Mike Gholson

I'm ready!

Awesome, thank you!  I thought the removal of Marketplace was depreciating the 3rd party capability.  I appreciate the clarification and this is great to see.  Hopefully the 3rd party developers can still make enough money to continue updating and supporting the apps.

To clarify: The possibility to install 3rd party apps wasn't removed in v5!
Plugins were deprecated, but applications can still be created, exported, imported, etc.. Hooks were replaced with Code Listeners and several new Extensions But all in all, 3rd parties will still be able to create new apps like Member Garage, Member Maps, Classified Ads, Member Info blocks etc..
More information about the upcoming changes can be found in our Dev Blog: https://invisioncommunity.com/developers/devblog/blog/

Yeah, IPB5 will be pretty sweet, from what I can tell.  Looking forward to seeing more from the team.  I find it extremely satisfying to see how active the developers are making a difference in our communities.  Also heavy involvement with us is key and you are hitting that nail on the head too.  Much appreciate everything you guys are doing!!

Yeah, IPB5 will be pretty sweet, from what I can tell.  Looking forward to seeing more from the team.  I find it extremely satisfying to see how active the developers are making a difference in our communities.  Also heavy involvement with us is key and you are hitting that nail on the head too.  Much appreciate everything you guys are doing!!

Yeah, IPB5 will be pretty sweet, from what I can tell.  Looking forward to seeing more from the team.  I find it extremely satisfying to see how active the developers are making a difference in our communities.  Also heavy involvement with us is key and you are hitting that nail on the head too.  Much appreciate everything you guys are doing!!

Yeah, IPB5 will be pretty sweet, from what I can tell.  Looking forward to seeing more from the team.  I find it extremely satisfying to see how active the developers are making a difference in our communities.  Also heavy involvement with us is key and you are hitting that nail on the head too.  Much appreciate everything you guys are doing!!

As a community owner for over two decades, I wanted to give some personal feedback as to what I find very useful (and need) to keep my community alive. 
Big Tech Competition:  The biggest challenge has been competing with other online services like FB, Reddit, Twitter, etc, etc.  You guys have hit the sweet spot in generating useful integrations to these services.  I would also like one for Linkedin but I'm sure that's on the radar.  With any competition like big tech, we can provide a more specialized touch to any community.  I hope we can still maintain this presence and I have a feeling IBP5 will give us even more ways to create active sites that give the big boys a run for their money.
Monetization:  I have a specialized car club and, with Invision, I've been able to monetize our existence and pay our bills.  We are hosted on a dedicated server environment so we have our fair-share of bills.  I've looked into using a cloud-host but the costs don't justify simply putting a machine into a colo site.  We also have other bills like licensing, email services, and annual domain costs.  With the integrations to Google Adsense, Infolinks, and the paid subscription model (built into IPB), this has enabled us to pay these bills and continue well into the future.  The addition of Subscriptions has also helped us a LOT!!!!

3rd Pary Marketplace:  I have appreciated the Invision Community capabilities with 3rd party apps (Marketplace).  However, I see these have been depreciated for the upcoming release.  Some of these modules really gave us an edge and we were able to stand out.  I fear that removing this integration may put us into a general category just like everyone else.  So, I hope the team considers opening this up again or at least making it easier for us to customize our sites to provide unique services.  Some of the more important apps for us are Member Garage, Member Maps, Classified Ads (big one), Tapatalk, and Member Info blocks (we use member numbers for members to use as discount codes to our partners).
Advertising Banners:  We have used, and will continue to use banner sponsor placements on our site.  The one place we are missing is at the top of the screen.  Of course we can always do a pop-up or slide-down style ad.  But people tend to hate these and disable them.  So, if we can add more customizable locations for these banners, it would be a big hit for our business.  
Google & SEO:  This service is so strange and it seems to change every other quarter.  New rules all the time, and I've gone from ~$700/mo in banner income to ~$125/mo.  I have no idea why this is, but I did notice that Google doesn't do very well with active community sites (they prefer static pages I guess).  So, if you are building something new with the release of IPB5, I would be very interested to see how we can improve our SEO or even Google results.
Forum Layout:  I *REALLY* like the new look of your forum design in IPB5.  I cannot wait to use it.  The one thing our members really appreciate are the active notifications and easy way to see how things changed over the last 24/48 hours.  The new features coming seem to compliment this very well.  Not to mention a lot of people have been asking for the light/dark mode and it will be nice to see this capability built-in rather than having to design our own.
Community Experts:  I did see something about the addition of community experts.  VERY GOOD addition!!  In an automotive community like ours, there are always guys hanging around that are considered RL experts as well.  I'd love to give them the recognition they deserve and let people know they actually *DO* know what they are talking about.  I hope this is an 'approved only' capability as I am sure some people may request this status and don't really deserve it.  😉
Downloads, Knowledgebase, Gallery:  These existing capabilities are huge wins for us.  Although I would like to see an update to Gallery, the majority of the existing features work very well.  I hope these stay and continue to see improvements as the product goes into the next stage.
Blogs:  For us, the blog module has been a strange experience.  Some guys know how to use it, while other people tend to post questions and use it like a forum.  If we were to continue using blogs, it might be a great idea to make sure end-users know they are in a "blog module" rather than part of the forums.  It's hard to explain on text but honestly I think people get confused as to what a blog is versus a forum.
All in all, I am so happy to see that I've invested with a company that is taking this product to the next level.  Your team is amazing and it's reassuring to see that private communities are still a necessary part of the Internet.  As we continue forward, please understand that I'll stick around as a long term customer.  Just don't jack up the rates too high on us.   😉
Mike

