Clover13

10 minutes ago, Jim M said:

Unfortunately, there is nothing in our default software called "Friendship".

 

I also see that you have Tapatalk installed. It could be they sent the message from that application. If so, you would need to contact Tapatalk for assistance as this would be outside of the default software.

Good call, might be Tapatalk related!  Attached screenshot so you can see where I am seeing it.   Also see something about "Posted Business".  I am not sure where these contexts come from.

Curiously, how does an Invision Community Ranking system's "Rank" get tied to a Tapatalk (or any external softwares) features?

The member joined 9 hours ago, is put in a New Members group upon registering, which has the respective limitations on PMs configured.  Nothing was changed regarding that configuration today in this group.  I cannot figure out how this user was able to send a PM given what group he is in and the limits it has set (which you confirmed are working with your account).  This limit does seems to work, at least some of the time or historically (as new members have asked why they couldn't send PMs initially).

I see something unique in the Ranking credits for this member:

Quote

Posted Friendship

What is the "Friendship" aspect and is that different than a standard Private Message but it sent AS a Private Message?

Sure, do you want me to PM you the info?

Noticed a spammer got through today and was able to PM members despite being in a Member Group that has Conversations allowed to start per day set to 0.  I have it setup intentionally to not allow this and promote to a Member Group that does allow PMs after 3 posts.  Not sure when this broke, I'm guessing in the last update.

Video (TikTok, IG, FB Reels, etc) is unquestionably increasing in popularity, and as such we're going to need world class video management and/or integration for our IPS based sites to evolve with the trends.

I believe one massively valuable IPS enhancement would be direct video platform (YouTube/Vimeo/TikTok/IG/etc) integration via the CKE Editor and upload directly to the video platform then auto-embed the video in the target topic.  I know it's not as simple as an image upload (synchronously) given video size and requires some asynchronous orchestration and updating of the topic post upload, but it's worth the stretch given the trends and would set IPS aside from any other site/community platform that lacks it.  Factor in shear cost savings offloading video storage to an external site and not eating your hosting cost (whether IPS cloud or self hosted) to store large video files and its a massive win all around.  JMHO, but it's the trend IPS needs to gain awareness in, look at Facebook, they just committed majorly to Reels and abandoned a lot of other project funding to do so.

I see mixed results, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  Either way, especially with video (tiktok, fb reels, etc) increasing in popularity, we're going to need world class video management and/or integration for our IPS based sites to evolve with the trends.

I still believe one massively valuable IPS enhancement would/could be direct YouTube (or Vimeo/TikTok/IG/etc) integration via the CKE Editor and upload directly to YouTube then auto-embed the video in the target topic.  I know it's not as simple as an image upload (synchronously) given video size and requires some asynchronous orchestration and updating of the topic post upload, but it's worth the stretch given the trends and would set IPS aside from any other site/community platform that lacks it.  Factor in shear cost savings offloading video to an external site and not eating your hosting cost (whether IPS cloud or self hosted) to store large video files and it's a massive win all around.  JMHO, but it's the trend IPS needs to gain awareness in, look at Facebook, they just committed majorly to Reels and abandoned a lot of other project funding to do so.

10 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said:

Just as an addition to this, while its not prepopulated as such, you can save replies for quick use on the system. You add these from Customization>Editor>Stock Replies . You then need to add the stock replies icon to your toolbar

Thank you @Marc Stridgen!  I had no idea this even existed and fits the bill perfectly! 👍

Not necessary for it to be pre-filled, the members can learn about the editor button and to import the template they're interested in!

8 hours ago, Miss_B said:

Have a look at my app:

 

Also a good app idea, this gives you the prefilled new topic body on a forum level.  I found I also needed a reply template, which is why Marc's solution fit better (free, but also had the same workflow as the new topic body).  Thank you for letting me know about your app too!

@Ghost Face those look like separate Pages app/integration not something that gets integrated into the forum topic/post.

@Adriano the only caveat I see with that app is that the data is managed separately and coupled to the application.  I don't want to lose the data in the future if the app loses support or compatibility.  The only thing I effectively need is the ability to specify a pre-filled text area inside the topic editor for a given forum.  I don't mind if the users alter it, I'm more interested in it being stored as part of the forum topic in the base IPS tables.

Is it possible to pre-fill a forum topic from a template?

I see Tags have a global setting to be open OR closed across all forums/subforums.  Is it possible to set a given forum/subforum to closed?  My use case is for Classifieds where I want to force members to use only a specific set of tags/prefixes in their topics.

