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Creating a staff directory for you community can be useful for all sorts of reason. Maybe just so that your members can see the staff just at a glance, or maybe you run a gaming community where the Staff may actually be staff within your game. Whatever the reason, you can create a staff directory with ease in the IPS4 Admin CP. Creating a Directory To add a staff directory, visit Members>Staff>Staff Directory, from within your admin CP. By default you will first see this (if you expand the 2 groups) with the administrator and moderators groups already added. Directory List You can add either groups or individual members to a category within this page by clicking on the plus icon at the side of any group. To add a new category click on Create Category. Once you have clicked the plus to add a member or group to a category. You will be presented with one of 2 sets of information to enter. If it is a group then you would simply select the group. If a member then there are also other items you can select here New Directory Entry You will note that you can change what you display for the member if you are entering an individual into the staff directory. This is handy if for example you wish to show someones real name or something different. So I may have a member called X2201 and want to show them as Dave (X2201) so its clear who the person is. This is the same with the user title, so they may have "Happy Guy" where I may want to put "Clan Leader" for example. Directory Display You can change the way in which the directory is displayed my changing the display of each category. You can change these by selecting the pencil icon at the right of any category in the list. Once selected you will be shown a screen similar to the below. Directory Display You can choose from any of the layouts provided, and can even create more layouts if you are a more advanced user. Using these options you can create some great layouts Staff Directory Example Advanced Layout Usage It is possible to create custom layouts for the Staff Directory page. You will need to write the templates using HTML, so to do this you will need to be familiar with HTML, as well as basic PHP logic. In the AdminCP, go to Customization -> Themes and click the "Edit HTML and CSS" button for your default theme. Then, from the "New" dropdown, choose "HTML Template". You can name the template whatever you like, and fill the rest of the form out with the following details: Variables: $users Location: Add to an existing location Existing Location: front Group: Add to an existing group Existing Group: staffdirectory Application: System You will then need to navigate to your newly created template within the many on the left (it will be under core -> front -> staffdirectory) and here is where you write the HTML code for your template. The template will be passed a $users variable which is an array of \IPS\core\StaffDirectory\User objects. Your code can include template logic and template tags You can use one of the existing templates as an example. After this you will also need to create another template with the same name (and settings above) but with "_preview" appended to the name (for example, if the template you just created is called "myCustomLayout" the template you create now will be "myCustomLayout_preview") which contains the HTML to display on the form when creating a Staff Directory group in the AdminCP. Since you know what the layout will look like, you can make this quite simple. You will need to repeat these steps for every theme you have installed (except child themes which will inherit the templates of their parents). Once this is done, when creating a Staff Directory group, you will see the template you have created as one of the available options.

Administrator and Moderator logs are an important part of your IPS Community Suite. These will allow you to check who was responsible for an action within your community, for example someone hiding a post or deleting a member. Where to find them You can find the moderator and administrator logs by visiting "Members>Staff" and either Moderators or Administrators within that section. Within each of these you will see a button for logs in the top left of the page.

