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IntroductionIf you’re here, chances are you want to know how to build your own forums—and you’ve come to the right place! In this guide, we’ll jump straight in and get you started. We’ll walk through the basics of creating a fully working forum and show just how easy it is to set one up (yes, really!). By the end, you’ll have everything you need to start building forums that fit your community’s needs. First View When you first open the software, you’ll be greeted with a page similar to the image below. By default, the system includes a forum called “A Test Forum”, along with a welcome topic. Don’t worry—you’re not required to keep these. They’re simply included to give you an example of how a forum and topic look, rather than presenting you with a completely blank page. Default Forum Setup Deleting Content/ForumsFirst, let’s remove the default content that comes with the forum. To do this, we’ll need to log into the Admin CP, where all site management takes place. Start by signing in on the front end of the site. In the top-right corner, click on your name and select the link to the Admin CP. You’ll then be prompted to log in. Once inside the Admin CP, navigate to the forums section. On the left-hand side, hover over the 'Community' section (represented by the chat bubble icon), then select Forums, as shown. Location of Forums - Admin CP Now that you’re in the forums area, you’ll see the Test Category that’s included with a default installation. Click the menu icon on the right-hand side of the category and select 'Move / Delete Content'. Deleting Forums It’s important to note that this action does not delete the forum or category itself—it only removes the content within it, such as topics and posts. When you select this option, a popup will appear allowing you to choose what to do with the existing content. You can either move the topics to another forum or delete them entirely. By default, the Delete option is selected. Delete Options The Business Support HubOur AimsMany of our customers use Invision Community as a support platform for their clients. For the purposes of this walkthrough, we’ll be creating a sample setup called 'The Business Support Hub' (feel free to use this idea or adapt it to suit your own needs). Before creating anything, it’s a good idea to plan out the structure of your forums. At a high level: Category - These act as a container for related forums Forums - This is where members create topics for discussion Below is the structure we’ll be using for this example. Categories are shown in purple, with the forums listed beneath them in red. With that plan in place, let’s jump right in and start building! Customer Service - Technical Support - Account Services Development -API Assistance - Designers Corner Creating CategoriesNow that we know what structure we want, we can go ahead and create our two main categories: Customer Service, and Development. To get started, click the 'Create New' button in the top-right corner of the page. Create a New Category By default, selecting 'Create New' will create a new category, which is exactly what we want at this stage. Enter the name of your first category, then scroll to the bottom of the page and select Save. Basic Category Setup When you click Save, you’ll be prompted to set permissions for the category. On the left, you’ll see a list of all member groups. For each group that should be able to view this category, select the 'See forum' checkbox. In our case, we want this category to be visible to everyone, so we’ll enable this option for all groups. Category Permissions Now that we’ve created our first category, we can create the remaining two. Instead of clicking Create New again, we’ll use the 'Copy' option. This is especially useful if you’ve already configured settings or permissions that you want to reuse. Click the dropdown menu next to the Customer Service category you just created and select Copy. Enter the name of the next category and save. Copying a Category You should now have both categories created and ready to begin adding forums beneath them. Both Categories We Have Created Adding ForumsNow that our categories are in place, let’s go ahead and start adding forums. To do this, click the + button next to the 'Customer Service' category to create a new forum. Where to Add a New Forum You’ll notice that this is the same screen used when creating categories. The difference this time is that 'Discussions' is selected as the Type. Enter the name of the 'Technical Support' forum and add a brief description. Once you’re done, leave all other settings at their default values and click Save. A New Discussion Forum Just as with categories, saving a discussion forum will prompt you to configure permissions. These include options such as which groups can create new topics, reply to existing discussions, or download attachments. It’s important to keep these permissions in mind when creating restricted areas such as moderator or admin areas, where access and interaction should be limited to specific groups. Forum Permissions Use the Copy feature, or click the + icon next to each category, to create all of the forums outlined in the 'Our Aims' section. Click to Get Back Rearranging ItemsOnce everything has been created, you may want to rearrange categories or forums to better suit your needs. This can be done easily by clicking and holding the drag handles on the left-hand side of each item, then dragging them into your preferred position. Drag & Drop to Rearrange Forums SummaryIf you now return to the front end of the site, you’ll see the forum structure we set out to create fully in place and ready to use. You’ll find additional guides for this application under Forums in the navigation on the left. These include more detailed walkthroughs of specific settings, such as adding image cards as you can see below, along with site-specific examples and helpful tips. As with all areas of the suite, if you’re ever unsure where to find a feature or can’t locate the information you need in our guides, please feel free to submit a ticket to our support team. We’re always happy to help you get the most out of your Example Forum Setup

