Charles

We cannot just give out the code as it's not our code to give out - it's the author's code - so you would need to transfer your proof of purchase to them. It takes 2 minutes not 6 months to transfer your purchase 🙂 

I respect your unique viewpoint but I am afraid I do not see that in practice 🙂 
We have many enterprise clients on our platform and they specifically do not want anything third-party. They see it as a security risk. When I speak to prospective clients they never ask about such things.
In fact, most enterprise clients specifically disallow any outsourcing or external code being added to their community setups in the contracts we have with them.
We get people switching to use from Discourse all the time. Again, I can see how you might see it that way in your specific case but, on a broader scale, it is just not what we experience.

Ryan and the team have done a fantastic job with these new tools and I'm really keen to see how they help in the current spam wave we're all experiencing.

Spam has always been an ongoing battle for community owners as spammers find new ways to circumvent existing anti-spam practices.
We have seen an uptick in new ways spammers are breaking through existing defense.
As such, we here at Invision Community continue to look at new ways for community managers to combat against spam. For our September release, we have added several new tools that can prevent spammers from registering in the first place and help combat them even if they register successfully.
Let's take a look at these new tools and settings.
Geolocation based registration filtering
Oftentimes, spam attacks can originate using bots and servers from specific regions. Using our existing Geolocation service, we have now added filters that will allow administrators to hold registrations from specific regions for administrator review, or deny the registration entirely.

Using this, administrators whose communities are under a spam attack from a specific region, can temporarily filter registrations from that region. Multiple regions can be defined at once, and each individual region can either be held for administrator review, or denied completely.
Disposable Email Filtering
We have added an extra option to our spam defense system to filter users registering with throwaway disposable emails, which are often used by spammers to bypass email validation.

During Spam Defense checking, we now also check the domain in use for the registration against a frequently maintained list. If the user passes through the normal spam defense checking, but is found to have a disposable email address, then the administrator can define one of the following actions to be taken.
Allow the registration to proceed Allow the registration, but moderate all posts (which an option to remove moderation after a certain amount) Flag the account for administrator review Register the account but immediately ban it Completely deny the registration For both Geolocation and disposable email filtering, the existing Spam Defense Whitelist is always honored ahead of these filters.
Contact Us Email Verification
A common pain point has been the Contact Us page. While the spam does not go to a user facing location, it does still land in the administrators inbox, or other area defined by the sites Contact Us settings.
To help with this, if a visitor who is not logged in attempts to use the Contact Us page, then in addition to the existing CAPTCHA, the administrator can optionally require the person to verify their email address before the message is ever sent. This applies to all Contact Us behaviors, including any added by third party applications.
Cloud Content Analysis
For our Invision Community Cloud customers, we have also added an additional layer of spam prevention after registration.

After a user registers, or if the account has been dormant, then the first few content submissions will be analyzed using a custom developed algorithm within our platform.
The algorithm takes into factor many different elements of the content, and will rank the post between 1 (not spam) and 5 (definitely spam).
The algorithm can be constantly adjusted and improved based on trends without any intervention from the administrator, and without the need to update to new releases of Invision Community.
The administrator can then decide one of the following actions to take based on the score that was received.
Allow the submission Hold the submission for moderator review Deny the submission completely Of course, specific groups can be made exempt from this and not have their content checked at all, which is useful for sites with subscription based registrations which may not want to have this applied to new subscribers, but do want to have new non-subscribers checked.
Spam can quickly become a headache for most community managers, and these new tools will help further combat it at the source. For our enterprise and Invision Community Cloud customers, being able to check for spam when posting is a new tool which will further filter out more of those annoying topics and posts.
We hope these new features give you additional tools in the fight against spam.
The features and changes presented here are available in the following packages:
Geolocation based registration filtering, Disposable Email Filtering, Contact Us Email Verification: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise, Invision Community Classic (Self Hosted).
Content Analysis: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise.

