AlexWebsites

Is their any central place where all developers are coming together to publish their addons? I remember many eon's back during vB days.. they used to have some modding community or at least some forum existed. 
With new IPS structure, it's annoying as hell from user perspective, going to 10 forums! I am also worried, that addon developers will not get new customers.. and they will move to different forums who support modding. 
But again, I am here not to debate on decision which has been made. Just looking for alternative solution if available. 
Thanks
 

Is there a benefit to deleting spammers? I always thought that leaving the data would prevent the same spammer using the same IP, email, or username from come back. 
 

I agree and leave all my sites branded. Most people know that when they visit a niche forum, it’s IPS, Xenforo, vbulletin, phpbb or other. If it would help my traffic or other to remove, I would pay to have it removed. I don’t think it does.
$500 is a bit steep but it’s their hill to put out there. Xenforo is $350 so not much less. Vbulletin is $289. So everyone charges something!
I don’t have an issue and want IPS to have more clients (self-hosted selfishly) so they prosper and continue on.. 

There is not a big huge benefit.  It's more OCD when viewing the member list.  😄 
The benefits I can think about would be having more usernames available for reuse if deleted, etc.  
Personally I see it as a bad thing as you lose the logs of bad emails that could try again.  It also has basically any record completely gone, etc.  

If you had added it to your ban flters, yes.
Correct - email = unique, so leaving them in there is a good thing. Or you add them to your ban filters if you want to delete the users.
Correct - display name could be re-used if deleted.

If anyone thought the alpha folks were keeping their lips shut about this I can state unequivocally we have not.
IPS kept this way close to the vest and none of us in the preview even knew this was what the tags changes were going to be, we just knew that tags were going to "change". This is not in the alpha yet, nor was it even hinted at.
I can state with some vague authority that this, treating tags as pseudo-content items to up discoverability and presentation of content has to be one of the best ideas I've seen in the CMS/Forums/Community space in years.
If you were waiting for something to differentiate V5 from just being V4 re-engineered, this is it.

Working on an integration currently.

AI is an interest area, and there's much we can do, but we want to make sure what we do makes sense. Google is hitting AI generated content hard and wants to purge a lot of it from its index, so having AI write content is probably not wise and destroys the humanity within the community (I'm a poet..)

Using AI to find content is probably a good area to move into. I find myself using ChatGPT instead of Google as it's generally more accurate and finding what I want (but still offers some really bad answers).

As we find ourselves with our toes over the precipice of June; signalling the half way point of the year, I thought it's a good time for an update.

Apologies southern hemisphere.
Invision Community 5 has been in alpha testing for a while, and a small group have found a good number of bugs, and offered their thoughts and suggestions, some of which we've implemented. During this time we've wrapped up the new editor, a boat load of UI improvements and more.
We are now ready for the next stage, which is to give our alpha testers their own Cloud v5 to test with. This opens up testing for the Admin CP, and all areas without using developer mode. v5 has a lot of changes to how CSS, JS and resources are managed. They are now built when we build the apps, and should never need rebuilding. We also store compiled templates now, so lots of slow eval() calls are no longer needed. In brief testing locally, it has made the entire platform super-fast.
We are choosing to use a Cloud v5 to test with, rather than a traditional download for two reasons. The first is that using our hosting platform means we don't have to chase down issues with PHP, MySQL and unix versions which can be time consuming in the early stages. The second is that we're still writing the new build code, so we can't actually produce a versioned zip just yet. 😂
But fear not, downloadable versions will be coming at some point.
We're aiming to have this alpha demo system ready next week, so if you want to help alpha test, drop a comment below. I want to keep the first round (1-2 weeks) fairly small or it becomes overwhelming sifting through the feedback and bugs but please do register your interest.
In terms of functionality, we're wrapping up the tagging changes; I'd expect a blog on that next week. The final parts of the Pages app are coming together. We even tested an upgrade of this site to v5 to see how the Pages built pages looked, and much to all of our relief, it looks great with just a few CSS classes needing updating.
It's been a long journey - and a little longer than we'd first hoped but we're getting closer to betas when the fun really starts.
We're really proud of v5 and we hope you like what we've created.
 

Here's Google's score for it's search page:

Must be nice to control where pages rank in search results. 😂
There are huge improvements in v5 but of course if you choose layouts that work better for humans, such as card layouts with header images, it means a lower Pagespeed score as there are more images to load. We've removed lots of JS, web fonts and CSS and the HTML structure is much cleaner.
You need to find the right balance. Purely optimising for a score from Google may mean it's not going to entice new members and keep members coming back.

I haven’t seen significant differences, but again, it would depend on what is actually on those pages. 
As Alex said, Pages databases don’t seem to be super fast. I have one site where the Pages homepage doesn’t show the main article database, but actually a block listing the latest articles. As those blocks are part of the regular sidebar block caching, it loads faster than the actual article database. Might be worth considering.  