Attracting new members is an important part of growing your community, and your existing members can play a key role in that process. To support this, Invision Community provides built-in invite tools that allow members to invite others to join your site. These invite sections make it easy for members to share invitations with potential new users and, if configured, can also be used to track and reward referrals. InvitesMembers can invite others to join the community directly from the site using the 'Tell a Friend' widget. Once this is enabled, members can send invitations by email through a simple form. Alternatively, selecting the share link provides a direct link to the site, unique if referrals are enabled, which can then be shared on social networks or copied and sent manually to potential new members. Tell a Friend ReferralsReferrals are a feature available with the Commerce application that allow you to provide members with unique banner links they can share to promote your site. When referrals are enabled, members can earn credit for users who sign up through their links. If configured, you can also choose to award commission when a referred member goes on to purchase an item, giving you a flexible way to incentivize promotion and reward engaged members. You can read more about how to set up referrals in the following commerce guide. {CROSS LINK FOR REFERRAL GUIDE}

Social media sharing makes it easy for members to share content from your community with a wider audience. By allowing posts, topics, and other content to be shared to external platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, you can help increase visibility, encourage engagement, and attract new members to your site. Share IconsYou can enable links that allow members to share content from your community to external social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. These sharing links appear beneath content items across the site. Below is an example showing the sharing options as they appear on a topic. Sharing Options Within Topics Sharing PermissionsYou can configure which social media platforms content can be shared to from the following location in the Admin CP System → Site Promotion → Sharing From here, you can enable or disable sharing to individual platforms at any time. Simply click the Enabled button next to a platform to toggle it off (or back on again as needed). Sharing List Selecting the pencil icon next to any sharing service will open its individual settings. From here, you can choose which member groups are allowed to use that specific share link, along with any additional options relevant to the platform. Below is an example showing the available settings for X. Sharing Edit

Invision Community allows guests to respond to content they want to engage with before creating an account, removing the initial barrier of registration. Guests can submit their reply first and then complete registration afterward. This can be incredibly valuable when you consider how much forum traffic comes from inbound search engine results. By enabling Post Before Registering, you increase the likelihood of converting casual visitors into registered members who actively contribute to your community. Switching OnYou can enable Post Before Registering from the following location in the Admin CP: System → Settings → Posting → General {image} Posting As a GuestWhen a potential member creates new content or replies to an existing item, they are only asked to provide their email address at the time of posting, as shown below. {image} Once the post has been submitted, the user is prompted to complete their registration. At this point, they are far more likely to do so, having already invested time and engagement in your community. {image} Guests will be able to begin submitting content, but they will be prompted to register an account before that content is fully submitted and made visible. This approach is particularly effective at encouraging registration, as users have already taken the first step toward engaging with your community. Guest users have up to one week to complete their registration. If registration is not completed within that time, the submitted content will be permanently removed. If the guest does not finish registering straight away, a reminder email will be sent shortly after the post is made to prompt them to complete the process.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps ensure your community is easy for search engines to crawl, index, and rank when people search for topics related to your community’s focus. SEO is not an exact science. Best practices evolve, opinions differ, and search engine algorithms change regularly. Invision Community follows widely accepted and proven SEO standards, and these are continuously refined with new releases to help keep your site aligned with current search engine expectations. All referenced items below, can be found within the following location of the Admin CP System → Site Promotion → Search Engine Optimization Built-in Automatic FeaturesThere are many SEO-related features that work automatically behind the scenes, requiring no action from you. These are designed to help your community perform well in search engines and are outlined in the sections below. JSON-LD MarkupThis markup is generated automatically and adds structured microdata to your pages. Search engines and other systems use this information to better understand the content they are indexing. Details such as dates, titles, images, and content snippets can be included, allowing search engines to more accurately interpret and display your content when it appears in search results or is shared elsewhere. Proper HTTP CodesWhen a page cannot be found, the system returns a 404 response. Pages that exist but are restricted return a 403, and situations such as an upgrade in progress return a 503, among other standard responses. These response codes are automatically handled and correctly inform search engine crawlers about the status of your site and its pages, allowing them to index and react to your content appropriately. Site MapYour sitemap is an XML-formatted file that search engines use to discover and index the pages on your community. In most cases, the default settings are recommended and work well for nearly all sites, requiring no changes. For more