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I respect your unique viewpoint but I am afraid I do not see that in practice 🙂 
We have many enterprise clients on our platform and they specifically do not want anything third-party. They see it as a security risk. When I speak to prospective clients they never ask about such things.
In fact, most enterprise clients specifically disallow any outsourcing or external code being added to their community setups in the contracts we have with them.
We get people switching to use from Discourse all the time. Again, I can see how you might see it that way in your specific case but, on a broader scale, it is just not what we experience.

Yes, we have many clients doing really interesting things with Downloads+Commerce.
I think for developers that are serious about what they are doing, they can really thrive with us out of the way 🙂 

Yes, I will corral all of the Marketplace devs together so we come to consensus on this project. I've been fortunate to have worked with many of them over my 10 years with the community.  They all know me (for better or for worse, ha 😆). 
My goal for this new Marketplace Directory  is simple: provide an independent directory using Downloads.  It will link you to the providers' own website for support. 
 
More broadly, to anyone who is hesitant about these changes, there are some pros and cons: 
- More independence, more variation, and total flexibility for developers and themers.   They can build their own core, their own gallery, their own package of plugins.  You can't do any of that in the current Marketplace.  I expect to see some truly experimental and innovative approaches to how developers and themers work with IPS 5. 
- More independence, more variation, and total flexibility in how they charge.  Providers can charge crypto, they can offer a bundled set, they can offer discounts, they can set their own policies for chargebacks and refunds. 
- Trust will be deeper, not wider. The IPS Marketplace gave a broad stamp of trust to all providers for meeting standard IPS coding. But for clients, this is an opportunity to deepen ties to one or two trusted developers and take our most important apps private and control our own development pipeline.  I do believe the biggest developers will still offer - and can make healthy income - off a broad portfolio of single purpose mods, but those by itself aren't going to dramatically fulfill your community's specific needs.  

Why instead of talking about this here, won't you contact authors of apps/plugins you use to find a solution that fits both parties?
I understand that this isn't something you are happy about but until October there is more than enough time to transfer your purchases from MP to Author's website.

My goal is to provide a listing directory to make it easy for developers to list their apps.
A directory will provide visibility, scale, and ease for everyone to visit.  
Developers will handle payments and support on their own.  

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

Yes, we have many clients doing really interesting things with Downloads+Commerce.
I think for developers that are serious about what they are doing, they can really thrive with us out of the way 🙂 

This sounds like a net positive for developers.   Two primary issues (based on observation) have always been how long it takes for IPS to approve an app, and the fact IPS takes a cut.   This knocks them both out, so it seems like a win to me.

I wonder though, since the Marketplace is essentially a portal for paid downloads, will this change affect the need/desire for IPS to continue developing/maintaining the Downloads or Commerce apps in the long run (V5)?

Yes, we have many clients doing really interesting things with Downloads+Commerce.
I think for developers that are serious about what they are doing, they can really thrive with us out of the way 🙂 

We would like to take this opportunity to inform you of an important decision we've made with regard to the Invision Community Marketplace. After careful evaluation and consideration, we have decided to discontinue the Invision Community Marketplace, effective October 30, 2023.
 
Over the past several years, we have noticed a decrease in usage of the Marketplace, with a staggering 75% decline in sales. In addition, we have observed a growing trend away from off the shelf customizations towards bespoke tailoring of a community by working more closely with developers. While it has been a platform for many dedicated and talented contributors to share their work, we believe it is time to re-focus our efforts and resources to better serve your present and future needs.
 
We understand that change can be unsettling, but we are excited to share with you our new direction. We are putting our efforts into enhancing the newly introduced Providers Directory, a platform that will enable you to connect with third-party providers for a wide range of services, including custom development, community management/support, conversion services, and other valuable resources. Additionally, many providers will have independent websites you will be able to visit to explore and obtain existing and new premade resources.
 
