Nathan Explosion

Nearly two decades ago, Invision Community President, @Charles , set out to make a leading online community platform. 
Around that time, Charles also met his now-husband of 18-years and hasn't looked back since. Until now. 
Behind the code, product updates and newsletters are a group of people who share a passion for community building. Considering how volatile and toxic the Internet can be, we want to become more visible, transparent and vulnerable.  To help you familiarize yourself with the masterminds behind Invision Community, starting with Charles, we're kicking off a new series that'll highlight our team.
I interviewed Charles for the first installment. In it, he commented on the state of the Internet: "I do think some times, for or better or for worse, people forget there are real people on the other end," he said.
Mr. Warner also touched on Invision Community's evolution over the years. 
"People don't like change. No one likes change," Charles said, adding "sometimes you say, 'we really need to change something' either in the software, or how you do things, and people push back. It might be we change a feature or maybe internally we change the way we do something. Sometimes you have to move forward. Sometimes it's irritating at first. 'Why did you change that?!' And also you have to recognize that sometimes you're wrong. Sometimes you might change something [and think], 'no, it's not better...' I really find that that's a big thing – to constantly be looking at all those other options and try stuff out. It doesn't harm [anything] to try things."
And in the spirit of Pride Month, Charles opened up about being part of the LGBTQ community and also President of a successful company. He hopes it'll inspire others.
 

The full interview is available to watch up top. 
After watching, please drop us a line in the comments and let us know your thoughts! 🌈 

Invision Community has an exciting opportunity for an experienced PHP developer to join our team.
Invision Power Services, Inc. is behind the leading community software platform, Invision Community. Our tailored solutions serve clients of all sizes, from smaller communities to the world’s biggest brands.
We have been on the forefront of independent and white label engagement communities since 2002.
The Role
As a back end PHP developer, you will be working closely within a tight nimble team. You are a clear thinking problem solver and are able to demonstrate skills in creativity and innovation with the ability to meet deadlines. You thrive when given a brief and create well structured efficient code.
Your role will be varied and involve bug fixing, peer reviews, helping refine a technical specification and contribute code towards new functionality for Invision Community.
The position is remote, but it will require significant overlap with the EST working day. We offer a friendly relaxed environment with an established team who have a passion for what they do. There is an opportunity to learn from others and progress into more senior roles.
Key Responsibilities
Write well designed testable efficient code by using sound development processes Cooperate with other team members to develop new features Gather and refine specifications are requirements based on technical needs Create and maintain software documentation The most important characteristic is a willingness to learn and to take on new challenges. The role is varied and you can be working on a launch with an enterprise customer or crafting code for our latest features depending on priorities.

Skills & Experience
Significant experience as a PHP developer in a commercial environment Experience with MySQL. Experience with github. Experience with various web services such as OAuth, SAML, REST, etc. Experience working within a team with a strong culture. Some experience with HTML, CSS and JS. Worked on large scale applications. Confident with modern OOP standards including traits, etc. The depth of experience can vary between developers. Please apply even if some of these areas are not your strongest points. We can offer training and mentoring for the right candidate and our team is very supportive.

Location
Remote but must be available for a significant portion of 9-5 EST working day.
Salary
Dependent on experience. Please submit your salary expectations on the application form.
How To Apply
Please complete the application form giving us as much information as possible.

You’ve probably already noticed that something looks a little different in our community today.
As part of our ongoing community improvements, we’ve performed some housekeeping to streamline the forum structure, make more distinction between areas and open up a few areas to guests and friends.
The big visual change is that we now have four separate areas: support, community, marketplace and developers. It should hopefully be clear what each section does, but let's go through a few examples.
Support
This area is where you can leave feedback on existing features, help shape Invision Community’s future by suggesting new functionality and also where you can get quick support from fellow Invision Community owners and our team.
Starting today, you can post in the Help & Support forum to get help from our team. If you’re unsure what a feature does, or think you’ve spotted an issue that needs our help, then you’re welcome to start a topic. Of course, if you want private support, then you are welcome to create a ticket in the client area as normal.
Community
Even the most seasoned community manager needs a little help from time to time. This section is the place to ask about strategy, to blow off steam in the lounge or to ask for fellow owners to help with support requirements outside of official support, such as configuring servers, databases and so on.
Marketplace
Our Marketplace brings hundreds of new features, themes, language translations and plug-ins to your Invision Community. If you need support or have a request for something you’ve purchased from the Marketplace, drop into the forums here.
Developers
Invision Community is blessed with a strong developer community extending the rich functionality of Invision Community. If you’re looking to develop an idea for Invision Community, these forums will let you connect with our development team to answer questions as well as get help from other marketplace authors.
Other Changes
There are a few other changes of note that I’d like to go through. Firstly, ‘Visitors’ (that is a registered member without an active license) are now ‘Friends’. Who doesn’t need new friends? Guests and Friends can now view the official support forums, but cannot post a new support request or reply to existing ones.

