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Note: Invision Community 4.6.8 changes the need for a manual robots.txt file Invision Community 4.6.8 onwards has a built-in way to create a robots.txt file. If you are using a version older than 4.6.8 or wish to learn about creating other verification files, then please use this guide. There are various reasons that you may wish to create a robots.txt file, or you may need an ads.txt file. For a robots.txt file this may be because you wish to block the indexing of certain pages by search engines, or even block a search engine altogether, amongst many other reasons. But did you know you can do this with the pages application? Creating a robots.txt or ads.txt file with the pages application can be helpful if you have no access to your server via ftp, such as on the cloud platform, and also gives you a quick location for you to edit these without the need to ever access the file directly. Creating the page In order to create you robots.txt file for the site, you need to create a new page within the following location in your ACP Pages -> Page Management -> Pages When creating a new page, choose the 'Manual HTML' option, which will allow you to manually create pages in code. When creating use 'robots.txt' or 'ads.txt' as the page and file name Robots.txt example It is important to note in the above that we have deselected the "Use suite HTML wrapper" option. This is done so that we are directly creating just text on the page for search engine use, rather than surrounding with the wrapper from the rest of the site. Also, ensure this is not placed within another folder, and is instead at the root of your pages application. Adding content Adding content to your robots.txt file is then as simple as adding whatever you need to the contents tab. Here I have added a simple entry to tell googlebot not to index my site. On an ads.txt file, paste in the code provided from your ad provider. robots.txt entry When saving, you must ensure you give permissions for guests to view that page, otherwise search engine bots will not be able to view the contents/rules you have in place. Upon saving you will see that the robots.txt file is available from yourSiteURLHere/index.php

With the advent of social media, this can provide great opportunity to promote your site to new potential members. Within the Invision Community application, we provide the tools you need to take advantage of the marketing opportunities that this can provide for you and your site. Setting up Social Media Promotion can be set up from the following location within your Admin CP System -> Site Promotion -> Social Media Promotion You can choose to set up multiple areas to promote to within this section, both internally and externally on social media. These include Twitter Feeds Our picks (internal promotion) Twitter Setup As with the facebook item, selecting the 'Twitter Promotion' tab will first of all prompt you to set up a twitter login, if you havent already. Please see the following guide for information on how to set up a twitter application. https://invisioncommunity.com/4guides/how-to-use-ips-community-suite/social-sign-in/43-and-above/twitter-r303/ When promoting to twitter, you can set up as many hashtags to be sent alongside your promoted content as you wish. Due to the limitation on text you can use on a tweet, you can select what to do in the scenario that your limit is used. Twitter promotion setup Link Shortening To reduce space on your promotions, you can optionally make use of the external provider bitly, to shorten your links. In order to do this, you would need to set up a bitly account, and enter the access token for this. bitly setup Setting up this would give you shortened URLs on promotion. For example https://bit.ly/2IizDkN , which is a shortened link for our own site here. Scheduling When you are promoting content, you may not necessarily want content to be sent straight away, but instead always sent on schedules of your choosing. For example, many will send at times such as 13:10 as people will have just gone on lunch (so will be checking their social media). You can set up automatic schedule times from the Auto Schedule tab, which can then be used when promoting content. Scheduling Promotions Permissions Permissions for promoting content can be set up on a group by group basis, by checking the selection box within the groups you wish to allow to promote. You can read more about editing group settings within our group settings guide. However there will be times where you wish to add an individual to be able to promote. This can be done from the permissions tab within the promotion section, by adding the name of the person(s). Individuals able to promote Our Picks On the final tab, you can switch on the 'Our Pick' option. This is an internal promotion, that will promote to the 'Our Picks' page, as seen below. Our Picks Additionally, there is a block in which will show these, which you can select from the block manager, and place anywhere you wish on your site. Using Social Promotion Promoting an item Each item such as topic, gallery album, blog entry etc, has its own Promote button. You can see this in the top left of the page. Selecting this would allow you to promote to any of the items you have set up for social promotion, such as Twitter, or My Picks. Click to promote In addition to promoting content items, you may also wish to promote an individual comment or post. This can be done by selecting the 'Promote' button within the options menu Promoting an individual comment Once one of these buttons has been selected, you will be shown the promote page, where you will be given a preview of what is to be shared. Sharer Page From here you can customise the text that you are sharing if you wish to do so, along with upload new images for sharing with this. The system is smart enough to add images from the post automatically, so these can also be selected for use. Once you are done, you can either promote the item using the promote button, or can change the schedule for when this will be promoted. The auto schedule will use the times set up within your AdminCP in the Social Media Promotions setting. Scheduling Once promoted, you will then see this in the platforms you have chosen, as per below example. Managing Promoted Content The status of promoted content can be seen by selecting your name in the top right, and selecting "Manage Promoted Items". From here you can see an icon showing where items have already been promoted, along with delete the items from the queue if needed (also deleting from the 'My Picks' page) Managing Promoted Items