More details are to follow soon, but we would like to highlight a few key points:
     • Marketplace renewals will cease effective immediately
     • New purchases will end September 15, 2023
     • The Marketplace will be removed in the October release and disabled on October 30, 2023
     • You will continue to be able to install and manage existing and new resources via the methods provided by their respective authors
     • You will be able to obtain a key for each of your current Marketplace purchases and provide that key to authors to transfer your purchases directly to the author
We invite you to visit the Providers Directory and start exploring the opportunities it offers. This will allow you to familiarize yourself with the database and the resources it will provide in greater depth. Many of the current Marketplace contributors have already created their profiles – please check them out!
Of course, this does not mean the end of aftermarket development with Invision Community. We are currently building new development tools for Invision Community 5 which have easier ways to add new functionality.
 
We want to express our sincere gratitude for your ongoing support and trust in Invision Community. We believe these changes will enable us to better position ourselves to continue moving forward in meeting the present and future needs of our customer base.
 
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out.
 
Thank you for being a part of the Invision Community family.
 
Update
We have posted our next blog covering the next steps for obtaining purchases from 3rd party developers.
 

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Nothing is really changing in that regard. We don't have a backdoor or anything like that to shut your community down 🙂 
Of course it would be detrimental to your community success and security to run any software platform that has not had an update in years, but that's up to you in the end.

Thank you so much for this help. I know I've been frustrated with this, and I appreciate you guys sticking with me. This is not my forte. I've got a server guy, and he's started on everything you said. Hopefully, that will do the trick. I've marked this solved and will report back -- one way or another -- just to let everyone know how it goes.
Again, thank you for your patience.

As has been mentioned, you have a DNS issue.  Multiple DNS issues in fact.
@Lindy mentioned the DMARC problem already.  You also highly likely to have an SPF issue. 
You have 11 entries in your SPF records, none include your MX record which is Outlook/365, none include your webhost (if you're directly sending from your host, this can be the issue), and it doesn't appear you have any sort of mailing service like SendGrid set up for SPF either. I'm surprised you can get any e-mails to go out at all.
If it is allowed by IPS, I can look into this for you. My rates are slightly lower than IPSes, but I do not offer IPS support outside of configuring a mail service on your site(s). I only would handle the Mail Deliverability side.  Since I don't believe it is an IPS issue, I may be a better fit for you than IPS's services.

Nothing is really changing in that regard. We don't have a backdoor or anything like that to shut your community down 🙂 
Of course it would be detrimental to your community success and security to run any software platform that has not had an update in years, but that's up to you in the end.

Nothing is really changing in that regard. We don't have a backdoor or anything like that to shut your community down 🙂 
Of course it would be detrimental to your community success and security to run any software platform that has not had an update in years, but that's up to you in the end.

This topic only applies to those on our cloud services.
 
As we prepare to launch improved spam management, we are also making changes to traffic control.
We have many tools in place to stop malicious traffic on our network. These tools stop day to day bad actors and can also handle situations where we get a huge flood of traffic in a denial of service attack.
It is always a balancing act to stop bad traffic while allowing good traffic. There have been some situations where real users were getting blocked because they were getting caught up in a suspicious IP range, for example.
When you were caught in a block, all you got was a permission denied page and that was it. This is what we want for bad bots or attacks, but for real people that is no help. So today we are launching a new system where you will be presented with a captcha (or similar) challenge to bypass a bot-focused block.
This will allow you, and your visitors, to continue browsing your community if you are caught in a block you should not be in. It also lets our firewall and other systems learn and do a better job of blocking bad traffic while allowing people in.
Please let us know if you experience any issues, inability to access a community, or you are prompted more than once for the challenge to access.
In normal operations, you should really never get the challenge prompt so please also let us know if you see it more frequently.

This topic only applies to those on our cloud services.
 