As a community owner for over two decades, I wanted to give some personal feedback as to what I find very useful (and need) to keep my community alive. 
Big Tech Competition:  The biggest challenge has been competing with other online services like FB, Reddit, Twitter, etc, etc.  You guys have hit the sweet spot in generating useful integrations to these services.  I would also like one for Linkedin but I'm sure that's on the radar.  With any competition like big tech, we can provide a more specialized touch to any community.  I hope we can still maintain this presence and I have a feeling IBP5 will give us even more ways to create active sites that give the big boys a run for their money.
Monetization:  I have a specialized car club and, with Invision, I've been able to monetize our existence and pay our bills.  We are hosted on a dedicated server environment so we have our fair-share of bills.  I've looked into using a cloud-host but the costs don't justify simply putting a machine into a colo site.  We also have other bills like licensing, email services, and annual domain costs.  With the integrations to Google Adsense, Infolinks, and the paid subscription model (built into IPB), this has enabled us to pay these bills and continue well into the future.  The addition of Subscriptions has also helped us a LOT!!!!

3rd Pary Marketplace:  I have appreciated the Invision Community capabilities with 3rd party apps (Marketplace).  However, I see these have been depreciated for the upcoming release.  Some of these modules really gave us an edge and we were able to stand out.  I fear that removing this integration may put us into a general category just like everyone else.  So, I hope the team considers opening this up again or at least making it easier for us to customize our sites to provide unique services.  Some of the more important apps for us are Member Garage, Member Maps, Classified Ads (big one), Tapatalk, and Member Info blocks (we use member numbers for members to use as discount codes to our partners).
Advertising Banners:  We have used, and will continue to use banner sponsor placements on our site.  The one place we are missing is at the top of the screen.  Of course we can always do a pop-up or slide-down style ad.  But people tend to hate these and disable them.  So, if we can add more customizable locations for these banners, it would be a big hit for our business.  
Google & SEO:  This service is so strange and it seems to change every other quarter.  New rules all the time, and I've gone from ~$700/mo in banner income to ~$125/mo.  I have no idea why this is, but I did notice that Google doesn't do very well with active community sites (they prefer static pages I guess).  So, if you are building something new with the release of IPB5, I would be very interested to see how we can improve our SEO or even Google results.
Forum Layout:  I *REALLY* like the new look of your forum design in IPB5.  I cannot wait to use it.  The one thing our members really appreciate are the active notifications and easy way to see how things changed over the last 24/48 hours.  The new features coming seem to compliment this very well.  Not to mention a lot of people have been asking for the light/dark mode and it will be nice to see this capability built-in rather than having to design our own.
Community Experts:  I did see something about the addition of community experts.  VERY GOOD addition!!  In an automotive community like ours, there are always guys hanging around that are considered RL experts as well.  I'd love to give them the recognition they deserve and let people know they actually *DO* know what they are talking about.  I hope this is an 'approved only' capability as I am sure some people may request this status and don't really deserve it.  😉
Downloads, Knowledgebase, Gallery:  These existing capabilities are huge wins for us.  Although I would like to see an update to Gallery, the majority of the existing features work very well.  I hope these stay and continue to see improvements as the product goes into the next stage.
Blogs:  For us, the blog module has been a strange experience.  Some guys know how to use it, while other people tend to post questions and use it like a forum.  If we were to continue using blogs, it might be a great idea to make sure end-users know they are in a "blog module" rather than part of the forums.  It's hard to explain on text but honestly I think people get confused as to what a blog is versus a forum.
All in all, I am so happy to see that I've invested with a company that is taking this product to the next level.  Your team is amazing and it's reassuring to see that private communities are still a necessary part of the Internet.  As we continue forward, please understand that I'll stick around as a long term customer.  Just don't jack up the rates too high on us.   😉
Mike

As a community owner for over two decades, I wanted to give some personal feedback as to what I find very useful (and need) to keep my community alive. 
Big Tech Competition:  The biggest challenge has been competing with other online services like FB, Reddit, Twitter, etc, etc.  You guys have hit the sweet spot in generating useful integrations to these services.  I would also like one for Linkedin but I'm sure that's on the radar.  With any competition like big tech, we can provide a more specialized touch to any community.  I hope we can still maintain this presence and I have a feeling IBP5 will give us even more ways to create active sites that give the big boys a run for their money.
Monetization:  I have a specialized car club and, with Invision, I've been able to monetize our existence and pay our bills.  We are hosted on a dedicated server environment so we have our fair-share of bills.  I've looked into using a cloud-host but the costs don't justify simply putting a machine into a colo site.  We also have other bills like licensing, email services, and annual domain costs.  With the integrations to Google Adsense, Infolinks, and the paid subscription model (built into IPB), this has enabled us to pay these bills and continue well into the future.  The addition of Subscriptions has also helped us a LOT!!!!

