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This release fixes reported issues from clients in our bug tracker and support tickets and adds refinement to existing features. New or Changed Features When your link auto-embeds in a post such as with an image, YouTube video, Twitter link, etc. an option will now display to revert the embed back to a plain text link if you do not want the embed. New setting to disable embedding. Facebook/Twitter integration improvements If you are an administrator and encounter a system error, additional debug output will now display. Regular members will see the normal error message. Custom Fields for Support Requests in Commerce now show on the front-end. If an advertisement is set up with a main image, but not smaller images for tablets/mobiles, the ad would not show at all on tablets/mobiles. This has changed so the main image will display on all devices unless smaller images are provided. Topics scheduled to automatically lock or unlock will now reflect this in the topic listing and when viewing the topic. Placing a link to a Facebook status will embed when possible. When viewing a report, the container (for example, the forum) the content is from is displayed. Three character searches are now allowed in the Admin CP Live Search. The Account Settings page now uses vertical rather than horizontal tabs to prevent overflow. If Gravatar is enabled, and a user has not defined an profile photo, then their email address will be used to fetch from Gravatar unless explicitly set not to. Gfycat embeds now use their oEmbed endpoint rather than their JS API. Using Amazon CloudFront as https provider will now be recognized as valid secure connection. The member REST API endpoint will now return custom fields. The Developer Center for Plugins now shows the filename in the list of hooks, and when editing a hook, a breadcrumb includes a link back to the list. Inline notifications can now be dismissed Efficiency improvements to the search index You can now close a poll independently of the topic Important Fixes In addition to dozens of smaller fixes this release includes fixes for the follow items that impacted many clients: Several security enhancements. The posting parser has been made more efficient. Some BBCode does not parse correctly in version 4 and we have applied some fixes for this. In general BBCode is deprecated so we only provide basic support. Sitemaps could sometimes be blank if there was no content in a specific section. Certain URLs from version 3 were not redirecting properly to the new version 4 format. The timezone detection is now more robust and will more gracefully fail if it cannot determine a visitor's timezone. Permission matrices have been reworked to send less data to prevent exceeding server limitations. Decimal handling has been reworked in Commerce for more precise calculations. The database class now handles InnoDB deadlocks more gracefully, and some queries have been changed to reduce the likeliness of deadlocks. Performance improvements to areas which perform large updates on the members table (for example, when editing permissions). Pages 'number' custom fields previously had an upper limit for submitted values around 2 billion. Multiple fixes for tag searching

Please note that this version requires PHP 5.4.0 or above. Before upgrading, go to AdminCP -> System -> Support and check the PHP version in the right-side column. If you do not have PHP 5.4.0 or greater, contact your hosting provider and ask them to upgrade your PHP version before continuing. This is a maintenance release to fix common issues reported from 4.1.3. Many issues were fixed and performance enhancements introduced. New option to allow Menu Manager items to open in new browser tab Image proxy feature can now cache images locally Update for 4.1.4.1 Fixes an issue with saving certain group settings Fixes an issue with upgrading Commerce

This is a maintenance release to fix common reported issues. Some changes also include: Mass import and exporting of members We have started making adjustments to account for MySQL 5.7 changes to GROUP BY Worked around a bug in MySQL that was causing core_notifications table to crash Warning reasons fixed AWS S3 file storage fixed on some hosts Adjustment for search minimum length

This is a maintenance release to fix common issues reported in 4.1.1. Some specifics include: Some clients report errors creating a new forum or member group Missing profile photos fixed More compatibility for auto-upgrader on different zip libraries Faster fetching of AWS S3 file sizes

This is a maintenance release to fix common issues reported by clients in 4.1.0. A change has been made to the theme system so themes with out of date templates do not result in a fatal error in most cases. Instead, you will see a notice explaining which templates are out of date and causing problems. You can choose to either fix/revert those specific templates or create a default theme to use temporarily while you work on your custom theme.

Version 4.1 of IPS Community Suite is nearly ready for its supported release. We have fixed hundreds of issues leftover from the 4.0 versions, introduced dozens of new features, and made the system run much faster. Check out the release notes and preview blogs for more information. When you upgrade from version 4.0 to 4.1 there are a few things to know and we will touch on the big points here. Be sure to read the release notes for a complete list. Theme Changes There are quite a few theme changes in 4.1 but most will not destroy 4.0 themes completely. You may need to update some areas though. If you used the custom CSS feature or the easy mode theme editor then most of those settings will be preserved in the upgrade. Note that the globalTemplate did change, specifically to remove the "utilitiesMenu" template bit. The upgrade system will attempt to handle all this for you but if there are any issues you can either update your theme or revert any templates causing issues. The system will show you a warning if there are any problems. You can check out out theme difference tool to see all changes. Most 4.0 themes will work just fine on 4.1 and those that do not generally just require small updates. Be sure to do a test upgrade on a backup first to see how it goes. Menu Manager The new Menu Manager in IPS Community Suite 4.1 is a powerful new feature that gives you much more flexibility in your top level menu structure. When you upgrade, the system will make its best guess on how the menu should be shown. Of course you may not like this layout but you can easily change it in the AdminCP under the Menu Manager. Just drag and drop to whatever menu setup works best for you! Activity Streams Many older areas like View New Content, My Content, and more are now merged into the new Activity Streams feature. You can still replicate all that those old areas did and we actually ship with some default Streams to get you started. You can also, if you like, set an admin-default stream that shows in the upper right area automatically. Your members can override that with their own defaults if they find they like their own custom streams better. For example, every morning when I get online I first check a custom Stream I created that I named "Home" which I selected as my default. By checking the default icon, a link always shows in the upper right. Admins can also define a selection of available streams and set a global default. Here is an example that creates an unread content stream. There are tons of new features, fixes, and enhancements in 4.1. We hope you enjoy!