There isnt a way in which to do this at present unfortunately, so indeed it would be feedback for something to add 🙂 

Maybe I am missing it somewhere, but it would be beneficial to see how many users login/register via standard or other method like FB, Google, etc.
I looked in statistics and don't see it.

Agreed that being able to eventually combine files would be helpful. V5 has SIGNIFICANTLY less JS and CSS overall.  It’s using much more native browser functionality.  So it’s absolutely a step in the right direction  
IPS has said already that the changes for v5.0.0 is not the end of the road.  It’s the start of the journey that lets them start moving in a direction that lets them support the software another 10 years.  Lots more improvements to still come in subsequent releases. 

Aside from the content and blocks that are cached, there’s some room for change around how IPS delivers CSS and JS. Need a way to combine files.
On a side note, two of my sites use CSM/pages app on the front end and they load slower than my sites that use the forum on the front end. Overall page load. I have to dig in but if you have pages installed, it’s a tad bit slower page load from what I can tell. 
I see the same thing. I’ve implemented some lazy load around Adsense and also removed Google captcha code loading on every forum topic, which is post before register.

I’m looking forward to this the most, before any new features. It’s amazing how impactful page load and Google page speed scores are on ranking and traffic. Arguably one of the most important updates for anyone making a living off of their sites these days.

I’m looking forward to this the most, before any new features. It’s amazing how impactful page load and Google page speed scores are on ranking and traffic. Arguably one of the most important updates for anyone making a living off of their sites these days.

Take a look through the Providers Directory. There is a list of developers that may be able to assist you. Or you can post a topic in the Developer Connection forum to request assistance.
Even though v5 might seem a fair way away (subjective based on who you ask), I would personally hold off on investing anything into fixing something like this now. You run the risk of it all being for nothing, and if not, having to pay for the service again once you upgrade to v5. I am on the fence myself with a new community I am launching and can see the pros and cons of waiting versus releasing now. That's not including anything custom or paying for a developer either.
Best of luck!

Not to discount your request, but this is likely highly unlikely to happen. Changing editors much less building the capability to support multiple editors is a HUGE undertaking and touches nearly every part of the suite. 

It was nearly 6 months of development effort so far to replace ckeditor 4 and is not fully done yet. So just dropping in another random editor just because it might be cool to have two most likely is not in the cards anytime soon.  If this is important for you, it might be better to engage a 3rd party resource developer. 

Invision Community 5 has a brand new editing experience powered by a lightweight, fast React text editor built for mobile and modern browsers.
The venerable CKEditor v4 at the core of our current editor is starting to show its age, so we wanted a clean slate with Invision Community v5 with an editor that was optimized for mobile use, easily extensible and had a feature set that would take us into the next era of Invision Community and beyond.
The obvious choice was to consider the latest version of CKEditor, but it didn't fit our needs as it wasn't easily extensible, external plug-ins would no longer be possible, and its large footprint would affect page speed scores and be painful to use with a mobile connection.
After a long search, we settled on Tiptap as the base for our editor. Written in React, loaded in chunks when needed for optimal performance and with many APIs and extensibility options, it was the perfect fit.

Aside from the technical improvements, the editor offers new tools and a great base for writing our own plugins. I'll walk you through the main features throughout this blog. If you want a more technical deep dive, then please see my development blog.
The Toolbar
The toolbar has been redesigned to put the most commonly used styles first, with the least used styles and functions into an ellipses menu. The new paragraph menu contains the header styles, as well as the code block. The plus menu adds lists, boxes and quotes. The benefit of this new compact menu is that it displays just the same on mobile. Currently, there are different editor styles for desktops, tablets and mobiles with some style buttons removed to save space. With Invision Community 5, this is no longer the case. Even the smallest display gets all the functionality.
mobile-toolbar.mp4
 
 
Emojis & Icons
Emojis have become a great way to embellish writing and express emotion. The new emoji picker has been modernized with larger emojis and tooltips to showcase the emoji shortcodes.
The Icons tab, new for Invision Community 5, allows you to add Font Awesome Icons directly to your content.

Lastly, both the emoji selector and the shortcode suggestion dropdown support arrow-key navigation, so you don't have to move your hands from the keyboard to the mouse.
Content Boxes
The feature I'm personally most excited about is boxes.
The concept started as an abstraction of spoilers because sometimes you just want "a box" - a section that stands out from the rest of the content, something we do manually in our documentation and guides on this site. Each box has a tile and the following options:
Expandable - You can mark a box as "expandable" which is functionally the same as a spoiler. One improvement is that expandable boxes use native HTML details and summary elements instead of plain Javascript animated divs. Colors - You can optionally keep it grey on grey like spoilers, but I think that's so boring! The colors automatically adjust to the theme colors, so it will look great in dark and light mode. Float (left/right/none) - You can make the box align to the left or right of other content just like you can for images Width - When the box is floated, you can set the width to big, medium or small. Boxes.mp4
Link Expansion
Invision Community has long expanded some links, such as YouTube, offering more context or even a mini-player where appropriate.
With Invision Community 5, we've added support for embedding dynamic link previews using site metadata. This is a preview of a topic on our forum.

