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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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We will miss you, marketplace 😢

Long ago, back in the dark ages, forums used the number of posts a member made and how long ago they joined to demonstrate trust and experience.
Is simply posting a lot and being a member for a long time the best way to know which community members are experts?
And is there a better way?
We think so.
 
 
What makes an expert, and why are they important?
Community experts are the keystones to any thriving community. You probably recognise a handful in your community. They tend to be active regularly, are often the first to try and help others with their questions and help set a positive example within the community.
Wouldn't it be great if newer community members could discover who these super users were a little easier? These members trying to find their feet in a new community could follow trustworthy individuals, absorb the positive tone of the community, and even get help a little quicker.
In the past, forums have shown trust and experience through basic metrics like post count and the years since they joined. However, these metrics only show that the individual has been around a long time and posts a lot. It doesn't show that they are potential role models or helpful and trustworthy.
Community Experts with Invision Community 5
Invision Community 5 identifies these experts through metrics such as the number of solutions they have, the volume of 'helpful' votes on their replies, the speed of answers and more.
Each forum will have its own experts, so if you have a very broad community, someone who is very helpful in a particular area will show as an expert in that area only.
When a member has been picked as an expert, they'll receive an email thanking them, and they can then opt-in to be shown as an expert along with a regular notification or email with any unanswered questions in forums they are experts in.

I'm absolutely killing it in the Test Forum
Every few months, the experts are recalculated to reflect the organic way communities grow and change. After all, there's little point in showing that a non-active member is an expert. It might even encourage new community experts to keep up the great work and remain active longer.

Community experts have a badge shown with their posts, along with the option to follow them. Encouraging new members to follow trusted community members should be a core part of any community strategy.
Settings and control
Of course, not everyone should be labelled as a community expert, and perhaps, in very rare circumstances, an existing community expert could have a bad day and not represent the community well.
Invision Community 5 gives you the ability to set which groups experts can be picked from and offers you the opportunity to block existing experts, ensuring they won't be selected again in the future.

Over to you
All communities have to be purposeful and provide value. That value may be in close friendships, or it may be in getting answers for problems you have. Either way, locating the most helpful members will help develop trust, provide guidance and increase knowledge within your community.
For transactional communities such as support-based communities, experts are vital in providing timely answers and demonstrating credibility and expertise to others.
As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Please let us know in the comments.
 

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This is absolutely next level. well done IPS 👏
Great job @Ehren

We have an internal wiki that is quite basic, but we'll eventually get an improved version out to the public (this is a little out of date but you get the idea).

Every IPS client at launch of v5 immediately changing all of their color schemes just to play with the theme editor.  
Nice job with the theme editor controls.  There are so many options to customize the theme.  
I'm personally most excited about mobile views and header controls to control the placement of logos, menus, and breadcrumbs.  Menus and above the fold placement is especially important for a mobile world, and we need to be judicious with how space is allocated.  

Thanks for the feedback everyone!
Thanks mate! Third party designers will be able to release themes which take advantage of all of these features, which almost makes "premade themes" much closer to "custom themes". If you find a theme for sale, but the header positions aren't quite right for example, you'll be able to customize it without asking the designer for custom changes. Win win for both the designer and the customer!
 
The web developer tools built into your browser are likely the best solution here. I'll write up documentation for all of the new components (grid, buttons, etc), but as for the custom CSS editor, there are no plans at this stage to expand it beyond a regular code editor.
 
Yeah, the swatches will come in really handy. It's a much easier system instead of manually trying to allocate light/dark shades manually.
The header background in the intro was added via Custom CSS. I've been thinking of the best way to add an image feature for the header, but making a simple UI for something like that is ironically a very complex task since you also need to cater for the multiple header/nav bars as you mentioned. It's very simple to add using CSS, so at least there's a simple fallback if nothing else comes to mind before the release date 🙂
There are no plans for gradients, but since you seem pretty confident with CSS, you'll have no problems adding them using the code editor 🙂
 
Thanks David!
There certainly is. Snippets are truncated to a maximum of 680 characters for memory - but you can trim that down using CSS line-clamp. One line of CSS can do that for you. 👍