4 minutes ago, Stuart Silvester said:

I'm sorry, I could have made this clearer. It isn't a retroactive fix, it will only apply to content posted after you upgrade.

Ah, OK that part I did not know.  So all existing attachments will just be broken for devices that can't play them natively?  Is there an automated method to fix this retroactively (I'm assuming maybe not, otherwise it would have been part of the upgrade script), and if not this is quite a stickler for user experience as I'm getting a lot of PMs and posts on broken attachments? 

23 minutes ago, Stuart Silvester said:

This issue was fixed in 4.6.6 as detailed in the release notes - https://invisioncommunity.com/release-notes/

Fixed an issue where videos attachments that are not supported by a browser may not be downloadable.

 

OK, I'm on 4.6.6 and still seeing the download issue where I get an error "Sorry! We could not locate the item you are trying to view." in browsers that can't natively embed/display the MOV file.

On 9/6/2021 at 7:29 AM, Daniel F said:

This was fixed for an upcoming release. 

Hi @Daniel F, is there a bug tracker or anything we can subscribe to so we can track these updates/changes?  

54 minutes ago, Jim M said:

The biggest impact of the "score" that I see a lot are actually from third party services/resources being integrated. This includes all around from your server, to within our software, to even Javascript you load into the software. Even using Google's own PageSpeed tool, it will flag and bring down your score for using AdSense and some more of it's own products (which I always thought to be ironic). Everything will need to be weighed on whether or not you need the integration and what impact it brings to your goals.

I agree to a large degree, there are some things we have to balance out and accept score degradation because the things that rely on optimal score are also causing the score to be reduced (ala Adsense).

I think there should be a baseline of scores of a fresh/clean install of IPS across it's suite (Forums, Pages, etc) with a reasonable use case set of data to test.  Even third party customizations should ideally align with similar coding practices that don't result in a scoring penalty.  I know I'm making this a bit simpler than it probably is, but the nuts and bolts of it is that customers who rely on ads are leaving money on the table without those scores being optimal and that also translates to potential revenue for IPS (or an advantage a competitor gains if they can achieve it and offer that revenue upside to customers).

As an example of this page (and I know @Adlagohas done similar identification before, he was one I thought would chime in here), I believe IPS' own page should have close to optimal scores and anything that doesn't allow for this should be reviewed and improved upon.

In the case of this page, the Desktop score is top-notch (but this is also not an image heavy format and a pretty basic topic page, no sidebars, nothing intricate, all sites can't be generic in this same way).  Despite the Desktop score and simplicity of the page, the Mobile score is significantly lower and this isn't a linear scale, so even at 60 I would think getting into the upper 70s-80s should be easy and increasingly harder after that (per @Adlago's point below).

50 minutes ago, Adlago said:

PS.Use the optimization tool Chrome development, you will find many of your mistakes, as well as options for improving your site.

Is this specifically the scope of what you did, using Chrom Dev Tools to identify the problems and was it within your code or did you make alterations to the underlying IPS core libraries?

A consideration that has been voiced here before by others but I haven't really found a solution to, is how can we best optimize IPS for Mobile usage such that we can maximize our PageSpeed Insights scores which directly correlate to potential ad revenue/rpms for those of us that are using Google Adsense (or similar)?

Desktops scores are fairly high (85-95), but Mobile scores are very low (25-40).  Some of this is impacted by factors outside of IPS (network, server, etc) but a lot of it is code sided (CSS, JS) that impact CLS, FCP, TTI, TBT, etc) and these are all directly tied to the score which is directly tied to ad RPM.  We may not be able to reach Desktop score level, but there are likely some improvements to be had to help elevate the Mobile scores.

1. What can we do as customers to optimize Mobile scores?
2. What is out of customers' hands whereas customers are reliant on IPS to improve their code to elevate Mobile scores?

1 hour ago, Sonya* said:

I do not have a scenario, but there have been a thread recently with urgent help needed 

 

Well that's a good example @Sonya*! 

Kudos to @Marc Stridgen on that 10 minute response time! 🙂

Also saw @Mark H opened a ticket to track it within 30 minutes and stayed on top of the ticket all within an hour, nicely done!

I think if the future support works in that responsive and cohesive manner between IPS Staff and clients, it can work out well, however there will probably be a lot of duplication (which may be unavoidable anyway and likely the situation today with tickets). 