As we prepare to launch improved spam management, we are also making changes to traffic control.
We have many tools in place to stop malicious traffic on our network. These tools stop day to day bad actors and can also handle situations where we get a huge flood of traffic in a denial of service attack.
It is always a balancing act to stop bad traffic while allowing good traffic. There have been some situations where real users were getting blocked because they were getting caught up in a suspicious IP range, for example.
When you were caught in a block, all you got was a permission denied page and that was it. This is what we want for bad bots or attacks, but for real people that is no help. So today we are launching a new system where you will be presented with a captcha (or similar) challenge to bypass a bot-focused block.
This will allow you, and your visitors, to continue browsing your community if you are caught in a block you should not be in. It also lets our firewall and other systems learn and do a better job of blocking bad traffic while allowing people in.
Please let us know if you experience any issues, inability to access a community, or you are prompted more than once for the challenge to access.
In normal operations, you should really never get the challenge prompt so please also let us know if you see it more frequently.

This topic only applies to those on our cloud services.
 
As we prepare to launch improved spam management, we are also making changes to traffic control.
We have many tools in place to stop malicious traffic on our network. These tools stop day to day bad actors and can also handle situations where we get a huge flood of traffic in a denial of service attack.
It is always a balancing act to stop bad traffic while allowing good traffic. There have been some situations where real users were getting blocked because they were getting caught up in a suspicious IP range, for example.
When you were caught in a block, all you got was a permission denied page and that was it. This is what we want for bad bots or attacks, but for real people that is no help. So today we are launching a new system where you will be presented with a captcha (or similar) challenge to bypass a bot-focused block.
This will allow you, and your visitors, to continue browsing your community if you are caught in a block you should not be in. It also lets our firewall and other systems learn and do a better job of blocking bad traffic while allowing people in.
Please let us know if you experience any issues, inability to access a community, or you are prompted more than once for the challenge to access.
In normal operations, you should really never get the challenge prompt so please also let us know if you see it more frequently.

Right. 
Yes, it gives you a lot of information first. 

This topic only applies to those on our cloud services.
 
As we prepare to launch improved spam management, we are also making changes to traffic control.
We have many tools in place to stop malicious traffic on our network. These tools stop day to day bad actors and can also handle situations where we get a huge flood of traffic in a denial of service attack.
It is always a balancing act to stop bad traffic while allowing good traffic. There have been some situations where real users were getting blocked because they were getting caught up in a suspicious IP range, for example.
When you were caught in a block, all you got was a permission denied page and that was it. This is what we want for bad bots or attacks, but for real people that is no help. So today we are launching a new system where you will be presented with a captcha (or similar) challenge to bypass a bot-focused block.
This will allow you, and your visitors, to continue browsing your community if you are caught in a block you should not be in. It also lets our firewall and other systems learn and do a better job of blocking bad traffic while allowing people in.
Please let us know if you experience any issues, inability to access a community, or you are prompted more than once for the challenge to access.
In normal operations, you should really never get the challenge prompt so please also let us know if you see it more frequently.

This topic only applies to those on our cloud services.
 
As we prepare to launch improved spam management, we are also making changes to traffic control.
We have many tools in place to stop malicious traffic on our network. These tools stop day to day bad actors and can also handle situations where we get a huge flood of traffic in a denial of service attack.
It is always a balancing act to stop bad traffic while allowing good traffic. There have been some situations where real users were getting blocked because they were getting caught up in a suspicious IP range, for example.
When you were caught in a block, all you got was a permission denied page and that was it. This is what we want for bad bots or attacks, but for real people that is no help. So today we are launching a new system where you will be presented with a captcha (or similar) challenge to bypass a bot-focused block.
This will allow you, and your visitors, to continue browsing your community if you are caught in a block you should not be in. It also lets our firewall and other systems learn and do a better job of blocking bad traffic while allowing people in.
Please let us know if you experience any issues, inability to access a community, or you are prompted more than once for the challenge to access.
In normal operations, you should really never get the challenge prompt so please also let us know if you see it more frequently.