3rd Pary Marketplace:  I have appreciated the Invision Community capabilities with 3rd party apps (Marketplace).  However, I see these have been depreciated for the upcoming release.  Some of these modules really gave us an edge and we were able to stand out.  I fear that removing this integration may put us into a general category just like everyone else.  So, I hope the team considers opening this up again or at least making it easier for us to customize our sites to provide unique services.  Some of the more important apps for us are Member Garage, Member Maps, Classified Ads (big one), Tapatalk, and Member Info blocks (we use member numbers for members to use as discount codes to our partners).
Advertising Banners:  We have used, and will continue to use banner sponsor placements on our site.  The one place we are missing is at the top of the screen.  Of course we can always do a pop-up or slide-down style ad.  But people tend to hate these and disable them.  So, if we can add more customizable locations for these banners, it would be a big hit for our business.  
Google & SEO:  This service is so strange and it seems to change every other quarter.  New rules all the time, and I've gone from ~$700/mo in banner income to ~$125/mo.  I have no idea why this is, but I did notice that Google doesn't do very well with active community sites (they prefer static pages I guess).  So, if you are building something new with the release of IPB5, I would be very interested to see how we can improve our SEO or even Google results.
Forum Layout:  I *REALLY* like the new look of your forum design in IPB5.  I cannot wait to use it.  The one thing our members really appreciate are the active notifications and easy way to see how things changed over the last 24/48 hours.  The new features coming seem to compliment this very well.  Not to mention a lot of people have been asking for the light/dark mode and it will be nice to see this capability built-in rather than having to design our own.
Community Experts:  I did see something about the addition of community experts.  VERY GOOD addition!!  In an automotive community like ours, there are always guys hanging around that are considered RL experts as well.  I'd love to give them the recognition they deserve and let people know they actually *DO* know what they are talking about.  I hope this is an 'approved only' capability as I am sure some people may request this status and don't really deserve it.  😉
Downloads, Knowledgebase, Gallery:  These existing capabilities are huge wins for us.  Although I would like to see an update to Gallery, the majority of the existing features work very well.  I hope these stay and continue to see improvements as the product goes into the next stage.
Blogs:  For us, the blog module has been a strange experience.  Some guys know how to use it, while other people tend to post questions and use it like a forum.  If we were to continue using blogs, it might be a great idea to make sure end-users know they are in a "blog module" rather than part of the forums.  It's hard to explain on text but honestly I think people get confused as to what a blog is versus a forum.
All in all, I am so happy to see that I've invested with a company that is taking this product to the next level.  Your team is amazing and it's reassuring to see that private communities are still a necessary part of the Internet.  As we continue forward, please understand that I'll stick around as a long term customer.  Just don't jack up the rates too high on us.   😉
Mike

As a community owner for over two decades, I wanted to give some personal feedback as to what I find very useful (and need) to keep my community alive. 
Big Tech Competition:  The biggest challenge has been competing with other online services like FB, Reddit, Twitter, etc, etc.  You guys have hit the sweet spot in generating useful integrations to these services.  I would also like one for Linkedin but I'm sure that's on the radar.  With any competition like big tech, we can provide a more specialized touch to any community.  I hope we can still maintain this presence and I have a feeling IBP5 will give us even more ways to create active sites that give the big boys a run for their money.
Monetization:  I have a specialized car club and, with Invision, I've been able to monetize our existence and pay our bills.  We are hosted on a dedicated server environment so we have our fair-share of bills.  I've looked into using a cloud-host but the costs don't justify simply putting a machine into a colo site.  We also have other bills like licensing, email services, and annual domain costs.  With the integrations to Google Adsense, Infolinks, and the paid subscription model (built into IPB), this has enabled us to pay these bills and continue well into the future.  The addition of Subscriptions has also helped us a LOT!!!!

3rd Pary Marketplace:  I have appreciated the Invision Community capabilities with 3rd party apps (Marketplace).  However, I see these have been depreciated for the upcoming release.  Some of these modules really gave us an edge and we were able to stand out.  I fear that removing this integration may put us into a general category just like everyone else.  So, I hope the team considers opening this up again or at least making it easier for us to customize our sites to provide unique services.  Some of the more important apps for us are Member Garage, Member Maps, Classified Ads (big one), Tapatalk, and Member Info blocks (we use member numbers for members to use as discount codes to our partners).
Advertising Banners:  We have used, and will continue to use banner sponsor placements on our site.  The one place we are missing is at the top of the screen.  Of course we can always do a pop-up or slide-down style ad.  But people tend to hate these and disable them.  So, if we can add more customizable locations for these banners, it would be a big hit for our business.  
Google & SEO:  This service is so strange and it seems to change every other quarter.  New rules all the time, and I've gone from ~$700/mo in banner income to ~$125/mo.  I have no idea why this is, but I did notice that Google doesn't do very well with active community sites (they prefer static pages I guess).  So, if you are building something new with the release of IPB5, I would be very interested to see how we can improve our SEO or even Google results.
Forum Layout:  I *REALLY* like the new look of your forum design in IPB5.  I cannot wait to use it.  The one thing our members really appreciate are the active notifications and easy way to see how things changed over the last 24/48 hours.  The new features coming seem to compliment this very well.  Not to mention a lot of people have been asking for the light/dark mode and it will be nice to see this capability built-in rather than having to design our own.
Community Experts:  I did see something about the addition of community experts.  VERY GOOD addition!!  In an automotive community like ours, there are always guys hanging around that are considered RL experts as well.  I'd love to give them the recognition they deserve and let people know they actually *DO* know what they are talking about.  I hope this is an 'approved only' capability as I am sure some people may request this status and don't really deserve it.  😉
Downloads, Knowledgebase, Gallery:  These existing capabilities are huge wins for us.  Although I would like to see an update to Gallery, the majority of the existing features work very well.  I hope these stay and continue to see improvements as the product goes into the next stage.
Blogs:  For us, the blog module has been a strange experience.  Some guys know how to use it, while other people tend to post questions and use it like a forum.  If we were to continue using blogs, it might be a great idea to make sure end-users know they are in a "blog module" rather than part of the forums.  It's hard to explain on text but honestly I think people get confused as to what a blog is versus a forum.
All in all, I am so happy to see that I've invested with a company that is taking this product to the next level.  Your team is amazing and it's reassuring to see that private communities are still a necessary part of the Internet.  As we continue forward, please understand that I'll stick around as a long term customer.  Just don't jack up the rates too high on us.   😉
Mike