For those unaware, the Open Graph (OG) Protocol is essentially a way webpages can specify a title, image, and description to be dynamically embedded on another platform. This is the underlying technology when you see the link preview in Meta, X, Slack, or iMessage.
Code Blocks and Inline Code
The new editor adds inline, syntax-highlighted code blocks and inline code. Both formats can be applied via the toolbar, or optionally, you can wrap text in a single backtick (`) to convert it to an inline code block or triple backticks (```) to convert it to a code block.

The code blocks also support numerous languages for syntax highlighting, including a new custom highlighter for the Invision HTML Template Syntax (Invision Community theme creators and application developers, you're welcome!)
Semantic Headings and Relative Sizes
Invision Community 5 adds a block selector with headings 1 through 6 in the new editor. It's possibly the most common request I hear so that people can use consistent styling rather than just big bold text in a paragraph tag. Semantic headings are also ideal for SEO and accessibility.
In addition to the block selector, you can create headings with the corresponding markdown shortcut. Consecutive pound signs (#) at the start of a line followed by a space (the number of pounds corresponds to the "level" of the heading). For example ### creates a Heading 3 (<h3/>) creates the heading for you.
Using clear header tags means screen readers and search engines can better understand your content as using absolute font sizes, such as 16px, can make it unclear what type of element is actually being used. Is it a heading or just a paragraph with large bold text?
Furthermore, you may want different sizes depending on the content and device type. Mobile devices may benefit from a large base font size. So we added percent-based font sizes which change the font size based on whatever the default would be for that block.
text-menus.mp4
Further UX Improvements
The new editor in Invision Community 5 has several tangible improvements, including a mobile-first design.
In the current editor, some functionality was hidden behind modals and double clicks, which are either not obvious on mobile devices or not possible at all. The new editor no longer relies on modals and instead uses buttons and dropdown menus that work perfectly with mobile and other touch-based devices.
New Line Arrows
For block content, such as boxes, images and quotes, we've added the ability to create a new line before or after the block with the click of a button. This was an issue of frustration for mobile and touch devices where it was not always clear where the cursor was and a finger is a much less accurate aiming device!

Sticky Toolbar
Anyone who has authored a long piece of content knows the pain of scrolling up and down to get the toolbar in view. To make writing longer content less stressful, we've made the toolbar sticky so that it will always be fixed at the top of the editor after scrolling down.
sticky-toolbar.mp4
Markdown Style Shortcuts
One common request is to support markdown in the editor. While we opted not to include full markdown support, the new editor recognizes many markdown-style formatting shortcuts.
markdown.mp4
Colors
A common challenge with rich text editors on sites with multiple themes is colors often need to consistently look right across all themes. This is even more important with Invision Community 5, as it has a native dark mode feature. For this reason, we opted to offer a reduced set of color options that all adapt dynamically to the theme. I mentioned this about box colors above, but this is also true of the font color. The difference in shade is slight, but it's very noticeable without it. Toggling between light and dark mode will never produce unreadable text.
colors.mp4
We can't wait for you to try the new editor; it has already been very popular with our small testing group. Which feature are you most looking forward to trying?

View full blog entry

Last night I used the PWA to access this site and got a 403 error. This site was down, but I had no way to refresh the page as the 403 page had been cached locally in the PWA. 
Please implement “pull to refresh”. It should be a little JS to easily add this to the PWA. 
 
Note: I did have to force quit the PWA this morning to reload the page with the 403 server down error. Not all users will know to do this and would be stuck. 
 
Also, the error page was from AWS Cloudfront CDN for this site. You should also configure custom error pages for your CDN so the error pages have a “reload” link to the page (and “pull to refresh” JS and no-cache response header).

We run a site that is NFL related and I have so many people telling me they couldn't access it yesterday during the NFL draft. This is our biggest day(s) of the year. I noticed the forums were offline this morning. I saw another thread and cleared my cache. But I had people reaching out saying they couldn't get in.

Two questions:
1. Is whatever issue it was, fixed?
2. Can everyone get on now without clearing cache? 

Our posts counts were much lower than expected yesterday, this is very disappointing. We didn't have problems like this when we were self hosted.

I've moved this to a ticket so we can look further into this to see what we can do for you here. Please watch your email for further correspondence.

I agree, as well as some sort of direction or prompt to install PWA on the device.

This ended up being non-recoverable. I ended up moving my sites to a new setup and trying out plesk over cpanel, so far so good.