AlexWebsites

Subscriptions have been available for some time now and offer a good way to monetize your community. It would be nice if each subscription had the option of multiple offers - time frame/settings. Most sites these days offer a discount for an annual subscription. In IPS, you have to create an entirely new subscription/box rather than something like:

 

Same, I only set up one site and am testing it. Shut off GA4 in IPS ACP and reviewing. Wondering what else I can offload.
I get your point, I'm just trying to see what I can prevent from pulling locally off my server while being on their free tier.

I use in one of my less used sites for testing purposes. I haven't done before/after monitoring. 
Off topic:  I was setting up zero trust and that's when I noticed it. It would be interesting to know if you are using CF Email service with AWS.. trying to set up auto move, to validating for bounced emails. If you have experience in that, will PM you. 

I truly appreciate all the effort that was made to simplify the code to keep it lightweight, while in the meantime modernizing the UI. It looks very sleek.

As showcased in our past blogs, Invision Community 5 introduces a brand new, modern interface which brings improvements to performance, aesthetics and mobile usability.
An optional side navigation panel, new view modes, light/dark modes, customizable header layouts, a search modal and a mobile navigation bar are some of the things we've showcased previously. Today, lets take a closer look at some other miscellaneous changes that we've been working on while developing Version 5, including some of the code reductions and performance improvements that we've been able to achieve in the process.
For those of you who are developers, we'll also give some simple explanations of how (and why) we've implemented these changes.
 
Widgets
Sidebar widgets are perfect for displaying content feeds, featured members, announcements, advertisements and more on your page. In version 4 however, the widget column would often become an empty space once the widgets had been scrolled past:
  widgets-v4.mp4  
In version 5, widgets now stick to the screen once the last widget has been reached, ensuring your readers have more convenient  access to your widgets rather than a void space:
  sticky-widgets-v5.mp4  
 
Messenger
The Messenger is a great way to reach out to members when a private chat is more appropriate than a topic. Inspired by modern email clients, the messenger in Version 5 has been revamped with a full-height, sticky inbox, a longer message snippet, mini profiles and a more polished UI - all with a 25% reduction in CSS and a 100% reduction in Javascript.
messenger-v5.mp4
 
Sticky elements
We've mentioned sticky elements a couple of times now, so lets take a look behind the scenes at how they're created, and some of the performance improvements with Version 5. Traditionally, sticky elements were created using Javascript which would calculate the position of the element on the page and adjust it's stickiness every time the page was scrolled. Scroll events can be quite taxing for browsers, and when it comes to Javascript, the less, the better (especially when aiming for great page speed scores)!
With that in mind, all sticky elements are now handled using sticky positioning via CSS, which is a native and much more performant way of controlling these elements. We've been able to replace an entire 400 line Javascript component with just 3 lines of CSS.
 
Grids and Masonry
Grids have previously been handled in a similar fashion. Javascript would scan all elements within a grid to determine how many could fit on a single line, and would then shuffle these elements into position after the page was loaded or resized. CSS has since introduced its own grid properties, which has allowed us to replace more than 350 lines of Javascript with just a few lines of CSS, resulting in more performant page rendering and nicer looking grids (especially on small-medium displays such as mobiles and tablets).
 

 
Fun fact: We first introduced a similar performance improvement to "masonry grids" in our Gallery update from January this year, by replacing more than 400 lines of Javascript with, you guessed it, just a few lines of CSS.
 

 
 
 
Click targets
We wanted to make Version 5 as simple as possible to navigate, and one way of doing that has been by implementing larger click targets. Clicking anywhere inside an entry in a table or grid will now take you to that entry (you can still click on other links like normal within the click target, such as subforums or profile links). Click targets are optional and can be disabled via your theme settings if necessary.
 
click-targets.mp4
 
Data Lists (tables)
Speaking of tables, they too have been revamped. Tables automatically adapt to the space they've been assigned to (for those curious, this is done using CSS container-queries), so they're always neat regardless of the screen size, with no overflow or squashed layouts. Behind the scenes, the two columns below are created with identical code, yet they're quite different visually due to the size which they've been allocated. Even with these improvements, tables have received a 25% reduction in CSS.
 

 
Profiles
Profiles have been polished for Version 5 and include some nice improvements such as sticky widgets and tabs. 
profile-desktop.mp4
 
On mobiles, the side column collapses into a carousel, and the sticky tabs allow you to easily flick between content types without scrolling to the top of the page.
profile-mobile.mp4
 

Tabs
You may have noticed in the above clip that tabs on mobiles are now scrollable, compared to a dropdown menu from version 4. We made this change to ensure that tabs are given more equal exposure on small devices, and have managed to reduce the CSS by a whopping 80%.
 