We have had IPS Community Suite 4.1 running on our own community site for several weeks now and are very happy with how it's taking shape. All the feedback has been very helpful and we have made many refinements to the new features and are looking forward to seeing what everyone does with them. The first two public betas have gone very well with no major bugs - just the normal sort of issues you expect to see in a large update. In fact, the betas have gone so well that we have actually fixed more bugs leftover from 4.0 than have been reported for 4.1! We originally planned on releasing 4.1 later this week but have decide to delay the release until the end of October so we have a couple more weeks to do more betas and further refine this release. Version 4.1 not only introduces many features but it also includes many low-level changes to enhance performance and be more robust with error handling. We have been very happy with the pace that we are implementing fixes and enhancements so we want to keep that up and think just a couple weeks of delay is well worth it for all. If you are interested in helping to test beta releases they are now available in the client area. Just keep in mind we do not provide support for betas and you cannot upgrade from beta to the final release. They should only be on test copies. Thank you for all the feedback! We are excited for 4.1 and know that a lot of you are waiting for it with great anticipation.

Once you have installed your suite you will will likely want to set up some members of staff to moderate the different areas of your suite, and maybe other members who can assist you with various administration functions. These people are referred to as Moderators and Administrators. Before we go into the setup of these, its important to understand the difference between Administrators and Moderators. At its most basic, Administrators are those members who can access areas of your AdminCP. Nobody at all can access your AdminCP without being set up as an administrator in some way. Conversely, moderators are those members who can access staff functions on the public facing side of your site. So moderation actions such as deleting posts, moving a gallery image, or editing someone's comment, may fall under these actions. Warning Pay special attention to the permissions you are assigning to moderators on your forum, and ensure moderator permissions are only given to users in which you trust to edit content within your community. Moderators Adding Moderators Moderators can be set up by visiting the following area Members -> Staff -> Moderators -> Add Moderator Once you have selected to add a moderator, you can add either a group, or an individual member. Add Moderator Once you have selected a member or group, then saved, it will be immediately added to the list of moderators. You can then edit the permissions this moderator entry has access to if required. By default they will have all permissions Moderator Listing An option will then be given to select whether you wish for switching to a moderator with more restricted permissions. You can also choose whether or not to show your members the moderator badge Restricted Option If you select to show restricted permissions, you will be given the option to select/deselect which options you choose for the moderator to have permissions to use. Moderator Permissions Location Specific There may be times where you wish for a moderator only to have access to permissions in specific sections of your site. For example, a moderator for a specific forum. When you deselect an option, you will see a new tab appear for each individual section. For example here, we have disabled the "Can edit all content" option Item Specific Tabs The item(s) you deselected then appear on item specific tabs. So for example here, we have enabled 3 permissions only on 2 forums. Forum Only Permissions Administrators Adding Administrators Moderators can be set up by visiting the following area Members -> Staff -> Administrators-> Add Administrator Once you have selected to add an administrator, you can add either a group, or an individual member. Once you have selected a member or group, then saved, it will be immediately added to the list of administrators. You can then edit the permissions this administrator entry has access to if required. By default they will have all permissions If you select to show restricted permissions, you will be given the option to select/deselect areas in which you wish the administrator to have permissions to use. Any which are not selected, will not be visible to that user/group Security Considerations While our system supports restrictions to admin access you should still only have access to trusted users. AdminCP access give unrestricted permissions to areas of the AdminCP you can visit. Unlike the front-end: the AdminCP assumes everything you do is trusted and will not stop you. Other Considerations One important concept to note here is that for someone to have "Full access" to everything both in the admin CP and on the public facing part of your site, they would be set up both as an Administrator, and as a Moderator. Permissions for administrators and moderators are additive. So if a member has 2 groups, of which both have moderator entries, they will gain the higher of any 2 permissions. The exception to this rule is if the member themselves are added to the moderator section. If they are added as an individual, then this will override any other moderator permissions.

