The Old Man

At least one of our users I know of has died of the virus. It's sad.

One of the things that will come from all of this is that people will remember those who came together and those who chose to stand apart; whether this be so-called friends and neighbours to suppliers of commodities and services - people will remember those who rallied around and those who ran away.
It is very hard times for everyone, but more so for the thousands who have lost loved ones and cannot even see them off properly; for the medics and front line staff who have to make the unenviable choice of who to save and who to let slip away and for Governments who have to make really tough choices to make sure that as many as possible stay safe.
This is something that will affect every part of the globe and with repercussions that will last a generation or more, but with grit and determination we will prevail.  This is a different kind of enemy, one that is enemy to all and not just a few and the only way we will be able to defeat it is to come together and squish it permanently.
Thanks to Matt for reminding us that together we are stronger - united we stand, divided we fall comes to mind. This is an event that transcends all of the old divisions which we must put aside to defeat this common enemy.
Stay safe everyone, stay strong and stick together (as much as social distancing allows).
 

We have a health related community and you can think how much questions people ask us and each other. In these times a strong community software is gold.
And now, where people are to stay home they want to see other people in video chats. We took Zoom. An embedded chat would be better, sure. But it's ok.

I won't lie, it hasn't been easy 😕 
Being in the travel niche, my community is heavily hit and it was an enormous task to moderate travel related discussions (flights cancelled, borders closed, etc.) from the general, speculation ridden, chit-chat covid talk that pretty much goes everywhere (including here).
In the end I had to enable pre-approval for posts in the virus topic. First time in seven years since my community start, but I guess desperate time requires desperate measures. It helped a lot! Before that it was pretty chaotic with everyone posting their own theories, unproven links form the internet etc, we had to try to keep it on topic by hiding almost 50% of the posts at some point. It was not pretty and people got annoyed and alienated. After pre-approval was introduced almost all posts were strictly on topic, you can say that by starting the pre-approval the moderator workload dropped at least 90% and was confined to quick approval to most of the posts. 
But it is still challenging, because with travel shut we have almost nothing to talk about besides the virus, quarantine, etc. Instead of discussing upcoming travels, most active discussions are based on what we do at home, cooking recipes and the emotional toll of the blockade. 
What I did to brighten the spirits and it worked extremely well is to organize Zoom conferences, where one presenter shows pictures and talks about his recent travels. As most people are stuck at home it is a very nice way to socialize and at the same time take your mind away from the constant negative news bombing. We will try to do it on an at least bi-weekly basis, maybe increase the frequency even more.
I always avoided chats as they may steal content from the community, but now I am contemplating chat setup as well, it will at least give the people a reason to stick around until this is over. I am just afraid that if I start a chat it might be difficult to remove later and I definitely do not want a chat when the things are back to normal.
Might start a book club and netflix/hbo movie club as well, we'll see. 

Nice post! Great subject. As always, some food for thought.
You almost had me thinking you were officially announcing IPS Gamification though, or actual built-in Core support for gamification trophies and awards to, er, level up the Leaderboard feature! No fair, ya meanie!
 

In the horizontal slim mode, the ad displays above the summary box. In sidebar mode, the ad will under the summary box but above any other widgets.
Note this is all easily themeable though, you can move the includes around if something else would work better for your site.

Yeah, other widgets will be below the new info panel. That was one reason we added an option to show a slimmer horizontal bar under the first post instead.

Thanks for working this out!
This is what bugs me about IPS, trying to find out what should be basic information like this or for that matter the recommended header background image dimensions (that bizarrely in 2017, we admin's still can't upload from the front end unlike a calendar event cover image or profile image!), is often like extracting blood from a stone. 
It should be in the guidance section or FAQ for heaven's sake! Companies for instance like Twitter do it for their recommended header image sizes, because they know users will benefit from getting it right, and their product looks better as a result. 
I'm having a bad day, ignore me.

Thank you so much for this, much appreciated! IPS released a dark version of the bright theme before, but it always seemed to get overlooked after a while.

The theme system simply isn't built to support automatic light/dark colour schemes yet. It would likely require a complete rebuild of the entire frontend theme, which is far too much of an undertaking for a smaller update such as 4.5. With that said, it's simple enough to offer your visitors a choice of light and dark themes which they can select using the "Theme" menu at the bottom of your site. 🙂

Is this code snippet going to answer your question?
namespace IPS\{app}\extensions\core\OverviewStatistics;  
Don't worry, I'm already preparing the 4.5 Dev Guides covering such new features:)

Hope they've added RSS Import into Clubs to generate activity!

