Joel R

100% agree.  
The story of mobile is the biggest story of the Internet right now.  It is the overwhelming trend for everything.  
I don't think ALL communities need to focus on mobile though.  If you have a highly technical community, you're probably okay sticking with desktop (based on your device usage, which you can see in your analytics).  
But if your community is more social, more casual, or more lifestyle-focused, then designing for mobile should be your first priority.  

To provide some added perspective on content, which is key to attracting and retaining members, not all content is the same.  And you want to be strategic in your content.  
You can have content that is functional, emotional, professional, or social.  
If you're a community in the Inception stage, you need a lot of functional content. These are "hard knowledge" articles such as how to's, guides, expert advice, and other authoritative content.  Search engines and visitors love functional content.  But it doesn't keep the people.  That's when you want to start thinking about content that is emotionally disclosing (eg. "what was your biggest challenge?  How did you feel when X happened? What was your most embarrassing moment? Welcome new members this week, etc").  Emotional content is what makes people stay.  There's a psychology and strategy behind content, so you want to choose the right mix for your community's lifecycle.  

To provide some added perspective on content, which is key to attracting and retaining members, not all content is the same.  And you want to be strategic in your content.  
You can have content that is functional, emotional, professional, or social.  
If you're a community in the Inception stage, you need a lot of functional content. These are "hard knowledge" articles such as how to's, guides, expert advice, and other authoritative content.  Search engines and visitors love functional content.  But it doesn't keep the people.  That's when you want to start thinking about content that is emotionally disclosing (eg. "what was your biggest challenge?  How did you feel when X happened? What was your most embarrassing moment? Welcome new members this week, etc").  Emotional content is what makes people stay.  There's a psychology and strategy behind content, so you want to choose the right mix for your community's lifecycle.  

It targets people within 80km of the area where most of my visitors come from who also have an interest in what the forum is for
This is what the ad looks like

To provide some added perspective on content, which is key to attracting and retaining members, not all content is the same.  And you want to be strategic in your content.  
You can have content that is functional, emotional, professional, or social.  
If you're a community in the Inception stage, you need a lot of functional content. These are "hard knowledge" articles such as how to's, guides, expert advice, and other authoritative content.  Search engines and visitors love functional content.  But it doesn't keep the people.  That's when you want to start thinking about content that is emotionally disclosing (eg. "what was your biggest challenge?  How did you feel when X happened? What was your most embarrassing moment? Welcome new members this week, etc").  Emotional content is what makes people stay.  There's a psychology and strategy behind content, so you want to choose the right mix for your community's lifecycle.  

To provide some added perspective on content, which is key to attracting and retaining members, not all content is the same.  And you want to be strategic in your content.  
You can have content that is functional, emotional, professional, or social.  
If you're a community in the Inception stage, you need a lot of functional content. These are "hard knowledge" articles such as how to's, guides, expert advice, and other authoritative content.  Search engines and visitors love functional content.  But it doesn't keep the people.  That's when you want to start thinking about content that is emotionally disclosing (eg. "what was your biggest challenge?  How did you feel when X happened? What was your most embarrassing moment? Welcome new members this week, etc").  Emotional content is what makes people stay.  There's a psychology and strategy behind content, so you want to choose the right mix for your community's lifecycle.  

To provide some added perspective on content, which is key to attracting and retaining members, not all content is the same.  And you want to be strategic in your content.  
You can have content that is functional, emotional, professional, or social.  
If you're a community in the Inception stage, you need a lot of functional content. These are "hard knowledge" articles such as how to's, guides, expert advice, and other authoritative content.  Search engines and visitors love functional content.  But it doesn't keep the people.  That's when you want to start thinking about content that is emotionally disclosing (eg. "what was your biggest challenge?  How did you feel when X happened? What was your most embarrassing moment? Welcome new members this week, etc").  Emotional content is what makes people stay.  There's a psychology and strategy behind content, so you want to choose the right mix for your community's lifecycle.  

