jair101

1 hour ago, Jim M said:

May I ask the reason for the change? Keep in mind that you can only have 1 Test URL.

I am doing a new server and wanted to start from scratch, which is different from my previous test environment (I haven't used it in a while). In a hindsight, it shouldn't have been an issue to keep the old test url, but now I already have the lets encrpypt certificates, web server, etc configuration, all with the new url.

I guess I can redo that if it is too much effort for you, I thought that the strict rule was just for the main website url, which won't change. 

@Marc Stridgen, may I tag along here with the same request?

My licensed URL is community.com, my current test url is devtest.community.com. I need to change it to devtest2.community.com and I am unable to do so. Appreciate the help. 

5 minutes ago, Randy Calvert said:

Having a plugin created to export whatever data you need will be the easiest, cheapest, and most sustainable way of doing what you want.   Exporting the database is not simple/easy/quick, especially doing it on a regularly recurring basis.  

Fair enough, this is the case for today. However, I already see that v5 is introducing major changes to the development, I vaguely remember that all plugins need to be made in an app. I've been also burned with custom plugins and apps before.

Furthermore, I will be needing my database on regular basis regardless, simply to have a copy outside of IPS environment - as much as I trust their backups, it is a good practice to keep a recent copy at an independent place. Once a month I hope is reasonable. 

Anyway, thanks for the feedback all, my main question was whether this could be done with Pages or API, I guess it won't be easy, I'll think about it a bit more. 

15 minutes ago, Jim M said:

I don't really see this as an option as we won't be able to run a re-import migration on your community monthly or it will become cost prohibitive to you. Additionally, that would be highly disruptive to your users as it would be the whole database being restored to when the database backup was taken.

A third party application/plugin would be the only way to do this on Cloud because you also would need your custom database table associated to one or it might be removed at some point.

No, I meant that I can execute my queries on the database copy that you provide, I won't be needing you to import it back. Once I have it, I can simply hardcode the values in the Pages block that vizualizes the chart. Now, if providing me a copy of the database once a month will also be expensive, I would have to reconsider my entire strategy from scratch. 

7 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said:

Please bear in mind Im not a developer of plugins, so this is just my own passing thought. Some of the plugin developers may have more thoughts on this.

I would thing a plugin/app is probably your best option here, as you need an extra table and need to ensure you are in control of that table. You would need a plugin/app that adds that table, and adds a task that does the queries you mention above.

Thanks. This is my last resort and possibly unacceptable. Doing this on my own will be a bit of a challenge, depending on 3rd party as well. 

If there is no some creative solution, I would probably request my database monthly, run the queries offline and update the data manually. Or maybe stick to the self hosted for the foreseeable future. 

It is about time that we migrate our community to the cloud. I think it will be mostly fine, but there is one key functionality that right now we do through creating auxillary database table and updating it through an event on a daily basis. This is all done directly in the database and once moving to the cloud I won't have access to it... So I am wondering what is the best way to do that.

OK, a bit more details. We are travel oriented community and I have created 200+ Yes/No profile fields the users can toggle for each country they have visited. It looks like this in the profile:  https://imgur.com/cCeNNCm

So once a day, I am executing a database request that imports the data from the custom profiles in an extra database table with the following columns:

id,field_name,iso_code,count
1,field_27,AT,135
2,field_36,DE,1047
etc..

This extra table ensures the mapping between field name, iso code and number of users that have visited the particular country. The query that generates that looks like this:

TRUNCATE countries_map;
Insert into countries_map (ISO, cntvis) select 'AU', sum(field_27) from core_pfields_content;
Insert into countries_map (ISO, cntvis) select 'AT', sum(field_28) from core_pfields_content;
Insert into countries_map (ISO, cntvis) select 'AZ', sum(field_29) from core_pfields_content;
Insert into countries_map (ISO, cntvis) select 'AL', sum(field_30) from core_pfields_content;
Insert into countries_map (ISO, cntvis) select 'DZ', sum(field_31) from core_pfields_content;
Insert into countries_map (ISO, cntvis) select 'AS', sum(field_32) from core_pfields_content;
Insert into countries_map (ISO, cntvis) select 'VI', sum(field_33) from core_pfields_content;
.....