Increasing the security of your site, over the usual login layer, can be an important factor for many users. Whether this be for everyone, or just for the extra security of admin areas on your site. Two factor Authentication allows you to add an extra layer of security to your site, by allowing you to add another form of login, such as security questions, or even text message authentication. Two Factor Authentication All two factor authentication settings can be found within the following location in your ACP System -> Settings -> Two Factor Authentication There are 3 different methods of 2 factor authentication, each of which are discussed below. When one of these is set up by the user, it will prompt the user for one of these secondary items after they have logged in. 2 Factor on login The user can set up these items from their security settings in Account Settings -> Security settings. Here you can see I already have security questions set up. I can amend these using the option provided, or activate another if one is available. Account Settings Area When setting up these, the system will ask you any details required for you to set up that option. Here the system is asking us for 3 security questions. Question Setup Authentication Types In the default setup of the platform, there are 3 authentication types which you can allow (or even force) people to use on your site. These can all be seen within the following location of your ACP, and can be enabled by selecting the icon at the side of the relevant icon System -> Settings -> Two Factor Authentication Click to Enable/Disable Authy The Authy method of authentication will allow users to authenticate via text message, phonecall, or by the Authy app which can be downloaded to the users phone. In order to set up authy, you would need to get an API key from the authy site https://dashboard.authy.com/signin Once you have this, add the API key in the location provided, and set up which options you wish to use for this. Authy Settings Google Authenticator Google authenticator will allow people to authenticate on the site using the google authenticator application on mobile (downloadable from the app store/play store). The only settings for this are which groups that can use it. Other than this, it simply needs switching on. No other configuration is needed. When the user initially sets this up, they will be given a barcode to scan with the authenticate application. This will in turn, give a code to be entered into the site. Each time the user then enters the site, they will be asked for the code on their application, which will change every few seconds and is unique to that individual account Google Authentication Setup Security Questions Setting up security questions for use will allow the user to answer any of the questions you have set up in their settings, and then be prompted to provide that same answer to a random one of those questions on login. On the settings page, you can set whether or not you wish for this to be mandatory, along with how many questions you want them to set up. You will find on the questions tab, there are some pre-populated questions which are set up within the stock installation for your use. You can delete, edit, or add to these questions from this page Question Creation Settings On the main settings page for Two Factor Authentication, you will find many different options relating to how this will work on your site. This includes the ability to set up groups in which setting up 2 factor authentication is mandatory, which can often be an important security consideration where groups have more access. For example, you may wish for the administrators group to have to set up 2 factor authentication. Two Factor Settings In addition, here you can set up what prompts 2 factor authentication. So it may be that you want people to use this when logging into the ACP and changing passwords only, for example. Passwords The email addresses and passwords that your members use on the site, are often the core security measure for a member accessing your site. As such it is important that these are both set up securely in the first place, and then kept secure once they are stored. In order to aid this, the software allows you to set up password strength limitations. This can be found within the fololwing location System -> Settings -> Login & Registration Password Strength Of course, on occasion you may find reason to force your users to change their password on the site. This can be done from the following location, by selecting the "Force Password Reset" button at the top of the page Members -> Members Force Password Reset If you need to do this only for an individual member, you can do this by selecting "Edit Password" then clicking the link provided within the password reset page for that member Individual Reset

Creating a homepage for your site has many benefits including: Showing your best content first By using the "Our Picks" blocks, you can display your best content first. This content sets the tone for the site and will encourage engagement across your site. Display multiple areas of the suite Each application has its own feed blocks that can be used to display content on the home page. If your members use Gallery heavily, then showcase those photos on the homepage. If you use Calendar a lot to schedule events, then show event feeds. By displaying feeds to content is a great way to showcase all areas of your site on a single page. Reduce confusion For those of us that grew up with forums are used to viewing a list of categories and forums. We find it easy to scan the list of forums and dip into the ones that interest us. For those that are not so familiar, a homepage displaying easily accessible content reduces the confusion and invites true content discovery. Basic Homepage While the pages application can be as complex as you would like to make it, creation of a basic homepage can be quite simple to do, even if you are a beginner in using the platform. The following video shows how to create a basic application using the block manager Whilst creating your home page, and re-organising you site, you may also find the following guides helpful in obtaining more information about some of the items discussed in this video. Databases There may be times where you wish to add your own database driven content to your homepage. For example you may want to add some articles in there, which are not driven by any other area of your site, such as forums. For this you can use the databases part of our pages application. The following 2 guides discuss databases and how to create them within your ACP. Databases are added, and connected to only one page. In this example we would be using your home page. Note, this is not to be confused with being able to add feeds from a database, which you can do in various places around the site. You would add a database to your site once created, using the block manager. Once added, you can select the database you have created, as shown below Database Selection By default this would show the categories of your database, as you can see in the background of the above image. For our purposes, we only have one category named articles, and want these to show up on the page itself, rather than showing the category name. In order to do this, you would need to edit the database you have created, and change its 'Database index' setting so 'Show as Articles'. This would the give an article layout to your database. Database in article layout More advanced options For our more advanced users, pages can be created in the 'Manual HTML' style editor, which you would select instead of using the 'Page Builder' option, when creating a page. Manual HTML One important option here for advanced users, is the 'Use suite HTML wrapper' option. If this is selected, you would be creating HTML within the suite wrapper. So you would already have the standard site header, footer, CSS, includes etc. This can be helpful if you want to add content within the page itself. If you do not choose this option, then you would be responsible for the whole page, including the doctype, head, body etc. All html content for the HTML version of a page would be added to the content tab.

There will be various times in which it is important to be able to find out information about how something has happened on your site. This may be related to something that has happened to a user, something that has changed on your site, or even an issue that has occurred that you need more information on. Within the Invision community suite ,we provide various methods of logging. The various areas you can find these are discussed below. Moderator/Admin Logs Front end moderation Within most content items, you can find out what moderation tasks have been performed, by using the moderator log. These can be found by selecting the 'moderator log' option within the 'Moderator Tools' menu, as shown below. Moderator Tools Clicking on this will give you a history of every moderator action which has been performed on that particular content item. Moderator History If you have full edit history switched on, you can also see a full edit history for a given item, along with what it was edited from and to. In order to see this, you need to ensure that the following option is switched on 'System -> Settings -> Posting -> Edit Log -> Log all edits made to content and what was changed' Edit History ACP Moderation Log A more overall log of moderator actions or administator actions can be found within the ACP within the following locations. Members -> staff -> Moderators -> Moderator Logs Members -> staff -> Administrators -> Administrator Logs You will note that there is a Prune settings option at the top. Clicking on this will allow you to set when these items should be removed from the system, if you wish to do so. Moderator Logs Administrator logs refer more to items that have been changed within the admin area. For example changing a setting, adding a usergroup etc. Admin Logs Admin CP Login Logs Within the following location in the ACP, you can see Admin CP login logs. These can be helpful if you believe someone has been logging in to do something malicious, or you beelieve someone has been attempting to access your ACP that shouldnt be. A full log of all these actions, and whether successfull or not can be found here. Members -> Staff -> Administrators -> Admin CP Login Logs ACP Login Logs Member logs There are various reasons in which you may need to know what has happened to an individual member account. It may be that you wish to know about a purchase they believe they have made, or simply what device they are using to log into the system. Whatever the reason, you will find this information within every members profile in the ACP by selecting the individual members profile Members -> Members Account History System/Error logs Whilst using the software, you will inevitably have times where you or your members experience an issue with the site. This may be related to a problem on your server, a 3rd party item you have added, or many other reasons. Often you will be given limited information from your members, and so we have made it easy to track down the error or system messages that the user has received. There are 2 different types of logs for these Error Logs These are related to items which are expected, but would be shown to a user. For example a user would recieve a permission error if they do not have permission to enter a certain area of the site. these would be logged in this area. You can find these in the ACP at the following location System -> Support -> Support -> Error logs Empty Error log Errors classified as being above a certain 'level' will be notified to you via email. Clicking on the settings button will allow you to set which of these you wish to recieve, or even which you whether or not you wish to log at all Error Levels System Logs System logs are those which are related to the internal system itself. If you see an error on the front end which relates to a 3rd party item crashing for example, this is where you would be likely to see it. You can find these here System -> Support -> Support -> System logs This is how you would hope to see your system log on most occasions. If there are items that are showing in here, then they likely need to be addressed. System Log Email Error Logs As of version 4.4, email error logs can be found within the following location in your ACP. System -> Settings -> Email Settings If you are having problems with emails, this is the first place in which you would look for the error messages. Email issues will almost always be related to either the details that have been entered, or the email server. You should forward error messages to your hosting company if its not immediately apparently what you need to address. Email Error Log From here you can also attempt to resend once you have resolved any issues, using the button provided on the right of each entry.

