Charles

I'm pretty sure that if you rewrite all the CSS you'll resolve this.

We recently announced large updates to Gallery:
You can now play with the new version of Gallery here on our site. Give it a try!
https://invisioncommunity.com/gallery/

We recently announced large updates to Gallery:
You can now play with the new version of Gallery here on our site. Give it a try!
https://invisioncommunity.com/gallery/

We recently announced large updates to Gallery:
You can now play with the new version of Gallery here on our site. Give it a try!
https://invisioncommunity.com/gallery/

We recently announced large updates to Gallery:
You can now play with the new version of Gallery here on our site. Give it a try!
https://invisioncommunity.com/gallery/

We recently announced large updates to Gallery:
You can now play with the new version of Gallery here on our site. Give it a try!
https://invisioncommunity.com/gallery/

I would be wary of any host that tells you to use an unsupported, including for security updates, software package like PHP 7.4 

I would be wary of any host that tells you to use an unsupported, including for security updates, software package like PHP 7.4 

We never added it because you're the first to ask for it 🙂. Everything has to start somewhere.
You can find the Developer docs by clicking on the top navigation Help and then Developer Resources.

Welcome to this week's Invision Insight!
Whilst the weather gets warmer Down Under and colder to those in the northern hemisphere, we are nearing the end of our 20th year of Invision Community! So much has been achieved through the years and 2022 specifically is no exception.
I felt it couldn't be a better time to approach our team to participate in this week's Invision Insight. I'll share their take below.
Before we get to that though, if you didn't get a chance to attend yesterday's Content Curation event, don't fret! You can watch the video and discuss your thoughts below.
 