This is a great list.  
It's so great that @Matt stole one of my future article ideas, ha.  
Some things that I wanted to add:
- Future Publish Date: I love queueing up content in advance, especially when I know I'm going to be away from the community.  It helps trick my community - whoops I mean "reassure" - that I'm still active even while away.  You can set future publish dates on Page records and Blog posts.  
- For the RSS Feeds, I usually like more granularity in how its displayed.  So as a pro Joel hack, I created an email folder called Community Ideas that's subscribed to various newsletters and feeds.  Anytime I need ideas, I just browse that folder and then rewrite a short introduction. 

I didn't even know about the auto moderation option. My communities have been postless for so long, I haven't gone through a lot of features in a long time, but am trying to think of a new community idea and then will finally get to see what features I've overlooked for a while. 🙂 
I've felt good about IPS' new versions in recent years.
(ps now that I have finally finished apps for 4.x, I can say I am extremely pleased with the whole 4.x system for creating apps and hooks. I was dreading hooks and left them for last, but they are much easier than in past versions.)

I agree that Future Publish Dates rocks. I just wish it was available in more areas of the Community. Most notably, artists ask me for this functionality in Gallery all the damned time so they can set up a Queued Content sort of thing.

This is a great list.  
It's so great that @Matt stole one of my future article ideas, ha.  
Some things that I wanted to add:
- Future Publish Date: I love queueing up content in advance, especially when I know I'm going to be away from the community.  It helps trick my community - whoops I mean "reassure" - that I'm still active even while away.  You can set future publish dates on Page records and Blog posts.  
- For the RSS Feeds, I usually like more granularity in how its displayed.  So as a pro Joel hack, I created an email folder called Community Ideas that's subscribed to various newsletters and feeds.  Anytime I need ideas, I just browse that folder and then rewrite a short introduction. 

This is a great list.  
It's so great that @Matt stole one of my future article ideas, ha.  
Some things that I wanted to add:
- Future Publish Date: I love queueing up content in advance, especially when I know I'm going to be away from the community.  It helps trick my community - whoops I mean "reassure" - that I'm still active even while away.  You can set future publish dates on Page records and Blog posts.  
- For the RSS Feeds, I usually like more granularity in how its displayed.  So as a pro Joel hack, I created an email folder called Community Ideas that's subscribed to various newsletters and feeds.  Anytime I need ideas, I just browse that folder and then rewrite a short introduction. 

Great scenario. 
I'm not a fan of having newbies repeat questions over and over again, so let me flip the question back to you: how would YOU like to deliver the best and most informative topics from the community to new members? 
Answer: articles or topic compilations that gather best-in-class resources from the community.  This is especially powerful for mature communities who have a wealth of community knowledge to share.  
What if you pinned topics of the following resources:
"Answers to All the Questions You Should Ask about Self-Travel" 
"10 of the Best Topics For New Travelers"
"The Definitive Guidebook on Self Organized Travel for Members, by Members"
"Planning Your First Trip? The Best Community Stories by Members"
"Read the World: the Best 2018 Travel Blogs on Jair's Community" 
You don't have to answer the same new questions over and over again if you can compile the best topics and answers from the community for members. But imagine showing these resources to new members, how you'll be able to deflect most of the easy questions, and also inspire them by showcasing the very best content from the entire community! 