Member groups allow you broad control over what your members can and cannot do, see, and interact with on your community. Members must have a primary group (by default it's Members) but can also have multiple secondary groups. The primary group is what displays under their name but they also inherit the permissions of any secondary groups they are in. Much of the core permission structure of your community will be set up in this area so take some time to look around at all the member group options. Groups Listing When clicking on the edit icon at the right of a group you will be taken into the group editing screen for that group. This will give you the tools needed to effectively and quickly manage your groups settings. You can also make a copy of an existing group for ease of setting up using the copy icon. Editing a group The edit group screen is split into sections on different tabs. Although most options are self-explanatory, there are some brief descriptions of what each of these are for below. (Note you may have more or less tabs than in the image below depending on the applications you have installed). Group Settings Tabs Group Settings From this tab consists of various items related to the group over all and is split into 3 sections. Group Details - This is where you set the basic elements of the group such as name, group icon which will appear below the members name in various areas of the site, group formatting where you can add html to surround the usergroup name and also give a promotion to this group which will move any user within this group to another group based on criteria you set. Permissions - These are the basic permissions for a group such as whether they can access the site when it is offline or how many times they can change their display name (this is not access permissions, these will come later) Signatures - Various settings for a group relating to signatures for users within this group. Content Most elements in this section are self explainatory, however a couple of items in here are worth further explaination Uploads - Note that in this area it is a setting over all. So for example if you set "Total maximum storage space" for a group this is the total storage for any user in that group over the whole platform. Once this limit is hit a user in the group would no longer be able to upload any further attachments/images etc to the site. Deleting - It is important to note that delete really does mean delete. If you give a group access to delete their own content from the forum then they would be able to delete this permanently from the system and this content would no longer be recoverable. The permissions should be given lightly. If it doubt, use hide on the group so that you can recover the information if required whilst allowing the group to hide the data from the community. Social This tab contains various settings for social elements of the community such as how many conversations a user in this group can start in a day to whether they can post status updates etc. For the most part these settings are quite self explanatory. Gallery/Blog/Other If you have more applications installed you will see some common settings for these are displayed within the group edit screen tabs. This will allow you to quickly set up features for a group such as allowing a group access to create blogs. or setting the size of images allowed to be uploaded in the gallery. Members can be added to one primary and any number of secondary groups in the members section of the admin panel. Changing the Groups of a Member Editing permissions Permissions can be edited from many areas of your community for each of the groups that you create. From the groups section you can get quick access to these by using the lock icon next to the appropriate group. By clicking on this icon you will be given quick access to permissions for many areas of yoru community in an easy tabbed format. Simply tick the boxes as appropriate and click save Permission Matrix You can see more about permissions in the following guide

Adding members manually, or indeed editing existing member, is something you will need to do from time to time, during the running of your community. You can see a list of all your current members, and add/edit members, from the following location within your ACP Members -> Members -> Members Members - ACP Adding New Members To add a member, select the "Create New Member" button in the top right of the Member section of the ACP. This will then show you the new member entry screen, where you can add the relevant details Add Member Screen By default, when you create a new member, that member will be sent an email confirmation, along with their login details. If you wish for this not to be sent, then you should uncheck the option on creation. Note however you can choose to set a password. If you do not set this option, an email would always be sent for the user to create a password. Editing Existing Members To edit an existing member, you can either select the pencil icon at the side of a member in the list, or simply click on the members name. This will bring you to the member view page as shown below Customer view tab - Commerce only In the screenshot below, you will also note there is a 'Customers' tab. This will give information relating to 'Commerce' items, and will show only if you have the commerce platform installed. Editing a member The member view section is split into several section, each of which are editable using either the pencil icon provided, or selecting 'edit'. Note that you may see extra tabs for items such as Gallery and downloads, which are application specific. These are discussed in the guides for those applications. While most items are self explanatory, some items are worth going over in more detail here. Account Actions - This is where you will find the option to merge the account with another, or delete the account entirely. Of note however you can also download the members personal information should this be requested by the member, and also use the 'Log in as...' function. This can be helpful if you need to diagnose an issue while logged in as that user. Edit Preferences - This is the admin equivalent of 'account options', but from within the admin area. So you can access items such as which notifications are switched on and off, whether or not signatures are showing etc. Reset Account Activity - On the right you will see a black bar of activity showing. This is an audit of the account and what has happened with the members account. It can be helpful if someone has changed something, and you want to know who has done so.

