Simon Woods

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
Improving your SEO can be a complex undertaking with many different approaches but there are things that everyone knows are good practice and also more modern approaches to SEO that have changed since we first started developing IPS Community Suite. So it was time for a review and update.
Unfortunately no pretty screenshots on this one as this is all behind the scenes stuff but still quite useful to know . Also, some of this may sound a bit technical and dry but feel free to search some of these technologies if you are curious.
Move from HTML structured data to JSON-LD and enhance our existing markup with sensible additions. Calendar, blog, forum and pages (articles) data marked up for rich snippets. General review of our schema.org markup and enhance where appropriate. Use sitelinks search and other sensible markup such as the website and logo markup. Allow administrators to specify social profile links in the AdminCP which we then show links to in the footer and also make available in schema.org markup. Fix many duplicate page title issues. Review and ensure nofollow/noindex tags are used in appropriate areas. Add item tags as HTML meta tags Adding <link rel="next" value="next page url"> helps search engines know next/previous page.  
Nothing like a bulleted list of items to get you excited! But really these should be welcome improvements to all.
 

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
One of our more technically-oriented features for 4.2, we have added more detailed logs of user logins, and the devices and IP addresses used. This brings several new features:
 
Notification of a new device sign in
If enabled, users can receive an email notification when a new device is used to log into their account:
 

Email sent when a login from a new device is detected
When a user signs in for the first time, a special key is set to recognise the browser on subsequent logins. This mean the notification email does not trigger on a new IP address, which would be annoying when travelling or if using a network where the IP address changes regularly. Instead, the notification is only triggered if someone signs into your account from a new physical device or web browser.
 
UserCP Device Management
If enabled, a new page will show in the user's settings page showing all the devices which have been used to log into their within the last 90 days (which is recent enough that could still be logged in if "Remember Me" was checked).

Recently Used Devices
Users can see the device, browser, physical location (obtained by a GeoIP lookup) and if applicable, how the login was processed (for example, if the sign in was with Facebook or Twitter, this will show). If they chose "Remember Me" when logging in, they can undo that (handy if you realise you accidentally left yourself signed in on a public computer).
If they see anything they don't recognise, a page to walk them through the necessary steps to re-secure their account is available.

Secure Account Information
 
New Two-Factor Authentication Setting
"Logging into the front-end" is one of the options of when to prompt for Two Factor Authentication. In 4.2, this has been separated into two distinct settings:
Logging into the front-end from a new device Logging into the front-end from a known device If you enable the former, but not the latter, and the user has previously logged in devices, the system will automatically show an explanation to users alongside the other available recovery option. This can be useful especially if you do not want to offer other recovery options.
 
AdminCP Device Management
In the AdminCP, administrators can see all the device and IPs a member has used. They can also disable automatic login for any device.
 

Edit member page shows most recently used device and IP address
 
 
Viewing a device's details
The system can also detect if another user is using the same device and will show this in the list of devices.
  
Users sharing the same device
 

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
I am sure we have all accidentally clicked delete on a post in your community and then realized you needed it. Luckily we now have Delayed Deletes to easily restore deleted content.

Settings in AdminCP
You can delete just as you normally do as you moderate and your posts will be removed just like now. The main difference is that you can now view recently deleted content and restore as needed in the Moderator Control Panel.

Easily view what is pending delete
All you have to do is click the deleted item and you will be taken to that item in context of where it used to be. This makes is much easier to understand why it was deleted and decide if you should restore.

Restore and view deleted content in context
Delayed Deletes is a feature that could be a life saver for your community and we cannot wait to get it out to you.

Version 4.1.19 is now available in the client area!
This release focuses on bug fixes and performance along with some new key features.
Ability for members to lock and unlock their own content
We've added a new group level option to allow members to lock and unlock their own content. This is disabled by default.

Messenger Quota Display
To help diagnose issues your members may find, we now display their personal message quota in the ACP.

Default view for Activity Stream
When creating a new activity stream, you can specify either expanded or condensed as the default view. This is especially handy for streams you wish to share with other members.