Carousels
Last and certainly not least, are carousels. Carousels are great for displaying large amounts of data in a confined space and they've been rewritten from scratch for version 5. Previously, a Javascript library was used to create the "scroll effect", however this has never been the smoothest experience on laptop trackpads and touch devices.
In version 5, carousels are powered by native smooth-scrolling and scroll-snapping, which results in a much nicer user experience, especially on touchscreens. We've been able to remove a staggering 95% of the Javascript, substituting it with just a few lines of CSS.
 
carousel.mp4
 
To be honest, we've only just scratched the surface here! In addition to these changes, we've modernized (and reduced code) in almost every component throughout the suite including avatars, cover photos, dropdown menus, forms, inputs, buttons, lists, off-canvas menus, side menus, columns and more!
Combined, these changes result in not only a significant reduction in code, but also a polished UI that performs smoothly on desktop and touch devices. We're excited to continue modernizing Invision Community well into the future as new technologies and techniques become available to us, and are looking forward to getting it in your hands in 2024.

View full blog entry

I don't believe in this instance that's the case. I believe it has more to do with all the garbage SEO content taking over search and it's getting even worse due to AI. As it continues to get tougher to distinguish between AI content and human content, first-hand experience and demonstration of real knowledge are becoming more of a focus in Google.
A Google Engineer has been advising on how to improve and better position forum content in search since March. Recently Google's been actively showing more 'Perspectives' content on mobile as well as highlighting Discussions and Forums. Until now, most of those results have been from Reddit and Quora. These changes should help showcase more variety.
Engineer's Quote:
"And most importantly, thanks for making changes. It heartens me to see forum platforms moving to expose their content better. I really would like to see this content more in search results rather than low quality, over-optimized rehash articles."
I work for a publisher that is investing heavily in AI. I see it across many other publishers as well and it's only going to continue to ramp up. I hate the direction publishers are heading in and if Google doesn't get ahead of it, searchers aren't going to be able to trust any of the results Google delivers. There's a reason so many people add 'Reddit' to the end of their searches now.
User-generated content and real-life experience are becoming more and more important.

We can provide the tools and you can decide how to use them. Google taking forum content seriously after years of "user generated content" being rated down can only be a good thing overall.

We are chatting about this internally and I think we agree that there is now value in letting most profiles be indexed. We still want to avoid 'thin' content pages for members who haven't posted, or perhaps haven't posted in years.

Does it still make sense to disallow profile page crawling in invision optimized robots.txt settings?
# Block profile pages as these have little unique value, consume a lot of crawl time and contain hundreds of 301 links Disallow: /profile/  

This is a big move by Google with the potential to showcase more forum content in search as well as highlight members of the community. Sharing this here hoping it can be natively added to IC5 🤞
Snippets below
-----------------------------------
New in structured data: discussion forum and profile page markup
Today we're announcing support for profile page and discussion forum structured data for use in Google Search, including new reports in Search Console. This markup works with Google Search features that are designed to show first-person perspectives from social media platforms, forums, and other communities. Implementing this structured data will help ensure what Search shows in these features is as accurate and complete as possible.
-----------------------------------
Discussion forum (DiscussionForumPosting) structured data
In general, we recommend nesting comments under the post they relate to. If the forum has its own threading structure, use a tree of comments to represent its structure
If it's more linear in nature (for example, an original post followed by a series of replies), nest them all under the original post as comments. Ideally, later pages of content in multi-page forums include the original post with the main page URL
-----------------------------------
Profile page (ProfilePage) structured data
The primary focus of the page must be a single person or organization that is affiliated with the overall website. Here are some examples of profile pages:

Valid use cases:
A user profile page on a forum or social media site An author page on a news site An "About Me" page on a blog site An employee page on a company website Invalid use cases:
The main home page of a store (usually contains lots of non-profile info) An organization review site (the organization isn't associated with the website) -----------------------------------
@Daniel F - Tagging you in case you haven't come across this yet. I know you make THE SEO application and probably have as much SEO knowledge as anyone in the space.

We’re already providing support for  ProfilePage and DiscussionForumPosting.
I have also made recently some adjustments to the QA stuff which will be included in a future release.

I watched the video and it's great to see that gallery video transcoding will be a cloud only feature...

 
That's sarcasm...I hope they at least did something with the titles for SEO.
It really would nice if you allowed self hosting customers to use AWS libraries on their own. Or give a developer the ability to create these features and support with a plugin or app. That goes for all the "cloud only" features. Your cloud pricing is just not comperable to self-hosting, especially multiple licences. 
 

I just purchased e-commerce to my plan. It was really the major item I needed. Paying 99 a month to get that would of been a tough pill to swallow. I would of had a hard time using the other items besides forums, pages, and ecommerce. 
 
Not sure if its good feedback but adding limited Ecommerce to that lower tier plan would make it a great value. 

Please report any issues on Community Hive here: https://talk.communityhive.com/
 
However, I have reported this internally as well.

Did I miss something or is hive no longer redirecting to the content site. In chrome, it just creates another tab to /discover whenever you click on topic.

I just don’t see myself looking at the providers page, then going to their individual pages, then looking at apps. Most of the apps I use were found by browsing here, not even searching. 
 
I’m guessing I’ll gradually use the stock, less good, version of Invision Community. Kind of a bummer. 

Hi
Just discover this
sounds weird to me, App store, Google play store, Wordpress plugins depository, it makes sense to find all apps / plugins at the same place, rather than to have to check all devs websites...
i am not sure that's a good move

I did the move and upgraded to alma Linux according to instructions of Cpanel elevate project and it went smooth, just make sure to follow instructions carefully 

Sorry, but this is a sucky move.

