Thomas P

Many thanks for the warm welcome everyone! Looking forward to engaging further with the community in the near future! 😄

Invision Community is growing at a rapid rate! To help us keep up with all of the epicness, we've brought on two new developers (4.7 we see you 😏).  
Drum roll please...
 
@Christopher Pei

 
 
@Marshall Slemp

 
Welcome to the team, gentlemen! It'd be greatly appreciated if you showed our new dudes some love in the comments!
 
Related:
 

Not true. It depends on what the keyword is. That is why long tail strategies exist that makes high rankings far easier. Speed is still just one factor so even if you load in a few milliseconds you will still not rank in the top 10 without offsite strategies. Content is still king and dwell time and quality of content still rank a lot higher than speed. This is why most companies spend money on offsite/onsite SEO or advertising over speed as long as speed is acceptable.
For e-commerce for example they spend more time on CRO than speed and their biggest concern is always duplicate content, conversion funnel and landing pages with targeted offsite strategies. Even though 1 second will give a 15-30% less conversion on mobile in the first funnel that is still less of a concern than the other issues.
Just to be clear: I have no objections against making Invision Community faster or more W3C valid. Everyone wins in that scenario 🙂
I admire you for having the energy to put into such an endeavor and whatever your end goal is I hope you achieve it.

You like to argue on the unfair side, right? 
Please read my post again: You could register for free at GTMetrix. When you are registered you could use other locations as those North American. 
GTMetrix uses Lighthouse as well. 

Google Pagespeed use their location in the US to measure other sites.
We are based in central europe and we don't use a CDN, so our site is optimized for European locations.
When looking from Australia your Topics are D-E and from Hongkong it is E-F and that has absolutely nothing to do with IPS and the forum software and frankly: It doesn't matter and if so - use a CDN with servers in that location.
For our requirement in the Europaen regions we are damn fast and as already said: It is also a matter of Server resources, configuration, using external content like ads etc. etc. and not only the forum software.
But since you argue inequitable this is my last post to you, I am out now. Bug someone else 😉

I take it as a compliment 😉
To be fair: As I said we measure without Ads, this is content we could not influence. Plus topics consistent of User Generated Content (UGC) and in the sample you picked we have several banners and a screenshot. Most of the posts have >50-60%
Secondly Pagespeed does not work worldwide, they are measuring from across the pond from their HQ.
What about your GTMetrix numbers?
Log in there, use a server next to you and please tell me what you see.
This is what I see:

To achieve good numbers PHP Workers, GZIP/Brotli, Redis and several other components and configs have to be well tweaked. Just saying that code is not all.
I see that IPS is heavily improving their code performance and seo-wise from release to release, undoubtedly they do a good job compared to other comparable platforms.
There is always room for improvement, but are you sure that 4.5 and 4.6 -which is still beta- is "terrible".
How does a Wordpress perform on pagespeed and GTMetrix on your server?
 
 
 
 

Happy Hump Day, fam! Before we dive into the goodness, I just want to say thank you for being a part of Invision Community. It's been really fun to see community members and the IC team become even more unified as we've rolled out 4.6. 🥲 
Speaking of...(!!!) 4.6 Beta 2 is now live! 🎉 
It's worth reminding you this is the third Beta version (it follows Beta 1 and Beta 1.1).
We collected a roundup of changes needed and spent the last week implementing updates. 
Not only did @Matt write an epic blog post about what you can expect to see in 4.6, he also relayed this list of fixes 🤯 
Added a no search results message when searching Pixabay and Giphy. Added truncated views for status updates. Added a new check to make sure a datastore method is working before using it. Clarified that a template must be saved when editing template variables/attributes. Fixed an issue with an alert message not showing when selecting ‘Administrators’ as Secondary Group for Members. Fixed an issue when an anonymous online status doesn’t persist across logins when using button log in methods. Fixed an issue where it wasn’t possible to grant access to the email stats page to a limited Administrator. Fixed an issue where the Standard login handler title isn’t saved on edit. Fixed some admin control panel live search results linking to the wrong page. Fixed an issue where text when using the visual language editor could be white on a white background. The last post date in fluid view will no longer extend beyond the browser width on mobiles. Fixed an issue where JSON-LD data was badly formatted for Question/Answer forums or when “Enable Solved” was enabled. Fixed an issue where phrase searches containing stop words could return no results. Added an option for members to cancel expired subscriptions to be able to purchase another subscription. Fixed an issue where PayPal Billing Agreements / Subscriptions may not include sales tax. Fixed an issue when approving a held Stripe transaction if the payment has already been captured. Fixed an issue where an empty donations page was visible creating a soft 404.  
 
4.6's official release date for all is set for the first half of June. 
Beta versions are available for Cloud clients (by request), or can be downloaded if you are self-hosted (proceed with caution and please make a backup!).
Have YOU been testing out 4.6? What are your overall thoughts now that you've had a minute to soak it all in? Sound off in the replies! 

4.5 upgrade to is out of the question. completely. 😕
Only to 4.6 when it leaves beta stage and gets more builds like 4.6.5 etc.

We also don't create sessions for all guests, this number would never be accurate

Ooh, sorry. Another resource:
 

Hey team, it's been 84 years (if you know you know), but...
We're excited to announce that Invision Community 4.6.0 Beta 1 is officially live! 🎉 
@Matt has a blog post on the way detailing all of the amazing additions, including how many commits and lines of code that were changed. A lot. The answer is a lot. 
Just to refresh your memories, some of the biggest changes/additions include:
Achievements (Points!) Web app and Push notifications Anonymous Posting when posting as a member Highlight Topics with replies from specific Groups Spam Improvements (And more!) It's available per request for Cloud customers or, if you're self-hosted, by manually downloading it.
Self-hosted: please make the necessary backups before upgrading. Because this is a Beta, please understand there is an inherent risk when upgrading.
The more information/feedback we get, the better we can optimize and improve things 🙂
If you find something and would like to submit a bug, please do so here.
Looking forward to hearing what you think! Sound off in the replies below. 