@Matt@Jordan Miller

Can you walk us through a support scenario where a customer without priority support has a downed site as a result of an IPS upgrade or some other unexpected IPS behavior with corresponding error message (i.e. it isn't immediately correlated to a server resource issue or configuration change)?

Old process (PRIORITY SUPPORT):

1. Customer opens ticket with IPS and mark as highest priority (site down)
2. Within 24 hours, IPS evaluates via ticket information and updates ticket with resolution as to what they fixed or what was identified outside the scope of their support that needs to be fixed
3. Customer verifies issue is resolved and if not, returns to #2 and may wait up to 24 hours (usually less) for an additional followup review?  If verified, customer addresses/closes the ticket.

As I had priority support before, I had generally heard in a few hours from IPS when it came to critical issues and even high issues.  In general support, are you saying this could be up to 3 days of waiting while your site was down?

New process (NO PRIORITY SUPPORT):

1. Customer posts in a community forum indicating their site if offline, posts corresponding error messages and related server information, and de-identifies anything specific to their business/site if they wise to remain private OR simply requests a ticket be opened to review the issue privately?
2. Within 3 days, IPS evaluates the issue via the topic information or private ticket and updates ticket with resolution as to what they fixed or what was identified outside the scope of their support that needs to be fixed
3. Customer verifies issue is resolved and if not, returns to #2 and may wait up to 3 days for an additional followup review?  If verified, customer addresses/closes the ticket.

I think the crucial aspect of support is availability and SLAs around resolving major issues that either result in the site being down or have a significant impact on its functionality.  I'm not sure what IPS' position is on this that drives the increase from $200 (I believe it was $100 per 6 months) to $1250, but it feels like the sites that are hobby oriented and have small/no revenue are priced out of the priority support and may have to sit waiting for days on end for their site to get back into an acceptable operational mode.  This shouldn't happen often, but I feel there should be an exception for these critical outage type support issues that mandates a faster response time even for smaller sites.  Or as I noted in previous reply, maybe some kind of scaling in pricing that make priority support more affordable.  IMHO, "Enterprise" (corporate) level pricing shouldn't be the same as "Small business" or "Hobby" level pricing.  However, across the board we have one single pricing model (particularly impactful at the elevated support pricing).  This just doesn't fit your customer base well:  Easy for mid/high revenue customers (corporate, bigger businesses, high traffic sites, etc) to afford, difficult for low revenue customers to afford, and impossible for no revenue customers to afford.  There simply has to be a better pricing calibration model to apply here that quite honestly gets you MORE from your Enterprise level customers and less as it tiers down to the no revenue customers.

ADDENDUM:  IMHO the goal of IPS should be enabling and expanding their customer base (all of it).  This seems like an obvious, but the current pricing increase deviates from that objective.  The more of IPS that is out there, the more visibility it achieves, the more interest it gains, the more developer incentive and recruitment there is, the more enhancements and growth are experienced.  Everyone wins in that case, and the path there is finding a comfortable pricing model that offers affordability based on the type of site and its inherent revenue, as well as rewarding IPS for the product suite they are creating.  There is a balance, but I don't think this is it as it's now impacted a subset of your customer base that you really should care if you lose.  And honestly, where it was at before wasn't it either because IPS was getting the short end of the stick not having raised prices in 10 years.

My take so far reading through all of this...

1. Don't lose your marketplace developers.  They're a key to your success and help build your suite of products.  It's a win for customers in getting more robust features, it's a win for developers in earning revenue, it's a win for your company/product suite in both revenue and features that can be adopted.  It's a tough balance to be had, but I can certainly see a credit system whereas developers are credited back license costs once they contribute X (whatever X is deemed to be).  This incentivizes them, and should be coupled to a quality metric to ensure they aren't just throwing something out on marketplace to get the credit but that their offering provides verifiable value to the consumers.
2. There is a huge gap in affordability between hobby sites and business sites.  To have the same pricing model apply to both only serves to make it unaffordable for hobby sites entirely.  If IPS has an interest in being the forefront of online forums/CMS and gain correlating exposure, this approach is leaving hobby sites out of the equation and that is a net loss for IPS in gaining visibility which translates to future sales/adoption by new hobby/business sites (penny wise, dollar foolish).  Not to mention the immediate loss and future visibility from hobby sites that migrate to another solution and popularize it will negatively impact future IPS sales/adoption.  IPS needs to find a way to balance the affordability based on the target customer, but not at a reduction of features (as that inhibits marketplace incentive and adoption if that feature set can be found elsewhere)
3. Support.  You need to address the turnaround SLA for support and customers need an appropriate path to solving site critical issues within a reasonable SLA without it costing $1250 or waiting 3+ days for a resolution to take effect (note, not 3 days to respond, but 3 days to resolve it and have the site properly operational).
4. Unquestionably, the PR around this specific case needs (and is getting) review.  Moving forward IPS needs to do a far better job in broadcasting the roadmap of these changes and provide their customers the opportunity to assess them, which avoids customers being cornered ala "big bang" like we've seen here.