advanced use cases, additional options are available that allow you to adjust things such as page weighting, result limits, and other sitemap-related behavior. These can be found in the 'Search Engine Optimization' section if you wish to fine-tune how your site is indexed. Friendly URLsFriendly URLs (FURLs) transform technical-looking links like: http://example.com/?app=forums&module=forums&controller=topic&id=1 into cleaner, more readable URLs such as: http://example.com/topic/1-my-latest-hobbies/ This is important because search engines take URLs into account when indexing and ranking content. A descriptive URL like the example above is more likely to rank for relevant keywords and phrases such as “hobbies” or “latest hobbies”, compared to a generic query-based link. Friendly URLs are enabled automatically on Invision Community Cloud services, so no additional configuration is required. Community Classic Self-Hosting To set up Friendly URLs (FURLs) on a self-hosted installation, these instructions assume you are running an Apache web server. While FURLs can be configured on other server types, the steps below are specific to Apache. You’ll need the mod_rewrite module enabled, along with permission to upload a .htaccess file to your server. If you’re unsure whether this is available, please contact your hosting provider to confirm. To enable FURLs, go to the Search Engine Optimization section in the Admin CP, enable Friendly URLs, and download the generated .htaccess file. Upload this file to the root directory where Invision Community is installed, then click Continue. Your community will automatically check whether Friendly URLs are working correctly and confirm once setup is complete. Meta TagsMeta tags are pieces of text that help describe the content of a page to search engines. While Invision Community deals with the appropriate tagging automatically through other means, it also allows you to add meta tags at several level, site-wide, by content type, or for individual page. This gives you fine-grained control over how your site is indexed. Search engines use meta tags such as keywords and descriptions to better understand your content and determine when it should appear in relevant search results. For example, you might want your downloads area to be indexed under a description like “news”, with keywords such as tech or politics. That said, meta tags are generally considered an advanced and optional feature. Much of the essential metadata is already handled automatically through the platform’s JSON-LD (structured data) system, which provides search engines with rich context about your content without additional configuration. Meta tags can be added from the Search Engine Optimization section by selecting the Meta Tags tab. From there, choose Add Meta Tags and provide the relevant details for the page or pages you want to target. You can assign meta tags by specifying: A page address (URL) A page title One or more meta tags The available meta tag types include: Keywords – Words or phrases that describe the topic of the page Description – A summary of the page content (often shown in search results) Robots – Instructions for search engines, such as NOINDEX or NOFOLLOW Other – Additional tags such as author, copyright, language, and more You can also use the * wildcard to apply meta tags to multiple pages at once, making it easier to manage larger sections of your site. Adding Meta Tags From ACP In addition to the manual meta tag editor, Invision Community also provides a 'Live Meta Tag Editor', which allows you to edit meta tags directly while viewing the page itself. This makes it easy to see changes in context and fine-tune your metadata as needed. The Live Meta Tag Editor can be accessed by selecting the Launch Live Meta Editor link, as shown in the example below. Adding Meta Tags From Live Editor Things to CheckFinally, it’s worth reviewing a few additional areas to make sure your community is set up exactly as you intend: Browse your community as a guest - Viewing the site while logged out lets you see what search engine crawlers can access. If you can’t view an area as a guest, it won’t be indexed. Likewise, if you can see content that should be private, it’s a good indication that permissions need adjusting. Customize permission error messages - Many applications allow you to replace generic “Permission Denied” messages with more helpful text, such as encouraging visitors to register or subscribe to gain access. Enable HTTPS - Using HTTPS can improve trust, reduce browser security warnings for visitors, and may also provide a small boost to search engine rankings. Taking a few moments to review these areas can help ensure your community is both search-engine friendly and aligned with your privacy and access goals. Advanced FURL ConfigurationAdvanced Friendly URL (FURL) configuration is a powerful feature, but it can also have unintended consequences if used incorrectly. Because it changes the underlying URL structure of your community, it should only be adjusted if you are confident in what you’re doing. You can find this within the following location in the Admin CP System → Settings → Advanced Confguration For the vast majority of sites, the default FURL configuration is more than sufficient, and no changes are required. Below is an example of how advanced Friendly URL (FURL) customization might be used in practice. For instance, if your previous system used a URL such as /oldLogin for its login page, you could add a custom FURL rule that automatically redirects visitors from that address to the Invision Community login page. FURL Configuration Other possible use cases include renaming specific URLs to better match how your community is structured, creating aliases for commonly used pages, or capturing legacy links that need to be redirected to their new locations. This can be particularly helpful when migrating from another platform or maintaining compatibility with older bookmarks and external links. A Note on Conversions If you converted to Invision Community from another product, in most cases the system will automatically redirect links from your old software to the new locations. This uses an HTTP 301 redirect to ensure that the search engine knows to update to the new location.