This is absolutely next level. well done IPS 👏
Great job @Ehren

This is absolutely next level. well done IPS 👏
Great job @Ehren

This is absolutely next level. well done IPS 👏
Great job @Ehren

CleanShot 2023-10-19 at 15.29.27.mp4  
 

This is absolutely next level. well done IPS 👏
Great job @Ehren

Welcome to the third video of our sneak peak series! Today, we're really excited to introduce you to the new Theme Editor!
Built entirely from scratch, the new editor provides an instant, live preview of your theme, as soon as you modify a setting. It's a zero-code approach to creating themes, and has been designed to ensure your theme adheres to your color scheme and looks great on every device, with very little effort. Let's take a closer look!
 
Paragraph 1.mp4
 
To the left of the editor, you’ll see a live preview of your community. You can navigate to any page, as if you were browsing your site normally. At the top left of the editor, you’ll find icons which change the theme between the light and dark color schemes. Below that are buttons which change the viewport size, from desktop, to tablet, to mobile. This is a really convenient way to ensure your theme looks great on every device, without needing to manually resize your browser window.
Lets take a closer look at the Color Palette.
Editing colors in version 4 was a fairly time consuming process. For example, modifying the color scheme from the default blue to another color meant that 26 theme settings needed to be changed. In contrast, the Version 5 theme is powered by just 3 colors: Primary colors are responsible for styling the main elements on your page, such as the Start new topic button. Secondary colors control minor elements, such as pagination links, while the Base color is responsible for controlling the overall tint on your site.
Clicking on these colors opens a color picker. Let’s change this blue color to yellow.
 
Video 2.mp4
 
You’ll notice two things have happened here. First, the preview window updated as soon as we modified the color. All elements which were previously blue, now use yellow, such as the Start new topic button. Secondly, the text color in our button has changed from white to black. This is our automatic contrast feature and it ensures our text is easy to read on our new yellow background, since white text may be more difficult to read for some viewers.
Below the color picker is a text box, with our color displayed in HSL. You can paste your own colors in this box, in any color format and that color will be applied to your elements.
 
Video 3.mp4
 
The Base color controls the tint of your backgrounds and text colors. Let's try a few examples to demonstrate how easy it is to recolor your theme.
 
Video 4.mp4
 
Next up are Logos! Invision Community 5 has three logo types: a text logo, an image logo for desktops and an image logo for mobiles. Let’s edit our text logo.
 
Video 5.mp4
 
After changing the text to “Theme Editor Demo”, we can see that the logo in our preview window updates instantly with our new text. Below that, we have multiple options to help us style the text logo, such as font-family These fonts are a combination of system fonts and web fonts. The web fonts are hosted locally on your site for optimal performance. Additionally, we can also change the font-weight and font-size. We might want a different font-size for mobile logos, so that can be edited too. We can see a live preview by changing our viewport to the mobile option.
If you’d prefer to use an image logo, you can assign it using the Image Logo options. Image logos are made up of 2 upload fields, one for the light theme and one for the dark theme. Below these upload fields, a slider lets you resize your logo so it fits neatly.
 
Video 6.mp4
 
Layout options let you assign the default layouts in your community. In our first sneak peak video, we showcased the new side panel layout, feed view for forum categories, and compact view for topics. These can all be enabled via the theme editor using a simple select menu.
 
Video 7.mp4
 
Lets explore some Color options! In the Header panel, we can see a list of elements we can customize. Clicking on an element opens the Swatch List, which is a list of 22 colors that are powered by the Base, Primary and Secondary colors from earlier. We have 6 "light" base colors, 6 "dark" base colors as well as various shades of our primary and secondary colors. Clicking on any of these swatches will apply that color to your element.
But what if none of these colors suit your requirement? That’s where the Color Picker comes in handy. Here, we can easily choose any color, or even paste in our own color like before.
 
Video 8.mp4
 
A major hurdle with themes in version 4 was customising the header. Depending on the complexity, this would typically involve modifications to both the CSS and HTML. That is a thing of the past with version 5! If we flick over to our Settings tab, you’ll see a brand new interface for customising the header. A new drag and drop feature allows you to easily reposition header elements without touching a single line of code.
 