Other key changes include:
Performance and speed improvements. A new moderator setting to restrict users from ignoring moderators. A new group setting to hide a group from filters in search. When moving content moderators are now prompted for where you want to be redirected after the action. An email is now sent when an account is locked for too many bad login attempts. Check out the Release Notes for a full list of changes.

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
There are many Calendar related improvements in 4.2 designed to make adding and engaging with events easier than ever before. First of these is Event Reminders. 
Reminders are easy to create. Simply use the Set Reminder button shown on all future events and specify when you would like your reminder.

Choose when you would like to be reminded
Changed your mind? Simply adjust the reminder or remove it altogether.

Easily adjust existing reminders
When the time comes a notification will be sent via the member's chosen email or inline method.

Receive inline or email reminders using the standard notification settings
Event reminders are a simple but often requested feature and we're excited to be introducing it with 4.2. Don't forget to follow the News & Updates section as we have many more announcements to help keep your members engaged.

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
Following on from our previous entry about the new Recommended Replies feature, we also have one more small feature change that will be very useful.
Content Message is a small feature available in all IPS Community Suite content areas (forums, blogs, gallery, etc.) and allows a moderator to put a message at the top of any item.

Topic with a moderator message
This is useful if you have a special use for the area people are posting in, need to encourage conversation to stay on topic, or perhaps the conversation is becoming heated and you need to remind people to behave.
Sometimes the smallest features can prove the most useful and already I have found myself reaching for this feature out of habit from using it on our test 4.2 installs and missing it on our production site. I cannot wait to have it available and I am sure you will enjoy the ability to add custom notes to any area of the Suite.
 
Development Note
For our power users: this feature and the Recommended Replies feature use a new content meta data capability. This allows you to store miscellaneous data that is attached to a content item which does not need to be otherwise searched or exposed unless you are viewing that item. We will provide technical details on this later but it is a really easy way to store data about content without having to create additional tables or methods.

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
Sometimes you may find situations where you want to highlight one or more replies to a content item to bring attention to a really great response. This is especially true on busy communities where you might have dozens or even hundreds of replies in a single discussion.
There is now an ability for a moderator to Recommend a reply (or multiple replies) and even leave an optional note explaining why they think you should view that post.

Moderator Permission

Optional note for recommended reply
When a reply is Recommended you will see a snippet at the top of the content item along with the optional moderator note and a link to jump right to that reply.

A topic with a recommended reply.
You can Recommend more than one reply and this feature works through IPS Community Suite in forum topic, blog entries, gallery images, and so on. You can set this permission along with other moderator permissions in the AdminCP.
We really think this will allow moderators to bring attention to some of the best replies and guide users to the best content your community has to offer.

We are well into development on IPS Community Suite 4.2 and are excited to start announcing all the new features and improvements.
Our next big release is focused on engagement with your members. You will see enhancements to our Reputation system, new ways to encourage people to register on your community, and enhancements to existing features to make them more interactive. There are also entirely new capabilities we cannot wait to show you ranging from new ways to organize content to tools to help promote your community.
Version 4.2 also features a refreshed AdminCP and default front-end design. Theme changes in 4.2 are mostly in the CSS framework so your existing themes will either work without issue or require minor changes to work in the new version.
Over the next several weeks we will be posting news entries with previews of upcoming features fairly often. Be sure to follow our News section, our Facebook, or Twitter to stay up to date.
We expect IPS Community Suite 4.2 to be out in mid-2017 with a public preview available sooner.
Everyone at IPS has worked very hard on this update and we think you will love it!

Version 4.1.18 is now available in the client area!
Two large changes include Two Factor Authentication:
And changes to make Google less jumpy about password inputs:
Some smaller changes include:
Pinterest share link has been added Images embedded in the editor can now have an alternative title set for accessibility The Approval Queue page now has a "Hide" button to hide content (rather than only being able to approve / delete) Disabling Profile Photo uploads will now also disable importing from a URL The Admin CP will now indicate whether or not a member is connected to a social network The Admin CP will now display more information for a user who has been banned imgur embedded is now supported Check out the Release Notes for a full list of changes.