Within Email Settings, you can configure both the incoming and outgoing email addresses used by your community. Email settings can be found in the following location within your admin CP System → Settings → Email Settings Outgoing email address This is the address shown in the From field when your community sends emails to members. Note On our creator plan or above, the From address is always set to [email protected] if using our community in the cloud email. However, the Reply-To address will use the outgoing email address you configure here, allowing members to respond to messages as expected. Incoming email address This address is used as a contact point for your site. Some error pages display this email so visitors know how to reach you, and messages sent through the Contact Us form are delivered to this address. Technical ConfigurationFor customers on our creator plan or above, no additional configuration is required to send email, as outgoing mail is handled automatically by our built-in email service. However, if you prefer, you can choose to disable the built-in service and instead use your own email provider, such as an SMTP server, postmark, or another third-party email service. This gives you flexibility to align email delivery with your existing infrastructure or provider preferences. Advanced Technical Notes If you are using our community classic platform, by default, the Suite will use your local server's PHP mail but some system administrators prefer you to use SMTP. You can find settings to enable these other email services on this page as well. If your SMTP server requires SSL or TLS you may need to prefix your SMTP Host with ssl:// or tsl:// to have the system recognize these requirements. When you change any email-related settings, always use the Test Settings button to be sure your changes are working. Email Error Logs can help you diagnose any issues. Customers on our creator package or above to not need to set up mail in any way, unless there is a preference to use your own email service. Emailing Your MembersThe Bulk Mail feature allows you to easily send emails to all members, or to a targeted subset of your community. You can create bulk mail from the following area of your admin CP Members → Bulk Mail → Bulk Mail A wide range of filters are available to help you precisely control who receives your message. These include filters based on member group, join date, last visit date, content count, and even purchase history within Commerce. This flexibility allows you to tailor both the audience and the message itself. You can also filter on custom profile fields, so that these can be used as criteria when narrowing down your mailing list. {image} The following members will never receive a bulk email, regardless of which filters you select: Members who did not check "Send me news and updates" during registration or have since disabled this option in their account settings. Members who have clicked the unsubscribe link in a previous bulk email, as this automatically disables their email preference. Members who are currently suspended or banned. When a bulk email is sent, it is processed in the background. Depending on the number of recipients, delivery may take some time while the system generates and sends each message. Customization EmailsOn the Email Settings page, you can quickly adjust basic branding options such as the primary email color and email logo. These settings control the header color and logo used across all HTML email templates, making it easy to apply consistent branding. If you need more control, you can edit the individual email templates themselves by visiting Email Appearance at the following location From there, you can fully customize both the HTML and plain-text versions of every email sent by your community.

Spam is an unavoidable challenge for any online community. From automated sign-ups to accounts created solely to post unwanted or malicious content, managing spam can quickly become a drain on time and resources. The Invision Community Suite includes a comprehensive set of spam management tools designed to help you prevent, detect, and respond to spam effectively. By combining automated defenses with moderator controls, these tools allow you to protect your community while minimizing disruption to genuine members. Invision Spam ServicesSpam Defense serviceThe spam defence service can be found in the following area of the Admin CP Members → Content Moderation → Spam Prevention→ Spam Defense From here, you can configure what actions are automatically taken when a registering user is identified by the system as a potential spammer. Spam Defense Service When a user registers, the spam defense service assigns a score indicating how likely the account is to be spam. Scores range from 1 to 5, where 1 represents the lowest likelihood of spam and 5 represents the highest. You can then define how the system should respond to registrations at each score level, allowing you to automatically apply different actions based on the assessed risk. You can change the default settings to any of the following items Allow user to register as normal Allow registration, but require approval of all posts Flag the account for manual review Register the account, but immediately ban it Do not allow the user to register at all In addition, you can also choose what you would like to happen when a users registers with a disposable email address, with the same options as above. LoggingThere may be occasions where you need to review the spam score that was assigned to a registering member. To support this, the system keeps a log of every registration that is checked by the spam defense service. These logs are particularly useful if a potential member reports that they are unable to complete registration, as they allow you to see exactly how the system classified the account. You can access these records by selecting Spam Defense Logs from the top-right corner of the Spam Prevention section, or by navigating to: Members → Content Moderation → Spam Prevention → Spam Defense Logs Logs from the Spam Defense Service From here, you can view the user’s registration details along with the spam score that was assigned. When combined with your configured spam defense settings, this information shows exactly what action was taken for that registration. White