Charles

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

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
 
 

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
 
 

The first thing you will want to do is login with the account created on install or was sent to you from our cloud services. Your initial account is in the administrator member group and therefore has full access to all areas of the Community.
AdminCP
The AdminCP (ACP) is the administration control panel area for your community. It is the place that administrators go to change settings, customize, and implement policies for how members interact on the community.
First Time Login
When you log into the ACP for the first time, you will see the page shown in the image below. If you are happy with how the ACP works, or wish to explore this yourself, you can of course skip.

Quick Setup
If you choose to select this option, it will allow you to quickly add in the main details about your site, such as logos, the name of your site etc.

Quick Setup List
 
Quick Search Menu

Quick Search
 
Learn to love the quick search menu as it will save you so much time! From here the system will search the entire AdminCP, member list, Commerce support requests, and more. If you are looking for a member's account to edit you can either go to the Members tab or just enter their name here. Let's say you need to edit a setting but cannot remember where it is: just enter the name and the system will take you there. Perhaps a client has give you their support request number for support: again, just enter the number and there you are. It's a real time saver.
Menu Reordering

Reorder Menu
 
The ability to reorder the menu is also quite useful. You can move menu items around and, if you change the root item, when you login that will become your AdminCP landing page. So let's say you are primarily involved in sales on your site: in that case make Commerce your top menu item. Perhaps you are a designer? Make Customization the top item. Then when you login you are taken directly to the most commonly used area for you.
AdminCP Dashboard
The Dashboard of the AdminCP is normally the default view when you login unless you have chosen to reorder your areas or are restricted.
 

Dashboard
 
It serves as a customizable overview of what is going on in your community. There are several widgets you can add/remove from this page and move them around to give you an overview that suits your needs. As you install additional apps new, app-specific widgets may also appear.
There is one widget in particular that is important to note:
Background Processes
There are various actions throughout the Community that cause tasks to be queued for background processing. Sending a bulk email, notifying people of new activity, deleting/moving large amounts of content, rebuilding post content, building the search index, and many more intensive actions. These actions are queued for work so you can continue to use your Suite while these intensive tasks occur without any further interaction from you.
The Background Processes widget allows you to monitor the status of these queue tasks and see their progress.

Background Processes
 
AdminCP Notifications
Within the AdminCP you will see a notifiation 'bell' icon in the top right. This will bring your attention to any notifications that you wish to see, by preference, and also to any items which need your attention such as something going wrong on your server setup.
 

Notification Alert Icon
 
When clicked, this will show you the current notifications awaiting your attention. From here you can click to see the full list using the link provided, and can also set up your own preferences for notifications. These preferences are set up per administrator.
 

Notification List
 
You can set up to see notifications for various items such as when a user registers, if there is a user who requires validation, when an error is logged, and many more items. It is important to note that some items you will see are greyed out, which are notified by default. You can choose to see these either in the admin notification area, by email, or both.

Notification Preferences
 
General Configuration
One of the first basic things you will want to set up in your AdminCP will be your general configuration. From here you can enter your Community name, address, copyright, and email addresses that will be notified when there are any updates to the software.

General Configuration
Next Steps
Now that you have logged in, become familiar with the AdminCP, and set your most basic settings you should start exploring the system. A few good places to start are:
Learn about member groups Setup your permissions Create your category structure The best way to learn is to explore the system and see all it has to offer. Invision Community is very powerful and configurable and you are sure to discover many features that will make your Community all it can be!

Before we start worrying about managing members we must first decide how members actually register on your community.
In the AdminCP go to System -> Login & Registration, under the registration tab  you will see a page with various options.

Registration Options
Key Options
Allow new registrations = You might want your community to be completely private where you manually create new members. If that is the case then just completely disable registrations. When do you this, the Sign Up link on the front end automatically hides.
Validation method for new accounts = By default this is set to Email Validation which requires new members to validate their email account before completing their setup. You can also allow for administrator approval if you want tighter control over your membership.
Tip You might not want to enable administrator validation of new members unless you really need that level of control as often people will lose interest if they have to wait around for approval to join your community.
We also provide COPPA support for clients who need to comply.

Everyone here at Invision Power Services, Inc., (IPS), the company that makes Invision Community, is happy you have chosen our system to power your Community! We are very proud of what we do and enjoy helping our clients grow their Community.
Let's first go over general terms and concepts in Invision Community.
General Terms
No one wants to read a glossary of terms so we will keep this short but it's important to know what we are talking about when we use a term or abbreviation.
AdminCP/ACP = Administration Control Panel which is the backend control area of your Suite
Member = Any user account in the system
Member Group = Control permissions and settings for members assigned to that group. All members are part of one or more member groups.
Guest = Someone who is browsing your community but is not logged in
Admin = A member who is in a group or otherwise has permission to access the AdminCP
Moderator = A member who has permission to perform any sort of control over other member's posts on the front end
Permissions = Throughout the Suite you will see permission options and be presented with a huge selection of checkboxes:

Permission Matrix
These permission checkboxes define what each member group can see or do within the area of the Suite you are working with at the time. The columns define the various options.
Applications
You will often hear us refer to the applications or apps in Invision Community. This may be referring to our primary applications (Forums, Blogs, Gallery, Pages, Commerce, or Downloads) or the ability for you to add third-party applications.
Cloud vs. Self-Hosted
We offer both a hosted, cloud-based service for Invision Community or a downloadable, self-hosted license you can run on your own server.
There are some more advanced functionality and server-level requirements that may not apply if you are using our cloud services. When something does not apply to cloud it will show like this in our documentation:
 
Applies to self-hosted customers only Example text that only applies to self-hosted licenses.
So when you see that text you can safely ignore all the technical requirements there when you are on our cloud services.