We have had a question and answer feature in IPS Community Suite for some time and we are now happy to add Google Authenticator as another option. We have also combined the various options it a new Two Factor Authentication (2FA) section in the AdminCP with many more options.

Two Factor Authentication Settings
There are also new settings to control when a user is required (or not) to setup 2FA:

2FA Setup
You can control what areas will prompt for 2FA authentication:

2FA Area Control
And how the system should recover if a user cannot login via 2FA on their account:

2FA Recovery Settings
An administrator can configure these settings to tailor the security needs of their community. For example, you might want to require 2FA your admins and moderators but keep it optional for your members. 
On the front end your members will see a new Account Security section under their settings area.

Account Security Settings
Once authenticated, a user will then be able to enable various security options. For example, the Google Authenticator setup shows an easy to follow setup.

Google Authenticator Setup
We hope you enjoy this new level of system security. IPS has plans to add additional 2FA providers beyond Question and Answers and Google Authenticator. We will keep you updated!
 
This change will be in version 4.1.18 which is scheduled to be released in late January 2017.

IPS is always auditing our software to improve security at the code-level but these improvements are not really visible to you even though they protect your site all the time. We are implementing some new features that you can use to enhance the security and privacy of your site. Many of these features depend on your personal preferences, local laws, or the policies of your own organization. Here is a list of what's new:
Birthday Control

You may wish to make birthday viewing only show to admins or you can completely disable prompting for a birthday if you consider that information sensitive.
Member Delete Name Retention
When deleting a member in the AdminCP, if you choose to keep their posts the system currently names the posts with a display name of "Guest user" where user is the previous display name of the member you deleted. You can how choose to retain their name in posts or not so you can either have it as it is now or simple "Guest" on member delete.
Password Strength

Password Strength
You now have two new options for password: show a strength meter and require strong passwords. You can choose to either just show the meter as a suggestion or you can also choose to enforce a password strength. You can choose between three levels of password enforcement parameters depending on how strict you choose to be.
Guest Terms Banner

Guest Terms Banner
There is a new option to show a guest terms of service banner when a new visitor first visits your site. You can set the text shown in the display and you can also put in two special tags to automatically link to your Terms of Service or Privacy Policy page.
Age Restrictions

Age Prompt
We have always had COPPA support in the Suite but we have extended this to be a more generic age restriction feature. You can now set your site to reject registrations from anyone under a certain age you specify. For privacy, the birthday entered on registration is only used to calculate permission and is never stored.
 
This change will be in version 4.1.17 which is scheduled to be released in early December 2016.

We have added a selection of improvements to moderator workflow and some new features to generally make moderation easier.
We have already talked about a few new moderation improvements:
Default Warning Notes Tag Quick Edit Word and Link Improvements Now let's go over a few more new features that are designed to help moderation.
Multi Page Actions
When you split a topic or delete replies to some content that has multiple pages you would always be redirected back to the first page and first post. This could get a bit annoying if you were previously very deep into a conversation. We now try to remember where you were and keep your place after those items are removed.
Hide Unapproved Content
Previously you had only two options when viewing content that was pending moderator approval: delete and approve. You can now choose to hide an item rather than approving it so you can remove it from the approval queue without deleting.
Moderator Actions on Reports

Report Status
When a moderator changes a report status it now logs that action so other moderators can view when and who changed a status.
Display Name History

Display Name History
You can now see a display name history on the front end for a user. This can also be enabled for the public to see per-group if you want everyone to see the display name changes of a member.
Animated Profile Photos
You can now disable animated profile photos so your users cannot apply them to their profile. This will not go back and remove existing photos but will stop new additions.
IP Tools

IP Use Overview
The IP tools have had an update to make finding IPs with their related members and posts easier. This works with both IPv4 and IPv6.

IP Search
You can also search for all uses of an IP by member or wildcard search an IP to find all uses of an IP range.
 