On the front end of your community, moderators can moderate your site depending on the permissions that you have given them to do so. Moderation can be done at an item level, or the level of its container. For example you may moderate individual posts from the topic screen, or moderate topics from the forum screen. Content Moderation Whilst within a post or topic, if you hover over the topic or post you wish to moderate you will see a checkbox appear in the top right of that item. Selecting this will add this to the items that you are currently moderating. Once you have selected at least one item, you will see the moderation menu appear at the bottom where you can select the action you wish to perform. You can see this in action in the animation below. Moderator Bar In some of the other areas of the community, you may find moderator actions under a button, such as you can see here in a gallery image. Moderation Menu Items Tip Within each item of content you will see a moderator actions menu. You can perform similar actions from here, and also see the moderation history for that particular item. Depending on where you are within the system, the moderation menu will show different actions. Below is another example where posts in a topic are being hidden from the end user. Inline Selection Post Approval There may be times when you need to switch on approval for replies within an individual topic. You can select this option from the 'Moderation Actions' menu, which will then mean each reply will need to be approved before being seen Post Approval Automatic Moderation There comes a time when your community is so successful that it can be a little tough to keep up with all the content and reports. To help with this, you can make use of our automatic moderation feature, which performs actions when an item of content is reported by a user of your community. This feature leverages your member reports to automatically remove objectionable content from public view. You as the admin will define thresholds for the content. For example, you may say that to hide content, a post needs 5 reports. This reduces the workload for your moderators and enables you to crowd source moderation. Community Moderation When a member reports a piece of content, they now have the option to set a type, such as "Spam" or "Offensive". These options can count towards the threshold. Once the threshold has been passed the item is hidden. Options when a user reports This threshold can be set up by creating rules in the Admin CP as shown below Report Types Before you can create your own rules for automatic moderation, you must create 1 or more report types from the following location. Once you have done this, you can then continue to setting up rules for auto moderation. Members -> Content Moderation -> Automatic Moderation -> Manage Report Types Any report type can be added here Creating Rules At its heart of the system are the rules. You can create custom rules within the ACP from the following location Members -> Content Moderation -> Automatic Moderation Rules set within the ACP For example, you may decide that: A member with less than 10 posts only needs 5 reports to hide the content. But you may want to give more experienced members a higher threshold as there is more trust. You simply add a new rule: A member who joined over a year ago with over 500 posts needs 10 reports to hide content. You can do that easily with the rules system as it will scan them all and pick the one most suitable for this member. Notifications Once an item has received enough reports to match the threshold, it is automatically hidden from view. Meaning it can then be dealt with by a moderator at an appropriate time, without the reported post being an issue to your members. Post is hidden on auto moderation A notification is sent to all moderators who opt in for notifications. This notification shows inline in the notifications center. Inline notification It can also optionally be sent via email for those who want to know without checking the site. Notification sent via email Of course, a moderator may decide that the content is fine and un-hide it. Once a piece of content has been un-hidden, automatic moderation will not hide it again. Preventing Abuse The system will only count a unique member as one point towards the threshold. This is to prevent a single member can reporting an item 5 times, as they are only counted once towards the threshold. You can also set a time limit between reporting the same item. This will prevent a member reporting a single item multiple times in succession. These settings can be found within the following area Members -> Content Moderation -> Automatic Moderation -> Settings Set limits to prevent abuse of this feature Of course, the member can delete their report if it was in error. Clicking report again gives the option to delete

Tagging and Prefixing content is a quick and easy way to categorise and highlight the content of content within your site. Users can then use these to quickly filter by similar tags or prefixes. Tagging Content Tagging when creating content can be done by entering comma separated values into the tag box. The system will check for tags which have been used previously, and automatically suggest these as you type. Once you have added your tags, you can choose one of these items to be a title prefix should you wish to do so, as seen below. Tagging Once tags are created, they can be seen within the topic list or indeed on the item of content itself. Clicking on any of these will do a search for other items with the same tab or prefix Tags are clickable for quick searching Tag Setup The setup for tags and prefixes can be found within the following location of your ACP System -> Settings -> Posting Clicking on the tags tab you will see many options which you can change to restrict the use of tags and prefixes to a predefined set, set minimum and maximum lengths and more. Tag Settings Restricting use You can also restrict whether or not tags and prefixes can be used within a forum or by a particular member group, by editing the appropriate forums/groups. Restrictions