As a community owner for over two decades, I wanted to give some personal feedback as to what I find very useful (and need) to keep my community alive. 
Big Tech Competition:  The biggest challenge has been competing with other online services like FB, Reddit, Twitter, etc, etc.  You guys have hit the sweet spot in generating useful integrations to these services.  I would also like one for Linkedin but I'm sure that's on the radar.  With any competition like big tech, we can provide a more specialized touch to any community.  I hope we can still maintain this presence and I have a feeling IBP5 will give us even more ways to create active sites that give the big boys a run for their money.
Monetization:  I have a specialized car club and, with Invision, I've been able to monetize our existence and pay our bills.  We are hosted on a dedicated server environment so we have our fair-share of bills.  I've looked into using a cloud-host but the costs don't justify simply putting a machine into a colo site.  We also have other bills like licensing, email services, and annual domain costs.  With the integrations to Google Adsense, Infolinks, and the paid subscription model (built into IPB), this has enabled us to pay these bills and continue well into the future.  The addition of Subscriptions has also helped us a LOT!!!!

3rd Pary Marketplace:  I have appreciated the Invision Community capabilities with 3rd party apps (Marketplace).  However, I see these have been depreciated for the upcoming release.  Some of these modules really gave us an edge and we were able to stand out.  I fear that removing this integration may put us into a general category just like everyone else.  So, I hope the team considers opening this up again or at least making it easier for us to customize our sites to provide unique services.  Some of the more important apps for us are Member Garage, Member Maps, Classified Ads (big one), Tapatalk, and Member Info blocks (we use member numbers for members to use as discount codes to our partners).
Advertising Banners:  We have used, and will continue to use banner sponsor placements on our site.  The one place we are missing is at the top of the screen.  Of course we can always do a pop-up or slide-down style ad.  But people tend to hate these and disable them.  So, if we can add more customizable locations for these banners, it would be a big hit for our business.  
Google & SEO:  This service is so strange and it seems to change every other quarter.  New rules all the time, and I've gone from ~$700/mo in banner income to ~$125/mo.  I have no idea why this is, but I did notice that Google doesn't do very well with active community sites (they prefer static pages I guess).  So, if you are building something new with the release of IPB5, I would be very interested to see how we can improve our SEO or even Google results.
Forum Layout:  I *REALLY* like the new look of your forum design in IPB5.  I cannot wait to use it.  The one thing our members really appreciate are the active notifications and easy way to see how things changed over the last 24/48 hours.  The new features coming seem to compliment this very well.  Not to mention a lot of people have been asking for the light/dark mode and it will be nice to see this capability built-in rather than having to design our own.
Community Experts:  I did see something about the addition of community experts.  VERY GOOD addition!!  In an automotive community like ours, there are always guys hanging around that are considered RL experts as well.  I'd love to give them the recognition they deserve and let people know they actually *DO* know what they are talking about.  I hope this is an 'approved only' capability as I am sure some people may request this status and don't really deserve it.  😉
Downloads, Knowledgebase, Gallery:  These existing capabilities are huge wins for us.  Although I would like to see an update to Gallery, the majority of the existing features work very well.  I hope these stay and continue to see improvements as the product goes into the next stage.
Blogs:  For us, the blog module has been a strange experience.  Some guys know how to use it, while other people tend to post questions and use it like a forum.  If we were to continue using blogs, it might be a great idea to make sure end-users know they are in a "blog module" rather than part of the forums.  It's hard to explain on text but honestly I think people get confused as to what a blog is versus a forum.
All in all, I am so happy to see that I've invested with a company that is taking this product to the next level.  Your team is amazing and it's reassuring to see that private communities are still a necessary part of the Internet.  As we continue forward, please understand that I'll stick around as a long term customer.  Just don't jack up the rates too high on us.   😉
Mike

As a community owner for over two decades, I wanted to give some personal feedback as to what I find very useful (and need) to keep my community alive. 
Big Tech Competition:  The biggest challenge has been competing with other online services like FB, Reddit, Twitter, etc, etc.  You guys have hit the sweet spot in generating useful integrations to these services.  I would also like one for Linkedin but I'm sure that's on the radar.  With any competition like big tech, we can provide a more specialized touch to any community.  I hope we can still maintain this presence and I have a feeling IBP5 will give us even more ways to create active sites that give the big boys a run for their money.
Monetization:  I have a specialized car club and, with Invision, I've been able to monetize our existence and pay our bills.  We are hosted on a dedicated server environment so we have our fair-share of bills.  I've looked into using a cloud-host but the costs don't justify simply putting a machine into a colo site.  We also have other bills like licensing, email services, and annual domain costs.  With the integrations to Google Adsense, Infolinks, and the paid subscription model (built into IPB), this has enabled us to pay these bills and continue well into the future.  The addition of Subscriptions has also helped us a LOT!!!!