These changes to moderator tools will help you better moderate your community and allow you to focus on member interaction rather than member management. In addition to the items linked at the top of this entry we have already talked about, these small changes come together to make moderation even easier in IPS Community Suite.
 
This change will be in version 4.1.17 which is scheduled to be released in early December 2016.

We are changing the existing Profanity Filters feature to become the new Word Filters feature. This change will allow you to define words that will initiate a moderator review before content is posted. With creative use of this new feature you can actually have the Suite self-moderate certain posts.
Right now the Profanity Filters are pretty basic. If you enter "stopword" you can have it change to *****. That's fine for basic profanity but sometimes you want to do other actions with a word. Perhaps someone might mention a competitor, you see common spam words, or you run a site targeted to children and want fine control over what is posted. There are a lot of reasons a simple replace word with *** might not be what you want.
Word Filters introduce an option to let you say "stopword" places a post in moderation queue.

Word Filters
So now you can define a list of words that are not necessarily profanity but are words you want to review if they are posted.
We have also extended this logic to the URL Filters which are now just called Links in the AdminCP configuration. You can now disallow all links and have a post go to approval if someone does post a link. This is also useful for sites where you need really tight control on content either for security or privacy reasons.

Link Options
With the new Links feature you can also set allow/disallow list of allows links and if someone posts a link outside those lists (depending on your mode) the post will go into review.
We hope these features allow you to introduce a bit of automatic moderation to your community and you can come up with creative ways to capture posts that need review either for security, privacy, or just keeping things in order.
 
 This change will be in version 4.1.17 which is scheduled to be released in early December 2016.

There are now two ways to get outbound RSS feeds in IPS Community Suite: Activity Streams and a new Custom RSS Feeds feature we are introducing.
Every Activity Stream you create also creates a related RSS feed. However, Activity Streams take into account recent activity and unread status per-user which you may not want if you want a simple, raw feed of content by date. The new RSS Feeds feature uses similar filter settings to Activity Streams but does a traditional by-date approach to the feed. It also only reports on the initial creation of a content item and does not update based on replies.

Configure RSS Feeds
You can finely select various content settings including selecting just certain categories within an application. So you might create an RSS feed that includes only content from an announcements forum and your blog section which would then be a total feed of all the news on your site.
RSS feeds are useful in the traditional sense for people to subscribe to a feed on your site but they are also useful for integration. Many clients use RSS feeds to pull content into external sources to embed content on a different site, mobile app, or other systems. For those of you looking for even tighter integration with external systems, be sure to check out our REST API.
 
This change will be in version 4.1.17 which is scheduled to be released in early December 2016.

When a moderator is warning a user they can already input a reason for the warning. However, on busy sites this can get quite tedious plus you also may want some content in there such as your Terms of Service to highlight the member's reason for a warning.
We have added a new default warning note for the warning actions. This allows the admin to setup these notes to pre-populate for the moderator when they select a warning reason. So you might input an admin-approved message, highlight the section of the rules your member violated, or for corporate clients you might include some notice from your legal department.

Admin Configuration
On the front end the moderator will see that content as a pre-filled area in the notes box but the moderator can still edit it to the specific situation.

Moderator Warning Panel
We think this will streamline moderation particularly on busy communities. Admins will be able to define how to approach certain member situations to balance keeping your community running smoothly with the importance of looking professional and polite when you do have to take action on a member. Moderators will also be able to speed up their work by simply clicking a post, selecting a reason, and submitting the warning. No typing needed.
 
This change will be in version 4.1.17 which is scheduled to be released in early December 2016.

Tags are a powerful feature in IPS Community Suite 4 and we have seen clients using them in many ways to enhance content discovery on their site. Adding tags to an item is quite easy but modifying them after the fact requires you to edit the root content item. Not only is this tedious but it also then shows an edited-by line for that item even if all you did was change a tag.
To make this process more user friendly we now have the ability to quickly edit tags when viewing any content item. When you view an item that has tags enabled and you have permission to edit then you will see a link to edit tags.

Tag Quick Edit
That brings up an input box where you can manage your item tags without leaving the page to a full edit screen.

