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We have had a question and answer feature in IPS Community Suite for some time and we are now happy to add Google Authenticator as another option. We have also combined the various options it a new Two Factor Authentication (2FA) section in the AdminCP with many more options. Two Factor Authentication Settings There are also new settings to control when a user is required (or not) to setup 2FA: 2FA Setup You can control what areas will prompt for 2FA authentication: 2FA Area Control And how the system should recover if a user cannot login via 2FA on their account: 2FA Recovery Settings An administrator can configure these settings to tailor the security needs of their community. For example, you might want to require 2FA your admins and moderators but keep it optional for your members. On the front end your members will see a new Account Security section under their settings area. Account Security Settings Once authenticated, a user will then be able to enable various security options. For example, the Google Authenticator setup shows an easy to follow setup. Google Authenticator Setup We hope you enjoy this new level of system security. IPS has plans to add additional 2FA providers beyond Question and Answers and Google Authenticator. We will keep you updated! This change will be in version 4.1.18 which is scheduled to be released in late January 2017.

Version 4.1.17 is now available! You can upgrade by downloading in the client area or just click upgrade in your AdminCP.

Next week, IPS will be implementing the pricing changes to our product lineup that we published in 2015. In the spirit of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we are extending an opportunity to purchase a new license or add new applications to your existing suite at 15% off our current pricing. To take advantage of this offer, please use coupon code IPSPROMO16 at checkout. This promotion is active starting now and valid until 1 December 2016 (EST) and applies to new purchases only. We are unable to retroactively apply the discount. This promotion also applies to Community in the Cloud for your first month of service! If you’ve been waiting to purchase a new license or add products to your suite, this is the last opportunity to obtain this level of pricing! Happy shopping!

Version 4.1.17 is in the final stages of development and will be released soon! Check out the release notes for the full list of what's new and our preview articles for details on some of the most interesting changes: Better Analytics Integration Tag Quick Edit Default Warning Notes Custom RSS Feeds Word and Link Filters Leaderboard Moderation Improvements Security and Privacy Embeds and Integration We hope you enjoy all these new additions coming in 4.1.17 and be sure to read the release notes for many smaller changes. The big feature in 4.1.17 is the new Leaderboard which we really think will enhance your community. If you like using pre-release beta versions, the public beta of 4.1.17 will be available in the client area on 28 November. We support betas on live installs with some exceptions so give it a try if you like to be first to try the new features!

IPS Community Suite allows for integrations with quite a few third party systems and also can embed content from external sites. We have added a whole new list of embed providers where you can just paste in a link to that site and a nice box will show up. For example, if I paste this link in normally: https://twitter.com/invisionps/status/799269691579449344 I get: You can do that will many popular sites already and we are adding a lot more: codepen.io coub.com deviantart.com docs.com funnyordie.com gettyimages.com iFixit.com kickstarter.com meetup.com mixcloud.com mix.office.com on.aol.com reddit.com reverbnation.com screencast.com screenr.com slideshare.net smugmug.com ustream.tv Google Maps Once you enable Google Maps under Community Enhancements by entering your Google API key you can them just paste in a link to a Google Map location. So when you paste a link to a Google Map in an editor it shows like this: Google Maps in Editor The maps are also interactive on the screen. REST API We have also added quite a few more endpoints, particularly in member management, to our REST API. If you are not already familiar with the REST API it is a great way to integrate external systems with IPS Community Suite. You can both fetch and modify data in the Suite via the API. REST API documentation... Third Party Diagnostics This is a bit more of a technical feature so feel free to skip if it does not interest you. If you use third party plugins or applications from our Marketplace or from other sites you may occasionally encounter issues in the Suite caused by those items but it is often hard to know the root issue. There are now tools in the AdminCP to show all places in the code that third party items are modifying to help with diagnosing issues. The Suite will now also try to detect if an error it encounters is referencing a third party plugin and suggest you disable it to see if the issue is resolved. New Support Tool Simplified Support Tool Though not specifically about embeds or integrations, the new Support Tool does better help diagnose issues so I thought I would give it a nice shout out. It really does help to find server problems, database issues, or outdated files that might interfere with your site. It also makes support so much easier if you submit your ticket to us via the Support Tool as it sends along a temporary login (if you allow it) for us to use. The new design simplifies the tool down to just one step and it gives you a report and suggested actions. This change will be in version 4.1.17 which is scheduled to be released in early December 2016.