There are often rules on sites in which people will use to promote members to another group. For example, you may have a rule on your site which states when a member reaches a 1000 posts, you would add them to an advanced member group. Within the Invision Community platform, you can do this automatically, based on rules which you provide to the system. Group Promotion Rules You would set up group promotion rules within the following area of the ACP Members -> Members -> Group Promotions From here you can add any number of criteria in which to use for promoting members. For example, I may wish to move members who have done 1000 posts . Whilst that example is quite simple, you can see from the options available, you can set up some quite complex options, should you wish to do so. Promotion Criteria Once your given criteria is reached, you can then move the users group, or add/remove secondary groups Promotion Action Restrictions The rules you set up within the group promotions area apply to all members, other than the following: If a member meets the criteria for more than one rule, the last shown in the list will be used. For example, if you have a rule to promote members after they have made 10 posts, and another after 100 posts, you should make sure the 100 post rule is below the 10 post rule in this list. If a member purchases a product which moves them into a group, these rules will not apply to them. Users who are in a group which has been set up to be excluded from group promotions, would not be promoted automatically by the system.

Completing forms can be a tedious job for anyone, however an important area when capturing data for your members. Filling in a large form to register on a site can be somewhat of a turn off to potential members. Invision Community Suite provides the facility for you to get your members signed up quickly, whilst also giving you the ability to capture any data that you need, by way of profile completion tasks. What is it? Profile completion allows potential members to sign up to your site, filling in the minimal amount of data necessary for registration on your site. It will capture only the display name, email, and password details. Any other information you need to capture from the user can then be prompted to be entered after the member has already registered, by way of 'Profile Completion'. These can be either optional, or mandatory items. So you can prevent people from using the site if you require information prior to use. Quick Registration Setting up Before setting up any profile completion sections, you need to ensure that you are using the 'Quick Registration' form. You can switch to this from the following location in your ACP System -> Settings -> Login & Registration -> Registration Once you have done this, you can create new profile completion steps from your custom profile fields. If you have not yet created the profile fields that you need, we would recommend taking a look at our custom profile fields guide before continuing. Profile completion steps are set up from the following location within your ACP Members -> Member Setting -> Profiles -> Profile Completion Clicking to 'Create New' will allow you to create a profile completion step. Each step can contain one of more profile items to be completed by the user on that step, and can also be stated to be required or not. The below example creates a simple profile completion step asking the user to tell you a little more about themselves. Profile Completion ACP You can set up as many of these steps as you would like the user to be shown on the front end. These will then be shown one per page to the user in the profile completion section. Additionally, as of version 4.4, you can create WYSIWYG items to appear in the profile completion section, via the "Custom Message". Custom Message User Side When there are items left to fill in on a users profile, the profile completion bar will be shown to that user, along with the percentage they have currently completed. This bar is dismissible by the user if they wish, in which case they would then need to complete any profile items from the profile itself. They can click on "Complete my profile" to continue to the next step shown, and complete each item. Profile Completion Bar Mandatory fields You will notice on the 'Complete my profile' section that there is a 'Skip this step' button at the bottom. This will only be displayed if the items are not required to be completed by the user. If there are any steps which are required, they will not have this selection, and the profile completion screen will always show until the required information is completed. The screenshot below shows that you are currently on a non-mandatory step which can be skipped. However step 2 is mandatory and has not yet been completed. Therefor you will notice there are no menu items that the user can select, and they see nothing on the site other than the profile completion section until they have populated any required elements. Profile Completion Custom Message

Donations can be a quick an easy way to generate revenue toward the running costs of your site. Within the Invision Community software, we provide the ability to create donation goals. For example, you may wish to set a goal of "Running costs" with the total running costs for your site, and people can then donate toward that goal. Donation Goals You can set up a donation goal within the following area of your ACP Commerce -> Payments -> Donations -> Goals Goal Setup Here you can set the amount of your goal along with a description to show your users on what the goal is for. You can set up as many of these as you like. These will then be listed on the main goals page Goals List Donating Your users can then donate toward these goals from the donations page on the front end of your site. This appears by default as a submenu item under the store link. Users can click to donate to any of the items they wish Main Donations Page In addition to the main donations page, we also provide a block that you can add from the block manager, making it simple to draw attention to your goals from wherever you wish on your site. Donation Blocks

RSS feeds are a way in which people can subscribe to your site using news readers. These allow for content on your site to be promoted easily with online RSS readers, and keep users engaged that use readers to give them news and information from various sites. The IPS Community suite shows RSS links in various areas of the site by default, and also allows for easy set of your own customised feeds. Built In Feeds Within each section of your site, you will see an RSS feed link in the bottom left. This provides an RSS feed link to the content within that area, which can then be consumed by the reader. In the example below, you can see it shows the latest topics from the News Forum, which we are currently browsing. Section RSS Links In addition to the links in each section, you will also see these within each of your activity streams. Creating new streams on your site can be a simple way of showing both the content on your site, and within a feed. Activity Feed Link Custom Feeds If you wish to build your own feeds to show within the main RSS link in the bottom left, you can do this from your ACP in the following location System -> Content Discovery -> RSS Feeds When creating a new feed, you can choose which sections you wish to 'feed' into this new RSS feed. Here we have created a feed named 'Test Feed', which shows information only from a specific calendar. Feed Creation