Tag Quick Edit Input
We have been testing the feature for a few weeks internally and it has already saved us time as we tag our discussions. But beyond that, and I think more important, is the fact that we find we are using tags more often. More use means more organization and filter possibilities of your content which is a great thing for busy, data-drive communities.
So we hope that not only will controlling your tags be faster an easier but you too find you use the tagging feature more often with this small but useful change.
 
This change will be in version 4.1.17 which is scheduled to be released in early December 2016.

I'm pleased to announce we're finally ready to open our new Developers area. The aim of this project has been to improve our existing developer documentation by building a central place to contain it, as well as update and expand the content available.
As of today, we have the regular documentation and REST API documentation ready to use. Over the coming weeks and months, we'll be expanding what's available further, going into more detail about the tools available within the framework. We've also started work on comprehensive Getting Started guides, that will walk you through simple developer projects from start to finish - these will be available soon, once they're complete.
If there's a particular aspect of IPS4 development that you don't feel is adequately catered for right now, please let us know! This will help us direct our efforts to the most useful places.
Enjoy!

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

IPS Community Suite 4.1.16 is nearing the end of development so I wanted to go over some of the new features in this upcoming release. Some are big and some are small but we always enjoy making any sort of enhancements to the Suite.
We expect 4.1.16 to go to public beta next week. If you are interested in using a public beta please check out our beta forum (clients only) with more info. We welcome as much testing as possible and our betas are considered safe to use on a live site. We do offer support for betas so, if you are technically minded, consider giving them a try.
Commerce: New Ticket Listing
We have redesigned the ticket listing view in Commerce to be much more user friendly and better use screen space. You can also now group by department which is great for organization.

 
Much like Activity Streams on the front end you can create custom views for tickets based on how you work.

The new My History view allows staff to quickly see their latest replies and actions along with some basic stats.

There are many other smaller improvement in Commerce in 4.1.16 as well. We think you will enjoy all the updates.
Security Questions
To enhance the security of your member accounts we now have a new security questions feature where you can allow your members to put in their own, personal security questions. The member will then be prompted to answer those questions for account actions you define.

Account Change Emails
Members will now receive confirmation emails when they change their email address...

and their password...

Topics per Page
You can now define the number of topics per page in forum view.

Remove all Followers
Moderators can now remove all followers from any item that allows follows. This is useful if you are archiving an old item or otherwise do not want people getting notified of new activity on an item.

Automatic Following
Your members can already choose to automatically follow content they start or reply to but now you can define this as the default behavior for all members. Your members can of course override this to their own preference.

Embed Failure Message
To answer the constant question "why didn't my media embed?" we now show you why. Regular members will just see a message indicating the Suite tried to embed but was not able to. Admins will get more information on what failed.

Suspended Member Page
When you banned/suspended a member previously they simply saw a generic permission denied message. We now show a more friendly page saying they were suspended and why.

The member can click to get the full information from the Warning System as well.

Contact Us
The contact us page now has configuration options to control where messages are sent. You can do email and even Commerce support departments now.

Announcements
Global announcements can now be restricted by member group.

And some technical stuff...
In addition to the new feature additions we have also fixed dozens of issues reported by clients. There was a particular focus on Commerce, Pages, and IPS Connect. Some other items of note:
Performance improvements in: profile view, sitemap generator, posting replies, and Activity Streams We now try to more reliably detect the AWS S3 endpoint for those using S3 file storage Tasks view will now show the last time a task ran More efficient license key checking to keep the keys from being checked too often which can slow your site down If group promotion based on date is enable the system will now auto-promote even if a member does not login If you move your site to a new URL you no longer have to update a constant if using the image proxy You can now press ctrl/cmd+enter in any editor window to submit the reply (yay!) In Commerce ticket view there are keyboard shortcuts to perform common actions (such as press 'r' to open reply box or 'n' for note) There is now logic to prevent double-posting when the initial post encounters an error on submit If your datastore (cache system) is not working properly the AdminCP will now show you a warning telling you that it needs attention.    