3rd Pary Marketplace:  I have appreciated the Invision Community capabilities with 3rd party apps (Marketplace).  However, I see these have been depreciated for the upcoming release.  Some of these modules really gave us an edge and we were able to stand out.  I fear that removing this integration may put us into a general category just like everyone else.  So, I hope the team considers opening this up again or at least making it easier for us to customize our sites to provide unique services.  Some of the more important apps for us are Member Garage, Member Maps, Classified Ads (big one), Tapatalk, and Member Info blocks (we use member numbers for members to use as discount codes to our partners).
Advertising Banners:  We have used, and will continue to use banner sponsor placements on our site.  The one place we are missing is at the top of the screen.  Of course we can always do a pop-up or slide-down style ad.  But people tend to hate these and disable them.  So, if we can add more customizable locations for these banners, it would be a big hit for our business.  
Google & SEO:  This service is so strange and it seems to change every other quarter.  New rules all the time, and I've gone from ~$700/mo in banner income to ~$125/mo.  I have no idea why this is, but I did notice that Google doesn't do very well with active community sites (they prefer static pages I guess).  So, if you are building something new with the release of IPB5, I would be very interested to see how we can improve our SEO or even Google results.
Forum Layout:  I *REALLY* like the new look of your forum design in IPB5.  I cannot wait to use it.  The one thing our members really appreciate are the active notifications and easy way to see how things changed over the last 24/48 hours.  The new features coming seem to compliment this very well.  Not to mention a lot of people have been asking for the light/dark mode and it will be nice to see this capability built-in rather than having to design our own.
Community Experts:  I did see something about the addition of community experts.  VERY GOOD addition!!  In an automotive community like ours, there are always guys hanging around that are considered RL experts as well.  I'd love to give them the recognition they deserve and let people know they actually *DO* know what they are talking about.  I hope this is an 'approved only' capability as I am sure some people may request this status and don't really deserve it.  😉
Downloads, Knowledgebase, Gallery:  These existing capabilities are huge wins for us.  Although I would like to see an update to Gallery, the majority of the existing features work very well.  I hope these stay and continue to see improvements as the product goes into the next stage.
Blogs:  For us, the blog module has been a strange experience.  Some guys know how to use it, while other people tend to post questions and use it like a forum.  If we were to continue using blogs, it might be a great idea to make sure end-users know they are in a "blog module" rather than part of the forums.  It's hard to explain on text but honestly I think people get confused as to what a blog is versus a forum.
All in all, I am so happy to see that I've invested with a company that is taking this product to the next level.  Your team is amazing and it's reassuring to see that private communities are still a necessary part of the Internet.  As we continue forward, please understand that I'll stick around as a long term customer.  Just don't jack up the rates too high on us.   😉
Mike

As a community owner for over two decades, I wanted to give some personal feedback as to what I find very useful (and need) to keep my community alive. 
Big Tech Competition:  The biggest challenge has been competing with other online services like FB, Reddit, Twitter, etc, etc.  You guys have hit the sweet spot in generating useful integrations to these services.  I would also like one for Linkedin but I'm sure that's on the radar.  With any competition like big tech, we can provide a more specialized touch to any community.  I hope we can still maintain this presence and I have a feeling IBP5 will give us even more ways to create active sites that give the big boys a run for their money.
Monetization:  I have a specialized car club and, with Invision, I've been able to monetize our existence and pay our bills.  We are hosted on a dedicated server environment so we have our fair-share of bills.  I've looked into using a cloud-host but the costs don't justify simply putting a machine into a colo site.  We also have other bills like licensing, email services, and annual domain costs.  With the integrations to Google Adsense, Infolinks, and the paid subscription model (built into IPB), this has enabled us to pay these bills and continue well into the future.  The addition of Subscriptions has also helped us a LOT!!!!

3rd Pary Marketplace:  I have appreciated the Invision Community capabilities with 3rd party apps (Marketplace).  However, I see these have been depreciated for the upcoming release.  Some of these modules really gave us an edge and we were able to stand out.  I fear that removing this integration may put us into a general category just like everyone else.  So, I hope the team considers opening this up again or at least making it easier for us to customize our sites to provide unique services.  Some of the more important apps for us are Member Garage, Member Maps, Classified Ads (big one), Tapatalk, and Member Info blocks (we use member numbers for members to use as discount codes to our partners).
Advertising Banners:  We have used, and will continue to use banner sponsor placements on our site.  The one place we are missing is at the top of the screen.  Of course we can always do a pop-up or slide-down style ad.  But people tend to hate these and disable them.  So, if we can add more customizable locations for these banners, it would be a big hit for our business.  
Google & SEO:  This service is so strange and it seems to change every other quarter.  New rules all the time, and I've gone from ~$700/mo in banner income to ~$125/mo.  I have no idea why this is, but I did notice that Google doesn't do very well with active community sites (they prefer static pages I guess).  So, if you are building something new with the release of IPB5, I would be very interested to see how we can improve our SEO or even Google results.
Forum Layout:  I *REALLY* like the new look of your forum design in IPB5.  I cannot wait to use it.  The one thing our members really appreciate are the active notifications and easy way to see how things changed over the last 24/48 hours.  The new features coming seem to compliment this very well.  Not to mention a lot of people have been asking for the light/dark mode and it will be nice to see this capability built-in rather than having to design our own.
Community Experts:  I did see something about the addition of community experts.  VERY GOOD addition!!  In an automotive community like ours, there are always guys hanging around that are considered RL experts as well.  I'd love to give them the recognition they deserve and let people know they actually *DO* know what they are talking about.  I hope this is an 'approved only' capability as I am sure some people may request this status and don't really deserve it.  😉
Downloads, Knowledgebase, Gallery:  These existing capabilities are huge wins for us.  Although I would like to see an update to Gallery, the majority of the existing features work very well.  I hope these stay and continue to see improvements as the product goes into the next stage.
Blogs:  For us, the blog module has been a strange experience.  Some guys know how to use it, while other people tend to post questions and use it like a forum.  If we were to continue using blogs, it might be a great idea to make sure end-users know they are in a "blog module" rather than part of the forums.  It's hard to explain on text but honestly I think people get confused as to what a blog is versus a forum.
All in all, I am so happy to see that I've invested with a company that is taking this product to the next level.  Your team is amazing and it's reassuring to see that private communities are still a necessary part of the Internet.  As we continue forward, please understand that I'll stick around as a long term customer.  Just don't jack up the rates too high on us.   😉
Mike