IPS is always auditing our software to improve security at the code-level but these improvements are not really visible to you even though they protect your site all the time. We are implementing some new features that you can use to enhance the security and privacy of your site. Many of these features depend on your personal preferences, local laws, or the policies of your own organization. Here is a list of what's new: Birthday Control You may wish to make birthday viewing only show to admins or you can completely disable prompting for a birthday if you consider that information sensitive. Member Delete Name Retention When deleting a member in the AdminCP, if you choose to keep their posts the system currently names the posts with a display name of "Guest user" where user is the previous display name of the member you deleted. You can how choose to retain their name in posts or not so you can either have it as it is now or simple "Guest" on member delete. Password Strength Password Strength You now have two new options for password: show a strength meter and require strong passwords. You can choose to either just show the meter as a suggestion or you can also choose to enforce a password strength. You can choose between three levels of password enforcement parameters depending on how strict you choose to be. Guest Terms Banner Guest Terms Banner There is a new option to show a guest terms of service banner when a new visitor first visits your site. You can set the text shown in the display and you can also put in two special tags to automatically link to your Terms of Service or Privacy Policy page. Age Restrictions Age Prompt We have always had COPPA support in the Suite but we have extended this to be a more generic age restriction feature. You can now set your site to reject registrations from anyone under a certain age you specify. For privacy, the birthday entered on registration is only used to calculate permission and is never stored. This change will be in version 4.1.17 which is scheduled to be released in early December 2016.

We have added a selection of improvements to moderator workflow and some new features to generally make moderation easier. We have already talked about a few new moderation improvements: Default Warning Notes Tag Quick Edit Word and Link Improvements Now let's go over a few more new features that are designed to help moderation. Multi Page Actions When you split a topic or delete replies to some content that has multiple pages you would always be redirected back to the first page and first post. This could get a bit annoying if you were previously very deep into a conversation. We now try to remember where you were and keep your place after those items are removed. Hide Unapproved Content Previously you had only two options when viewing content that was pending moderator approval: delete and approve. You can now choose to hide an item rather than approving it so you can remove it from the approval queue without deleting. Moderator Actions on Reports Report Status When a moderator changes a report status it now logs that action so other moderators can view when and who changed a status. Display Name History Display Name History You can now see a display name history on the front end for a user. This can also be enabled for the public to see per-group if you want everyone to see the display name changes of a member. Animated Profile Photos You can now disable animated profile photos so your users cannot apply them to their profile. This will not go back and remove existing photos but will stop new additions. IP Tools IP Use Overview The IP tools have had an update to make finding IPs with their related members and posts easier. This works with both IPv4 and IPv6. IP Search You can also search for all uses of an IP by member or wildcard search an IP to find all uses of an IP range. These changes to moderator tools will help you better moderate your community and allow you to focus on member interaction rather than member management. In addition to the items linked at the top of this entry we have already talked about, these small changes come together to make moderation even easier in IPS Community Suite. This change will be in version 4.1.17 which is scheduled to be released in early December 2016.

We are excited to announce the Leaderboard as the latest all new feature of IPS Community Suite. The new Leaderboard is designed to better highlight your most active members and content based on reputation and other metrics. The Leaderboard will greatly enhance both member and content discovery on your community. Leaderboard Home First you will notice the new feature of member leaders based on a specific time frame. In the example above it is set to All Time showing those members with the most reputation overall on your community. It also shows the content with the most reputation for the same timeframe so you get a snapshot of both popular members and popular content in one view. Past Leaders The Past Leaders tab shows the "winners" of each day in a history. The system counts all reputation made each day and logs the members who had the top reputation counts that day. Using reputation rather than post count encourages your members to post quality of quantity which is really important to any site. Winner Profile Badge Those who win the day also get a badge on their profile page to highlight that they were the member with the most reputation for a particular day. Top Members Top Members shows you a list of all members sorted by various metrics. By default you will see members sorted by reputation but you can also easily sort by total post content Suite-wide or per-app. All of these views can be linked directly to so if you wanted a menu item to show members who post the most files in Downloads you can just directly link to that sort view. Leaderboard Settings There are various settings to control the default behavior of the Leaderboard. You can define the default view and how many members to show which is helpful to tailor it to your needs. We hope you enjoy this initial launch of the new Leaderboard feature. We are excited about the new content and member discovery abilities this offers and look forward to adding new options to the Leaderboard as we continue to develop! This change will be in version 4.1.17 which is scheduled to be released in early December 2016.