In line with our aim to make incremental improvements in each release, I wanted to go over a few of the small but useful changes to the personal messenger that you'll find in our next release, 4.1.13.
 
Read/unread filtering
The first improvement is that you can now filter the message list by read and unread, making it a little easier to browse through just the messages you're interested in.
 
Search improvements
Next up, the messenger search has been improved in a couple of ways; first, you can now also search the names of both the recipients and the senders, and second, we've added a menu so you can specify which fields in particular you want to search by.
 
Easier moving
Finally, we've added a popular request - the ability to use the mass-move tool inside the messenger. You can now check multiple messages, and the usual mass-action toolbar will appear that will allow you either move them to another folder, or, has been the case in the past, delete them.
 
While these are each small improvements by themselves, we hope the incremental changes in each release add up to a more pleasant experience for users. 

Often when you are reading a topic, comments, or other posts, you will see team members replying. Although IPS Community Suite already allows groups to set up custom images and member titles, these replies can get lost in the noise.
Version 4.1.13 now allows you to switch on post highlighting per member group. This makes sure the reply stands out from the rest of the replies.

 
Of course, this feature works everywhere; from calendar comments to article replies.

 
The feature is switched on via the Group form in the ACP.

 
You can edit the look of the highlighting via the theme’s settings which allows for different color schemed per-theme.

 
We have also ensured that theme designers can get the most out of the system by embedding a data attribute noting the group of the author. This means that you can add custom CSS to use different colours per member group.

 
 
 
We think post highlighting will be a simple way to bring attention to member posts in groups that you define.
 
 

Our Pages CMS is one of our most popular applications as we are continuing to improve it based on feedback. New in 4.1.13 includes:
Designer’s Mode HTML Editing
This update allows you to edit your HTML mode pages inside the designer's mode file system. Any edits you make, once saved in your text editor are instantly available which makes it much faster to build HTML pages with Pages.

 
Database Template Improvements
We listened to a lot of feedback about templating within the AdminCP for Pages and one common request was for a way to delete a group of database templates and to rename those groups. When you import databases, the template group names are created unique but you may want to change this to something more memorable. You will see here that the dialog also shows you which databases this template is used.

 
Page titles when using databases
Currently, when you add a database to a page, the page title is replaced with the database name. This may not always be desirable, and you may want the page title to remain in all database URLs (such as record view). There is now an option for this per database.

Relational Field Improvements
Now when you create a relational link between databases, you can opt to show which records link to the relational record. To give you an example, say you had a database for actors, and a database for movies, and you created a link on the actors record to show which movies they star in; now when viewing the movie, it will show you a list of the actors.

 
More Filterable Fields
We added both "Date" and "YesNo" field types to be filterable when viewing a list of records. When you use the Date type, you can select a date range for listing articles.

We also added the ability to use any custom field set as filterable to be used when creating a database feed widget.

 
Unique Fields
Another popular request was to allow a way to force unique entries for custom fields. This means that when enabled, only one record per database can have the same value. This is enabled when creating or editing a field.

 
Other improvements
You can now quickly delete an entire media folder via the AdminCP.

You can now quickly see which databases are used on which pages via the AdminCP page list.

 
And we added a way to programatically fetch a custom field value via the $record object. Currently, you need to use something like $record->field_12 which works well until you import that database to another installation. The fields are renumbered so this syntax no longer works. We made it possible to use the field key like so $record->field_{my_key_name_here}. Not only does this solve the issue when importing databases, it is also much more readable and easier to remember!

We are currently beta testing our next release, 4.1.12, which contains hundreds of bug fixes, dozens of improvements, as well as a handful of new features. In this post, I want to cover some improvements we've made to two key areas: activity streams and search.
Activity Streams
The first improvement we made is to change how the expanded/condensed toggles are displayed to improve their clarity. From studying the feedback from administrators and users, we discovered that many people did not realize the view could be changed. To improve this, the toggles now explicitly say 'Condensed' and 'Expanded', making it much clearer how the view can be toggled to your own preference.