As a community owner for over two decades, I wanted to give some personal feedback as to what I find very useful (and need) to keep my community alive. 
Big Tech Competition:  The biggest challenge has been competing with other online services like FB, Reddit, Twitter, etc, etc.  You guys have hit the sweet spot in generating useful integrations to these services.  I would also like one for Linkedin but I'm sure that's on the radar.  With any competition like big tech, we can provide a more specialized touch to any community.  I hope we can still maintain this presence and I have a feeling IBP5 will give us even more ways to create active sites that give the big boys a run for their money.
Monetization:  I have a specialized car club and, with Invision, I've been able to monetize our existence and pay our bills.  We are hosted on a dedicated server environment so we have our fair-share of bills.  I've looked into using a cloud-host but the costs don't justify simply putting a machine into a colo site.  We also have other bills like licensing, email services, and annual domain costs.  With the integrations to Google Adsense, Infolinks, and the paid subscription model (built into IPB), this has enabled us to pay these bills and continue well into the future.  The addition of Subscriptions has also helped us a LOT!!!!

3rd Pary Marketplace:  I have appreciated the Invision Community capabilities with 3rd party apps (Marketplace).  However, I see these have been depreciated for the upcoming release.  Some of these modules really gave us an edge and we were able to stand out.  I fear that removing this integration may put us into a general category just like everyone else.  So, I hope the team considers opening this up again or at least making it easier for us to customize our sites to provide unique services.  Some of the more important apps for us are Member Garage, Member Maps, Classified Ads (big one), Tapatalk, and Member Info blocks (we use member numbers for members to use as discount codes to our partners).
Advertising Banners:  We have used, and will continue to use banner sponsor placements on our site.  The one place we are missing is at the top of the screen.  Of course we can always do a pop-up or slide-down style ad.  But people tend to hate these and disable them.  So, if we can add more customizable locations for these banners, it would be a big hit for our business.  
Google & SEO:  This service is so strange and it seems to change every other quarter.  New rules all the time, and I've gone from ~$700/mo in banner income to ~$125/mo.  I have no idea why this is, but I did notice that Google doesn't do very well with active community sites (they prefer static pages I guess).  So, if you are building something new with the release of IPB5, I would be very interested to see how we can improve our SEO or even Google results.
Forum Layout:  I *REALLY* like the new look of your forum design in IPB5.  I cannot wait to use it.  The one thing our members really appreciate are the active notifications and easy way to see how things changed over the last 24/48 hours.  The new features coming seem to compliment this very well.  Not to mention a lot of people have been asking for the light/dark mode and it will be nice to see this capability built-in rather than having to design our own.
Community Experts:  I did see something about the addition of community experts.  VERY GOOD addition!!  In an automotive community like ours, there are always guys hanging around that are considered RL experts as well.  I'd love to give them the recognition they deserve and let people know they actually *DO* know what they are talking about.  I hope this is an 'approved only' capability as I am sure some people may request this status and don't really deserve it.  😉
Downloads, Knowledgebase, Gallery:  These existing capabilities are huge wins for us.  Although I would like to see an update to Gallery, the majority of the existing features work very well.  I hope these stay and continue to see improvements as the product goes into the next stage.
Blogs:  For us, the blog module has been a strange experience.  Some guys know how to use it, while other people tend to post questions and use it like a forum.  If we were to continue using blogs, it might be a great idea to make sure end-users know they are in a "blog module" rather than part of the forums.  It's hard to explain on text but honestly I think people get confused as to what a blog is versus a forum.
All in all, I am so happy to see that I've invested with a company that is taking this product to the next level.  Your team is amazing and it's reassuring to see that private communities are still a necessary part of the Internet.  As we continue forward, please understand that I'll stick around as a long term customer.  Just don't jack up the rates too high on us.   😉
Mike

As a community owner for over two decades, I wanted to give some personal feedback as to what I find very useful (and need) to keep my community alive. 
Big Tech Competition:  The biggest challenge has been competing with other online services like FB, Reddit, Twitter, etc, etc.  You guys have hit the sweet spot in generating useful integrations to these services.  I would also like one for Linkedin but I'm sure that's on the radar.  With any competition like big tech, we can provide a more specialized touch to any community.  I hope we can still maintain this presence and I have a feeling IBP5 will give us even more ways to create active sites that give the big boys a run for their money.
Monetization:  I have a specialized car club and, with Invision, I've been able to monetize our existence and pay our bills.  We are hosted on a dedicated server environment so we have our fair-share of bills.  I've looked into using a cloud-host but the costs don't justify simply putting a machine into a colo site.  We also have other bills like licensing, email services, and annual domain costs.  With the integrations to Google Adsense, Infolinks, and the paid subscription model (built into IPB), this has enabled us to pay these bills and continue well into the future.  The addition of Subscriptions has also helped us a LOT!!!!

