longer think Clubs needs Pages with their databases etc, that's all a bit overkill.
Too much like having members basically creating  mini websites for free that your server is powering and you are paying for to host, and they would suffer identify crisis with links and references to the host community. Plus Pages is too generic out of the box but more importantly over complicated for Admin's, never mind members who just want to type and post.
However I do think it disappointing that there is still no built-in support to add simple rich text custom content/widget blocks to Forums, not only would Forums benefit hugely from custom content blocks that could be easily drag and dropped where you want them like widgets, but then Clubs would inherit the feature and it would give Club owners that bit of extra choice and customisation to easily make their Club stand out and look different to all the others (besides a header). 
Then we could position ads  (inside the block) somewhere in the sidebar other than just the top slot of the side bar, without having to buy Commerce just to achieve that. You could also then quickly add or external/third party content like a Twitter feed, PHP or Jquery accordions, tabbed blocks, sliders etc.
Pages provides that ability but limiting custom content blocks to Pages isn't the best idea or use of the system. They used to be Blogs years way back when.
There again, I think Pages should be redisgned to a database solution and their should instead be a new much friendlier app created (or perhaps Blogs taken to the Wordpress pages level) for those who want a site home/webpage front end for their website with a range of news articles layouts to choose from out of the box and custom blocks like Wordpress has. This way Admin's would have the 2 sets of member registration databases and members could respond to news comments and post in forums, clubs, gallery etc.
Clubs needs just the custom blocks aspect of Pages, at least I think for the majority.

Even though I like the layout and wizard of IPS, the Lithium version is much broader and includes interactive activities such as writing your first post and giving your first like.  
Potentially one could create a tour of your website with required / non-required steps for new members.

Nice improvements, thank you.
Still hoping for an announcement on member rewards, badges and trophies and thought it may be tied in to the Leaderboard improvements news article!
Something built-in and not a mod, with motivating attractive trophie/reward graphics shown in profiles, within the Leaderboard and optionally next to forum posts, like this:-
https://www.lithium.com/products/online-communities/gamification
Come on, please take it to the next level! I have my fingers crossed.
 
 
 

To expand on this - yes. So say, for example, you do not require users to set a profile photo, but then add a step so that it is required, then all users who did not set one previously will then be prompted to do so.

It may help to reprogram yourself from "required fields" to "required steps".
You can add multiple custom fields into a single step and make that step required, meaning all elements need to be completed.

Yes, if you add a new field as required it will prompt all existing members to complete that field.

The "Question and Answer" challenge fields still show on the initial registration form. Any custom profile fields that are required show on the wizard view to keep the registration form more friendly.l

Most important question: does @Joel R still show up 5,000 times?

As long as I still show up 5,000 times on the Leaderboard, everything is okay.  

Hi,
This sounds great, thank you. Quick question. At the moment in 4.1.x when a tweet is made containing a link to a topic, it results in a rather ugly gray icon in the Tweet. 

I think it has something to do with Twitter meta tags in IPS's code that are used to create these Twitter cards.
Is it possible that a screenshot of the topic/webpage could be used instead, or perhaps at minimum a sharing type icon image (in the theme you can add an image for Facebook)?
Is it possible to achieve a better image in Twitter feeds for now until 4.2 is released, with 4.1.x?
Many thanks. 

We should be able to exclude groups or users. The founder of a forum, for example, will probably have more reputation than another admin and maybe he doesn't want to appear in the leaderboard.
One example here on IPS is the IPS NEWS account! There's no sense in display it there: https://invisionpower.com/topmembers/

Agreed, and keep in mind that we have a vibrant marketplace and many talented developers who are great at filling perceived gaps in functionality.
 

no more hootsuite need, awesome! can't wait to get to use 4.2

Thanks opentype.  IMHO, this would be a great further step for Clubs, which is not to dismiss the great features which are already lined up for 4.2!

There is a setting to allow the admin to choose whether to show pinned topics at the top or not when fluid mode has been chosen.
 

Can you make the video bigger, I can't hardly see a thing in it. It so darn small.