The Old Man

I like this, but to take it a step further....I would like to see an option to return members to lower groups if they don't maintain a certain level of activity.
example..
In order to remain in "Group X" you must have 25 posts over the last 12 month, otherwise you go back to "Group Y"
This would keep up forum activity, rather than just having a member do a one time burst of creating topics and replies.

I also feel not having this report as a routine feature would be an oversight. 
I was also wondering about the existing facility to sign in as a member via the AdminCP to aid troubleshooting. 
Is there protection in place to prevent a member from effectively blocking an Admin from doing so again in future via the 'block device' function?
Would the admin's device details actually be shown in the list of devices used to access the member's account?

Thanks for the clarification, Simon/Mark.

Actually that's a real cake that @Stuart Silvester's wife made for us for the release of 4.0.0.

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!

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.
 
 

The ability to order images randomly in widgets was added as well. Sorry for forgetting to mention that!

These are pretty substantive changes, relative to the other apps. So I'm very thankful that they've done this much already. But I agree there are some larger overhauls that need to be done on one of the most popular apps in the suite.
Yes please.  
Random images in gallery block.  
 

@bfarber, a common request is add a RANDOM option to the image widgets. Will this be added in 4.2?

Thank God.  
Some much needed changes to Gallery.

Great to see some improvements to Stats, very useful indeed. Thank you for this. 
Funnily enough I was thinking earlier today after receiving a newsletter from the ICO that I may have to look at a way to prune or remove non-active member accounts in order to comply with the U.K. Data Protection Act, in relation to the legal requirement to only store personal data as long as it is needed. I'm not sure how it is in other countries, but I asked myself, can I justify keeping a person's name, age, email address etc for member accounts who haven't been active in the last 2 years, never mind 15 years ago. I'm sure this kind of statistical data will help.
However, I too would also like to see more front-end visible friendly stats, such as a dedicated Stats information page. This could be used for content such as most active members, most active topics, longest topics (with most replies), most used and least used emoticons, the usual kind of thing and harking back to the days of of the old Stat mods for earlier versions of IPB, but also perhaps for more modern analytics such as members who engage the most with content, members who visit the most and for how long, how regular etc, perhaps engagement with the community and other members by way of comments and likes etc, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual etc.
A default layout but in the form of widgets that could be enabled/disabled and perhaps drag and dropped. All of the data is there, why not pull it together and allow us to put it on the front end?
 

Nice. Anyway I hope some more statistics for the front end too

I hope this is only the start for stats.
Great job!

Thanks for the article DanielF! 
Agreed the Downloads Index page is quite stale looking and could do with some IPS Feng Shui love! ??
It's weird how the featured downloads slider on the Downloads index page still isn't touch enabled in this day and age, instinctively you go to swipe through the downloads when using a tablet and then find you can't and instead you have to catch the left or right buttons just right.
Same with the Gallery images widget for main forums index, it could also do with being touch enabled and let you choose random images from specific Gallery categories instead of the persistent recent images if nobody has uploaded new ones for a while.

Thanks for the article DanielF! 
Agreed the Downloads Index page is quite stale looking and could do with some IPS Feng Shui love! ??
It's weird how the featured downloads slider on the Downloads index page still isn't touch enabled in this day and age, instinctively you go to swipe through the downloads when using a tablet and then find you can't and instead you have to catch the left or right buttons just right.
Same with the Gallery images widget for main forums index, it could also do with being touch enabled and let you choose random images from specific Gallery categories instead of the persistent recent images if nobody has uploaded new ones for a while.

but overall the view of downloads looks very stale. nothing ever changes to make you say wow. now thats cool. but on the other hand I have 0 suggestions for improvements too.

This is the first blog entry by @Daniel F and he was a bit nervous writing it. I am sure he'll hate me saying that
But I think he did a great job and the feature will be really useful for those who heavily use our Downloads app.

This a good start to improve and modernise Blogs, thank you!

This a good start to improve and modernise Blogs, thank you!

Yes
 
As for categorization of clubs, as has been mentioned you can set up whatever custom fields you like and filter by those fields (so you could have one called "Subject" with options "Food", "Car", etc.). This is a situation where I think it is probably best to wait and see and play with the implementation first, before deciding whether you think additional organization tools are needed.

This would seem a logical way to organise the Clubs. You have to have good organisation for some communities. For example, you might have a category/group of TV Show-related Clubs, one for Food-related Clubs, one for Car-related Clubs.
Infact, although I do have some concerns about my particular community becoming even more off-topic and fragmented than it is now, I'd suggest the ability to have as many categories and sub-categories as some communities may need, is quite important.
So for good organisation of Clubs, to keep them easy to navigate for visitors, you could have say, a parent category/group of Car Clubs with GM, Lamborghini, Masarati Clubs etc, another parent category for Motorcycle Clubs, but this time with a sub/child categories for Modern Superbikes-related Clubs, itself containing further sub-categories of Honda Clubs, Suzuki Clubs, Ducati Clubs etc.
The Motorcycle Clubs category might also contain another sub-category of Classic and Vintage Motorbike Clubs which contains a further sub-category of BSA Clubs, Triumph Clubs, and Indian Clubs etc.
You might then have a parent category of Sports related Clubs, with say Football Clubs by team, Baseball Clubs by team, Basketball Clubs by team etc.
If you had the option for as many as you need for logical organisation and re-ordering as with Forums now, you'd have that flexibility and future proofing to make them all part of another category in the future, or add further sub-categories, again as with drag and drop reordering of Forums now. 

Will you be able to categorize one level up? (These 5 clubs are part of club category 1 since they are all related to X, these other 6 clubs are part of club category 2 since they are all related to Y, etc)

Can I move all members of group A to club A? As of now we have group functionality but it would be very nice to have some kind of cross moving of members from groups to club directly through ACP. - Thanks

I knew there would be new developments in 4.2, but I never anticipated that something like this would come about which fits so precisely - PRECISELY with what I have wanted for tutoring clients - spaces which constellate all the other apps and that can be custom-tailored for my clients with complete control over visibility and privacy.
Obviously the product of a lot of work and consideration, and I am truly looking forward to using this on my site.  Awesome!
 

My first task will be to set up virtual spaces for my paying tutor clients I can discuss their projects with them in forums topics, aid them in research by contributing to their media gallery, allow them to use a blog to track their own insights, etc.  With Clubs (well, "Spaces") they can let others join to collaborate if that's what the project calls for (although essay writing and critical argument building will probably be 1 on 1).
I can't tell you how excited I am to see Clubs, as up until now my clients had their own password-protected forum - some not visible, others visible - and blogs where desired, which is not nearly as graceful and professional a solution as Clubs.
After that, I want to organise groups around literature and philosophy (British/Australian/Canadian/Etc lit., Romanticism, Speculative Realism, German Idealism etc etc) and then promote like hell once I have the time!
 
Oh...there will also at some point be a Club dedicated to the Zombie Apocalypse.  But I expect it'll be pretty dead in there ZING