Within the IPS Community Suite, you are provided with the ability to add items to your pages by way of a 'Block Manager'. This drag/drop facility allows you to quickly add items to create a sidebar, or add items to the top and bottom of your page. This facility is also used within our pages application to facilitate the easy creation of new pages. Adding Blocks Adding blocks to your pages is a simple process. When logged in as a member of staff with the moderator permission "Can use sidebar", you will see a tab sticking out from the left of the site. Clicking on this will open the block manager, and reveal available areas of the site where you can place your blocks. This is shown in the gif image below Block Manager Usage Editing Blocks Some blocks that you add to the page will have their own configuration to them. Where this is the case, you will see an edit button where you can add further configuration. Clicking edit reveals setup options In this example, we are using the topic feed. As you can see from the image below, you can configure many of these blocks to very specific needs. For example, you may want a block named "News" which is fed from your news forum. This would easily done with the topic feed block. Topic Feed Config Selecting the visibility tab, you can also then choose to show on all devices, or limit to desktop, tablet, or mobile view. Block Visibility Pages Additions If you have purchased the pages application, there are a few additions to the block manager that are worth noting. Each of these are described below. If you haven't yet purchased the pages application, and you are interested in adding this to your community, please see the following guide. If you are one of our community in the cloud customers, don't worry, you already have this. WYSIWYG Block By adding one of these blocks from the block manager in teh pages section, you can add a WYSIWYG Editor to any blog placement area. Meaning you can add anything you like to the page that you could add in the editor. Here a WYSIWYG block has been added to an articles section of the site. WYSIWYG Editor Adding this to the top of the page, I have been able to add a simple text description to the top of my page. While this is a simple example, you can of course add anything you like into the editor area. WYSIWYG Result Database Filters If you have a database set up within your pages application, and also have a field added to that database as filterable, you can add a "Database Filters" block to your page. Database Filters This will allow you to filter the database (in this case, articles) using the selections, as shown. You can read more about setting up fields from our pages guide on building a recipe section at the link below Page Builder Widgets The page builder widget block types were introduced in version 4.5, and allow for the easy adding of content to any page on your site, with a lot of customizations, and without the need to code any CSS of HTML. You can add background colors and images, adjust padding and borders and even add color overlays right from the widget menu. There are 3 of these widgets, of which serve slightly different purposes Page Builder: Text - Used for adding simple text to the page Page Builder: Media Embed - Embedding of external content, such as YouTube, Vimeo, GIPHY and more Page Builder: Upload Images - Add a single image, or an image carousel to the page Each accepts slightly different input when adding them to the page. So for the Page Builder it's just text that is accepted, the Media Embed it's a single media URL, and the upload images it is one or more images. All three of these blocks contain an 'advanced' tab, which allows you to very quickly change the look of the block to suit Advanced Page Builder Settings One item in the advanced settings which is worth extra note is the "Set custom background" setting. Here you can move from the default inherit option, to add background images or colors. So you can very quickly create striking sections on your page within a few clicks. These also contain a transparency option, so you can 'fade' an image into the background of text for example. Background Image Settings This example is simply a stock image for a background image with some transparency selected, a change of font size and padding. All done with a few clicks from the advanced tab Background Image Example For a further look at this feature, please take a look at our video showing these features in action

The Commerce application, give you the ability to sell subscriptions to your users. This may be to give a higher status to your users, give access to more sections, change usergroups or anything else you decide within the product. These can become an important revenue stream for your community, and promote social engagement though the ability to give multiple tiers to your community. Creating Creating a new subscription item can be done from the following location within your ACP Commerce -> Subscriptions -> Subscription Plans From here you can see any subscriptions which already exist, along with how many active and interactive subscribers are currently using that package (with revenue, of course). You can edit any of these by selecting the pencil icon, and even add a subscriber manually to that package using the + icon (note manually added members would not be paying for that subscription). Subscription Package List Clicking on 'Create new' in the top right, will give you the setup screen for a new subscription. Here you will see a variety of options you can use for that particular subscription, including the renewal periods (if required), any benefits the subscriber gains by changing or adding to that members group, and other payment options such as the payment and tax methods to be used. Subscription Setup Settings Within the following location in your ACP, there are various settings which apply to the subscription system over all. Commerce -> Subscriptions -> Subscription Plans -> Settings From here you can set overall options for upgrading/downgrading on the subscriptions you have set up, such as whether or not to charge a difference, prorate, or not charge at all for a change. You can also set up protected groups which would not be affected by any group changes, which can be helpful to ensure that moderators and admins groups are not amended. Subscription Setings If you click on any of the numbers in the main Subscriptions page, you can also get a list of subscribers which are currently set up on the system. Subscriber List Purchasing Users can purchase a subscription from the front end, by visiting the subscriptions section. These can also be shown on registration if set up within the subscription settings, or even shown anywhere on your site with a block available within the block manager. Subscriptions Front End Users can change their subscription at any time fro the upgrade/downgrade/cancel buttons provided within the subscriptions screen. They will be asked to confirm this, and also shown any changes to costs which may occur. Changing Subscriptions

Within the calendar application, there is the ability to set up venues to be used by anyone with permission at the click of a button. This can be handy if you have specific locations for events on your site, for example, football games or motor racing events whereby there are repeated locations/venues Setting up venues Venues can be created and managed from the following location within your ACP Community -> Calendar -> Venues To create a new venue, simply select the 'create' button and enter the details requested Venue Creation In order to use the venues you have set up, you must ensure that you switch this on within your calendar settings Using Venues When creating a new event on the front end of the site, you will then see that there is the ability to select one of the pre-added venues from the dropdown provided. This does not remove the ability for you to add your own location. If the location you wish to use is not pre-defined, simply select "Venue not listed" which will allow you to enter an address as normal Venue Use