Invision Community Suite allows you to easily change the top-level menus on your site, to suit your own needs. Whether these be internal links, external links, dropdown menus, or sub menu items, the menu manager makes these simple and quick to set up. Menu Manager The Menu Manager can be found within your ACP in the following location System -> Site Features -> Menu Manager This allows you to fully control the top-level menu of your community. Menu Manager You can create one or two-levels of menu items and all menu items can have drop down menus as well. Menu items available include: custom link = link to any URL you want special Suite areas = specific apps are special app functions activity streams = access to a specific activity stream Pages = link to any page you create in the Pages app Permissions All menu items support full permissions. You can either set them to honor the permissions of the item they're linking to or set custom permissions, by selecting the groups you would like to see the menu item. Permissions If you do not set any second-level menu items then that bar will automatically hide and only the top tabs will show. Example Use Below are a few examples of how to use the system to change things around to your liking, showing each item in turn Moving an Item Moving an item within the menu manager is as simple as drag and drop. You can drag items into and out of other menu items, to create sub menus. Moving Adding an Item To add a new item to the menu, you select the "Add Item" button and select a menu type. What menu types show will depend on what you already have added, and what applications you have installed. You may even have 3rd party items that will add their own menu items. You will see in the video below, that depending on what you select, there will be different items available to you. For example, you can create a menu link to an external page if you wish by supplying a URL. Or select the pages application, and select an internal page. Adding an Item Previewing Changes When making changes on the menu, you can see an instant preview of what these changes will look like, by expanding the "Live Preview" option at the bottom of the page Previewing Changes Restoring Defaults If at any point you decide you would like to restore the menu to its original defaults, so you can start again with your menu, you can do this by selecting the "Restore Default Configuration" button in the top right of the page Restore Defaults Secondary Menu Removal The platform by default has 2 levels of menu. A primary and a secondary menu. If you decide you wish to have only a single menu, you can achieve this by ensuring you have no second level items, as shown below Removing Secondary Publishing Once you have made any changes to your menu, and you are happy with them, you must ensure that you publish your menu. Publishing

You will see references to "constants.php" throughout our guides. The constants.php is a special file you an optionally create in the root directory of your Suite which can include special commands and configuration options which alter the normal behavior of the Suite. File Format You would create a file in the root directory of your Suite, the same directory where index.php and init.php are located, called constants.php. In that file you would simply enter: <?php \define('THE_CONSTANT_YOU_ARE_ADDING','ValueOfConstantHere'); Then below that line any special commands referenced throughout our guides or via instructions in the AdminCP. Many functions are available and common settings include caching controls, debug tools, and special overrides based on your server environment. Most people do not ever need to worry about constants.php until you find a special circumstance. Common Constants While this list is not a full list of constants within the system, these are some of the most common ones you will find in use WARNING: Changing any of these values without full knowledge of what you are doing can result in system issues. Please do not add constants without this knowledge. Constant - CP_DIRECTORY Use - Name of your admin CP directory when changed from the default of 'admin' Example value - 'newcpdirectory' Constant - IN_DEV Use - Places the system into developer mode (dev tools must be present) Example value - TRUE Constant - IPS_FOLDER_PERMISSION Use - Default permission folders will be set to for writable folders Example value - 0777 Constant - FOLDER_PERMISSION_NO_WRITE Use - Default permission folders will be set to for non-writable folders Example value - 0755 Constant - IPS_FILE_PERMISSION Use - Default permission files will be set to Example value - 0666 Constant - FILE_PERMISSION_NO_WRITE Use - Default permission files will be set to for non-writable files Example value - 0644 Constant - COOKIE_PREFIX Use - Prefix to add to any cookie. Helpful if you have cookies of the same name for other uses Example value - 'ips4_' Constant - UPGRADE_MANUAL_THRESHOLD Use - Row count in a table before manual query prompt will occur. Do not change unless you are 100% sure your server will run above this in all queries. Example value - 250000 Constant - UPGRADE_LARGE_TABLE_SIZE Use - Size of table before manual query prompt will occur. Do not change unless you are 100% sure your server will run above this in all queries. Example value - 100000000 Constant - USE_DEVELOPMENT_BUILDS Use - Adding a true value to this will allow the automatic upgrader to pick up public alpha and beta releases. Example value - TRUE Constant - TEMP_DIRECTORY Use - Temp directory to use. By default this will use your servers set temp directory Example value - '/some/full/path/' Constant - BYPASS_ACP_IP_CHECK Use - Removes the check of IP from your ACP Example value - TRUE Constant - RECOVERY_MODE Use - Used for recovery of the system when failure occurs in 3rd party items, preventing ACP access Example value - TRUE Constant - DISABLE_MFA Use - Disabled two factor authentication on the system. Example value - TRUE Constant - REBUILD_SLOW Use - Number of items to be rebuilt per-cycle for routines that take a while (change only if you are 100% sure your system will cope) Example value - 50 Constant - REBUILD_NORMAL Use - Number of items to be rebuilt per-cycle for most routines (change only if you are 100% sure your system will cope) Example value - 250 Constant - REBUILD_QUICK Use - Number of items to be rebuilt per-cycle for routines that are fast (change only if you are 100% sure your system will cope) Example value - 500 Constant - UPGRADING_PAGE Use - Allows you to use an alternative page to the usual upgrading.html page, which is shown when an upgrade is in progress Example value - '/some/full/path/something.html'

