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PayPal support on your product can be set up quite easily, for your customers to purchase items within commerce. This can be used either for one-off payments or for billing agreements that allow for recurring payments such as for a monthly subscription. You would set up any payment method, including the PayPal payment method, from the following location in your AdminCP Commerce > Payments > Settings > Payment Methods PayPal Application Before we can set up the PayPal payment method within the AdminCP, we must first create a PayPal REST API App within the paypal developer page. Once on the page, log into the dashboard using the button in the top right. This will be the details for the paypal account you will have people paying in to. If you do not already have a paypal account for this, you would need to create one first of all. Log In If you have used this area before, you may see other items as we see in the screnshot below. Don't worry however if you have not. In either case, you need to click "Create App" to start creating a new REST API Application. Create an Application First os all enter an application name. This is simply a name to identify this in your developer dashboard, so it can be anything you like here. You will also note it asks for a sandbox business account. This can be left as it is on its default setting. Click on "Create App" to create your new application. Application Name Once we have done this, it is important that you select the "Live" tab, as this will have the details you need to enter into your Invision Community AdminCP Ensure you select 'Live' Once on the live page, click on "Show" in order to show the 'Secret' key, which you will need for your Invision Community AdminCP. Show the 'Secret' key Now that your application is created, you need to copy the Client ID, and Secret shown below. These will be used in the next stages to set up within commerce. Copy the Details Required Creating the Payment Method Now that we have the application set up in PayPal, and have the Client ID and Secret, its time to set this up within your AdminCP. Go to the following location and select to create a new payment method Commerce > Payments > Settings > Payment Methods Select the PayPal method, and then click next Create a New PayPal Method You can choose any name you wish for your payment method, including a name for each language pack you have on your system. This is the name that will be shown to the user on the front end, and would usually simply be named PayPal. You can however choose anything you like if needed. Your Client ID and Secret are then added to the locations provided. Enter Your App Details You will note also on this screen you can restrict the payment method to be available only to certain countries, should you wish to do so. The billing agreements section here. You can switch these off entirely, have them as optional, or set them as required. This enables a billing agreement (previously known as recurring payments) to be set up between yourself and the customer, for items such as subscriptions. If a billing agreement is set up, then after the first payment, any renewals would be automatically requested from the customers paypal account. Billing Agreement Selection It is important to note, that if you disable Billing Agreements on this page, you can still use subscriptions if you wish to do so. What would happen in this scenario, is that the invoice would be created, and would be available for your customer to manually go ahead an pay. Failure to pay this after the given period would then result in the invoice expiring. Once you have added all the details needed, simply select "Save" which will then make the method available for use.

There are various other settings for member profiles within the suite, which can be set up by the administrator, to better suite the needs of any particular site. These settings can be found within the following location of the ACP. Members -> Member Settings -> Profiles -> Profile Settings Profile settings From this location, you can switch on/off various items, and set defaults relating to peoples profiles upon registration. Profile Settings Page Photo Settings In this section, you can various options related to profile photos, their defaults, and what you would like to allow the user do do in relation to being able to add them Photo Settings Display Names This is where you would set what is allowable as a display name on sign up. You can set the length requirements, along with what chars you wish for the users to be able to use. For example, you may wish to restrict to only the A-Z in the alphabet, along with 0-9, hyphens and underscores. You can easily select these from the list provided. Of course, if you have more complex requirements, you can select the "Use regex" function and enter regex for the display name requirements. If you wish to stop people using a specific name or term within their display name, you can restrict this from the ban settings page, discussed in the following guide Display Name Settings Signatures These are a signature that would be placed under your members items of content, when posting in the forum areas. You can choose whether or not to use these on your site. Along with who to show them to Signature Settings Status Updates Here you can set whether or not status updates can be used by your members, along with the default settings. These are small statuses, that you members can use within their profile. Status Update Settings Birthdays While a date of birth is entered on registration, you can choose whether you wish for people to be able to see them on the users profile or not, by default. Settings so this is visible in profiles, will allow it not only in profiles, but also within the calendar and birthday widgets, if set up. Birthday Settings Member History These settings allow for the automatic pruning of member information such as displayname history or IP Addresses Member History Prune Settings Ignoring By default the system allows users to ignore other members. This can be ignoring the user altogether, or simply ignoring something like a signature. You can disallow this from the profile settings page here. Note, however, that if you wish to just stop certain members from being ignored, you can do this from the group settings. Ignoring Members Display Settings Group formatting which is set within each group, will be shown only on the group name by default. For example, if you have an 'Administrators' group, which is colored red, then the word 'Administrators' will be colored. If however, you switch to 'Global' then the username itself will be colored, in all areas where the group name is not shown. You can also set what happens when a member clicks an item on your site, as shown in the image below. Display Settings