We are changing the existing Profanity Filters feature to become the new Word Filters feature. This change will allow you to define words that will initiate a moderator review before content is posted. With creative use of this new feature you can actually have the Suite self-moderate certain posts. Right now the Profanity Filters are pretty basic. If you enter "stopword" you can have it change to *****. That's fine for basic profanity but sometimes you want to do other actions with a word. Perhaps someone might mention a competitor, you see common spam words, or you run a site targeted to children and want fine control over what is posted. There are a lot of reasons a simple replace word with *** might not be what you want. Word Filters introduce an option to let you say "stopword" places a post in moderation queue. Word Filters So now you can define a list of words that are not necessarily profanity but are words you want to review if they are posted. We have also extended this logic to the URL Filters which are now just called Links in the AdminCP configuration. You can now disallow all links and have a post go to approval if someone does post a link. This is also useful for sites where you need really tight control on content either for security or privacy reasons. Link Options With the new Links feature you can also set allow/disallow list of allows links and if someone posts a link outside those lists (depending on your mode) the post will go into review. We hope these features allow you to introduce a bit of automatic moderation to your community and you can come up with creative ways to capture posts that need review either for security, privacy, or just keeping things in order. This change will be in version 4.1.17 which is scheduled to be released in early December 2016.

There are now two ways to get outbound RSS feeds in IPS Community Suite: Activity Streams and a new Custom RSS Feeds feature we are introducing. Every Activity Stream you create also creates a related RSS feed. However, Activity Streams take into account recent activity and unread status per-user which you may not want if you want a simple, raw feed of content by date. The new RSS Feeds feature uses similar filter settings to Activity Streams but does a traditional by-date approach to the feed. It also only reports on the initial creation of a content item and does not update based on replies. Configure RSS Feeds You can finely select various content settings including selecting just certain categories within an application. So you might create an RSS feed that includes only content from an announcements forum and your blog section which would then be a total feed of all the news on your site. RSS feeds are useful in the traditional sense for people to subscribe to a feed on your site but they are also useful for integration. Many clients use RSS feeds to pull content into external sources to embed content on a different site, mobile app, or other systems. For those of you looking for even tighter integration with external systems, be sure to check out our REST API. This change will be in version 4.1.17 which is scheduled to be released in early December 2016.

When a moderator is warning a user they can already input a reason for the warning. However, on busy sites this can get quite tedious plus you also may want some content in there such as your Terms of Service to highlight the member's reason for a warning. We have added a new default warning note for the warning actions. This allows the admin to setup these notes to pre-populate for the moderator when they select a warning reason. So you might input an admin-approved message, highlight the section of the rules your member violated, or for corporate clients you might include some notice from your legal department. Admin Configuration On the front end the moderator will see that content as a pre-filled area in the notes box but the moderator can still edit it to the specific situation. Moderator Warning Panel We think this will streamline moderation particularly on busy communities. Admins will be able to define how to approach certain member situations to balance keeping your community running smoothly with the importance of looking professional and polite when you do have to take action on a member. Moderators will also be able to speed up their work by simply clicking a post, selecting a reason, and submitting the warning. No typing needed. This change will be in version 4.1.17 which is scheduled to be released in early December 2016.

Tags are a powerful feature in IPS Community Suite 4 and we have seen clients using them in many ways to enhance content discovery on their site. Adding tags to an item is quite easy but modifying them after the fact requires you to edit the root content item. Not only is this tedious but it also then shows an edited-by line for that item even if all you did was change a tag. To make this process more user friendly we now have the ability to quickly edit tags when viewing any content item. When you view an item that has tags enabled and you have permission to edit then you will see a link to edit tags. Tag Quick Edit That brings up an input box where you can manage your item tags without leaving the page to a full edit screen. Tag Quick Edit Input We have been testing the feature for a few weeks internally and it has already saved us time as we tag our discussions. But beyond that, and I think more important, is the fact that we find we are using tags more often. More use means more organization and filter possibilities of your content which is a great thing for busy, data-drive communities. So we hope that not only will controlling your tags be faster an easier but you too find you use the tagging feature more often with this small but useful change. This change will be in version 4.1.17 which is scheduled to be released in early December 2016.