That would be really nice! +1

That would be really nice! +1

Please add https://unsplash.com/ to the code. 
Thanks.

Unsplash is good too. We might create an API for that if there's enough traction.

Thanks for pouring some sugar on 4.5 @Matt !
 
I recently started using Unsplash, they have some stunning photos. 
https://unsplash.com/
They also have a modern API:
https://unsplash.com/developers
 

What a great site. Thank you for highlighting it. Pixabay looks quite limited for our area of interest but that site is very good for us.

Thanks for pouring some sugar on 4.5 @Matt !
 
I recently started using Unsplash, they have some stunning photos. 
https://unsplash.com/
They also have a modern API:
https://unsplash.com/developers
 

Thanks for pouring some sugar on 4.5 @Matt !
 
I recently started using Unsplash, they have some stunning photos. 
https://unsplash.com/
They also have a modern API:
https://unsplash.com/developers
 

Hi @opentype and all,
here's my wish list for Pages. Of course I know that everyone has different requirements and that a change from WordPress to Pages requires compromises.  But let me share my complete wishlist 😉
I use WordPress in its current version. That means: with the Gutenberg editor. I quickly got used to the blocks of the Gutenberg-Editor, I like them. But they are not a must-have. A must-have is an editor that lets me formatting subheadings (h2-h6). Elements like quotations or a picture gallery must be able to be displayed even in the middle of an article. We need more possibilities for interaction in articles - polls, surveys, forms etc. Schema.org markers as FAQ or How-to must be possible. SEO features are a must, and I mean more than meta keywords and meta description as now, but also SEO title, SEO description, settings for no-follow etc. per article. Another must-have for Pages is AMP. An absolute must-have. A good thing would be the possibility to have a "Table of content" by default, which can be switched off per article. (here's the WordPress equivalent). For images in articles it is essential that additional fields are available in the editor (alt text, title, caption, credit, license, image source as URL as in this WordPress plugin). These fields should be displayed at the end of the article (except the caption, of course). Images used in Pages must be better managed and SEO-optimized.  A very German problem is the VG Wort Zählpixel in posts. But this could be realized with an additional field in Pages. A special requirement for us is that the date of the last update should always be displayed in addition to the date of publication. But this can be solved in the template. Other candidates on my wish list concern the whole suite and so Pages too.
Better 404 management (or anyway a 404 management) Better tag pages, which can also be found in a sitemap. With the possibility of editing. With an intro text, an image and SEO functions (title, description, no-follow settings...). And perhaps with customizable sections, for example with 5 entries each from pages, forum, clubs, calendar... Multiple Forms Better newsletter management also for automated mailings (Popular right now, Member suggestions for you, because they wrote in the same forums or clubs or with the same keywords or because they are near me...

Hi Claudia,
I think they look at the editor from the perspective that most end users (your members) will never need or take the time to use correct tag formatting especially from an SEO aspect. It's different and more important for you as an admin or site owner, or contributor. Users often abuse things like bold button which drives me nuts (making their entire post bold!). However you can add plugins to the CKEditor Toolbars and assign permissions as will if you like. I use this plugin for article content and it works fine:

https://ckeditor.com/cke4/addon/format
This one that offers font selection may be available already I can't remember, I think we normally just have font size:

https://ckeditor.com/cke4/addon/font
 

We should have an IPS Meetup in Germany 🙂 Then I will explain my concerns to you. Because you're the Pages man anyway 😉 

I joined way before 2010. I'm like a mythological creature in these parts. I'm here as fast as I disappear for awhile. lol. I'm generally known by the long time IPB staff. Not sure if it's entirely for good reasons or because I can make legendary long posts.

I still remember the old 'Subway' jokes. lol
IPB has come a long way. I look forward to its future!

Honestly, improvements are almost always nice and appreciated but I can see the points made about there being more useful and priority improvements.
The Commerce store front end is boring and bland in particular if you only use Subscriptions, all you can do with it is add a widget to your available subscriptions, terms and conditions or change the currency in this one place.
So yes, this one really feels more like it could have been suggested as a third party Marketplace mod.