Video 9.mp4
It’s an incredibly fun tool to play with, and we’re really excited to hear what you think!
Below the drag and drop area, we can customise the header further by using sliders to adjust its height, or we can enable navigation icons with a single click. Body settings let you can customise global elements such as the body background color, text colors, the max-width of your site, the font-family, font-size and more.
Editing Content boxes has always required code modifications in the past. Using this new editor, we can adjust not only the colors of the boxes, but also the borders and shadows. Theme editing has honestly never been this easy!
 
Video 10.mp4
And there you have it! Our brand new theme editor. With a few simple clicks and drags, we've been able to create a customised theme that looks great on desktops and mobiles, with a new color scheme, new logos, a customised header, new page layouts and restyled content boxes - all without touching a single line of code.
Speaking of code, for those of you who want to apply more advanced customisations, we’ve added a really convenient way to access your custom CSS file, via a new dialog box.
Video 11.mp4
And last but not least - the new theme editor is fully responsive, so even if you’re away from the desk, so you’ll be able to change colours and settings, upload new logos, redesign your header and even add your own code!
 
Video 12.mp4
 
Developing this new editor has been a lot of fun, and it’s even more fun to use. Themes have never been easier to edit and we're really excited for you all to get your hands on it so you can have a play for yourself - but for now, let us know what you think the comments, and we’ll see you next time!

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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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I'll be doing a dev blog on the significant changes in how you create and edit themes in v5.

Great work as always @Ehren
For me particularly like the new feed view. it just triggers some cool design ideas 😊

The side navigation panel is completely separate from the widget sidebar, so it's reserved for navigation items only. When enabled via theme settings, the navigation panel replaces the horizontal header/navigation menu - so you can only use a single one at a time. The navigation links are managed via the Menu Manager, as you'd expect.
The sidebar has independent scrolling which means you won't have a long empty space in either the sidebar or the content area:
sidebar-scroll.mp4
Just like the other views (table and grid), the avatar is of the person who posted the most recent reply. User participation isn't displayed in our existing views (apart from fluid of course), but is something we can keep in mind for a future iteration.
To prevent the index page from becoming overwhelmed with icons and badges, there are no badges for answered, staff, etc. Quotes, codes and gifs are removed, so only plain text is shown in the snippet.
Thanks! The hovercard has received a UI polish in version 5, but still behaves as normal in the compact topic UI.
Here's an example with more data for you. The stats behave like bricks in a wall - they'll occupy the full width of the mini profile, as neatly as possible.
Desktop:

 
Mobile:

 
Thanks Joel!

Welcome to Invision Community 5!
Over the coming weeks, we'll be exploring a bunch of new features and improvements coming to our user interface including our brand new theme editor, a new mobile UI, dark mode and performance improvements thanks to a reduction in both JavaScript and CSS. To kick off this series, let’s take a closer look at the new sidebar layout and new view modes for the forum index and topic pages.
Sidebar Layout
Traditionally, Invision Community has shipped with a horizontal header and navigation bar at the top of the page, which is still available in version 5. We're introducing a brand new (and optional) sidebar layout, which can be enabled or disabled easily from within your theme settings. The sidebar not only provides convenient access to your applications, activity streams and search bar, but you can now add links to nodes for even easier access to popular or commonly used areas of your community. For example - a category from your forum, an album from the Gallery, or a product group from Commerce.
Sidebar-zoom.mp4
Forum Index: Feed view
One of our goals for version 5 was to re-imagine new ways for your visitors to consume content, and the sidebar layout is just one of our solutions. Table view has been the typical way of displaying forums, providing visitors with a simple summary of the most recently active topic. Grid mode introduced cover photos to forums and is a great way to make your page more visually engaging, while fluid view allows visitors to filter through a list of topics to easily focus on multiple areas of the community.
Joining these view modes in version 5 is our new Feed view. Optional cover photos and featured forum colours allow you to personalise each forum, and a list of recently active topics with snippets of the most recent reply allow you to easily see what each forum is focusing on at a glance. The topic list drops below the cover photo and converts to a scrollable list on small devices. It's our fresh take on content display, and we can’t wait to hear your feedback!