I need this extra query and extra table (countries_map), because we tried to do it by joining the results of 240 queries together and the speed was not pretty. So this query is executed once a day, truncates and populates this table, we are not concerned with live updates for visited countries so once a day is fine. This is all then fed in to this page created with the help of Pages and google geocharts that shows the most visited countries by our members: https://magelanci.com/atlas/

This is a core functionality for our community and I definitely need to find a way to do the same in the cloud without direct database access. So what is the best way to do that?

Some magic through the REST API? Store the auxiliary table in Pages database and somehow update/obtain data from it? I cannot think of how to do that...

Maybe I can commission some developer to do an app for me for this functionality, however I have been burned a bit by disappearing developers, so I'd rather use core IPS functionality.

All ideas and suggestions will be appreciated, this is kind of a blocker for our migration to Cloud, which I definitely need to do as I don't have the time to admin my dedicated server responsibly.

OK, fair point. In this case I think I would take the hit of having the content indexed with 2 weeks delay. 

1 hour ago, teraßyte said:

It can be done, but wouldn't that also cause Google to not index the content properly? 🙄

I think there is already a method for Google to bypass the restrictions, based on user agent. At least this mod have this functionality:

I am considering some actions to entice people to register/subscribe etc. based on the date availability of forum content.

In a simplest terms imagine that guests will be able to see only topics and replies from up to 2 weeks ago. A large banner will inform them that if they want to access the latest content and engage with the community they need to register/become premium member, etc. 

Does this sounds like something that is easy to achieve through third party app/plugin? Tagging @DawPi as it seems that you have dived in to guest limits area, though not exactly in this respect 🙂

Seriously 😕 

Custom member titles are part of the profile identify, please make sure there is an option we can preserve them somehow. I guess the query to copy them from member title to profile field shouldn't be overly complicated, can someone from the expirienced devs advise on that?

Going a step further, the invoice pdf can be sent as attachment via email, this is becoming a standard as it can be easily forwarded to the relevant department or event automated:

Looks awesome 🙂 Are we going to be able to award users retroactively or all users will start from 0 once the system is enabled? Ditto for if/when new achievement rules are added later?

Any further details how points can be obtained? Is it going to be through regular content creation - i.e. number of posts, articles, images, etc.? Or it will be more flexible, for example based on where the topic is located (post in professional category might be worth more than one in humor section), or based on word count or number of attachments? Even better if we can set the weight of points ourselves 🙂

8 hours ago, Pavel Chernitsky said:

I don't think there is a separate stat for that. But I can tell you that when we first enabled it our registrations more than doubled. From around 50-70 a week to around 150+
*the second jump was after we've enabled Facebook+Google 

Any idea how many of those are spam and how many legit accounts though?

@Paul E., is SQL the only thing you have offloaded outside of Compute Engine? What about object storage, elasticsearch, redis?

9 hours ago, Jordan Invision said:

If the Invision Community can generate enough interest in this idea, and ideally illustrate how points would be incorporated in a meaningful way in their own community, there'd be more momentum behind making it a priority. Again, can't make any promises, but the team is open to the idea, and that right there is a very good (and might be the most important) first step. 🙏 

Just check the popularity on the point systems. There are a few on the marketplace (you hardly see any competition with multiple mods with the same purpose) and the one linked above has close to 300 purchases (very high for a paid addon) and its price tag is not insignificant.

Seriously, you can hardly expect more definite proof on "generated enough interest". Now, if you are looking for a way to politely deny the request for the time being as the priorities are different, thats fine. But there is enough interest and it is proven, IPS don't need to wait for that.

23 minutes ago, Morrigan said:

I'll be honest, why would you want to only translate the front end? If your site is in one language why would you be more comfortable to reading the ACP in English?