Setting Addresses In Email Settings you can configure both the incoming and outgoing email address. Outgoing email address = When the Community sends an email out to a member this is the email address in the "From" field. Note that on our cloud services, the "From" field will always be noreply@invisioncloudcommunity.com but the Reply-To address will be the outgoing email address you set here. Incoming email address = Some error pages display this email so your visitors know how to contact you and the Contact Us form sends messages to this address. Technical Configuration For our cloud services you do not have to configure anything to send email. However, you can optionally choose not to use our built-in email services and instead use your own SMTP, SendGrid, or other services. Applies to self-hosted customers only By default, the Suite will use your local server's PHP mail but some system administrators may want you to use SMTP. You can find settings to enable these other email services on this page as well. If your SMTP server requires SSL or TLS you may need to prefix your SMTP Host with ssl:// or tsl:// to have the system recognize these requirements. When you change any email-related settings, always use the Test Settings button to be sure your changes are working. Email Error Logs can help you diagnose any issues. Emailing Your Members You can use the Bulk Mail feature to easily email all or a portion of your members. There any many filters you can use to email only a subset of your member database. Ranging from by group, join date, last visit date, content count, and even what they have purchased in Commerce. You can customize who receives your emails and what they say. Below you can see an example of these filters. You will see at the top, there are fields for 'About Me' and 'First Name'. These are custom profile fields, which can also be filtered Email Filters The following members will never receive a bulk email regardless of what filters you choose: People who have not checked the "Receive email from admins" box either on sign up or in their account settings. Those who have clicked the unsubscribe link in previous bulk emails as this auto-unchecks the receive emails box. Members who are suspended/banned. When you send a bulk email it will process in the background and can take some time to send depending on how many emails must be generated. Applies to self-hosted customers only If your web host or email provider cannot handle sending many emails at once, you can optionally add the following line to your constants.php to set a number to process per bulk mail cycle. In this example we are setting it to 25 per task cycle. define ( 'BULK_MAILS_PER_CYCLE', 25 ); Customizing Emails Right on the Email Settings page you can change the basic setting Primary email color and Email Logo. This is a quick setting to set the header colors and logo in the HTML email templates. If you want to edit the actual email templates you can visit email appearance and have full control over both the HTML and plain text versions of all emails sent. You can edit both the "wrapper" which contains the overall template that all emails use or the specific content that goes inside the wrapper for email events. There is a list of all email events. This is a useful feature if you want to add info to all emails (edit the wrapper) or just specific emails (edit the email for that event). Email Debugging You can write full email logs to disk. If you need to debug the emails being sent from the Community, you can create a folder (example here named _mail) with appropriate write permissions in your Community root directory, and then add in your constants.php (editing the example path provided): define( 'EMAIL_DEBUG_PATH', "/full/path/to/the/folder/_mail" ); This will cause every email that is sent to be logged to a flat file under this _mail folder. The email will not actually be sent. You should not leave this on for long, especially on a production forum as it can generate a lot of logs. The emails will not be delivered to the recipients The files written are in plain text, and viewable via a web browser if you know the correct URL A high-traffic forum can generate many hundreds or thousands of debug files in a day The debug switch is useful to determine the raw contents of the email being sent to identify any problems, and to confirm the emails you expect to send are being generated and passed to the mail transport agent. If you are looking for what error has been generated on an email that goes out prior to setting the above, you can see these within your email error logs. See Also You may also want to check on the Notification Settings as they define the defaults for when members receive emails based on actions on the Community. Applies to self-hosted customers only If you are being limited on mail by your hosting company, it may be worth taking a look at using an external email enhancement such as send grid for sending your emails. You can set this up from the Community Enhancements section of your ACP

In a world where personal information is high on the agenda, and policies on your site are every more prevalent in our daily internet lives, it is important that you have the ability to add the key information to your site that is required in some countries, and indeed by many 3rd party integrations. Invision Community Suite aims to provide you with the tools necessary for you to manage these with relative ease, so you can get on with the day to day running of your site. Guidelines You can add guidelines on how you wish people to use your site within the following area of the ACP System -> Settings -> Terms & Privacy Policy This allows you to add test which will automatically be added to the guidelines page of your site, directly into an editor. Alternatively you can switch these off entirely if you choose, or link them to a page in an entirely different location Guidelines Setup Once you have added your guidelines, you can add a link to this, by linking to the built in guidelines option within your Menu Manager Privacy Policy Having a good privacy policy set up on your site, is not only important to many, but also required by many 3rd party integrations. Setting up items such as facebook and twitter logins for example, will both ask you to ensure you provide a link to your privacy policy. In order to set up a privacy policy, you would visit the following area in your admin CP. Privacy Policy Setup Here you can provide all your privacy policy information, or a link to an external privacy policy, in a similar manner to that of the terms section discussed above. You will also note there is a switch to add third party information, which is discussed in the next section. Your privacy policy link will be shown in the footer of your site, and will also require acceptance on registration by your members If at any point you change your privacy policy, or registration terms, you will be asked if you would like to force your existing members to accept the changes. This ensures that all your members are kept up to date with this information. New Policy Acceptance Third Party Information There may well be 3rd party items that you have are used by your site, such as recaptcha, the spam defense service, google maps and more. Each of these may use information such as email addresses, IP addresses, and cookies. It is important that this information can be easily added to your own privacy policy on your site. Selecting the "Add third party information" checkbox beneath the privacy policy setup, will automatically add the information from services in which you add to the site. You can see an example of this in the image below Third Party Information Registration Terms & Rules You can add guidelines on how you wish people to use your site within the following area of the ACP System -> Settings -> Terms & Privacy Policy These will show to the user on registration to your site, and have to be accepted in order to register. As with the above items, these can be typed in, linked to an external site, or excluded entirely if you wish to do so. Rules Setup This includes some default text which will be applicable to most sites, which you can then edit to your liking. Guest Options In the guest options setting of the following location, you can set up a terms of service confirmation bar, when guests are viewing your site. You will have seen these already on many sites you visit, with regards to accepting cookies. System -> Settings -> Terms & Privacy Policy -> Guest Options Here you can set up what you wish to show on your guest bar. You will also see below this that there are some placeholders you can add, such as {cookies} and {terms}. These will prepopulate some text with information on each Guest Bar Setup On the above I have added {cookies}, which displays information to guests about the sites use of cookies, with relevant links. You can see this in the image below Guest Information Bar Other Options Bulk Mail Opt In In some areas, most notably the EU, it is important that your members are asked to opt into emails, rather than automatically having a checkbox selected for them. You can set whether this setting is automatically opt in, or opt out, in the following location in your ACP Members -> Member Settings ->Notifications >Newsletter Opt 'In' or 'Out' by default In addition to this, we have provided an easy way for your users to then sign up to your newsletters at a later point in time, should they decide not to opt for them to begin with. This is done by adding the 'Newsletter Signup' block from the system section of your block manager Newsletter Signup Removing IP Addresses IP Addresses are an important part of how the internet functions, and are stored each time a member posts on your site alongside the content. By default these are stored indefinitely. If however you wish for these to be periodically removed, you can do this in the following location. System -> Settings -> Posting -> Content Automatic IP Removal Personal Information Requests There will occasionally be requests from your members to provide any personally identifiable information which is stored on their account. This can be done very easily from the members account within the ACP. Members -> Members -> {Name Of Member} Select account functions, and then select to download personal information Personal Information Download