We’ve merged ‘General Chat’ in with the Client Lounge to form ‘The Community Managers’ Lounge’. This is still a perk for active customers and the topics are not viewable unless you have an active license.
Finally, we’ve gone through and spruced up some of the forum rules, descriptions and custom error messages.
I hope these changes make it easier to find what you need and get a little help when you need it.
 

For a long time, Invision Community has supported a Question and Answer mode within the Forums application which allows a reply to be flagged as the "best answer" to the question posed. With the release of 4.5, we also introduced a way to allow topics to be marked as "solved" which introduces similar functionality without transforming the look and feel or other behavior of the forum itself.
Based on the popularity of this new addition in 4.5, we have made some further improvements to solved topics and answered questions in our next release.
Notification to topic/question starter
While notifications were available to the poster who answered a question or solved a topic with the release of 4.5, this release also adds notifications for the topic or question starter so that they can be made aware that an answer is available to their question.

Topic and question starters now get notifications for solutions
AdminCP Statistics
Solved topics and answered questions provide for measurable statistics that can help you determine the health and direction of your community, particularly for support communities. To that end, we have introduced two new content statistic blocks that can help you measure how well areas of the community that support answers and solutions are faring.

New AdminCP statistics
You can now quickly see the percentage of topics/questions that have been solved (relative to the total number posted in areas that support solutions), as well as the average time it has taken for a solution to be marked on a topic or question (relative to the time the topic or question was initially posted). These statistic blocks support time period filter, time period comparisons, and node filtering to narrow down the statistical data for your specific needs.
User profile enhancements
User profiles now show the number of solutions the user has posted, and also allows you to view all of those solutions, in a manner very similar to reputation.

Prolific problem solvers will now be called out boldly

Answers can be quickly found on user profiles
These improvements should help reward the most helpful users on your community by giving them more prestige and helping other users find their answers quicker.
Collectively, we hope that these changes make the question and answer and topic solution features in the Forums application more useful for your community members, and the administrators behind the community.

Videos are everywhere. We shoot them on our smart phones, share them to social media, messengers and more.
Up until now, the only way to share a video to Invision Community was to use a service like YouTube or Vimeo. If you uploaded a video file it would be treated like an attachment, and if the user clicked the link it would download it to their computer.
In Invision Community 4.3 we've improved this. Now if you upload a video file (mp4/3gp/mov/ogg/ogv/mpg/mpeg/flv/webm/wmv/avi/m4v), it will embed similarly to an image.

Uploading a video
When viewing an uploaded video, if it is in a format that the user's browser and platform natively supports, it will show an embedded player. This will have all of the features supported by the operating system - for example, almost all browsers support fullscreen, and Safari supports Airplay and picture in picture.

An uploaded video
If the video is in a format not supported, it displays exactly as it does now - as a download link.

An uploaded video in a browser without playback support for that format

When you use custom templates for a Pages database, you'll often need custom CSS to go along with it to provide the styling. There's two main ways of doing this:
CSS files within Pages
Pages allows you to create CSS files, and then associate them with particular custom pages of your community (you create these in the AdminCP, under Pages > Templates > CSS). So simply create your CSS file, and associate it to the page that your database is displayed on.
The benefit of this method is it applies to all themes, so it's great if you want your database to look the same on all themes. Of course, this is also the drawback - you can't easily use it for per-theme customization.
Targeting the database classname in theme CSS
Alternatively, you can target the database classname in your normal theme CSS files. When a database is inserted into a page, IPS4 helpfully adds a classname to the body element, which makes it really simple to style that page in particular. If your database key is myDatabase, then the classname added to the body element would be cCmsDatabase_myDatabase. Use this in your selectors and you can style everything exactly how you need:
.cCmsDatabase_myDatabase .ipsButton_important { /* Style important buttons differently in this database, for example */ } Combine both methods!
Of course, you can use both approaches when it makes sense. Create a CSS file within Pages for the basic structural styling that will apply regardless of which theme the user uses, and then in each theme target the database classname to customize it for that particular theme - perfect for the colors, font family and so on.