Davyc

A huge thanks to @Rikki for everything he has done to help bring IPS to where it stands now.  It's always sad to lose a valuable member of the development team, but the man has to go where he believes he can do the most with his talents and to secure his and his family's future.  All good wishes and a fond farewell to this amazing talent.

Bon Voyage 🙂

Ideally yes, we could choose. 

Please don’t encourage him. He would actually do it. 

Updates to the Pages app to add a more flexible approach to layouts and not be restricted to 1,2,3 columns and to be able to mix rows with different columns - I've been asking about this for almost 2 years and nothing has been done to give Pages more vavavoom.  That would be a nice event 🙂
 

Updates to the Pages app to add a more flexible approach to layouts and not be restricted to 1,2,3 columns and to be able to mix rows with different columns - I've been asking about this for almost 2 years and nothing has been done to give Pages more vavavoom.  That would be a nice event 🙂
 

As you may have noticed, we've been doing a lot of work to prepare Invision Community to use PHP8 as the minimum version.
If you are an Invision Community Cloud client, then you do not need to worry about any of this, and can happily click out of this topic.
For those who host Invision Community on their own servers, then please read on.
PHP7 is now end of life and from November, PHP will no longer offer security updates. PHP8 is a major update which brings many changes including how errors are either logged and means that what was a harmless notice or log entry is now a fatal error which Invision Community cannot capture.
We have introduced the application and plugin scanner to ensure that your site is not "bricked" (unrecoverable from a fatal error) when you upgrade to PHP8 although you currently have the option to re-enable any disabled applications or plugins.
From the November 2022 release, we will require PHP8.0 as the minimum version. If you are currently using PHP7 then you must contact your host and plan your PHP8 upgrade to ensure compatibility with Invision Community from November onwards.

We are rolling out dismissible AdminCP banners to those who are currently on PHP7.
If you are unsure what version of PHP your server is running, simply log into your Admin CP then navigate to System > Get Support and check out the PHP version block.


The November release of Invision Community will also mean that you are no longer able to re-enable plugins the application scanner disables. We continue to work on this tool to refine its error checking and logging verbosity.
If you have any questions, please let me know below.
 

I totally agree with this, other clients have the same concern as well...
I developed a little plugin to overcome this by allowing admins to select the default search area, not sure if IPS will approve it or not (Now awaiting MP approval).

It may not be realistic but that's what they do.  We have to remember that these are ordinary people who are 'used' to just typing in what they are looking for.  As @Markus Jung noted people are used to Google and YT, WP and SM etc, and just type and click/tap.  Attention spans are generally at a low eb for regular use items and to 'expect' people to notice is as unrealistic as expecting that they do notice.  We have to put ourselves in the same shoes as users, not admins and not experts at using the system.  A search bar implies you can search the site - if you want to drill down then we need to educate users that they can drill down, if they want.
An example that I have come across many, many times with people I know (including clients) is with Google search.  Not one of them knew that by clicking on 'tools' that they can have more options to drill down further depending on what they are searching for.

My point being that 'expecting' people to notice this (when it has never been that way before) is expecting too much.  Over time users who visit regularly may notice and get used to it, but the casual passer-by will probably not, and that can cost you a member.  Search 'Everywhere' should be the starting point and then let a user know that there are other options available by making them more noticeable (push it to them).

Which is why I used the Google search as an example - the tool is there but people don't look at it.  So the 'reading' in general argument you are using is based on your own opinion.  In the 'real world' people tend to have tunnel vision and only see what they want to see, not necessarily what's there; hence the example of the google search.  I wasn't attempting to say that Google search was better, simply pointing out that people don't see the tools available.
Once you start 'guessing' that a user will want to search anywhere but in general, then problems will arise.  I'm not saying that the new search is 'bad' but it is flawed by making assumptions on behalf of a user.  An example would be, if I search for something and a topic is flagged that I 'may' be interested in but isn't what I'm looking for, why in the world would I want to search that topic?  The system makes that assumption, and also assumes that the user is 'aware' that a filter has been applied.  Considering all of these factors when the user goes to search for something else, they would need to remove the filter that they may not be aware of.  Filters should be a user decision, not a system decision.  So, it would be of benefit to have those filters highlighted in an unmistakable manner so the user is aware of them.  Now this 'does' occur in mobile view and a drop down of filters is shown so the user is 'aware' of them.  
When I first updated to 4.7.1 and I went to search for a movie on my own site that I knew was there but didn't want to go on a hunt for amongst hundreds of others, I typed the name in the search box - zero results.  With some investigation I discovered that because my home page was a Pages page, the search 'assumed' I wanted to search Pages.  I had to download a plugin to remove Pages from the search to make sure that my visitors were able to search my entire site and not something the system assumed I wanted to search.  Would they actually have known what Pages was if they did see it in the search bar?  Would they understand that this was a filter, or something that the way the search bar was designed? 
The best way out of this situation is to allow admins to default the search to 'Everywhere' until a user decides to apply a filter.  If others want to use the new method then that option should be there too.  It would save a lot of pointless debates about theories and opinions that may or may not be valid 🙂
 

I'm pleased I didn't update again - there's far too many people posting issues for this to be updated until everything is sorted.  My sympathies go out to everyone affected, clients and devs.

I'm pleased I didn't update again - there's far too many people posting issues for this to be updated until everything is sorted.  My sympathies go out to everyone affected, clients and devs.

Yep 😞 I checked and updated nearly 100 apps and plugins already.

For the sake of my head/health, I need to take a break.

I'm pleased I didn't update again - there's far too many people posting issues for this to be updated until everything is sorted.  My sympathies go out to everyone affected, clients and devs.

I'm pleased I didn't update again - there's far too many people posting issues for this to be updated until everything is sorted.  My sympathies go out to everyone affected, clients and devs.

Hi all,
We've been working on fine-tuning the PHP8 compatibility scanner to ignore technically incorrect things, but they are still allowed with PHP 8.0 and 8.1.

Please see this post for details: 
 
 

Now it's public. Thanks Matt

Ultimate answer to the universe.  Not sure which one though 😉
 

I believe the answer is 42

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

We have released 4.7.2.1 with an update to the PHP8 compatibility scanner to make it less sensitive to issues that PHP8 is not concerned at this time, such as the following:
Parameter variable names being different in the extended class, eg:
Base: function foo( $node )
Extended: function foo( $forum )
Protected methods becoming public methods in the extended class, eg:

Base: protected function foo()
Extended: public function foo()

Extended methods returning a type when the base class does not have any type, eg:

Base: function foo():
Extended: function foo(): \IPS\Member

This will reduce the number of third party code flagged and thus fewer plugins and applications being disabled.
Posted edited to reflect that 4.7.2.1 has been released.

That is the issue @Matt these apps 'are' 4.7 compatible and they are in the marketplace.  I've received a reply from the author who has provided replacement files and the support page now shows no errors at all, but the app is still locked.
 
 
 

Fantastic response from @Matt that makes it clear about apps and plugins.  
If I had one suggestion, I would not just make the message clear on this topic, but also on the main site index, and/or in the ACP of owners sites.  That way no one can use the excuse that they didn't see the message.

That was exactly my thinking Adriano - we live in weird times with lots of weird things going on, too many for my liking lol.  I'm sure this will get sorted.

I don't know what else we can do. We've given our marketplace authors about a year to prepare. We started releasing betas in May, and we posted the above in August; yet a lot of our marketplace authors seem unaware.

However, we do not want to cause our clients a headache, so we're working on a way forward that doesn't leave you without apps and plugins you need.