In the AdminCP under Settings you will find the Posting section which is another one of the more important settings areas as these options control how your members post content throughout your Suite. These are your general settings and individual apps can override these settings depending on their specific feature set. It's a good place to spend some time thinking about how you want things to look and work on your community. General Allow remote images = You can completely disable the ability for members to embed images from external sources in posts. Maximum Image Size = Controls the largest size an image can be posted on your community (in dimensions not file size). If someone uploads an image that is larger than these defined dimensions then the system will generate a thumbnail up to the size defined here. Example: The settings on this site are set to max of 500 x 350 yet I uploaded an image with a dimension of 1300 x 936 so the system saved both my original image and also created a new thumbnail with a width of 500. The thumbnail is shown above. I can also resize the thumbnail down and even change positioning of the thumbnail as you can see by the smaller thumbnail that is right aligned here. If I click either thumbnail I am shown the full-size original image scaled down to fit in my browser window (larger the window the more you will see). Finally, I can click to view full size and the image then opens in a new window without any styling. Acronym Expansion A basic but pretty useful feature which allows for commonly type acronyms to contain a tool type. Example: ACP Polls Some apps have the ability to show polls and here you can define the Suite-wide options for how you want to handle polls. The more important options define if a user can see what other people voted for, are required to vote before seeing results, and if they can change their vote. Depending on the nature of your community and how you use polls these can be very important settings to consider. Profanity Filters You can of course use these filters to filter out profanity on your site. But beyond that you might also use them to replace commonly misspelled words, block out references to your competitors, or wherever you might want to do a word replacement. As with many features in IPS Community Suite, you can be creative with how you apply this one. Tags & Prefixes Many applications support the use of tagging and you can use tags to associate content with similar purposes across all your various apps and areas of the Suite. By just clicking a tag a member can see everything related to that tag regardless if it's a forum discussion, gallery image, or blog entry. This settings pane controls some important global options for tags but note that some apps can override these settings if they have local configuration options. You can read more about these here URLs Members will always post URLs linking people to other sites and here you can define how you want those URLs handled and if you want to enable any restrictions to what people can link to.

Once you have configured your various storage options you can then assign them to various areas of the Suite. By default all areas use File Storage but you can create as many storage configurations as you want. Storage Settings In the screenshot above there are some examples of various storage areas of the Suite. Here we are using the same Amazon S3 "bucket" for all areas. But I could choose to switch just one of them to a different storage configuration or all if I chose to switch providers. When you changes file storage configuration for a particular area the system will have to move your files. If you have a large number or large storage amount of files this could take a very long time so keep this in mind when changing. You will see a status bar on the AdminCP dashboard. When you change your storage option: The area you changed locks to prevent other changes. A queue task is started to copy all files from the old to the new storage configuration. When the queue task finishes, files on the old configuration are deleted. Configuration unlocks to allow changes again. While Step 2 above is processing, all your file references will still work. So you may see some files linking to the old location and some linking to the new. This keeps your from having broken images or downloads during the move.