Clubs are a way of supporting sub-communities within your site. Many people have requested social group functionality in the past and Clubs are our implementation of this concept. Setting Up Initial Setup The first thing you will need to do in order to use the clubs functionality on your site, would be to switch these on. You can do this by visiting Community>Clubs>Clubs, where you will see an 'Enable' button. Click enable to switch the clubs system on Settings The club application contains various global settings, which apply to every club. These range from whether or not clubs must be approved by staff, to how clubs themselves are displayed on the site. An area in which should be paid special attention to here are the permissions in which you wish to allow club moderators to have access to. Club Settings Paid Clubs If you have purchased the commerce application, you can set up the ability to charge for access to a club. You can do this from Community>Clubs>Settings within your ACP. When this is enabled, users who have permission will beable to create clubs for which a membership fee must be paid to join. You can control which groups can create paid groups, by allowing this on the clubs page of any member group. Below shows the settings for this, including the ability to give the site a commision for paid clubs, taxes, and payment types that can be used. Paid Club Settings This will give an additional option to users who have permissions when creating a club. All proceeds would be added to the users account as account credit, which can be withdrawn based on your withdrawal settings in Commerce>Payments>Withdrawals. If you do not currently have the commerce application, and would like to add this to your community, you can see more information on how to do this in the following location. Purchasing and adding a new IPS product Allowed Permissions You can control what members can create and participate in, all from within their group settings. These are found in members>groups>social by editing any group. These options include: What types clubs members can create How many clubs they can create If they can create paid clubs (You will see this only if paid clubs is switched on) What content can be created within clubs You can read more about group settings in the following area Using Clubs Club types There are 5 different types of clubs that a member can create, if they have permission to do so. These are as follows: Public - Everyone can see these clubs and their posts. Members can participate within that club without the need to join. Open - Everyone can see these clubs and their posts, however you have to join the club in order to participate. Anyone can join. Closed - Everyone can see the club, and can see who is in that club, but only members of that club can participate. Users need to ask a leader of that club in order to join. Private - Thee clubs can only be seen by member of that club. Users would need to be invited by a leader of that club. Read Only - These are read only clubs that can only be added to by the leader of that club. Members cannot add content. Creating Clubs Members can create new clubs on the front end (permission dependant), from the clubs page, using the "Start a Club" button provided. They would simply fill in the detail required on that page, and save to initially create the club itself. Here I have created a public club, given it an icon which will show on the club itself, and also chosen a location. Locations are optional, and will show a map of where that club is located, if added. Club Creation Screen You will see a forums section has already been added. Adding Features Once created, click the club to enter. Initially, you will be presented with just the home tab, which shows a stream of all activity within that club. You now need to select "Manage Club" to add more tabs to the club, such as forums, an images section etc. You will note at the bottom there is an additional "Add Page" setting. This will allow you to add a page fully created by yourself to the club. This may be because you want to add an extra information page or any number of additional uses. Reordering Menus Added on version 4.4 is the ability to re-order club menus. To do this, select the "Manage Club' option within the club itself, then select Reorder Menu. Once selected you will be able to drag and drop menu items into the order you would like them to show. This can be seen in the image below. Reordering Menu Club Rules You can add and amend terms from the initial club settings when you set up the club, or later by selecting "Edit Club Settings" from the Manage Club menu. On selection this will give you the opportunity to add some rules, or amend any in which you already have, along with the ability to force people who join the club to acknowledge them. Rules Setup Note, if you change your rules, you can use the selection at the bottom to force people to re-acknowledge. Moderators & Leaders Within clubs, the creator change members of that club to be moderators or leaders. The difference in these is as follows. Leaders - A leader can moderate content and manage members in the club, including making other members leaders. The creator of the club initially, is a leader Moderators - A moderator can moderate content only. They cannot make any structural changes to the group, nor make any other members leader or moderator. You can change a member to a leader or moderator, from the members tab within any club, as shown in the image below. Making a member a moderator/leader

Permissions are a great way in which to control who can see different areas of your site. By using permissions, it empowers you, as an admin, to customize a users experience on your community. It may be that you have a staff area you want only members of your moderation team to view, or even a premium area that you sell to your members. Overview Within the Invision Comunity platform, we provide various different ways in which to manage what a user sees, both from a staffing point of view, and that of a member. Here we will discuss how to set up the member side of permissions, by the use of groups and modules. Along with a brief overview of other areas you may see across the suite relating to control of your membership. Group Permissions Permissions on the various areas of the platform are controlled by Member Groups. Please take a look at our Member Groups guide, if you are not yet familiar with these. Permissions can be accessed from either the Member Group screen in the ACP, or from the application in which you are changing permissions for. Which way you access these, would depend on what you are trying to achieve. For example, if you wish to do all the permissions for an individual group, you would visit the following location: Members -> Groups Once there, select the lock icon at the side of that group. Select the lock icon to access permissions (nb: In some areas, this may be under the dropdown on the right) You will see a similar option within this location: Community>Forums or indeed many other areas where there are categories such as Gallery, or Downloads. Choosing from the group page would give you the following, where you can choose all permissions for that member group, as shown in the following image. Permissions for our 'Members' group When selecting the permission (lock) icon at the side of a forum/category within an application, you will see a similar set of checkboxes, but this time it would show all groups permission for that forum/category. Permissions for a gallery category In this way, you can quickly and easily set up new permissions for a newly created category, forum, or member group, without the need to go into each item. It is important to note that permissions will be added if they are on any group in which a member has. Therefore if a member has 2 groups set, one with a permission and one without, they will gain that permission. Module permissions Within the software, there will be times that you wish to restrict an application, or application module, in its entirety on your system. Using the member group permisions for this can often not be effective. You may, for example, want to completely remove the contact us section, or remove the PM system from a given group, as if it doesnt exist. For this you would use module permissions. To apply permissions to a module, first of all, go to the following area within your ACP: System -> Site Features -> Applications Expanding any application will give you a list of modules in which that application contains. Note. that unlike regular permissions, these will give you the option to completely remove functions as if they do not exist to the end user. Applications overview Clicking the permission/lock icon at the side of any module will give you the ability to restrict access to only specific member groups. So for example, if I wanted to remove search entirely from guests, I would click the icon, giving me the following where I can deselect 'guests' Module permissions This would completely remove all search functionality on the site, for any user who is not logged into the site. Other permissions You will see in many sections, you can set custom permission error messages. This can be helpful in situations where you wish to direct your members to another area, such as signing up to a subscription to be able to access a specific forum. You can see an example of this in the image below, which is on the forum setup screen. Custom Permission Error As you can also see from the above, there are other areas in which permissions can be set. These are items in which are global in nature such as upload limits, or area specific rather than group specific.