We are improving our integration options with analytics tracking services to better track and credit all page views. Our focus here was to add the ability for IPS Community Suite to communicate with your analytics tracking provider of choice when it does page change events that do not otherwise get tracked. Some tracking providers do not understand that an inline AJAX page load (one that loads new content without a full page refresh) should still count as a new page. Even though your browser did not do a full reload, all your content is different so it should count in your metrics. To solve this issue, IPS Community Suite can now automatically put in custom code to execute on pagination. We include Google Analytics and Piwik code by default and there is also an option to include your own custom pagination event code for other services. Analytics in AdminCP If you already have your Google Analytics code in our existing (basic) analytics system then the Suite will detect this on upgrade and automatically enable the new pagination tracking. The screenshot above shows the "Other" option if you do not use Google Analytics or Piwik. If you have other providers you want us to consider just post a feedback topic. Note: be sure that you embed Google Analytics into your Suite using the built-in analytics system. If you simply pasted the code into your theme templates then we cannot automatically enable the new tracking. We hope this new feature allows for easier integration with analytics tracking providers and also gives you much better insight into your traffic by properly counting all the page views you may currently be missing out on! This change will be in version 4.1.17 which is scheduled to be released in early December 2016.

This release resolves intermittent issues submitting a reply or seeing CSRF errors.

Version 4.1.16 is now available to all clients. This release contains fixes, performance updates, and many new features. Check out what's new: You can also read the Release Notes for the technical details. Enjoy 4.1.16!

Our own site on invisionpower.com is now running version 4.1.16 with all the new features. Have a look around and see what you think! My personal favorite is being able to press cmd/ctrl+enter to submit a reply. It is a small change but sometimes small changes make all the difference. We have also released a beta for any clients who are interested in using the latest release before it is officially available. The alpha and beta forum has more information (clients only) if you want to learn more about using beta releases.

In addition to many small bug fixes, this release includes: Accounts flagged as spammers are now more visibly different on the member list in AdminCP Added quite a few new embed providers codepen.io coub.com deviantart.com docs.com funnyordie.com gettyimages.com iFixit.com kickstarter.com meetup.com mixcloud.com mix.office.com on.aol.com reddit.com reverbnation.com screencast.com screenr.com slideshare.net smugmug.com ustream.tv Google Maps (requires free Google API key) Default location for an AdminCP tab honors the admin's ordering Staff notification emails for tickets in Commerce now include the ticket ID Auto-saved content in the editor will now expire after 48 hours If you load an editor that has previous auto-saved content you will now be prompted to keep or remove it You can now set pre-filled reasons for Warning actions that will automatically populate the member notes editor when a moderator warns a user Escape key will now cancel quick-edit on titles Adds a setting to restrict member birthday view to admins only or to completely disable prompting for birthday to member There are now more "save and reload" options in various places to keep your place when editing content or settings New check all box when viewing activity on a member profile for easier moderation You can now hide posts that are unapproved rather than just approve or delete When a moderator changes the status of a report in the ModCP the system now puts a reply in moderator comments noting the change When you see a "could not write file" error the file it was trying to write now shows in the error logs You can now quickly edit tags when viewing an item without having to edit it if you have permission If you are using multiple devices to login to a site you will be less likely to be logged out Tags can now be quickly edited when viewing an item Administrators can now create custom RSS feeds for various content Enhancements to IP discovery tools for moderators Actions for reports in ModCP now show when status is changed as a comment Redesigned support tool More REST API methods Password strength rating and requirement option Guest terms of service alert Minimum age requirement Ban Filters are now Word Filters and can set words to automatically moderate Display name history is now available on profile view Better analytics integration Leaderboard More release information...