There are four standard file storage options you can choose to configure. Most will use the default File System option which stores files on your local server. Any option can be used for a Content Distribution Network (CDN) if you choose to use such a service. You can create multiple storage configurations to mix and match storage for various areas of the Suite to suit your needs. File System Default option which is sufficient for most environments. This stores files on your local server with no special configuration needed. Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 Remote storage system recommended for very busy sites. Service fees apply. AWS S3 Setup Database Use if you do not have much file storage space available or file writes are undesirable for your server environment. Will require more server resources to display a file. For database storage no configuration is needed. Your files will be stored in MySQL in a BLOB column type. This takes more resources but is sometimes the only option available based on your environment. Using a CDN All storage options, excluding Database, can be used with a CDN. You will see a "Use Custom URL?" option under those options where you can override the default URL to use a CDN. You will need to contact your CDN provider for instructions on the proper URL to use. As an example here, I have visited System>Overview>Files>Storage Settings>Configuration and selected to edit one of my Storage methods (in this case my uploads) Editing your storage settings We can then switch on the "Use a custom URL" settings and add in our CDN URL as shown below. Enable a custom URL

When you click Files in the AdminCP the first page you see is the Attachments screen which lists all file attachments Suite-wide. File attachments on this screen only include those files attached to a post-field. This would be any attached file to any content that members type in the editor. It does not include application-specific files such as Gallery images, Downloads files, member photos, and so on. Attachment List You can quickly delete attachments on this screen or use the magnifying glass icon to see where a certain attachment is being referenced. Members can upload ones but embed an attachment in multiple posts so it's a useful way to see how a member is using their attachments. Attachment Search You can also quick search a file name or open up advanced search options. Note that downloads do not work for images as they are not downloaded but simply viewed in the post itself.

You can store file attachments in the Suite in several different ways and you can vary storage based on your preference for the various Suite areas and applications. Options include: FTP Use if you want to store files externally on a server optimised for rendering files or a third-party storage service. File System Default option which is sufficient for most environments. This stores files on your local server with no special configuration needed. Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 Remote storage system recommended for very busy sites. Service fees apply. Database Use if you do not have much file storage space available or file writes are undesirable for your server environment. Will require more server resources to display a file. You can also define how different areas of the Suite store their files. So you might choose File System for most files but AWS S3 for Theme Resources so you can enable a CDN. Storage Options

The Forums app contains several special widgets that can be placed in the header, footer, or sidebar. Available Widgets The popular now widget references the popular settings option in the Forums app. The topic and post feed widget are particularly powerful as they let you create a customizable feed of forum activity anywhere you might like to place it on the Suite. You can place these widgets on any area of the Suite - not just the Forums app. So you might choose to put a feed of topics on your Gallery page to cross-promote areas of your community. With any widget just access the control panel using the icon on the left of the screen and drag it where you like. You can then edit to get more options. Some options for the topic feed might include: Topic Feed Options Be creative with the filters and option to highlight many types of content.

On an active community you will find yourself often doing the same moderation actions or posting the same reply quite often. Problems might be: Members often posting topics in the wrong forum Locking a topic with a reply of "resolved" when you fix an issue Adding a prefix or suffix to a topic that's important There are many time saving ways to use Saved actions and a whole list of options you can select. Below is an example where we have created a quick saved action to move topics to a news forum, prefix them with "News: " and add an appropriate reply

Under the Settings area for Forums you will find an Archiving option. If you have a very large site, it can be beneficial to reduce the size of the database table storing posts. Archiving topics is an alternative to deleting which allows them to still exist and be viewed as normal, but moves them to a separate database table. Some example options: Archiving Options Archived topics cannot be posted in or edited, and will not show in search results. You can unarchive topics after they've been archived if you change your mind. You can also optionally choose to store your archived posts in an external database. Tip This is a power-user option designed for communities with millions of posts and a long history where they would want to archive off old post data to conserve resources.

There are a few settings in the AdminCP under the Forums app you may want to review. These are global settings that apply to all member groups. Each of these sections are discussed below, along with what each setting is for General forum settings The first of these are forum settings. So anything which affects the forum view outside of the topic itself. RSS feeds enable a feed option for members to subscribe to get updates on activity in your forums. General Forum Settings All other settings in this section are related to the layout of the the forum and topic listings. Each of these can have a default set, and you can also choose whether or not to allow your members to choose which view mode to use. The forum view comes in one of 3 views. Table - This is the traditional view of forums you may be used to seeing around the internet, and is used by default on a new site Grid - Displays forums as cards in a grid, with optional header images Fluid - A simpler dynamic listing of topics, with a filter box in the sidebar of your forum. Note that when using fluid mode, this will only display up to three levels deep, and is intended for use with sites that have fewer forums, and less complex hierarchies. Question Settings Here you will find various settings that relate only to forums that are set as a "Questions" style forum. These settings are self explanatory in nature Question Settings Topic Settings While most settings here are self explainatory, the 'popular now' setting we will go into in a little more details Topic Settings The 'popular now' option allows for intelligent flagging of topics that are popular right at that moment. Rather than relying on historical replies, the system keeps track of the number of posts in a topic within a certain timeframe so you can call attention to a topic that is about a current event or getting a whole lot of interest right this moment. So with the example above, any topic which has had 10 posts in the last 60 mins would be highlighted as popular on the forum. Topic Summary Settings The topic summary section allows you to add a summary on any topic which meets the criteria you have chosen. For example you may wish to show the top posts in a summary on any page that isnt the first page. Topic Summary Settings Below is an example of how this looks within a topic, when placed in the sidebar Topic Summary Placement