@Joel R, Thanks for the feedback. My post was more like illustrating a concept then actual looking for an advice. I have most of your suggestions implemented, on top of my board is introductions and welcome forum, right below it are instructions for newbies. Each newbie receives a friendly welcome message pointing to the organization of the community - simple enough to be followed, not complicated enough to overwhelm them. I do have some paths to knowledge within my forums, if the newbie wants to put the effort to follow them. I think I got the newbie bases covered. 
Still...the reality is a little bit more complicated. If I have to dig deeper, I would say that most actively travelling people are a bit egocentric. These people have their own blogs, they are a bit stubborn in a sense that their way is the only correct way, they hardly accept different opinions, etc. Most of the time you won't find the people doing self-organized trip from Amazon river answering basic questions on Trip Advisor. I try to nurture these people as much as I can, because they really enrich each discussion they participate in - I do add badges to people with many visited countries, to people that often share their travels in trip reports, etc. But still I am sure that many of them feel the discussions are below their level. It is up to me to figure out if I need the grumpiest of them when I am certain they will never make it within a community anyway. They are lone wolves and have them at the expense of my sometimes basic but very enthusiastic newbies is not something I like. Anyway, its an additional complication, which comes with the travel niche, I am sure other niches have similar specifics. 
If I have to summarize it to one sentence, one should be careful to set the boundaries high enough, but still to make them jumpable. I think thats one of the axioms of gamification too - make the achievement hard enough so the person can feel a sense of accomplishment, but not impossible so he doesn't participate and give in easily.
And one should be aware of the signals your community is giving - are the discussions too basic and thin to your liking - try to toughen up on newbies, because usually they are responsible for the thin discussions. Are the discussions too few with rarely a new member contributing - try to relax the atmosphere and make it less elitist. This should be actively controlled by the admin, but my experience is that many admins dont realize the importance of it and let it go with the flow. 
To lighten up a little bit in the end, sometimes no matter what you do the result is like this:

 
https://xkcd.com/1726/

Hold on! I have an amazing guide / topic to share in Community Administration board, just need a board moderator to approve the topic.  I think it'll give you some good ideas. 
Topic has been approved: 
 
 

You need to be careful with the height of the boundary, though. While jumping it might be satisfying and rewarding for the member that will feel accepted, at the same time failing to jump it might leave a lot of potential useful members out. An example from my real life experience:
I have joined my first forum waaay back in 2001. Back then it was the most popular discussion option in a very specific niche - Formula 1 racing. We had real life meetings and parties, we had many internal jokes incomprehensible for outsiders, we developed strong relationships that last until today. However, entering our club wasn't easy - we really knew our stuff so newbies with basic questions or not well very well presented arguments were often ridiculed - not directly, sometimes with a joke only we can understand, but in the end it created a bit of a hostile, unwelcoming atmosphere for newbies. 
As it is natural through the years many of the regular members dropped out due to losing interest or other issues and there were no fresh members to replace them, because of the stuff explained in previous paragraph. So eventually the size of the community thinned out and it died. Now, 18 years later, I have met one of my best friends in this forum, including my life partner, however what is left of it is a facebook messenger chat with 5 people. The forum is still online, but this is its most recent posts list:

So, yes, keeping the entry boundary high will result in a long term lasting friendships and really dedicated members. The higher the boundary, the tighter the friendships. However it will also be the most probable certain death of the community - sooner or later people within the borders will leave and the newer ones won't be able to jump high enough. 
So, it is an extremely delicate balance. I would argue it is probably the most important detail you need to figure out - how hard you want it to be for new members. Do you want to have facebook and twitter login available that will attract a lot of members, but many of them will post thin questions and the percentage of well defined meaningful discussions will drop. Or you want a steeper entry curve, which might lead to have very few really meaningful discussions, but you will eventually lose critical mass and the community will die. Unfortunately you can't have both. 
To find this balance you need to adhere to your mission statement. On my current forum, I am removing posts that are hostile towards newbies, even though some of them might be fair - a newbie asks a question that has been answered thousand of times, or a newbie asks 5 questions without contributing answers to other peoples questions, etc. This alienates the elders, some of them even might scream "censorship!" and leave, which will be a big overall loss to the community as most of them have invaluable knowledge. However, this is the path I have chosen and I am adhering to it. 
My niche is travel and I have decided that this is the mission statement of my forum - I want to make self organized travel more popular and reduce the monopoly of travel agencies that shoehorn all people in the same boiler plate travel programs and charge pretty penny for their easily replaceable services on top of that. This means that very often there are newbies that take their first self organized flight and will always ask question about cabin bags size or liquid limits. This definitely dilutes the the discussions, imagine that such basic topics are always popping up on latest list, instead a story from a long self-organized trip from a little known country like Uzbekistan. However, for me I have decided that I want to be newbie friendly instead of elitist. I want to have 10 people that will make their first self-organized trip to Rome (Rome is very easy to organize when you are in Europe - tons of cheap flights, concentrated and easy accessible main attractions, etc.), instead of 2 people that will discuss their Nepal trecks. In the long term, the Nepal guys are the ones that will contribute very unique and quality content to my community, but it doesn't help with the Rome guys who will book with travel agency if they can't find a place that will provide friendly answers to their basic questions. I do want to have it both, really, but it is hard and next to impossible to achieve.
I do hope to realize a gamification idea I have, which will reward the quality and unique discussions more, I hope it will help. I am in the process of defining the project requirements and will post it here if we can community fund it. We'll see. 
Very interesting topic. 