Invision Community Team Insight
During the week I took it upon myself to annoy our busy Invision Community staff members and take them away from their work (momentarily of course). All for good reasons! 😇
I asked them to weigh in on one of three questions. This gives us a glimpse into their minds and is a fun opportunity to hear directly from those that make Invision Community great. As usual, we are all very proud of the work they have produced; the results really do speak for themselves. Team, a huge thank you for playing along and taking the time to get your answers to me.
What is your favourite thing or feature we delivered this year?
@Jim M - My favourite feature we delivered this year was the real-time viewing/typing. I feel like this added a whole new level to our software to know in real-time that someone is viewing/replying the same time as you. Really helps with continuing the conversation, as if I reply and see someone else replying back, I'll stick around a few more seconds rather than moving on. For our support usage, it is also nice because we can see if another staff member is already replying and follow up with them internally before going to the client if we have something to collaborate.
@Lindy - The new Image Scanner (https://invisioncommunity.com/news/invision-community/our-new-image-scanner-and-discoverability-ai-keeps-your-community-safe-video-r1263/) is my favourite feature/service that we've rolled out in 2022. I have been in the technology sector for 30 years (ouch!) and have watched the evolution of so many incredible technologies, but AI-driven technology continues to blow my mind, truly. I love that we are among the first to begin developing AI-based features within community platforms and I look forward to our brilliant team incorporating more of this technology as we move forward.
@Mark H - I'd have to say my favourite enhancement was the "Who's Typing/Viewing" feature that others have already mentioned. It encourages more engagement among both members and staff, and for us techs, also reduces doubling up on an issue. A runner-up favourite would be the Image Scanner feature. It's quite effective when pre-moderation of content is a necessity and reduces the workload of community managers.
@Marshall Slemp - My favourite feature that was delivered this year has to be the Live Features (Who's Typing and Who's Viewing). It's really cool seeing new technologies being introduced into the platform and being leveraged to add that real-time experience. I think it's been mentioned before that even though the outcome seems simple, there is a lot of work involved in getting to this point and this is just the beginning. The devs (not me) have been working tirelessly to further utilize these new technologies to bring more real-time features such as Live Topics. Also, JavaScript is heavily involved and who doesn't love JavaScript?
@Matt Finger - Obviously Live Topics. It has taken up like the last third of the year for me and I am super excited for it to go live. This year though, I think my favourite thing as a developer was the existing real-time stuff; Who's Viewing and Who's Typing. From the user's perspective, they seem small and simple, but from my perspective we had to put in place a lot of newer technologies (new to IPS at least) such as Node.js, WebSockets, and dozens of AWS tools. With that robust, performant and secure foundation it opens up all sorts of avenues for where we can take our software in the future.
@Olivia Clark - We have such a great team! Our ability to work and deliver great product and service with togetherness only continues to improve. I know that sounds cliche but we are improving processes, getting the software is ready for those next great things, and testing new waters - together. Our customer support team serves our customers so well and is always looking for ways to do that better. It is fun to hear the developers working on projects that they cannot wait to sink their teeth into, areas that have been a paint point of theirs for years and areas where they see potential. I love the enthusiasm, the willingness to help those of us that are not as technical and the genuine passion for Invision Community. So, that's my favourite 'thing' delivered this year - greater cohesion and even more enthusiasm amongst our team.
What are you most excited for in 2023?
@Ehren - Funnily enough, one of my favourite features from this year is something that'll actually be available in early 2023, our refreshed Gallery. Andy and I spent a few months giving the Gallery a much-needed makeover, deleting a bunch of redundant code and replacing it with a far more modern approach; one example is the new masonry grid, powered completely by CSS! We worked on a new UI with a better focus on features images, we improved support for videos and added some nice new features such as a NSFW filter. My very biased opinion thinks we've made some really nice improvements that our customers will love, so fingers crossed they agree! Just like a Spring clean, I've always found it quite satisfying diving into an old framework and refactoring it using modern techniques. Looking towards 2023 and beyond, I'm really excited to take things even further with not only other application updates (I'm looking at you Downloads and Commerce), but Invision Community as a whole!
@Marc Stridgen - I'm looking forward to that next jump forward in look for the suite. It always amazes me that just as you think the software looks modern, that next evolution comes along and makes everything before it feel old. It gives a real feeling of moving forward and can pump a new lease of life into every community.
@Ryan Ashbrook - I think I am most excited for our infrastructure improvements we have planned for 2023. Our development of things like live community, real-time trending content, image scanning and so forth has allowed us to learn and grow how we deliver new features efficiently. But, in addition to that, I am looking forward to improvements to the overall software as a whole - such as the upcoming Gallery refresh. I'm really excited to see all of the applications get the same treatment as Calendar did (which is also one of my favorite things we've done this year).
@Stuart Silvester - The most exciting thing for 2023 for me is the new Live Topics feature, it's really awesome. The team working on that are doing a great job and I cannot wait for us to share it with you. Besides that, I feel like 2023 is going to be another great year, we've got lots of things coming to the software in the foreseeable future and I'm excited to be able to get new features out to our customers.
What was the most challenging obstacle you overcame this year?
@Andy Millne - It seems like more than a year ago but implementing Trending Content was challenging. We wanted to make sure trending items were not just ranked on dumb count of views. What we came up with is really quite clever and takes account of a number of metrics like replies and reaction but also recency. Doing this in a way that reflected real time results and was still performant was challenging but rewarding when it was proven to work.
@Matt - The biggest obstacle we overcame this year was the PHP 8 transition which impacted our self-hosting clients. Invision Community is built upon several server level software languages, and occasionally there are major updates which cause breaking changes. PHP 8 is a significant upgrade from PHP 7 as it is stricter on how to work with it. Given the size of the Invision Community codebase and the flexibility it affords for after-market code additions, it was a step we had to plan well for. We built tools to assist third party developers and created a multi-step process over many months to ease into the final step of cutting off PHP 7 support. It took a big, coordinated approach with several Invision Community teams and our third-party authors.
 
Forum Showcase Prune
In an effort to ensure we give our community the most accurate examples of the Invision Community product suite in practice, I spent a few hours going through this topic. All links to communities that have since moved on to another software and/or contained links to blatant advertising and explicit content have been hidden or removed (I went the extra mile and removed the same links from quoted posts). If you find something that isn't quite right that I may have missed, please do shout out so I can sort it out.
Otherwise, feel free to post a link to your own communities below! We would love to see what you have done! Going through the topic made me realise just how far some communities have come from the very beginning, sharing links to their communities for the first time.
 
