Joel R

This is entirely an off handed observation, but there's a certain exquisite irony in theme design. The positioning of the community menu to the sidebar is to take advantage of larger resolution and wider screens. Here we are with massive, curved screens with extra large resolution and bigger monitors yet at the same time we also need our communities to appear on handheld smartphones. I'm waiting for the day that we can navigate our communities (or at least new notifications) on my smartwatch!

I'm a little taken aback that IPS is referencing Backblaze as a formally supported solution by the company. Was this ever announced in your documentation? I would have strongly considered them as a storage solution if I knew. I was always under the impression that IPS only supported Amazon S3. And although the third party community provided an informal plugin for S3 compatible storage, this was never officially supported by IPS. To the topic at hand, I could care less if IPS wants to group all storage into one. My only ask is that IPS retains top-level folder categories of at least Attachments vs Gallery vs Downloads. This is the one benefit that I currently have of different storage buckets, and I periodically need to investigate content / DMCA takedowns so this organization helps tremendously.

I think the better way to frame this request is to see how other common sites behave with Print to PDF on dark mode, and to see whether Invision Community meets basic web standards.

How will this be handled in the upgrade from 4 to 5?

You can put widgets of (or filter for) Featured Content around your community. This is one of those features that isn't integrated or does a lot right now. In Invision Community 5, there is a new Featured Content page that can make featured content more valuable. https://invisioncommunity.com/news/invision-community/invision-community-5-tagging-reinvented-r1302/

I'm not IPS so this is simply an outside observation, but they are convinced of the pros. And convinced of the cons. Which is why they built Live Topics, which is their answer to Chat.

I want to say that the overall level of communication and transparency (with the dashboard guide in the ACP) is a huge step forward. I appreciate how IPS continues to evolve and push the ACP experience. I had one of those realizations several years ago that I candidly spend more time on the ModCP and the ACP than the front end. That's where the troubleshooting, the reports, and the moderation occurs - which are all of the areas of first level triage for community management. Other thoughts on the dashboard Prepare: - Tagging. This is going to be one of those unexpected surprises for current community owners if we can't retain or migrate our tagging.

I'm going to take a step back in a very meta manner and point out that this is exactly the kind of repeat topic that forums should do a better job of addressing: New users asking the same question over and over again. How do we drive them to the right information (that is official, that is published, that can be referenced)? How do we upcycle related or existing topics? How do we give authority to answers and users? How do we capture these trending questions?

I would like to nominate this topic to be memorialized in the Beta upgrade information. There is some great information in here.

Some thoughts regarding the new design options in v5: - Stylistically, the vertical menu allows all of the menu links to be shown. Before, we would inadvertently hide a lot of the sub menu links into drop downs or hover menus. Behaviorally, this means menu links will be more readable and more accessible, and therefore easier to navigate especially for new users. I really think the vertical menu is going to really help new users. - The most creative designs are those that tap into a broader range of apps and widgets, which leverages the full strength of the suite. They're doing things beyond just forums, and building custom pages with blog widgets, events widgets, and more. Even though IPS will never match the algorithmic personalization as Facebook, I do believe we can start building more customized pages for each user entirely with widgets.

The short answer is yes, you can build a standalone and independent page. It looks like you built a database, and attached a page to the database.

Some thoughts in no particular order (and this is not directed at anyone in particular, but some food for thought for everyone) 1. The new classic terms can be more expensive - or less expensive! - for clients based on your existing selection of apps. With that said, for clients who will be paying more, I want to point out that you're getting access to all the apps at an incredible value without buying the apps (I remember when I was buying the apps, it was something like $850. To upgrade and be able to access all of the apps at only $199 is an absolute steal). 2. On a more important note, you're getting the IPS ecosystem of apps. Even if you have no intention of using most of them, independent communities of the future really need to think about building a website of content and resources around their forums. Having a true standalone forum in this day and age is very hard for new starter communities. Pairing the crowd sourced conversations in Forums with the organized publishing in Pages or Blogs maximizes the organic and the organized. At the same time, part of the energy that IPS has invested is in building you a multi-app approach. One example is in the activity streams: other developers have hard coded lists like New Threads or New Posts or New Images. IPS is generationally ahead in letting you pick and choose content to craft your own activity streams, which is much more advanced.

Now would be the time to remind him of that promise 😀. I think tagging is going to be one of the unexpected surprises that clients will have on v5.

1. My understanding is that IPS will roll over any existing tags in your community. 2. This is one of those situations where I think IPS is putting forth a very bold new vision, but not giving existing communities the right tools to manage our existing content. For example, how do we consolidate and merge in existing tags? How do we delete frivolous tags? How do we bulk apply a new tag to thousands of new content items in various apps? 3. A closed taxonomy assumes the forum admin can identify a comprehensive taxonomy in advance. The only way that happens is if you make the taxonomy broad and generic (and this might be the original vision of IPS, when they were only going to roll over the top 25 most used tags). But you lose any of the nuance of detailed tagging. I'm still wrapping my head around this new taxonomy vision by IPS. My personal take at this time is this new closed system only works best for new communities without a lot of content.

Lol I wasn't trying to answer your question! I'm a client just like you with my own questions 😃