The only time English is required is when you have an IPS staff member looking in your ACP for a problem and as long as you haven't removed the English Language pack, its easy enough to enable it and allow the IPS staff member to use it and disable it when they are done.

As you are English native it is understandable to have these questions, probably the reason IPS decided to "simplify" it by merging everything together. But for all users with translated communities the effect on this is huge. The main reasons are:

1. Much less effort in translating. Translating the software takes a lot of time and is mindbogglingly boring. Like really. Trust me. As most communities have only 1 or 2 people with ACP access and usually technically apt people have also reasonable English, it is not necessary to have the English in the backend as well. So reason number 1 - having the strings separate saves you a lot from translating strings that no end user will ever see. 

2. Not sure how it is for other languages, but for mine, it is much easier to communicate technical terms in English. Sure, we do have localization on windows, android, all major pieces of software, but it is much easier for me to keep it in English as I have learned what this button does and what this label actually means in English. This brings two benefits:

- first I know what IPS is talking about when they say for example "Admin control panel notifications are improved", if I have "admin control panel" and "notifications" in my language, it is more difficult for me to realize what they are saying. 

- I can easily communicate back to them using the same terms. If I have ACP translated, I will have to translate back when asking for support and the back translation won't always be accurate. For example "notifications" can be translated in my language and when I translate it back it might be "news" or something like that. If I raise a support ticket "My news are not working", you can see there will be tons of confusion and my example is extremely simple. 

Really, even with simple and mundane buttons like copy/paste/cancel, you might have issues once they are localized. Even if I had a free professional ACP translation provided to me for free, I would still prefer to keep it in English. 

Hope this clarifies it. 

The tool won't help much. Basically, yeah, you need to translate all if you want to be thorough. If you invest a little bit time in it sooner or later you will get a "feel" which strings are from frontend and which from the backend. For example all _menu_ strings are part of the ACP menu.

With 4.0 IPS introduced a lot of changes to the translation tools, but most of them have been visual gimmicks with little practical usefulness (like the mentioned "View key words"). And they removed the separation of Admin CP/Frontend language strings. So one step forward, ten steps back.

The ability to pluralize is the only amazing change I like.

Cool and creative app. 

Can you please share some screenshots from the admin panel/configuration screen as well?

@Makoto,

I am currently using AT&P and I want to upgrade to Radical Tags. As discussed previously with you, it is better to install Radical Tags on 4.4. migrate and upgrade to 4.5 after that. All good, however, I cannot download the 4.4 compatible version now. 

Please advise how to proceed. 

Would it be easy to migrate from Trophies & Medals or I need to recreate all the medals manually?

Will there be any performance issues if we enable the random setting on a topic with thousands of images?

Just keep your fingers crossed that one of the enterprise customers will request this, thats the way to get this implemented.

A bit tongue in cheek, but lately I believe this is the main driver of IPS roadmap.

Want to jump in here as well. There are A LOT of very VALID reasons to postpone the upgrade - custom themes, 3rd party app/plugins, language translations and so on and so on. Frankly, this:

On 10/16/2020 at 8:04 AM, Rhett said:

If you can't upgrade for some reason, we would recommend you find the cause of that and resolve it so you can.

is insulting. I found the reason - the apps I use are not updated yet, those that are done I have not finished testing, I still need to translate > 100 pages of new language strings and on top of that your brand new releases are typically unstable, so it makes sense to wait at least a few months for everything to settle down. What should I do to resolve it? Duh!

16 minutes ago, Makoto said:

Did you just recently migrate from ATP to Radical Tags? You may have some NULL / empty tag entries in your database if so.

If you can send me a DM and set me up with ACP access I can take a look and get it resolved for you.

You should also be able to click on prefixes to go to the tag search page without issue, if this is not working I'd try running the support tool first and see if this clears up any issues.

Thanks. Its a test board that I migrated from AT&P after upgrade to 4.5, which as advised above is probably not ideal. I will let you know if I face the same issues once I upgrade prod.