3rd Pary Marketplace:  I have appreciated the Invision Community capabilities with 3rd party apps (Marketplace).  However, I see these have been depreciated for the upcoming release.  Some of these modules really gave us an edge and we were able to stand out.  I fear that removing this integration may put us into a general category just like everyone else.  So, I hope the team considers opening this up again or at least making it easier for us to customize our sites to provide unique services.  Some of the more important apps for us are Member Garage, Member Maps, Classified Ads (big one), Tapatalk, and Member Info blocks (we use member numbers for members to use as discount codes to our partners).
Advertising Banners:  We have used, and will continue to use banner sponsor placements on our site.  The one place we are missing is at the top of the screen.  Of course we can always do a pop-up or slide-down style ad.  But people tend to hate these and disable them.  So, if we can add more customizable locations for these banners, it would be a big hit for our business.  
Google & SEO:  This service is so strange and it seems to change every other quarter.  New rules all the time, and I've gone from ~$700/mo in banner income to ~$125/mo.  I have no idea why this is, but I did notice that Google doesn't do very well with active community sites (they prefer static pages I guess).  So, if you are building something new with the release of IPB5, I would be very interested to see how we can improve our SEO or even Google results.
Forum Layout:  I *REALLY* like the new look of your forum design in IPB5.  I cannot wait to use it.  The one thing our members really appreciate are the active notifications and easy way to see how things changed over the last 24/48 hours.  The new features coming seem to compliment this very well.  Not to mention a lot of people have been asking for the light/dark mode and it will be nice to see this capability built-in rather than having to design our own.
Community Experts:  I did see something about the addition of community experts.  VERY GOOD addition!!  In an automotive community like ours, there are always guys hanging around that are considered RL experts as well.  I'd love to give them the recognition they deserve and let people know they actually *DO* know what they are talking about.  I hope this is an 'approved only' capability as I am sure some people may request this status and don't really deserve it.  😉
Downloads, Knowledgebase, Gallery:  These existing capabilities are huge wins for us.  Although I would like to see an update to Gallery, the majority of the existing features work very well.  I hope these stay and continue to see improvements as the product goes into the next stage.
Blogs:  For us, the blog module has been a strange experience.  Some guys know how to use it, while other people tend to post questions and use it like a forum.  If we were to continue using blogs, it might be a great idea to make sure end-users know they are in a "blog module" rather than part of the forums.  It's hard to explain on text but honestly I think people get confused as to what a blog is versus a forum.
All in all, I am so happy to see that I've invested with a company that is taking this product to the next level.  Your team is amazing and it's reassuring to see that private communities are still a necessary part of the Internet.  As we continue forward, please understand that I'll stick around as a long term customer.  Just don't jack up the rates too high on us.   😉
Mike

As a community owner for over two decades, I wanted to give some personal feedback as to what I find very useful (and need) to keep my community alive. 
Big Tech Competition:  The biggest challenge has been competing with other online services like FB, Reddit, Twitter, etc, etc.  You guys have hit the sweet spot in generating useful integrations to these services.  I would also like one for Linkedin but I'm sure that's on the radar.  With any competition like big tech, we can provide a more specialized touch to any community.  I hope we can still maintain this presence and I have a feeling IBP5 will give us even more ways to create active sites that give the big boys a run for their money.
Monetization:  I have a specialized car club and, with Invision, I've been able to monetize our existence and pay our bills.  We are hosted on a dedicated server environment so we have our fair-share of bills.  I've looked into using a cloud-host but the costs don't justify simply putting a machine into a colo site.  We also have other bills like licensing, email services, and annual domain costs.  With the integrations to Google Adsense, Infolinks, and the paid subscription model (built into IPB), this has enabled us to pay these bills and continue well into the future.  The addition of Subscriptions has also helped us a LOT!!!!

