Markus Jung

We can provide the tools and you can decide how to use them. Google taking forum content seriously after years of "user generated content" being rated down can only be a good thing overall.

See the links in the original post. Google are making large changes to how forum posts are presented in their search results and they include more data on the author including a link to their profile page.

If you do not want to have profiles indexed, then you can simply adjust the robots.txt via the ACP to exclude them again.
We would still add 'noindex' meta tags to profile without any valuable content to avoid loads of thin pages being indexed and sucking up the crawl budget.

We’re already providing support for  ProfilePage and DiscussionForumPosting.
I have also made recently some adjustments to the QA stuff which will be included in a future release.

This is a big move by Google with the potential to showcase more forum content in search as well as highlight members of the community. Sharing this here hoping it can be natively added to IC5 🤞
Snippets below
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New in structured data: discussion forum and profile page markup
Today we're announcing support for profile page and discussion forum structured data for use in Google Search, including new reports in Search Console. This markup works with Google Search features that are designed to show first-person perspectives from social media platforms, forums, and other communities. Implementing this structured data will help ensure what Search shows in these features is as accurate and complete as possible.
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Discussion forum (DiscussionForumPosting) structured data
In general, we recommend nesting comments under the post they relate to. If the forum has its own threading structure, use a tree of comments to represent its structure
If it's more linear in nature (for example, an original post followed by a series of replies), nest them all under the original post as comments. Ideally, later pages of content in multi-page forums include the original post with the main page URL
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Profile page (ProfilePage) structured data
The primary focus of the page must be a single person or organization that is affiliated with the overall website. Here are some examples of profile pages:

Valid use cases:
A user profile page on a forum or social media site An author page on a news site An "About Me" page on a blog site An employee page on a company website Invalid use cases:
The main home page of a store (usually contains lots of non-profile info) An organization review site (the organization isn't associated with the website) -----------------------------------
@Daniel F - Tagging you in case you haven't come across this yet. I know you make THE SEO application and probably have as much SEO knowledge as anyone in the space.

One of our member complained that recently, notification emails from our site are going to his spam folder. 
I checked the raw headers in an email notification from our site and I can see that while SPF and DKIM both pass, it says "dmarc=unknown".
Is it possible to add a DMARC record to these emails?  

Hi team,
I think that will be a great update to add recent activity in a search results for every topic. Because now only show the creation date, so looks like is an old topic, and they can have a lot recent replies so it is a recent hot topic.
For exemple, this topic named "My site is down / slow" was created 09/08/23 but have last reply in 11/15/23 (Last wednesday) If we show the last reply field too we offer to user signals of freshness and actuality.
Actually looks like all topics results are olds.
Can you consider to future updates? Thanks

🍂 🦃 Welcome to this week's Invision Community Insight! 🍎🍂
Thank you for checking out our weekly, round up post. I hope you have had a wonderful week. 
 
Current Happenings
Invision Community Version 5 news is all the rage! 🎉
Follow the Invision Community Insider Forum and our Invision Community Blog to be among the first to see those updates each week. 
Aren't those videos awesome?!  🤩 
 

New Version
The official November release was made available last week. Upgrade your community now.
Here is what is included in November release, version 4.7.14. https://invisioncommunity.com/release-notes/
 
Looking Ahead
As we near the holiday season, we will post announcements for our holiday hours. Expect delays for general support. Our team is, however, available for urgent requests and system monitoring. 
 

Changelog
For those that like to see what we are up to line by line, here is the changelog for the last two weeks for version 4. 
 
 

Invision Community offers fantastic ways of customizing the user experience for your members, and today, we’re excited to introduce some new and really simple ways of customizing Invision Community 5 even further using our new icon tools.
 
Icon Picker
Lets begin with our brand new icon picker. Containing both Font Awesome icons and emojis, the new picker allows you to easily search and assign icons to specific areas throughout your site. Lets take a look at some examples!
icon-picker.mp4  
Navigation icons
Adding icons to the navigation list has been a highly requested feature, so we're happy to announce that you can now use this new picker to do exactly that, for both the horizontal and vertical navigation panels, without needing to modify your theme.