Moving your site to another server / Server Transfer is a relatively simple task with regards to the way in which your software works. In order to do this, you would follow the process below. Step 1 - Your old hosting Switch your site offline ready for transfer to your new server Make a full backup of your database. Make a full backup of your files and folders. Step 2 - Your new hosting Create a new database Restore your backup from the above steps to the new database you have just created Upload your files and folder, which you backed up from your old server Ensure any folders which should be writable, remain writable on your new server. The folders which should be writable by the software are as follows applications datastore plugins uploads recursively (all contents) Step 3 - Software configuration Open your conf_global.php file, which can be found at the root of your installations folder on the new server. In here you will need to edit the mysql username, password, and database name, to match the new database you have set up and restored to. Log into your admin control panel and run through the support tools by visiting System>Support>Support, and selecting "something isnt working correctly". You will need to select next only until it states cache has been cleared. Other considerations If you have also changed the URL of your site, or the folder in which your site will be in (for example moved it from a subfolder into root), then you will also need to change the site URL within your conf_global.php file. You should do this prior to running the support tool in the steps above. If you have a constants.php file (not all configurations will have this), then please ensure that you check any paths which may be present within this file as they will likely need to be updated. If you are using .htaccess for friendly url rewrites you may also need to adjust the path in the .htaccess file or download a new one from the admincp > Search Engine Optimization > Friendly URL sub-tab. ----------------------- Test installations Creating a test installation would be the same process as above, however you would be copying, rather than moving the software. You would need to ensure you have changed your URL within your conf_global.php file as described above. In addition, you need to ensure you change to your test license key from the following location system>settings>license key Your test key, would be your current license key, suffixed with -TESTINSTALL . So for example, if you have a license key of the following 000-000-000 then your test key would be 000-000-000 -TESTINSTALL All test installations should be protected by htaccess, and not available to the public, as per your license agreement.

There may come a point after the installation of your product, that you wish to purchase another part of the IPS community suite. The following instructions will show you how to do this. Purchasing a new product Purchasing a new product for your suite can be done directly from your client area, in the following manner Log into the client area, using your client credentials Go to the "Manage purchases" tab Select the license in which you would like to add the new application Select "Manage your community" From this page you can add any product you have not already purchased for that license. In addition, you can purchase any extras from that area, such as priority support, copyright removal, or even an increate in your chatroom limit. Once selected, you will be given the option to pay for the new product in the top right, as seen below. Applications Page Adding a newly purchased application If you have purchased a new application, you then need to add this to your community suite. In order to do this, you would do the following. Download a fresh set of files from your client area. If you are unsure on how to do this, please see the following guide which will show you how to get this. https://invisioncommunity.com/4guides/welcome/install-and-upgrade-r259/ Unpack, and uploads the files. Do not delete any existing files, however please do overwrite where there are files that already exist on the server. You may find this guide helpful if you are unsure on this https://invisioncommunity.com/4guides/welcome/install-and-upgrade-r259/ Log into your admin CP, and visit "System>Site Features>Applications". From here you will see that you can install your new application, using the install button provided. For example here, we will install the gallery application, using the + icon shown. Installing an Application

Within the downloads system, you can allow using URLs for download submission, and also link things directly from your file system. If you edit any of your groups, and select the downloads tab, you will see a series of options which can select on a group by group basis. Submission Permissions Charging for files If you have a license for the commerce application, you can allow users to charge for files. This is similar to how it is used within the marketplace on our own site. You can see more information on this in the following guide Can submit multiple files at once? People without this setting, will only be able to upload single files at a time. Can submit URLs? This option will allow for people to use a URL to a file, rather than uploading a file. Note that people can only link to an external URL, if that setting is allowed within the main Downloads settings. Can import files from the filesystem? This will allow linking to files which are already uploaded somewhere onto the server, using your servers internal filesystem. Note that you should only ever enable this for trusted groups such as staff groups. When additional ways of submitting files, such as URL and filesystem, are allowed. The user will see further options above the upload window that can be selected to use these options, as shown in the screenshot below. Submission Screen

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. Within IPS4, you can switch on post highlighting per member group. This makes sure the reply stands out from the rest of the replies, as shown in the images below. Highlighted Post Of course, this feature works everywhere; from calendar comments to article replies. Highlighted Calendar Comment The feature is switched on via the Group form in the ACP. You can get to this from Members>Members>Groups, and editing the group you wish to highlight. This can be fount on the content tab. Group Highlighting Option Settings for the color of highlighted posts, can be found within your themes settings in customization>Appearance>Themes, by editing the relevant theme, and editing the 2 settings shown below, in the "front end colors" tab. Highlighted Post Theme Settings 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.

About caching With todays emphasis on speed being important to people when browsing websites, it can often be of benefit to add caching services to your site once your site increases in size. IPS4 is no exception to this, and we have therefore added the ability to use the redis caching method, which may be available to you on your hosting environment. Before setting up any caching, we advise you consult with your hosting company to see which is best suited to your particular environment . Setting up You can switch on any of these that are available on your server, by visiting the following location in your ACP System -> Settings -> Advanced Configuration -> Data Storage From here you can set up Redis, if available on your server configuration. If this is not detected by PHP will not be selectable. If you believe it should be available for use, you will need to contact your hosting company. Cache settings Once you have selected a caching method, and filled in any relevant options for that method, you will be asked to download a new constants.php file, which must be uploaded to the location in which your installation resides. Using sockets You may be given a socket by your hosting company for items such as redis, rather than an address in some cases. If this is the case, you would enter that socket address into the 'servers' section, and set any port to 0 where there is a port field to enter.

It may be handy at times, to be able to add some of the blocks you see in pages, or even your own custom blocks, into external webpages. Within IPS4 we give you the ability to choose any block to embed externally directly from the admin CP. In order to embed one of your blocks on an external page. First log into your admin CP and visit Pages>Page Management>Blocks. Once you are in here, select the dropdown box next to the block you wish to embed externally, and select "External embed" Selection Menu Once you have selected this, you will be presented with a screen similar to the below. Embed Text Copy the code into the relevant areas of your own website code to embed the block. Note that there is a checkbox to "Inherit key styles from parent page". If this is selected, then the styling of the block will also be brought across. If not, then you would need to style the block from your own websites code.