Notifications are a great way for your users to be notified when things happen around your community. This may be that a user has been quoted, someone has mentioned them in a post, someone has commented on a photo and more. Notification Icon Settings by default When a member signs up to your community, they will have default settings for notifications based on what you set up within your admin cp. If you visit Notifications you will be presented with the following screen. Notification Defaults From here you can set default notifications when a member signs up by editing each type and setting as appropriate, along with what type of notification they will receive and whether or not they can edit the setting themselves on the front end. Default Settings Clicking on the "Prune Settings" button at the top, you will also be given the ability to set limitations as to how long these will be stored, along with being able to automatically remove follows after a set period. This may be important in large communities to ensure there are not large volumes of un-required notifications being sent out. Prune Settings Members and settings On the front end, your members will see notifications based on the criteria either by default, or in which they have set up for themselves. Clicking on the notification icon will show the notification list as below. Notification Sent to a User From here you can view all of your notifications, change your notification settings, and subscribe to then using the RSS feed should you wish to do so. Notification Management Selecting notification settings will allow the member to set up their own options for what they are notified for. Any items which are not allowed to be changed will be greyed out. You can change any item by clicking and editing accordingly. User Notification Settings If you need to check what settings a member has set up already, you can do this by editing their account in the AdminCP, and clicking any of the notification types. Group Settings This is useful if a member is querying about receiving notification emails. Browser Notifications Browser notifications are items which will show within the browser, upon certain actions on the site. These show items such as when you receive a personal message, or if another comment has been to a topic you are currently reading, without you having changed page, or even on some occasions (such as notification sounds), when you are even on the same tab. Browser Notification When someone first logs onto your site, they will likely be asked by their browser if they would like to allow browser notifications. Without allowing these, no browser notifications will show Example on Chrome If a user disallows browser notifications, they will be shown that this is disabled within their notification area on the site. From here, they can click to enable them if they wish to do so. Option to Activate

The search facilities within your community, allow your members to find specific content that they are looking for on the site, using words and other known criteria. How to use A simple search can be achieved by typing into the bar on the top right of the site. When selecting the box, you will see there are options appear which will allow you to change what criteria you are using. Options for search Selecting search icon (magnifying glass) with no search criteria entered, will take you to the advanced search screen so you can select to filter by other criteria, such as by author, searching through tags, and many other criteria including custom fields you have set in your applications. Advanced Search Administrator Options Basic Settings You can find all of the admin settings related to search within the following location System -> Content Discovery -> Search From here you can change the type of search and the way in which searches are processed by the system. By default search is set to MySQL. You should leave your system set to this default unless you are comfortable in setting up advanced server functionality on your hosting. For most people MySQL search will be sufficient. MySQL Search Options In the top right, you will also see a button to rebuild your search index. This can be used if you find any issues with search, you change any settings which require a rebuild, or any other reason you may wish to rebuild the indexing of the search itself. Elastic Search When switching to elasticsearch you will need to enter the details relating to your elastic search server. If your hosting company has set this up for you, then you will need to obtain the address for this, along with the index name that has been used. These will then need to be entered this into the fields provided. Elasticsearch Settings Additional options such as time decay and author boost settings can also be set when using elastic search. These should be left at their default settings, if you are unaware of what to set these too, or you are informed of what values to use by your elasticsearch service provider.

In addition to the standard search functionality of the site, there will often be content in which you wish to be able to search on a constant basis, without the need to have to create an advanced search for content items. An example of this would be 'Unread content' or 'Content I have started'. For this, we have Activity Streams. These provide you with the ability to set up lists of content based on a criteria that has been given, either by yourself, or user defined. All Activity Stream The 'All Activity' stream which is available in the activity menu by default, will give you a rundown of all activity on your site. Unlike other streams on your site, this will notify you of any new items since viewing the page. You can view this in either a condensed view (one line per item) or the default expanded view you see in the screenshot below. Live All Activity Screen If you wish to switch off some items from showing within 'All Activity' such as when members register, these can be switched off from the following location in the ACP System -> Content Discovery -> Streams -> Activity Stream Settings Activity Stream Settings User Defined Streams New Streams Within the default menu structure, under the 'Activity' menu item, you will see a 'My Activity Streams' option. Here you will see any admin defined activity streams, and also the ability to create your own stream (on a per user basis). Default Stream Menu When selecting to create new stream, you will be presented with the filters you wish to use for your new stream. Here I have created a new stream for a news forum on the site. Note you can select the cog icon at the side of any content type to select specific items under that content type. In this instance, a specific forum. New Stream Creation Any new streams that are created, are then shown under the 'My Activity Streams' menu, beneath the default set of streams. User Defined Streams Editing Existing Streams When viewing any existing streams, you will see a set of filters at the top of the page, in which you can change to your liking. Changing these will change the data shown in real time. Often there are times where you will wish to save a small change to an existing stream, rather than creating one from scratch. After making an edit to any of the filters, you will see a save button, which will then allow you to create a new stream from your changes. Save From an Existing Stream Admin Defined Streams Creation In the activity menu, you will see there are some streams in which are defined by default within the system. These items can be changed or added to within the following location in the ACP System -> Content Discovery -> Streams -> Activity Stream Settings You can filter by all areas of the site when creating a new stream in this area, or edit an existing stream. New Stream Creation Default Stream You will see at the bottom of each stream, there is a 'Default' selection box. Only one item can be select, which by default is the 'Unread' stream. If you change the default, it will change 'unread' link on the front end of your site to point to that new stream. In the image below, I have changed this to statues Default Stream