 
Forum icons
Uploading forum icons is a great way to personalize individual areas of your community. In the past, these icons have typically been images, uploaded via the admin panel. In addition to the upload form, the icon picker now makes it a breeze to assign icons to forums - and if a Font Awesome icon is chosen, it'll even inherit the featured forum color.

 
Forum Feature Color
We have brought the existing forum feature color to feed view allowing for a flash of color and personalization that helps associate a color with a specific forum. The feature color pairs really well with the card image to lift the forum display.

 
Icon creator for badges, ranks and reactions
Creating unique badges, ranks and reactions is a great way to boost activity within your community by encouraging members to share more engaging and frequent content - but designing these icons from scratch using a graphics program often comes with hurdles of its own.
With our new icon creator, you can now design your own custom icons for badges, ranks and reactions straight from your Admin panel, using a combination of colors, icons and shapes.
icon-creator.mp4  
 
We think this new icon creator will make the rank, badges and reactions features even more accessible for everyone, allowing you to create a user experience that is uniquely yours. With Invision Community 5, bringing in customization and personalization moves beyond adding new themes.
We're excited to see how you can take advantage of these new tools, and we look forward hearing your feedback in the comments below!
 


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I just don’t see myself looking at the providers page, then going to their individual pages, then looking at apps. Most of the apps I use were found by browsing here, not even searching. 
 
I’m guessing I’ll gradually use the stock, less good, version of Invision Community. Kind of a bummer. 

Glad to hear it 🙂 

No more issues right now. Thanks. 

No more issues right now. Thanks. 

This issue has been resolved in our recent 4.7.14 release of the platform. Please upgrade to resolve the issue, and if you see any further problems at that point, please let us know.

We do not currently do this for retail cloud plans, however, this is something we will look at. Thanks for your inquiry.

DNSSEC basically is used to prevent someone from putting up a DNS server with fake records pointing users that use that resolver to a server different than yours. 

This matters for banks and major sites that handle high volumes of commerce… but in practical/real life terms, it’s super unlikely to happen. It would be isolated (say a hotel network compromised and routing traffic to fake sites) and in most cases would be targeting sites that are more commonly used.

It does not protect the domain itself and does not prevent things like DNS highjacking or someone trying to port your domain without permission. 

I don’t say this to minimize implementation of a security feature, but instead to help folks realize that should it not be available that there is not a huge hole out there putting you at risk.  I have a better chance at winning the Powerball than seeing my site attacked successfully in this manner. But yes, it’s technically possible for it to occur!  

Not that I am aware of, however I will find out for certain and let you know

Hey Joel,
1. The advanced search page is still available. The search modal is just an "enhanced version" of the drop-down filter menu which we currently use in version 4.
2. We'll have a lot more information on this in a future update 🤫 But to answer your question, they're FA 6 icons.
3. Correct, this is static. You could use your own javascript code to target the element and change the text every x seconds, but it's not a feature which is coming with version 5.
4. "Focus rings" for focused elements are very important for keyboard users. It's definitely not for power users or developers, but rather users who find it difficult to browse your site with a mouse. Imagine a condition which affects motor control such as Parkinson's disease, or someone who has a broken arm - both of those users would likely find it more convenient to browse using the TAB key instead of using a mouse.
Focus rings only appear when pressing the TAB key on your keyboard (they won't appear when clicking with a mouse), so they've been added purely to improve accessibility for those who need them. Accessibility took a back seat in version 4, however we've placed a higher priority on it with version 5 and will be improving it further in future updates. This is a desktop only feature, but will also work on iPads if a bluetooth keyboard is connected.
5. Currently hard-coded, but customization is currently on my "would be nice to have list". Certainly something to consider.

Not at all, image logos are most definitely a thing. Next weeks video will showcase that in detail 🙂 

Very nice. 
 
One thing I’d love to see is the ability to restrict dark mode to specific user groups. This would be nice because we sell subscriptions that remove advertisements. Dark mode works great for subscribers, but for those who see the ads dark mode would make the ad images look really strange. 