Maybe another take on boundaries: what do you think of introducing achievements to community? For items created (posts, uploads to gallery, blogs, etc), things user does for the community (i.e. recruited someone, wrote an article).
Do you think such a way would be viable to boost engagement? Is only a badge reason enough to engage more?

The new group formatting option is located in the following location in the ACP:
ACP - Members - Profiles - Profile Settings Tab, scroll to the bottom of the page

To give some background information on this topic, I'm a really big advocate in transforming IPS from a support community into a knowledge community with best practices and thought leadership for community management. And that's why I love the topic of Activity Streams, because it combines both strategy and product knowledge.  
I'd love to hear examples of how you've customized or tweaked the Activity Streams to fit your community.

This is apparently my biggest problem. I have had literally 0 people post in years and years... that's how well I did at coming up with an idea. I'm hoping to eventually think of something that will be a more unique, focused idea. And my main site was a general site, so not focused at all... I did do a second site, which I thought had a nice custom skin someone made me (for free, too) and was a specific idea, but that didn't take off, either.

You're welcome! I'm glad you're getting some useful pointers from these articles.  
I really wish I had these kinds of thought provoking articles on community management when I was first starting out, so I'm trying to jumpstart the success of others. These articles are really meant to provide an easy core foundation for all Invision Community admins and owners to think deeply about how to build a better community.  
Sometimes I feel as if community managers try to rely too much on technology to solve all their problems.  Install a new app! Request customization! Focus on SEO and sitemaps! When in reality, there's this whole component to sparking human connection which is far more important.  People have been building communities for thousands of years, and the tenets of community building have been around forever.  
In short, whether you build your tribe in digital or offline, you'll always need to think about things like boundaries, identification, rituals, and more.  Get those right and the community will follow.  

You're welcome! I'm glad you're getting some useful pointers from these articles.  
I really wish I had these kinds of thought provoking articles on community management when I was first starting out, so I'm trying to jumpstart the success of others. These articles are really meant to provide an easy core foundation for all Invision Community admins and owners to think deeply about how to build a better community.  
Sometimes I feel as if community managers try to rely too much on technology to solve all their problems.  Install a new app! Request customization! Focus on SEO and sitemaps! When in reality, there's this whole component to sparking human connection which is far more important.  People have been building communities for thousands of years, and the tenets of community building have been around forever.  
In short, whether you build your tribe in digital or offline, you'll always need to think about things like boundaries, identification, rituals, and more.  Get those right and the community will follow.  

You're welcome! I'm glad you're getting some useful pointers from these articles.  
I really wish I had these kinds of thought provoking articles on community management when I was first starting out, so I'm trying to jumpstart the success of others. These articles are really meant to provide an easy core foundation for all Invision Community admins and owners to think deeply about how to build a better community.  
Sometimes I feel as if community managers try to rely too much on technology to solve all their problems.  Install a new app! Request customization! Focus on SEO and sitemaps! When in reality, there's this whole component to sparking human connection which is far more important.  People have been building communities for thousands of years, and the tenets of community building have been around forever.  
In short, whether you build your tribe in digital or offline, you'll always need to think about things like boundaries, identification, rituals, and more.  Get those right and the community will follow.  

WoW! 
 
What a awesome read, and many useful pointers, and needed info
 
Thank you for another awesome news entry @Joel R

Does lazy loading work on all applications, especially pages like Gallery albums or Our Picks that are rich in content? 
Edited this post to include Our Picks, which I use as my homepage and I have a terrible score in Pagespeed insights.  Number one recommendation is to lazy load offscreen images!