IPS Community Suite 4.1.16 is nearing the end of development so I wanted to go over some of the new features in this upcoming release. Some are big and some are small but we always enjoy making any sort of enhancements to the Suite. We expect 4.1.16 to go to public beta next week. If you are interested in using a public beta please check out our beta forum (clients only) with more info. We welcome as much testing as possible and our betas are considered safe to use on a live site. We do offer support for betas so, if you are technically minded, consider giving them a try. Commerce: New Ticket Listing We have redesigned the ticket listing view in Commerce to be much more user friendly and better use screen space. You can also now group by department which is great for organization. Much like Activity Streams on the front end you can create custom views for tickets based on how you work. The new My History view allows staff to quickly see their latest replies and actions along with some basic stats. There are many other smaller improvement in Commerce in 4.1.16 as well. We think you will enjoy all the updates. Security Questions To enhance the security of your member accounts we now have a new security questions feature where you can allow your members to put in their own, personal security questions. The member will then be prompted to answer those questions for account actions you define. Account Change Emails Members will now receive confirmation emails when they change their email address... and their password... Topics per Page You can now define the number of topics per page in forum view. Remove all Followers Moderators can now remove all followers from any item that allows follows. This is useful if you are archiving an old item or otherwise do not want people getting notified of new activity on an item. Automatic Following Your members can already choose to automatically follow content they start or reply to but now you can define this as the default behavior for all members. Your members can of course override this to their own preference. Embed Failure Message To answer the constant question "why didn't my media embed?" we now show you why. Regular members will just see a message indicating the Suite tried to embed but was not able to. Admins will get more information on what failed. Suspended Member Page When you banned/suspended a member previously they simply saw a generic permission denied message. We now show a more friendly page saying they were suspended and why. The member can click to get the full information from the Warning System as well. Contact Us The contact us page now has configuration options to control where messages are sent. You can do email and even Commerce support departments now. Announcements Global announcements can now be restricted by member group. And some technical stuff... In addition to the new feature additions we have also fixed dozens of issues reported by clients. There was a particular focus on Commerce, Pages, and IPS Connect. Some other items of note: Performance improvements in: profile view, sitemap generator, posting replies, and Activity Streams We now try to more reliably detect the AWS S3 endpoint for those using S3 file storage Tasks view will now show the last time a task ran More efficient license key checking to keep the keys from being checked too often which can slow your site down If group promotion based on date is enable the system will now auto-promote even if a member does not login If you move your site to a new URL you no longer have to update a constant if using the image proxy You can now press ctrl/cmd+enter in any editor window to submit the reply (yay!) In Commerce ticket view there are keyboard shortcuts to perform common actions (such as press 'r' to open reply box or 'n' for note) There is now logic to prevent double-posting when the initial post encounters an error on submit If your datastore (cache system) is not working properly the AdminCP will now show you a warning telling you that it needs attention.

In addition to many small bug fixes, this release includes: Large number of bugs fixed in focus areas: Commerce, Pages databases, and IPS Connect Performance improvements in: profile view, sitemap generator, posting replies, and Activity Streams We now try to more reliably detect the AWS S3 endpoint for those using S3 file storage More efficient license key checking to keep the keys from being checked too often which can slow your site down There is now a column in tasks view to show the last time it ran to help diagnostics When a member changes their email or password they now get an email confirmation If group promotion based on date is enable the system will now auto-promote even if a member does not login There is now a setting to change the number of topics per page in the forum view If you move your site to a new URL you no longer have to update a constant if using the image proxy You can now press ctrl/cmd+enter in any editor window to submit the reply In Commerce ticket view there are keyboard shortcuts to perform common actions (such as press 'r' to open reply box or 'n' for note) There is now logic to prevent double-posting when the initial post encounters an error on submit Moderators can now remove all followers from an item Contact Us is now configurable with various options Announcements can now be restricted by member group Admins now have a setting to have members automatically follow content they start or reply to. Members can optionally override this. The editor will now show a message if a link that can be embedded (image, video, etc.) failed to embed for some reason. Admins get more detailed error reasons. If your datastore (cache system) is not working properly the AdminCP will now show you a warning telling you that it needs attention. When a member is banned/suspended the system now shows a more friendly page with information on their ban. Previously it showed a permission denied page. Redesigned ticket listing in Commerce New My History view in Commerce Security Questions for account security Please view the 4.1.16 announcement for full details and screenshots.

This is a maintenance release to fix known bugs and also includes many performance improvements to search and activity streams. Commerce Customer Standing Data now loads via AJAX for faster loading Lots of Commerce related bug fixes Passwords on new hosting accounts are now more secure REST API now supports adding Staff Notes to support requests REST API now supports editing purchases Remember me cookie is now 90 days rather than 7 days A race condition is fixed where the site may call to check the license way more often than needed Performance improvements on activity streams Performance improvement to online list widgets