Changelog
Here's what the dev team have been working on over the last seven days:
See you in the community and early in January right here for another Invision Insight! I look forward to hearing from you all! Have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year! 🎄
Thank you everyone! 🦘

Is anyone still having this issue? It appears to have only impacted people on certain nodes on the network. Our monitoring service did not alert us of a global downtime event so we are researching which segment was having issues.

@Andy135 Thanks for your help diagnosing this.
For those of you having this problem, please be sure you are on the latest version of Invision Community. Older versions are on the old PHP7 array which is no longer receiving updates because PHP7 itself is end of life. This is starting to cause some odd performance and reliability problems that our monitoring is having trouble detecting.

@Andy135 Thanks for your help diagnosing this.
For those of you having this problem, please be sure you are on the latest version of Invision Community. Older versions are on the old PHP7 array which is no longer receiving updates because PHP7 itself is end of life. This is starting to cause some odd performance and reliability problems that our monitoring is having trouble detecting.

Welcome to this week's Invision Insight!
Well doesn't time just fly by?! We are a little over two weeks away from Christmas and well into the holiday season! I hope everyone's got their presents ready or at least has an idea of what to buy for their loved ones. I'm a last-minute man so I have so much time left before joining the crowds... 😅
For those following the World Cup ⚽, despite Australia being knocked out of the tournament by Argentina, my equally supported team from my roots, Portugal, has made it through to the quarterfinals! 🎉
I would love to hear what you are up to and are most excited about this time of year.
To keep you in the loop with Invision Community...
December 2022 Chat - In Summary
We received some feedback from the chat we hosted last week, (shoutout to @jesuralem), so I thought I'd provide a summary of key items discussed to offer everyone an opportunity to catch up on the latest from the team! For those that can, though, give the video a watch to get the full context. I hope you've got your reading glasses on...
Intro
Improved the software and user experience. Collaboration through our clients, community and the team, we identified needs and delivered additions and improvements. We planned to pivot where it made sense regarding feature requests and suggestions. Industry and client needs have changed, including during and post COVID-19. Goals for this year was content engagement and also on support communities, which have been a big driver of growth. Factor in time to fix bugs, do updates such as PHP 8 and build the tools needed to get people through the transition. Security and performance problems which we have to prepare for. It's a balancing act with new exciting features and necessary things required to ensure the software functions correctly. Refactor language system, which is time intensive, however required for functionality. Delivered
6:11 minutes into the video: New Alerts System was launched in July 2022, with version 4.7. Engage with single users or multiple member groups with a message that must be acknowledged and dismissed before further engagement with the community. 11:51 minutes into the video: Webhooks and Integrations was initially launched in April 2020, with version 4.5. Webhooks implemented in February 2022 with version 4.6.10. Enhancements and more apps released in July 2022, with version 4.6.10. 18:57 minutes into the video: Live/Smart Community was launched in July 2022, with version 4.7. Includes trending content, who's typing and who's viewing, image processing for discoverability and moderation, this is an immediate function and not cached and it changes the dynamic of a community in a positive way. 26:36 minutes into the video: Improvements Solved/Unsolved filter for Activity Streams was launched in July 2022, with version 4.7. Schedule topics to be published on a future date was launched in August 2022, with version 4.7.1. Marking posts as solutions was launched in September 2022, with version 4.7.2.1. 28:39 minutes into the video: Applications: Revamp, Refresh, Repurpose Calendar, renamed to Events, was launched in October 2022, with version 4.7.3 (additional updates deliver in November 2022, with version 4.7.4). 32:00 minutes into the video: Gallery revamp preview - Coming in 2023! 37:11 minutes into the video: Full list of key features we delivered in 2022 (including over a massive 800 bug fixes!). 40:15 minutes into the video: Community questions asked and answered live. Coming
47:18 minutes into the video: Summary of what we have planned for 2023, including (but not limited to) Gallery, Live Topics, GraphQL and other integrations, an Invision Community style update, statistics and reporting, email balance management on the Cloud platform, more enhanced security backends, tech improvements such as OpenSearch and Elasticsearch, removing some JavaScript for efficiency on the frontend, Commerce and Pages. Closing
1:01:50 minutes into the video: Closing comments and sign off. Expectations of a forum as a platform, the mindset of a community and the human component. 1:05:50 minutes into the video: Some reminders, including slow-down of development over the Christmas and holiday period. No new release in January, but back to our monthly release cycle thereafter. If you missed the event or video altogether, I'll link it below. Fast track to the above timestamps if you want to skip straight to what you are most interested in hearing about.
Feel free to below on this topic or the December Year in Review and 2023 Preview (Video) topic.
Upcoming Event
The Invision Community team has been at work organising another event, this time delving into the world of automated and manual curation methods available for you to implement in your very own communities.
Please don't forget to RSVP and mark yourself as going (or at least a maybe) so you don't miss out! Anyone that hasn't RSVP'd will not receive the Zoom link.
Changelog
Here's what the dev team have been working on over the last seven days:
See you in the community and next week right here for another Invision Insight! I look forward to hearing from you all!
Thank you everyone! 🦘

