NoGi

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
IPS Community Suite has long had a reputation system; first we had a simple up/down system, later updated to introduce a Likes system as an alternative. Whichever system you chose to use, it tied in with our reputation system.
We're pleased to introduce the latest updates to the reputation system, and it's something that has been requested for quite some time: Reactions.
Quite simply, reactions allow users to offer more fine-grained sentiments towards content than a simple up/down or 'like'. They are now in common usage on social networks, and so users expect to be able to be more nuanced in their response to something they see.
Let's see how they work in a post, and then cover the options you'll have available.

What you see above is the default setup for a site that has used the Like system in version 4.1. We include 5 reactions by default:
Like Thanks Confused Sad Haha If you currently use the older style up/down reputation system, don't fret - you'll still get the new reactions on upgrade, but they'll be disabled by default and instead the new reaction UI will show up/down reactions. This gives you the flexibility to decide which of the new reactions, if any, you want to allow.
So, those are the basics - but what configuration options can you expect to see? First, you can of course add your own reactions! We expect that beyond the default reactions you'd expect to find, some sites will want reaction types specific to their use-case. On an intranet, you might want to have 'agree' and 'disagree' reactions for staff to use when responding to discussions. On a gaming community, you might replace the icons to be some graphic from a video game that means something to your particular userbase. There's a wealth of possibilities.
Each reaction you set up can be configured to adjust the original author's reputation count - a reaction can be positive (i.e. award a reputation point), negative (i.e. subtract a reputation point), or neutral (i.e. leave the reputation count unchanged). Our default set won't include any negative reactions, but you are free to configure these and new reactions to suit your own use-case. A user's total reputation count is still shown alongside their content and in their profile, of course.
If you don't want to use the new reactions for whatever reason, you can disable all of them except Like, and it'll behave just the like 4.1-and-earlier system:

 
Sites that currently use the up/down system don't show a list of names of users, and instead show an overall reputation score for the content. With the new reaction system, you can enable this even if you don't use up/down reactions. This is great if you plan to use reactions as, for example, an agree/disagree system, or where the content score is more important to your site than the individual reaction types.

How the reaction UI looks with the 'count only' setting enabled
As you'd expect, you can click individual reaction counts (or the overall reputation score, if you enable that setting) to view who reacted to the content. This remains a permission setting that you can apply per-group.

On touch devices, on-hover functionality is not suitable, and so for these devices the reactions UI looks like this:

Reactions play well with all areas of the suite, including Recommended Replies:

...and activity streams...

...and a couple of places we aren't quite ready to reveal yet  
 
We hope you're looking forward to this new feature as much as we are. It's already been a hit on our internal testing site, and we're looking forward to seeing how clients customize it for use on their own community.
Developer note: Reactions are one of two new features (the other currently unannounced) so far that make use of PHP Traits.

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release
IPS Community Suite comes with a default profile photo which is used when members have not set a profile photo for their account. While this model has served the software well for years, we felt it was time for an update to the software to keep pace with current internet trends. This has led to one of the latest changes you can expect to see with version 4.2: letter profile photos
When upgrading you will be asked if you wish to use letter profile photos, or if you wish to stick with the generic per-theme default profile photo that is used presently. You can change your mind any time after upgrading by adjusting the setting in the AdminCP as well.

AdminCP members list
We have tested many languages to ensure maximum compatibility. The font used in the image is automatically selected based upon the characters to be written to the image, so sites that have more than one language will see compatibility for all of the profile photos that are created automatically.
The colors are not set for each letter. You will notice in the screenshot that each "A" letter photo has a different color. They are chosen randomly when generated.

Letter photos in a sidebar widget
We hope that this change helps bring your communities to life with a little more style, flair, and uniqueness for each new user on your site.
 
Developer Note
The code is structured in such a manner that third party developers can further extend the feature with plugins. The methods for writing text to images are exposed through our central \IPS\Image class introducing new possibilities in your own custom code.

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.

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.

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!

We are improving our integration options with analytics tracking services to better track and credit all page views. Our focus here was to add the ability for IPS Community Suite to communicate with your analytics tracking provider of choice when it does page change events that do not otherwise get tracked.
Some tracking providers do not understand that an inline AJAX page load (one that loads new content without a full page refresh) should still count as a new page. Even though your browser did not do a full reload, all your content is different so it should count in your metrics.
To solve this issue, IPS Community Suite can now automatically put in custom code to execute on pagination. We include Google Analytics and Piwik code by default and there is also an option to include your own custom pagination event code for other services.

Analytics in AdminCP
If you already have your Google Analytics code in our existing (basic) analytics system then the Suite will detect this on upgrade and automatically enable the new pagination tracking. The screenshot above shows the "Other" option if you do not use Google Analytics or Piwik. If you have other providers you want us to consider just post a feedback topic.
Note: be sure that you embed Google Analytics into your Suite using the built-in analytics system. If you simply pasted the code into your theme templates then we cannot automatically enable the new tracking.
We hope this new feature allows for easier integration with analytics tracking providers and also gives you much better insight into your traffic by properly counting all the page views you may currently be missing out on!
 
This change will be in version 4.1.17 which is scheduled to be released in early December 2016.