3rd Pary Marketplace:  I have appreciated the Invision Community capabilities with 3rd party apps (Marketplace).  However, I see these have been depreciated for the upcoming release.  Some of these modules really gave us an edge and we were able to stand out.  I fear that removing this integration may put us into a general category just like everyone else.  So, I hope the team considers opening this up again or at least making it easier for us to customize our sites to provide unique services.  Some of the more important apps for us are Member Garage, Member Maps, Classified Ads (big one), Tapatalk, and Member Info blocks (we use member numbers for members to use as discount codes to our partners).
Advertising Banners:  We have used, and will continue to use banner sponsor placements on our site.  The one place we are missing is at the top of the screen.  Of course we can always do a pop-up or slide-down style ad.  But people tend to hate these and disable them.  So, if we can add more customizable locations for these banners, it would be a big hit for our business.  
Google & SEO:  This service is so strange and it seems to change every other quarter.  New rules all the time, and I've gone from ~$700/mo in banner income to ~$125/mo.  I have no idea why this is, but I did notice that Google doesn't do very well with active community sites (they prefer static pages I guess).  So, if you are building something new with the release of IPB5, I would be very interested to see how we can improve our SEO or even Google results.
Forum Layout:  I *REALLY* like the new look of your forum design in IPB5.  I cannot wait to use it.  The one thing our members really appreciate are the active notifications and easy way to see how things changed over the last 24/48 hours.  The new features coming seem to compliment this very well.  Not to mention a lot of people have been asking for the light/dark mode and it will be nice to see this capability built-in rather than having to design our own.
Community Experts:  I did see something about the addition of community experts.  VERY GOOD addition!!  In an automotive community like ours, there are always guys hanging around that are considered RL experts as well.  I'd love to give them the recognition they deserve and let people know they actually *DO* know what they are talking about.  I hope this is an 'approved only' capability as I am sure some people may request this status and don't really deserve it.  😉
Downloads, Knowledgebase, Gallery:  These existing capabilities are huge wins for us.  Although I would like to see an update to Gallery, the majority of the existing features work very well.  I hope these stay and continue to see improvements as the product goes into the next stage.
Blogs:  For us, the blog module has been a strange experience.  Some guys know how to use it, while other people tend to post questions and use it like a forum.  If we were to continue using blogs, it might be a great idea to make sure end-users know they are in a "blog module" rather than part of the forums.  It's hard to explain on text but honestly I think people get confused as to what a blog is versus a forum.
All in all, I am so happy to see that I've invested with a company that is taking this product to the next level.  Your team is amazing and it's reassuring to see that private communities are still a necessary part of the Internet.  As we continue forward, please understand that I'll stick around as a long term customer.  Just don't jack up the rates too high on us.   😉
Mike

Is there any approximate release date for version v5 yet?

I just had the same problem...  it turns out my datastore was full.  I deleted a few backup files and all is good.
 

Hi all,
I currently use month-to-month pricing for my subscriptions.  I would like to provide an option to provide a discount if the user wants to pay for an annual membership.  Is there an option for this in the subscription system?  It would look something like this:
Subscription 1 - $5/mo or $60 $50/year (discounted) Subscription 2 - $10/mo or $120 $100/year (discounted) Trick is, I want to keep these as the same subscription.  I realize I could add more subscriptions with the annual rate but I want to keep it simple for users.
Mike

For clarification, this shows as available to buy within the marketplace on ACP, and we are aware of that.  You need to renew the product, which can only be done via the marketplace here on the IPS site at present. 

No worries, I've moved the topic to the suggestions section.

If it's any consolation, I've always had problems with RSS Import process.

Aack..  ok thanks I will revert back then.  Appreciate having this thread...  

Your cache level should definitively be Standard, the default setting. Using anything else will break IPS' cache busting feature, which is needed to recache static assets.
Cache TTL can come down to a matter of preference. Considering important resources like CSS and Javascript assets are cache busted as needed, it's safe to use values up to even 30 days if you so wish.
The potential concern with this is, if image attachments are deleted but left embedded into posts as an example, they will still display as cached in the users browser for however long you set this to. So, it can be a minor privacy concern, as IPS currently does not automatically remove image embeds from posts when attachments are deleted from the users control panel.
That's really the only thing to keep in mind. Otherwise, I recommend at least 7-days personally.
 
Outside of these, there are several useful features Cloudflare provides that I recommend taking advantage of.
Note, some of these features are Pro only, but if you're a Free user, use the ones that aren't. They help if even a little bit and there's no reason not to.
Now, if you have a high traffic website and you can afford it, I personally believe it's worth upgrading to the Pro plan.
 
But to get started with the optimizations, under the Speed tab, go to Optimization and make sure these settings are enabled.

Polish with WebP enabled can be hugely useful if you have a lot of PNG attachments / avatar uploads on your site, as WebP can provide substantially better lossless image compression compared to PNG.
Auto Minify is disabled by default and you should enable it. The actual performance improvement is small, but it's still an improvement with no risks, so there's no reason not to use it.
Brotli, again, small improvements, but no risks and and no reason not to use it for clients that support it. All the overhead involved in performing the compression is handled by Cloudflare here after all.

Enhanced HTTP/2 Prioritization and TCP Turbo are again zero risk performance improvements and if you have access to them you should enable them.
Mirage can be great in theory for mobile browsers by automatically optimizing images on slow networks. It's in beta, but I do definitely recommend enabling this. Roughly half the of the internets traffic today is mobile. These optimizations can yield huge benefits to your users.
Rocket Loader I do not recommend enabling, as it can cause functional and perceptional issues with IPB. It makes things look and act in strange ways, and can potentially just break things. Rocket Loader is one of those things that works well for some sites, but is awful for others. It's not great for IPB in my experience. I say the same for PageSpeed JS optimizations and so on as well.
Under the Network tab, make sure these settings are enabled.

All of these are, again, zero risk performance optimizations. No reason not to use them.
Argo tunnel can potentially be useful as well, but note that it can be extremely expensive depending on your bandwidth requirements. It's an additional $0.10/GB of bandwidth. Do not enable it until you have at least a months worth of bandwidth analytics logged from Cloudflare so you have an idea of how much you can expect to pay if you enable this feature.