ListingThere may be occasions where a legitimate user is assigned a higher spam score than expected. A common example of this is during testing, where repeatedly registering accounts can cause your own IP address to be flagged as a higher-risk spam source. At higher levels, this can result in registration being blocked entirely. In situations like this, you can whitelist trusted sources within the spam defense system so they are excluded from future checks. This is particularly useful for administrators, developers, or internal testing environments. To do this, visit the Spam Defense Whitelist, where you can add specific IP addresses or email domains that should be ignored by the spam detection service going forward. An email and IP Added to Whitelist Geolocation Spam FilteringIn many cases, spam activity originates from bots or servers located in specific regions. By leveraging our existing geolocation service, Invision Community now provides additional filters that allow administrators to take action based on a user’s geographic location. You can set up location specific moderation in the following area of the admin CP Members → Content Moderation → Geolocation Settings Adding Locations to Geolocation Filtering Using these filters, you can choose to automatically hold registrations from selected regions for administrator review, or deny those registrations entirely. This gives you another effective layer of control, helping to reduce spam while still allowing legitimate registrations to be reviewed when appropriate. Cloud Content AnalysisAvailable in our teams package or above, we have also added an additional layer of spam prevention after registration. This can be found in the following location within your Admin CP Members → Content Moderation → Spam Analysis After a member registers, or if an existing account has been inactive for a period of time, their first few content submissions are analyzed using a custom-built spam detection algorithm within the Invision Community platform. This algorithm evaluates multiple aspects of the submitted content and assigns it a score from 1 to 5. In a similar manner to the spam defence service, 1 represents the lowest likelihood of spam and 5 represents the highest. Similar Settings to Spam Defense, but for Spam Analysis The system is continuously refined and improved based on emerging spam trends. These improvements happen automatically, without any action required from administrators and without the need to install software updates or upgrade to new versions of Invision Community. Based on the score assigned, administrators can define how the system should respond. Possible actions include: Allowing the submission to be posted immediately Holding the submission for moderator review Denying the submission entirely Specific member groups can also be excluded from post-submission spam checks. This is particularly useful for communities with subscription-based registrations, where you may want trusted or paid members to bypass spam filtering, while still monitoring content from new or non-subscribed users. Spam can quickly become a major challenge for community managers, and these additional post-registration tools help stop unwanted content at the source. Post-submission spam checking adds another powerful layer of protection, further reducing the number of spam topics and posts that reach public view. CaptchaCAPTCHA is an external service used to help determine whether a visitor is a real person or an automated bot. Bots are commonly used to register accounts automatically in order to post spam, advertisements, or malicious content. Enabling a CAPTCHA method is one effective way to reduce this type of automated abuse. You can configure CAPTCHA for your site from the CAPTCHA tab within following area of the Admin CP Members → Content Moderation → Spam Prevention → CAPTCHA From here, you can choose one of the following options: Cloudflare Turnstile - The user clicks a "I'm not a robot" checkbox. Invisible reCAPTCHA - Runs silently in the background and intelligently determines whether the user is human, without requiring any interaction. reCAPTCHA v2 - Presents users with the familiar “I’m not a robot” checkbox. hCaptcha - Prompts users to click a checkbox and, in some cases, select specific images from a grid. Each of these services requires a (free) API key in order to function. Direct links to obtain the required keys are provided within the settings area for each CAPTCHA option. Flagging SpammersThe Flagging Spammers section allows you to define what happens when a member on your community is identified as a spammer. From here, you can configure automatic actions such as banning the account, removing any submitted content, and sending notifications to selected staff members if required. This can be found in the Admin CP at Members → Content Moderation → Spam Prevention → Flagging Spammers Flagging Settings A member can be flagged as a spammer from several areas across the site. Administrators and moderators will find this option: Next to each member in the member list within the Admin CP On the member’s profile on the front end of the site Under the More Options menu within a member card Each of these options provides a quick way to identify and act on spam accounts wherever they are encountered. Flagging a Member as a Spammer Question and Answer ChallengeThe Question and Answer Challenge provides an additional, customizable way to verify that a registering user is human and not an automated spam bot. You can create your own questions and define one or more acceptable answers for each, giving you full control over how this challenge works. When setting up these questions, it’s best to use prompts that require a bit of reasoning rather than simple math or color-based questions, as bots can often bypass those with ease. Adding multiple questions is also recommended, as this helps ensure the same answer isn’t presented for every registration—something that could otherwise be exploited if a human feeds the answer into a bot. Example questions: Question: What is the third letter of the fifth word in this sentence? Answer: t Question: What is the third word, in this sentence after the comma? Answer: sentence Thoughtfully designed questions like these add an extra layer of protection while remaining simple and fair for genuine users.