Share Icons You can place links to share content to other social media such as Facebook and twitter. You will see these links below any content on the site. Here is an example from a topic. Share icons Share Permissions If you visit Sharing you will see all of the sharing sites that you can currently use. You can disable any of these completely at any time. Simply click the "Enabled" button and this will change to "Disabled" Shares Available If you click on the pencil icon at the side of any of these, you will be presented with options for which user groups can use any individual share link, along with any other options which may be relevant to that share link. Below is an example of the options for Twitter. Edit Share Option Social Sign In You can enable social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and more as an option for your visitors to register or login on your Community. Existing members can choose to link their accounts to one or more social media platforms to enable a more integrated experience. Setting up social media integration varies by network. Facebook Twitter Microsoft LinkedIn Another Community Instance Wordpress External Database

There are several methods of adding advertisements on your Community both in HTML and as image-based ads. They are placed automatically in areas of your choosing. Create Ads Advertisements can be placed on you site in either image or plain HTML in Advertisements in the AdminCP. You can add a new advertisement by clicking on the "Create new" button shown in the image above. Once you have done this you will be presented with the various options for creating an image. You can either enter HTML code or you can click "Upload Images" in order to upload an ad image. In the example below, you will see you can chose to enter separate HTML code to appear on secure pages. Once you have added your image or advertisement code, you can then choose the location and permissions for your advert to be shown. You can select more than one location for an ad to show and criteria for when and how long to show the ad. When using Google Adsense adverts you may notice that page navigation no longer works as expected. This is caused by Google requiring that adverts are not loaded using AJAX. To resolve this issue you can disable AJAX pagination using the built in theme settings. Ajax Pagination Should you wish to disable an advert at any time, you can do this by clicking the "Enabled" text in the list, which will then change to "Disabled" Disable/Enable Manual Ad Placement You can put advertisements in several pre-defined locations but it is also possible to create additional locations which you can insert by modifying the HTML code for your community or use in the Pages application. First, create your advertisement as normal. For the "Show the advertisement" setting, select "Define your own location" and enter a key into the box (it can be whatever you like). You can then later use the same key for other advertisements that you want to show in this location. Now you will need to insert a special tag in the HTML code where you want the advertisement to show. The code to insert is: {advertisement="KEY"} Replace "KEY" with whatever key you used. In your theme Go to Themes and click the "Edit HTML and CSS" button for your default theme. The specific template you need to edit and where to make the change depends on where you want the advertisement to show. For this example, if you wanted the advertisement to show in the profile under the header, go to the core -> front -> profile -> profileHeader template and insert the code at the very bottom. Since each theme has its own HTML templates, you will now need to repeat this for each theme. In pages or blocks The tag can be inserted in a page, block or template within the Pages application. Simply insert the tag wherever you want the advertisement to show. Control when Ads Show Using the responsive CSS classes available in IPS4, it is possible to set your ads up so that different content displays depending on the device size. This only applies to ads you create yourself. If you use an ad service (such as Google Adsense), you should find out how that service supports responsive ads. For example: <div class='ipsResponsive_showDesktop ipsResponsive_showTablet ipsResponsive_block'> This ad shows on desktop and tablets, but *not* phones </div> <div class='ipsResponsive_showPhone ipsResponsive_block'> This ad shows on phones, but *not* desktop and tablets </div> Ads in email Introducts in version 4.4 of the Invision Community platform, is the ability to show your ads within your community emails, as well as on your site. Within the same email section, you will see an Email Advertisements tab, where you can ad advertisements which will only show within emails. Ads within Emails can be restricted to only show within specific email types. As you can see in the image below, I have changed this ad only to be sent when the email is from a Topic, such as a topic reply notification. Email Ads