A final supported release is unlikely before 2024 just because we are heading into three consecutive months where there are holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year) so releasing a brand new version would increase workload at a time where we want our team to relax and enjoy those holidays. I've patched releases on Christmas Day before and it's not the best time. 🙂 
I think we can expect a public preview and some beta releases before then, though.

Welcome to the second video of our sneak peak series! Today we'll be taking a closer look at the new Invision Community interface, including dark mode, accessibility improvements, performance improvements and the mobile layout! Before we begin, I should mention that this is a pre-alpha version of Invision Community 5, so some areas of the design may change before the official release.
 
New traditional header design
In our previous video, we showcased our new, optional side panel which formats your navigation into a vertical list. For those who prefer a traditional, horizontal header, here it is!

A much more compact header compared to version 4, the new design condenses the navigation bar into a single row, moving all sub-navigation items into dropdown menus. A new, optional area below the text logo allows you to add your website slogan or announce events such as anniversaries or holidays, and our new search modal provides convenient access to the advanced search filters from any page on your community.

 
Accessible interface
The main content area has been designed with accessibility as a priority. High contrast text colours and larger font-sizes help to make reading more comfortable and clickable table rows (which can be enabled or disabled via the Theme Editor) allow you to navigate between pages more easily. A visible focus ring significantly improves navigation for visitors who find it more comfortable to browse with their keyboard TAB key, instead of using their mouse (ie. visitors with conditions such as Parkinson's disease, or those who have temporarily lost function due to a broken arm).
 
Focus.mp4
Elements are highlighted while navigating with the keyboard
 
Dark mode
Dark mode has become increasingly popular over the past few years - so it's no surprise that Version 5 has been designed from scratch with both light and dark mode in mind. With version 4, it was necessary to manage two themes in order to provide a light and dark colour scheme. In version 5 though, all of that is handled by a single theme.
By default, your members will be able to choose their own color scheme preference: either light, dark, or system. System assigns a color scheme based on your system preferences - so if your device automatically switches to dark mode at night, your community will too! With that said, as an administrator, you also have the option to restrict your site to a single color scheme - so if you ONLY want to offer a dark theme, that's easily achieved.

 
 
Performance
Despite all of these new inclusions, the version 5 UI has been coded with significant reductions in both CSS and Javascript. We'll dive deeper into code reductions in a future blog entry, however two great examples are:
- Grids: which have had a 100% removal of Javascript and are powered by only a few lines of CSS, resulting in a faster rendering time, especially for users on slow connections.
- And carousels: which have had a 95% reduction in Javascript and now rely on native browser scrolling, for a much smoother experience on both desktop and mobile!
Additionally we've removed a number of helper libraries that are no longer needed with modern browsers saving even more.
 
Mobile UI
With an incredible amount of mobile visitors accessing the web, we’ve placed a huge priority on redesigning the interface to ensure it lives up to todays standards.
A new navigation bar at the bottom of the page provides convenient access to your activity feed, notifications, messages, a search panel, and navigation links. A conscious effort was made to ensure that this information was available within a single tap, and we found that a bottom bar like this was easier to interact with compared to icons in the header.

The mobile navigation bar from Invision Community 5
 
A goal of the mobile UI was to display elements that were previously only available on larger devices, while still maintaining a clean interface. For example, to improve navigation, we've added a scrollable breadcrumb list to the top and bottom of the page. To improve guest participation, we added Sign In and Sign Up links to the bottom navigation bar. These links were previously hidden within the hamburger menu, so we feel like this will really benefit those looking to improve registrations. And as demonstrated in last weeks video, profile information is now available within posts, comments and reviews on small devices.
We’re really excited for you to literally have a hands on experience with the new mobile interface of Invision Community 5, and we're interested to hear your feedback in the comments!

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There would be no cache for logged in users. We actually tell the browser this (no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, max-age=0, s-maxage=0). What you are stating about using the back button is different than loading a completely new browser session and the browser does not open a previous session. 
Keep in mind that if you're using a block to display new topics, they have their own internal cache and would not update frequently. As opentype mentioned.

Thank you!

There is a patch that addresses the issue. 
System > Smart Community > Spam Analysis > Settings

There is a patch that addresses the issue. 
System > Smart Community > Spam Analysis > Settings