@opentype Good idea. 
I think something like that is probably possible now with some custom code but a future update could make it a lot easier. 

You just dated yourself.

Yes, it will start at Team level and up.

You just dated yourself.

You just dated yourself.

You just dated yourself.

@Gary Love this! Miss my Invision fam and I'll def be looking forward to these. 

Welcome to the very first Invision Insight, hosted by yours truly! 😎
I'm excited to connect with you each week to share what's happening inside Invision Community. For those that haven't yet seen me making my way around this community, I'm Gary, and I have just recently joined the Customer Service team at Invision Community.
We are currently working hard to close out our 20th year in business on a high note!
There are still so many things to look forward to before the year is done though, and I wanted to give you all a few things to keep your eyes out for. It truly is a testament to the hard work, motivation and dedication of the entire team, and we thank each and every one of you for your contributions, suggestions, feedback and overall engagement within the Invision Community space. We have you to thank for the past 20 years, and we hope to still bring you a dynamic community platform for the next 20 (and beyond)!
New Version
Invision Community have released their most recent beta, 4.7.5 Beta 1.
This release is our December release and focuses mainly on providing bug fixes and improving stability in the software. This will be our last release for the year as we prepare ourselves for some new features in 2023!
Please click here to read up on the full release notes.
Blog
Earlier this week, I posted my first blog entry providing insight on how keeping it simple provides the best experience for the users of your community. It would be awesome if you could check it out if you obviously haven't already done so!
This makes up the first of a mini-series of blog entries I have planned, so stay tuned to read more in the next few weeks.
Upcoming Event
Want to hear from Olivia, Charles and Matt as they discuss what we have delivered this year? How about getting your eyes on the roadmap and what we have planned for next year? Join us for this very special December Release and Year in Review Chat, due to kick off in just a week's time!
It'll be 2:30 am my time, but I'll try my best to be there too!
Changelog
And just to keep you all in the loop, and because we know you love what our outstanding development team are doing each week, I thought I'd steal @Jordan Miller's idea (😈) in providing you all with a list of updates and fixes made to Invision Community in the last seven days:
See you in the community and next week right here for another Invision Insight! I look forward to hearing from you all!
On a side note, if you have any ideas for future Invision Insight content, I'm all ears! Feel free to send me a private message if you don't want it mentioned publicly.
Thank you everyone! 🦘

You will be missed, Jordan. I remember flying out to Las Vegas to meet you and when you ran up to me thinking "oh great, he's a hugger." I look forward to what you can do at AWS and expect discounts.

As the resident dang superstar, I would like to acknowledge @JamiUB's insight and wisdom.

As the resident dang superstar, I would like to acknowledge @JamiUB's insight and wisdom.