The first thing you are going to want to do in the Forums app is create the overall structure of your discussion areas. You can create categories, forums, and any number of sub-forums or sub-categories. Types Before you begin, it is important to know the difference in the various types available. Categories - Containers in which you would place forums. Every forum must be within a category of some description. Discussions - A forum built for classic topics Questions - A question and answer type forum, where users can vote up/down the answers to those questions Redirect - This would place a link in place of a forum location, which can link to any location of your choosing. Creating/Editing You can set up your forums and categories from the following location in your AdminCP Community->Forums->Forums Forum Listing Example You can edit any forum by selecting the pencil icon at the side, or select "Create New" to create a new forum or category. When editing or creating a forum, you will need to provide a name, along with the type discussed above. There are then various other tabs where you can customise to your liking, such as adding forum rules, enabling star ratings, adding post requirements and more. Create / Edit Forums in the forum listing can be reordered by dragging and dropping Reordering

People signing up on your community just to post spam is a never ending battle much like spam in your email inbox. IPS Community Suite has tools to help you fight that battle. You will find the various methods in combatting spam in the following location in your ACP Members -> Content Moderation ->Spam Prevention Spam Defence Service The IPS Spam Defence Service is a free service provided by IPS to clients with an active licence. Each time a user signs up to your site, the registration is checked with the spam prevention service which will determine its likelihood of being an spam. This is given a level of 1 to 4. Setup From here you can set up what automatically happens to these users when they are detected as being a potential spammer by the service. Spam Defence Setup You can change the default settings to any of the following items Allow user to register as normal Allow registration, but require approval of all posts Flag the account for manual review Register the account, but immediately ban it Do not allow the user to register at all Logging There may be times when you need to see what level has been given to a registering member, and for this we have provided logging for each registration which goes through the spam defence service. This can be helpful if for example a registering member reports they are getting the message they are not allowed to register. You can find these by selecting the "Spam Defence Logs" button in the top right of the Spam Prevention section. Members -> Content Moderation ->Spam Prevention -> Spam Defence Logs Defence Logs Here you can see the users details, along with what level has been registered. This alongside your spam defence settings would show you what action was taken White Listing There will be instances where someone has been flagged at a higher level than you would have liked. A prime example of this would be if you are testing registrations yourself. Trying to register over and over would eventually flag you as a spammer at level 4. By default this would refuse registration. In the above scenario, you can whitelist individuals in the spam service, so they are not checked. To do this, you would visit "Spam Defence Whitelist" where you can add an IP address, or email domain to be excluded from any future checks. Email domain localhost has been whitelisted CAPTCHA CAPTCHA is an external service, in which can be used to determine whether a user is human, or not. Automated code known as bots are often used to automatically sign up to websites, in order to post spam, adverts etc. Therefore adding a captcha method is one form in which to prevent this. You can set up a captcha on your site from the 'CAPTCHA' tab with the spam prevention section, where you will be able to choose from one of the following Invisible reCAPTCHA - Users do not need to do anything. The system intelligently detects if the user is human in the background. reCAPTCHA V2 - The user clicks a "I'm not a robot" checkbox keyCAPTCHA - The user must complete simple jigsaw puzzle hCaptcha- The user must click a checkbox and may be require to select certain images from a grid For each of these services, you are required to create a (free) API key in order to use them. You will find a link to this under the key section related to the selected service. Important Note: Google has discontinued reCAPTCHA v1 and this service is no longer available. If you are using Invision Community 4.2 or below, you will need to reset your CAPTCHA service preference to reCAPTCHA 2 or keyCAPTCHA. Flagging Spammers The "Flagging Spammers" section is where you can set up what happens when a member on your community is flagged as a spammer. This will allow you to have a member automatically banned, remove submitted content and notify someone if you wish to do so. Flagging spammer options You can flag a member as a spammer from one of 3 areas on the site. You will see a flag at the side of each member in the member list on the admin CP which can be used for this purpose, a button on the members profile on the front end, or under the 'More Options' menu in a member card Flagging a spammer Question and Answer Challenge The question and answer challenge gives you an extra customizable set of questions and answers you can present to a potential member to ensure that the user is human and not an automated spamming bot. You can put whatever questions you like in here for people to answer along with multiple possible answers. Try to use a question and answer that will make the user think, not a simple math or color question as bots can get right past those. Be sure to add more than one, so the answer isn't the same for each registration, as a human can plug that info into a bot and get right past the same answer each time. Examples: Question: What is the third letter of the 5th word in this sentence. Answer: t What is 3rd, word, in this sentence after the comma? Answer: sentence Q&A Setup