Another fine Hump Day, folks! Hope you're having a great week. 
Yesterday, we announced 4.6.0 Beta 1. We've already added a few updates/fixes, and in less than a day we rolled out 4.6.0 Beta 1.1 (which is now available for download! Per the sound advice of @Nathan Explosion, I'd like to remind you that this is a Beta; please make a backup of your community and all its data before updating). 
 I want to give @Pavel Chernitsky a shout-out for saying this in the announcement post:
The team worked really hard on this release, so that is greatly appreciated! 🥲 
Last week when I shared that precious photo of @Charles and I working together in Vegas on our forthcoming website refresh, I didn't include a roundup of bug fixes per usual. So please sink your teeth into this updated list:
- Fixed the position of the queued content badge in fluid view, which was overlapping the topic stats.
- Removed browser caching for "upgrade in progress" page.
- Fixed an issue where a cached Widget returned the wrong timezone based time.
- Changed the email in the profile hovercard into a mailto link
- Fixed an issue where the Privacy Page does not redirect to an external link.
- Fixed an issue where the first step may be skipped during checkout even if custom fields are required.
- Fixed an issue when an anonymous online status doesn't persist across logins when using button log in methods
- Fixed an issue where merging members could leave members as alternative contacts for themselves.
- Added a no search results message when searching Pixabay and Giphy
- Added truncated views for status updates.
- Added an option for members to cancel expired subscriptions to be able to purchase another subscription.
- Fixed an issue where PayPal Billing Agreements / Subscriptions may not include sales tax.
 
Thoughts? Have you tried out the Beta version yet? We'd love to hear from you in the replies! 

Thanks for this info. I misinterpreted the "Advanced Configurations / Data Caching" page and thought that I could not use Redis with MySQL. But I see that's incorrect. 
I have a dedicated server running MySQL for my website. It's got some good horsepower behind it. Does it makes sense to install Redis on that mysql server? Would I gain any advantage from that even though they are on the same box?
Thanks!

I wasn't expecting Charles to be so young looking.  I had this impression in my mind that Charles was in his early 50's, grey hair, tall with a stern look about him.  He looks like a really nice chap that I could easily have a beer with 🙂
 

If a guide is out of date, just hit the report button and let us know. Someone will update it soon after we're aware. (Google and Facebook especially change their interfaces very often).

That photo though. 

To recap:
You do not need to enable the new rules, badges and ranks. There is an option pre-upgrade that asks you if you want to switch to the new system or not. If you choose not to, then you retain the existing ranks you already have.


The upgrade will also move any custom titles across to a new custom profile field.

If you want to show the custom member title under the user's photo in a post, then just switch on these custom field settings which are off after the upgrade.


 
 

All I said that we and you should give it a chance. Just because it is new doesn't mean it is bad.
The only constant in life is change - this is an objective fact 😉
There you go 👍
 
 

Gutenberg 

The 4.6 release now moves all existing custom titles to a new custom field.

I just moved the members' titles to the custom field.
Just create a new text field with a maximum length of 65 characters.

My field has the ID 7. In the query, change the field ID to yours.
Additionally, add a prefix before the tables, if you have one.
Make an SQL query
UPDATE core_pfields_content t1 INNER JOIN core_members t2 ON t1.member_id = t2.member_id SET t1.field_7 = t2.member_title; Caution.
You do everything on your own accountability.
Before executing the SQL query, make a backup copy of the database just in case.

Go to settings > Posting and look to the arrowed check boxes and choose what you feel is best:

Hey team, another fine Hump Day is upon us. 
A couple orders of business before we dive into the latest round of 4.6 fixes and updates: 
1.) Have you voted in the Star Trek vs Star Wars poll? V V important. 

 
2.) We'd love to feature your community! In case you missed the giant green bar at the top of the page (😆), check out this topic. We want to showcase your wins and successes and hopefully entice others to join Invision Community. If you feel a little uncomfortable to write a few sentences out for whatever reason, please reach out to me. I'd love to help you. 🙏 
 
4.6 (with Achievements) is most definitely still in the works, as is a Live Q&A for you all to participate in (more details on that to come!).
Here's our weekly roundup of new fixes: 
- Fixed an issue where uninstalling an application wouldn't delete the associated rss feed import data.
- Fixed an issue where deleting a database wouldn't delete the associated rss feed import data.
- Fixed issue where poll choices are cleared because poll question title is empty on Edit Topic submit.
- Fixed an issue where topics marked manually for unarchiving would not be processed.
- Fixed an issue where banned members could see that there are announcements, but could not read the announcement.
 
If you have any questions, comments, concerns, please drop us a line! 

I hope not.
If it has you'd be surprised how popular it is to set your own personal message below your username, instead of whatever the forum decides.
It needs to stay.

You can easily create a robots.txt files with wildcards:
Check the section: "How to Use wildcards in robots.txt" here: An SEO's Guide to Robots.txt, Wildcards, the X-Robots-Tag and Noindex (builtvisible.com) for example.
To prevent the report URL or other sections being indexed we use this e.g.: 
Disallow: /*?do=reportComment* Disallow: /*?do=add As the robots.txt file is very site and version specific and there are other methods, see article mentioned above, I think every site owner has to create his own robots.txt file or "no index" mechanism.