 
Topic pages: Compact view
In addition, Invision Community 5 also introduces a new, compact layout option for topics. We wanted to create a layout which placed focus on your content while still keeping all of the authors profile information easily accessible within a mini profile. Stats, rank, badges, reputation points and more can be found by tapping the icon at the top of every post. The mini profile strip has also been added to other areas of the software too, such as comments and reviews in applications like Gallery and Blogs, and will appear on the mobile layout when the traditional "table view" is used in topics.
Switching between the new compact view and the author sidebar view takes just seconds giving you complete control over your community.
Mini profile.mp4
 
As part of this view, you also have the choice to feature/pin the original post to the top of every page, making it a breeze for your visitors to easily understand the context of replies without navigating back to page 1. Pinned posts have a slightly larger font-size to distinguish them from replies, and we've thoughtfully truncated them on pages beyond the first to keep scrolling to a minimum.

 
The new sidebar layout and view modes offer a fresh and innovative approach to navigating and interacting with your community. We’re really keen to hear your thoughts on these new views and whether you’ll be unleashing them on your own sites! We appreciate that no two sites are the same, and those who are a fan of the classic header look will benefit from quick styling tools and a visual way to re-arrange the header elements which we’ll cover in a later blog.
We’re looking forward to showcasing a whole bunch of new features over the coming weeks - so stay tuned, and we’ll see you then!
 

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As you may know, Invision Community 5 is currently in development, and progress has been great, with many areas starting to come together.
Almost all of the significant code restructuring has been completed, with much progress on the UI and the new theme bearing fruit. A fair few new features are complete, but some aren't quite ready to show, as they need a little love from Ehren.
I wanted to share a little teaser of Invision Community 5; how many new things or changes can you spot?
The small print
Please remember that the features, functionality and UI shown in this little teaser are pre-beta, so they are subject to change. The features and functionality shown here aren't all that has been completed; many new features are 'code-complete' but waiting for some UI polish before we're ready to share more. Essentially, what you're seeing is a work in progress.
We don't have a release timeframe in mind yet, but we'll let you know when we do!

Wonderful, it works! Tnx again! 🙂 

All text and messages in this theme is translatable. you can use alternative text using language setting.

To Marketplace developers and the Invision community as a whole, I will be happy to host an independent and collaborative Marketplace directory.  It's already in the works.
I fully support a thriving ecosystem of developers and clients: to extend, to inspire, and to push the boundaries of our platform. Technology is an important differentiator more than ever in the modern web, and working with developers (either privately or through their public mods) can help fine-tune your platform. 
 
More information and invitations will be sent out to active Marketplace devs.  You are also welcome to send me a direct PM.  
Follow this topic for any future updates.  

Hi all,
Next week we plan on releasing a few blogs outlining what development looks like for Invision Community v5.
I was curious as to what changes you'd like to see, and what changes do you think are coming?

Thanks for bringing to my attention.
I can confirm padding issue and custom text color for title in Plugin settings (for general timer block) however i can't confirm these for widgets and settings have intended effects. also links in text for both (plugin/widgets) is not affects by custom text color and i have idea for it. in any case, these issues along this report are going to be fix for next update. 👍

Hi all,
This is just a quick post to let you know that while stand-alone plug-ins are deprecated in version 5, there is no need to convert your plugins to applications right now.
There are significant changes coming to how third party templates and code interacts with the v5 framework changes which means any plug-in or application will need a lot of work for Invision Community 5. Simply converting a plug-in into an app won't future proof it, so it is a waste of your time at this point.
We're in the very early stages of making these framework changes but will get information to you as soon as we have everything figured out.
Also a reminder that v4 will have a multi-year deprecation, and we expect to work on both v4 and v5 for quite a while with a fairly slow migration over to v5 for the first chapter of its life, so I would think the majority of sales would still come from v4 for at least another year or so.
Thanks!