When a new version of the software is released, there will inevitably be changes to the default templates in which would need to be replicated in your own custom themes. On an upgrade, only unedited templates would be upgraded automatically, and therefore this would be for yourself to upgrade any templates which cannot be upgraded. There are a couple of tools available for you in order to achieve this. Each of which is explained below. Theme differences The theme differences tool is an external tool which can be found in the following location on our site https://invisionpower.com/index.php?app=core&module=system&controller=plugins&do=diff This tool will allow you to see the differences between any 2 versions of the 4.x software, from 4.0.0 right up to the current version. Once you have selected the versions to compare, you will then be shown all changes between templates on the 2 versions in which you selected in a similar format to the below. Red showing what has been removed, and the green showing what was added Comparing within the admin CP Whilst within a template in your custom theme, you can compare that to the default, unedited version of the same template directly from the admin CP. First of all, you would take a look to see which items within your custom theme have been modified. You can do this using the selection menu at the top of the template list, to select only modified templates. This will enable you to quickly find all templates that you may need to look at after an upgrade. Once you have found and opened a template that you are working on, you will see a tools button in the top right of the screen. Clicking on this will show an option for you show the default. Tip If you simply need to change the template to be that of the default template, you can use the Revert button, also shown in the image below, to achieve this. Once you have selected this, you will see the default template is placed alongside, with any changes to the default indicated, as shown below. Note that you can edit directly on the right hand side to make any changes needed.

Date formats in IPS 4 can be formatted and translated by changing language strings to any format you wish to show them in. You can find date related strings prefixed with _date within your language pack. If you are unsure on how to manually translate language strings, you will need to read the following guide first of all Language strings are made up of separate elements relating to the day, month, and year. In this example I will be editing the language string _date_last_year_long . The default for this is as follows, which I will explain in parts {!1#[1:January][2:February][3:March][4:April][5:May][6:June][7:July][8:August][9:September][10:October][11:November][12:December]} {0#} %s Re-formatting To explain this I have colorized the relevant items within the language string we are using as an example {!1#[1:January][2:February][3:March][4:April][5:May][6:June][7:July][8:August][9:September][10:October][11:November][12:December]} {0#} %s In this example we have 3 parts, and I will explain this showing March 1 2016 RED - This is the simplest of the 3 sections, as you can see the months clearly. This is the "March" month part of the string above BLUE - This is the day part of the string, in this case simply the number 1. PURPLE - This represents the year part of the above date, being 2016 As you can see here, you can quite simply rearrange the above by changing the order in which the parts are set within your language string. So if we wanted to switch this to "1 March 2016" we would re-arranged as follows. Again colorized to emphasize the individual parts. {0#} {!1#[1:January][2:February][3:March][4:April][5:May][6:June][7:July][8:August][9:September][10:October][11:November][12:December]} %s Tip You will note before the months that there is a "{!1#" displayed. This means that it will not display the numbers in that section, so will only show February for the language string part, rather than showing the number 2 Note: Some dates are controlled by the locale set within your language pack. You can edit this from Customization>Localization>Languages, by selecting the edit button on your language pack

There will be times when topics and replies can become quite large in nature. They may contain BBCode and other elements which cannot be seen in the editor at the time of writing. In addition you may want to see how your topic/post/other looks on a mobile or tablet. For this purpose we have introduced a post preview button for the editor, which will allow for quick and easy previewing of posts. Previewing content You will see in the image below, I have created a small post using some old BBCode tags. Preview Button Clicking on the icon provided for post preview. This will allow me to see how it will look on desktop, mobile, and tablet views. Giving me an easy way to see how it looks on each. You can use the x in the corner to close the window and return to the editor. Previewing Content Cant see the preview button? If you cannot see the preview button within your editor, then you may have upgraded from an earlier version and had already. You will need to add this using the toolbar editor within your admin CP. If you are unsure on how to add new buttons to your toolbar, you can see the guide referenced below, which will show you how to do this.