It will be more incentive still to move away from Invision and will likely dissuade new users looking to easily,  cheaply and rapidly implement Invision with some customized functions.
 
Now you'll need to pay out of ear for custom development and be held in by the very limited devs experienced with this platform.
 
You'll also need to verify them yourself, somehow and you'll need accounts on countless sites to even try to facilitate those modules, coming from all different devs.

I have Google Adsense with the Auto Ads on and I don't think the bottom-positioned auto ads are going to play nicely with V5's new mobile navigation bar... it's annoying because I really want that bottom navigation bar!!! 😆 But I've never liked having auto ad banners appear at the top of a page either.
I suppose it'll all come out in the wash when it launches and I road test it for public deployment on my community.

Looks great and I'm happy to see that JS is reduced with CSS on some of the scrollers. What about advertisements, same positions? That's crucial or the bill isn't getting paid...🤣
I suppose we can use Google Auto Ads and let Google dictate our fortunes/misfortunes..🤪

Welcome to the second video of our sneak peak series! Today we'll be taking a closer look at the new Invision Community interface, including dark mode, accessibility improvements, performance improvements and the mobile layout! Before we begin, I should mention that this is a pre-alpha version of Invision Community 5, so some areas of the design may change before the official release.
 
New traditional header design
In our previous video, we showcased our new, optional side panel which formats your navigation into a vertical list. For those who prefer a traditional, horizontal header, here it is!

A much more compact header compared to version 4, the new design condenses the navigation bar into a single row, moving all sub-navigation items into dropdown menus. A new, optional area below the text logo allows you to add your website slogan or announce events such as anniversaries or holidays, and our new search modal provides convenient access to the advanced search filters from any page on your community.

 
Accessible interface
The main content area has been designed with accessibility as a priority. High contrast text colours and larger font-sizes help to make reading more comfortable and clickable table rows (which can be enabled or disabled via the Theme Editor) allow you to navigate between pages more easily. A visible focus ring significantly improves navigation for visitors who find it more comfortable to browse with their keyboard TAB key, instead of using their mouse (ie. visitors with conditions such as Parkinson's disease, or those who have temporarily lost function due to a broken arm).
 
Focus.mp4
Elements are highlighted while navigating with the keyboard
 
Dark mode
Dark mode has become increasingly popular over the past few years - so it's no surprise that Version 5 has been designed from scratch with both light and dark mode in mind. With version 4, it was necessary to manage two themes in order to provide a light and dark colour scheme. In version 5 though, all of that is handled by a single theme.
By default, your members will be able to choose their own color scheme preference: either light, dark, or system. System assigns a color scheme based on your system preferences - so if your device automatically switches to dark mode at night, your community will too! With that said, as an administrator, you also have the option to restrict your site to a single color scheme - so if you ONLY want to offer a dark theme, that's easily achieved.

 
 
Performance
Despite all of these new inclusions, the version 5 UI has been coded with significant reductions in both CSS and Javascript. We'll dive deeper into code reductions in a future blog entry, however two great examples are:
- Grids: which have had a 100% removal of Javascript and are powered by only a few lines of CSS, resulting in a faster rendering time, especially for users on slow connections.
- And carousels: which have had a 95% reduction in Javascript and now rely on native browser scrolling, for a much smoother experience on both desktop and mobile!
Additionally we've removed a number of helper libraries that are no longer needed with modern browsers saving even more.
 
Mobile UI
With an incredible amount of mobile visitors accessing the web, we’ve placed a huge priority on redesigning the interface to ensure it lives up to todays standards.
A new navigation bar at the bottom of the page provides convenient access to your activity feed, notifications, messages, a search panel, and navigation links. A conscious effort was made to ensure that this information was available within a single tap, and we found that a bottom bar like this was easier to interact with compared to icons in the header.

The mobile navigation bar from Invision Community 5
 
A goal of the mobile UI was to display elements that were previously only available on larger devices, while still maintaining a clean interface. For example, to improve navigation, we've added a scrollable breadcrumb list to the top and bottom of the page. To improve guest participation, we added Sign In and Sign Up links to the bottom navigation bar. These links were previously hidden within the hamburger menu, so we feel like this will really benefit those looking to improve registrations. And as demonstrated in last weeks video, profile information is now available within posts, comments and reviews on small devices.
We’re really excited for you to literally have a hands on experience with the new mobile interface of Invision Community 5, and we're interested to hear your feedback in the comments!

View full blog entry

Hey, the 80s was peak civilisation.

A broader thought: 
I know many of us focus a lot of time and attention to our homepage, which we think is the front door to our community.  
The reality is much more nuanced.  The way that Google crawls our sites and shows sub-pages in search results means guests enter our communities directly into specific topics, not the homepage! In other words, every public page that Google crawls can potentially be the front door! 
On my bigger community, my homepage index barely makes the Top 10 most visited pages of my community.  If you run a publicly-available site, you should spotcheck multiple pages as a guest, because all of those pages are potentially your chance for first impression. 

Ok grandpa.