More clearly marked expand and condense options for Activity Streams
Next, a common point of feedback about Activity Streams is that clicking a result and then hitting the Back button in the browser means you are put back at the first batch of results, losing your place in the stream. In 4.1.12 we improved this so that clicking Back will load the last batch of results you were viewing, enabling you to continue browsing from whence you left off.
Finally, in the Content Types menu we added an Apply button. We discovered that users were not always sure how to save the selection of content types they had made (which automatically happened when that menu was closed). To alleviate this, the new Apply button will save the selection and close the menu, updating the stream results in real-time as expected. You can still simply click out of the menu to apply changes as well.

The new Apply button in the Content Types menu
Search
While overall improvements to search (specifically the algorithms to match and return the results) are a matter of ongoing research and refinement which we will improve in the 4.2 series and beyond, 4.1.12 sees one small improvement to the options available to users. While you have always been able to search within a particular forum, category etc. while browsing that area, you were not able to retroactively filter into particular areas after performing a more general search. IPS Community Suite 4.1.12 adds this ability to the interface, allowing you to get more specific results from a particular area of the community.
Version 4.1.12 is currently in beta testing and should be released in the next two weeks.

We are currently beta testing our next release, 4.1.12, which contains hundreds of bug fixes, dozens of improvements, as well as a handful of new features. I wanted to introduce one of those new features: post preview.
Long-time users of our software will know that a post preview function was a standard feature, but we took the decision to not include it in the initial IPS4 release. It had a couple of drawbacks:
it only applied to certain pages, such as topic view - other WYSIWYG editors simply didn't get a preview the workflow wasn't very good for modern web apps, requiring a round-trip to the server and a full page refresh When IPS4 was released, we felt that the built-in rendering of the editor was a sufficient preview of how the end result would appear. However, while analyzing ongoing customer and user feedback for IPS4 in its first year of release, we have seen that a preview still has a use. There are some circumstances when a true WYSIWYG experience is just not possible such as using more advanced formatting (like LaTeX) or when admins create certain custom editor plugins.
As a result, we rethought post preview. We wanted to ensure that all editors could be previewed, and that it didn't have a clunky workflow. In addition, since IPS4 uses a responsive theme, we wanted to give users the opportunity to preview how their post would look on different devices.
Here's the result, and what will be available in 4.1.12:

Post preview in IPS Community Suite 4.1.12
The preview is shown by clicking a new button on the toolbar (meaning it can be moved, removed, etc. just like the other default buttons). When the preview loads, the toolbar allows the user to resize it to different device sizes. If they are on desktop, they can also view it at tablet at phone sizes; on a tablet, it can also be viewed at phone size.
So now we not only show a true preview of what content will look like when posted, but we also allow you to preview how it will look on other devices. Of course that preview is just a best-guess since different devices have different window sizes but it does give you an idea.
We hope this reimagining of an old feature for a more modern web will please end-users and make posting content a more accurate process. Stay tuned for more updates on what's included in 4.1.12!
Version 4.1.12 is currently in beta testing and should be released in the next two weeks.

This is a maintenance and security release to fix reported issues and add refinement to existing features. In addition to bug fixes and performance improvements, it includes following new/changed features:
Instant notifications are now dismissible. The sidebar has been added back to the stream pages. You can now sort by most downloaded in Downloads app. The ModeratorCP and AdminCP IP Address Tools now allow you to track the IP addresses used to vote in polls. A new setting has been added to disable the RSS feed for activity streams. A new setting has been added to specify the minimum display name length. Adds a new "can unban" moderator permission separate to the "can edit profiles" permission being used previously. IP addresses now show in reports. There is now a constant-level setting to disable the ACP IP address check in case of being locked out of the ACP. Several improvements to Commerce to make some features clearer: the Shipping Rates configuration pages now indicate to the admin if a potential mistake has been made, the front-end indicates to admins if no support departments have been set up, and the renewal settings wording has been clarified. Check our Release Notes for full information and to keep up with releases in development. To be notified of updates as soon as they are available you can add an email address in your AdminCP under General Configuration.