Installing Note that on our cloud services we install Invision Community for you so this entire section on installing may be skipped. Applies to self-hosted customers only Installing Invision Community on your server is very easy. Just follow these steps: Ensure your server meets the system requirements. Download our compatibility checker. Download the latest version from the client area by selecting Manage Purchases then your purchased license. Unzip the download and upload the contents to your server in the directory where you want your Community to run. Simple visit /admin/install in your browser from that directory where you uploaded. At this point the installer will make sure all your directory permissions are correct and prompt you to correct any issues. You will then be asked for your MySQL database issues and various other information the system may need to proceed. Your license key can be found on the same page in the client area where you downloaded the software. Test Install Your self-hosted license allows you to have one live installation (your actual community) and one test installation. We also allow an unlimited number of installations on "localhost" domains so you can test locally without restriction. If you are installing on a test install, enter your license key with -TESTINSTALL on the end. If you are installing on localhost (it must be "localhost" specifically, not "127.0.0.1" or any other alias), this will not count towards either of your installations, however, if you are installing on any other domain, it will count as your test installation. This means that if you already have a test installation at a different URL, you will receive an error message that says "A test installation has already been activated for this license key. Your license key entitles you to one test installation only." There are three ways to overcome this: 1. You can delete your current test installation and reinstall at the same URL. For example, if your Test URL (as shown in the client area) is "example.com/test", you can install at example.com/test (meaning of course you'll have to delete whatever is there first) and you will not get the error message. 2. You can install on a localhost installation: localhost installations do not count towards your allowed usages. 3. Test installs are a one time url, so you should use a sub domain of your live site as an example, so in the future if you need to test a new server or setup, you can adjust your DNS to point that sub domain anywhere as needed. Automatic Upgrade When you see an upgrade is available you can simple follow the steps in the AdminCP to initiate an automatic upgrade. Always be sure to read the release notes so you are aware what has changed in the new version. The basic steps of an automatic upgrade are as follows: When you see an alert that an upgrade is available click to proceed to upgrade system. Enter the email and password you use for the client area on our site (where you purchased your service) not your AdminCP login. The system will then fetch needed files, scan your install for any issues, and redirect you to the upgrade system. From there just follow through the upgrade prompts until it confirms upgrade is complete. During the upgrade process your Community will show an offline message stating that an upgrade is in progress. Applies to self-hosted customers only The automatic upgrade process assumes that it can write files to your local system. If it cannot it may prompt you for FTP/SCP logins to attempt a remote upload of files. Sometimes both of these automated methods may fail for various, technical reasons and you will need to use the manual upgrade process. Manual Upgrade Simply login to the client area and download a full package of software, much like you would if doing a fresh install, and unzip the archive to your computer. It will create a folder named "ips_xxxxx" where xxxxx is a random string of characters. Then use an FTP client such as Filezilla and upload the contents of the ips_xxxxx folder (not the folder itself) to your forum main directory, overwriting when prompted and making sure all files transfer without error. You will then go to your site and /admin/upgrade such as example.com/admin/upgrade and login with your AdminCP credentials. The upgrade system will scan you install to confirm that all files are up to date before proceeding. If it reports any are wrong then be sure you uploaded all files properly. In 4.3 and higher, when logging into the upgrader, you will need to use an email address / display name and password using the standard, internal login handler. If you normally use a different method for logging into your community, you can bypass logging into the upgrader by adding this line to constants.php: define( 'BYPASS_UPGRADER_LOGIN', TRUE ); 4.5 Upgrades and the Marketplace Starting at version 4.5, we introduced a new Marketplace feature directly into the AdminCP area of your site. When upgrading from a prior version for the first time, you will be required to match up your existing 3rd party applications and plugins to the marketplace items, so that the system knows which marketplace applications they are for upgrades. After upgrading, you will see a notification within your dashboard, that you need to set up the marketplace Setup notification Once selected, you will see a list of your applications. Each of these needs to be matched up using the tools provided on the right of each. The system will try to automatically match these where possible, but you must confirm they are correct. Go through each step to do the same for plugins, themes and languages Onboarding Screen If you wish to see more about the 4.5 marketplace, you can see this in the following guide Install Apps and Plugins You can download third party applications from our Marketplace or other source and install them your community. Just visit Applications or Plugins to do this. You can also upload new versions and upgrade if the author provides updates. Applies to self-hosted customers only Adding an Invision Community Application Does not apply to cloud Community as all apps are automatically installed. You may decide to add on new Invision Community applications after you initially setup your Community to expand the capabilities. To do this, simply download the full zip from the client area, upload all files, and then go to Applications. At the bottom of that page you will see a list of available but not installed applications. Just click the application you want to install. Unsupported Legacy upgrades to Invision Community If you are upgrading from IP.Board or below to Invision Community 4, there are special considerations you should take. Support We do not provide support for IP.Board product (3.x downward) product in any way. This guide is provided purely as a knowledgebase article on how you would go about this, should you wish to attempt to do so. If you feel you may require assistance, please take a look at the providers section, where you may find 3rd parties who offer this service. A direct link to this can be found here https://invisioncommunity.com/third-party/providers/ IP.Board 3.x An unmaintained upgrade path from 3.x is available for use directly from invision community using the above mentioned manual upgrade path. 3.x items that are not compatible with 4.x: Skins Skin images Third party hooks Third party applications Languages All base data, including: members, forums, topics, posts, etc. will remain intact and upgrade to Invision Community Backups Please ensure that you have a full backup of your database and file system your community prior to upgrading. Requirements for Invision Community You may wish to use our requirements checker to be sure your server supports our software before proceeding. IMPORTANT: Upgrades to PHP and MySQL that show in the requirements checker must be done prior to upgrade. You need to be aware once you upgrade these, your 3.4 installation will not work. This is because 3.4 is not compatible with the latest versions of PHP and MySQL, and is nothing to worry about. Just continue with uploading the 4.x files, and running the upgrade as normal. UTF8 Requirements Invision Community requires UTF8 when upgrading, if your current database is not UTF8, during the first steps of the upgrade process, you will be prompted to run a UTF8 conversion, this is all built into the upgrader and works very well. Once this step is completed, you will be taken back to the upgrade routine. Checking URL's and storage paths prior to upgrading It's important to check your urls and upload paths in your admincp on 3.x prior to upgrading, for example if you have more than one url parked on your hosting configuration, the upload paths and urls should only match your current url of the site. User / Display Names Usernames and display names have been merged in Invision Community. As the administrator, you may select which to keep during the upgrade process. Please note that this field will be the publicly displayed field for the user. Friends / Followers Instead of friends, Invision Community features followers. A member now has the ability to follow another member without that being automatically reciprocal. You have the option of converting friends to followers. Question and Answer Forums Previous versions of the software allowed enabling of "Mark as Solved" on a per-forum basis. Invision Community enhances this functionality by allowing members to ask questions and rate their answers. Validating Group When upgrading to Invision Community, the validating group is merged into the members group with a "Validating Flag" these users will be prompted to validate their account or continue as a guest on the forum until they do so, using the guest group permission set. IP.content > Pages Upgrading ip.content to pages will upgrade your ip.content database, and content to the new Pages Application, however all blocks and templates will need to be re-created in IPS4 after the upgrade. Moderator CP - Deleted Content If you have any items in the deleted content before upgrading, these items will be removed on upgrading to Invision Community, so in some cases you may have this set to a long period before it's actually deleted, if so, and you need these items, restore them before upgrading. This is not common and in Invision Community when you delete an item, it's deleted instantly, so there is no "removed content" section in the modcp anymore. IP Board 2.x There is no direct upgrade path from 2.x to our latest products. However you may find a 3rd party who can do this. Please take a look at the providers section, where you may find 3rd parties who offer this service. A direct link to this can be found here https://invisioncommunity.com/third-party/providers/

While installing your IPS Community Suite, you will be given the opportunity to choose your default application. However, we realize you may not know at that point in time, or indeed change your mind on what you want the default application for your suite to be. What is your default application? In a nutshell, your default application is what your user sees when they visit your sites main URL. So for example, if you set this up as gallery, then the first thing that people will see on your site would be the gallery home page. Setting your default You set up a default application from your applications section within the admin CP. This can be found at System>Site Features>Applications, and will look similar to the following. Applications Screen In the above image you will see one of the stars is selected on the right. This is what denotes the default application on your site. You can select any of the star icons to change the default application. Module Defaults Each application is built up of modules. For most, you may only see one module under that application. For example, the forums application only contains a single forums module. In some application such as commerce and system, you will see more than one. For example, you may wish to set commerce as your default application and have the subscriptions module as the default module to be viewed when commerce is visited. You will note you can set up the system application as the default application, but then what would that show? If you expand the system application, you will see that you can also set a default module. In the example below, I have set this to be the status updates page. Application Modules