I can see MANY are quite upset by these changes for a variety of reasons, but I also see opportunities for IPS to revise their approach for their benefit and for their customers' benefit.  It's a complex situation, and there are fair arguments on both sides, however there is a big void in the balance in the current solution and it WILL unquestionably adversely affect BOTH IPS and its customers.

- "cannot see the forest for the trees"

32 minutes ago, Jordan Miller said:

I can see why this might be a bit ehh at first, but I've seen first-hand how many times we answer similar questions privately via email. Shifting support to the community should become super useful to free us up a little so we can focus on expanding the platform. I know, very PR-ey response but what I mentioned is what we're aiming for. We're not going to abandon you guys. 

The one huge gain would be reuse of the solved issues that are common among clients.  I've seen this has increased in the community over time.  I just think when it comes down to a site outage, there has to be a better way to get immediate support than footing $1250 a year up front.  This is particularly important when it's related to an upgrade via IPS (I know Priority support covers IPS doing the upgrades, but I think that's overkill as almost every upgrade goes smoothly *knock on wood* for us but that one time I need it, I don't want to be offline for my members for 24+ hours).  Maybe a per ticket or per hour pricing model or something similar?

43 minutes ago, Adlago said:

I've been wondering for a few hours whether to leave an opinion or not ...
I can accept new prices - it is clear that you have an argument for this.
But!?!
Even 4.6.6 does not offer a performance boost, especially for mobile.
Too many sites that allow Google ads - Web Vitals have desperately bad results - I don't see anything in this direction in your work, developers.
And what should owners of these sites do? Google lowers their revenue, you increase their license!
Apart from your own budget, don't you have an interest in performance improvements for your clients?
You have good enough developers and you can easily solve all the requirements for Web Vitals. Why don't you do it?

I wonder if I'm wondering, but your new site is also performing poorly

 

Your FCP and LCP results for the last few hours are deteriorating.

You have also allowed duplication ID of "elSigninButton_mobile".

https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Finvisioncommunity.com%2Fforums

In short - nothing new, but more expensive.

 

This is an excellent point, as those who are using Google ads are getting effectively penalized for something I don't believe is within our control.  If it is, I'm not sure of how to resolve these.  If you're going to increase prices, you definitely should prioritize integral parts of the suite that affect client revenue (in order to afford those price increases).

My client area shows my annual renewal as 2x from what it was for every 6 months (i.e. no change)  Yet when I look at renewal pricing in the Pricing, it's actually less?  I'm totally confused at this point as to what my pricing will be.  Can someone at IPS review and PM me?

Also, not a big fan of the transition to Community Support with Priority Support skyrocketing in price.  I rarely used Priority Support, but it was a nice security blanket to have in the event of something going wrong and my site being down.  And I got it precisely because I couldn't rely on Community Support being available and actively answering questions while my site was down.  Hoping the upcoming updates to Community Support @Jordan Miller alluded to help offset this in some way, likewise assuming this will be followed more responsively by Invision Community Staff?

7 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said:

Videos being playable are actually dependent upon the browser and OS. MOV files are an apple format, so indeed only play on apple devices natively

Understood, however from the site owner perspective, we want tooling that automates making videos device and browser agnostic.  We can't control what our members use to take videos, but given Invision Community's use of HTML5's video rendering, can we not control some automated conversion of uploaded files to an HTML5 compatible format for all browsers?

On 9/8/2021 at 3:05 PM, pequeno said:

Thnks.

Same problem here! I can´t view MOV video in post.

I think you still won't be able to except on Safari?

This is also a big issue on my site where some iPhone users submit MOVs and android users can view them.  Need a better automated solution, not feasible to download, convert and reupload them 

Is it possible to force English alphanumeric (or any other rules) to topic naming convention?

4 hours ago, Adlago said:

PS. Have you tried a Rebuild Search index?

Did the rebuild.  Put a topic poll up after and no change for many members.  They are mainly reporting being on a custom stream, clicking a topic then hitting the browser back button and landing at All Activity rather than the initial custom stream page.