When creating new database template, there will be times where you want to add custom fields in specific locations with them. This guide covers how custom fields are used within your own custom database templates, examples on how to enter these, and a brief explaination of each field display type. The Basics In order to understand how custom fields are used within templates, it is important to understand the items in which will be used within your template code. When creating a custom field with a view to displaying in your own templates, the following items will be of note when you are creating these Display Methods Template Key - This is how you will reference your field within your template. When creating fields, try to stick to a convention of naming which is relevant to what the field contains, and the database if you have more than one. So for example I may have 'bugs_area_text' which would be clear to me in my instance, that it's the bugs database, the field which shows the area where the bug is, and it's a text field. Sticking to some sort of convention may help make your templates easier to read as you are developing them. Listing View Format - This is the format used when referencing the listing view, which will be discussed below. Display View Format - This is the format used when referencing the display view, which will be discussed below. Note also that display is the default view to be used if no other is specified. Display - In addition to the Display View Format, there is also a specifier for where this should be placed. You can reference each of these options specifically in your template code. Template Syntax Any field you have created can be used within your database templates. This can be done using the following code {$record->customFieldDisplayByKey('your_template_key', 'viewtype')|raw} The template key parameter would be whatever you have entered in the 'Template Key' field, in the display tab of your custom field. The view type parameter is what you would use in order to specify what format you are using, which would depend on which of the options from your display tab in your custom field you wish to show. The view types that can be used are as follows listing - This will show the value as per any listing badge preferences as set up on your custom field. This is usually used within a record list. display/display_top/display_bottom - Each of these show the value as per any display value set up in your custom field. Display on its own will just show the format, however you can use display top and bottom to display based on which of these items is selected within that field for the display section. thumbs - returns an array of \IPS\File objects . Returned only with image types, where thumbnail creation is selected. upload- returns an array of \IPS\File objects . Returned only with upload field type. raw - this will show the value as store in the database, unless there are muliple upload (returned as an array of URLs) or they are a Reciprocal field type (returned as an array of record objects) processed - this will show the raw value as specified above, however is also passed through the form helper Adding |raw will mean that the value will not be escaped. For some items which specifically contain URLs this may be desirable. For example returning a thumbnail, or a youtube item. However if using for items such as plain text, please be aware that you are allowing raw unescaped text to be added to the page. An Example For this example, I have created a field named "Sub Title". First of all I have set my field up. For this item I am aiming to add a subtitle to the record, shown below. Template Key I'm happy with one of the preset display options, do have selected the one below Display View I now need to edit my record template, and add in the line where I require it to show up. In this case, just below the title Template Edit Note that the syntax used here includes the |raw at the end. This is because what will be returned will the the HTML from the standard display format I have chosen, and I dont wish for this to be escaped. {$record->customFieldDisplayByKey('sub_title', 'display')|raw} Result

Invision Community allows the ability for guests to create a response to a content item they wish to engage with, without barriers of first creating an account, by allowing the user to post and then register afterwards. This will be incredibly valuable when you consider how much traffic a forum receives from inbound Google searches. With Post Before Registering, you'll increase your chances of turning that inbound lead into a registered member contributing to your site. Switching on You can switch on posting before registration in the following location within your admin CP. System -> Settings -> Posting -> General Switch on guest posting Posting as a guest When a potential member posts a new content item, or responds to an existing content item, they will be asked nothing more than their email address when posting, as seen below New topic as guest Once they have posted, they are asked to simply complete their registration. They are more likely to do this now they have invested in your community. Asked to register Therefore guests will see the ability to submit content, but then will immediately be prompted to register an account before the content is actually submitted and viewable. This is useful for encouraging guests to register. Guest users will have up to one week to complete their registration before their content will be permanently removed. If the guest user does not complete their registration immediately, they will be sent a reminder email shortly after making the post.

The invision community system sets up emails via the email template system. This gives you the ability to amend the email structures from within your ACP, without the need to edit any core files. The following guide shows how the Email Template system works, and where you would be looking in order to change a particular email. Email Structure The email template structure is made up of 4 parts, in which you would need to be aware of to make changes to your emails. Email Wrapper Template - The email wrapper is the surrounding template for all emails. Each email type will be 'wrapped' by the email wrapper when building up the email, and so is where the basis for the look of your emails would be changed. Note there are some examples of templates which do not use the wrapper. These are specified in the template name, as shown in the example below. The wrapper can be previewed at any time. using the button provided at the top of the template list. Content Templates - All other templates are the body of specific emails, and would be the contents that sit within the email wrapper. For example, you may see an item such as 'Staff Reply', which is the email template for when staff respond to a ticket. This is the template for the content of that email, which would then be pushed into the Email Wrapper. Tags - These are items which are specific to an email type. You will see an available list of these in the side of the editor for each template. For example, the email wrapper has tags for subject, member, content, unsubscribe and more, which can be placed within the template. Language Strings - It is important to note that most text within an email which is not dynamic, will come from a language string. In most cases if you are editing simply the wording of an email, you will find these within the language editor Templates Templates for emails work in a similar manner to that of theme templates. Any tags available will be shown on the left, and can be clicked to add to the email template itself. Additionally, below is a highlighted example of where you would look at a language string to change content. In this case, the language string email_registration_validate is used, so you would visit that language string to change its contents.

What is EasyPost? Enabling integration with EasyPost provides direct API access to shipping and logistics, when a user purchases a physical item. This allows for items to be priced based on the current price to ship an item, direct from the supplier of that service. Creating a EasyPost Key In order to create a EasyPost API key, you will first need to create an EasyPost account on their website. Once logged in, click the API link shown in the left bar, as shown in the following image, by selecting your name, then API Keys. You need to copy the Production API key from this location. API Key Location Adding EasyPost to your site Now you have your API key, you can add EasyPost to your Invision Community site. To do this, visit the following area within your admin CP System -> Site Features -> Community Enhancements Once here, select the "Enable" button under EasyPost. You will then be shown the following where you need to enter the key you have just created and select 'Enable'. For EasyPost, you must have an address set up to set from, which can also be set either in this location, or it can use your settings from General Configuration if needed. API Setup Once you have set up your required settings, you can test the EasyPost API if you would like to do so. To do this, select the "Test Settings and View Rates" button in the top right of that screen. This will present you with the following Testing EasyPost Add a product, a member, and a destination address. You will then be shown the rates available for that chosen location.

What is Giphy Integration? Giphy integration will allow your users to click and select GIF images, directly from the editor. This will pull and search gifs on the popular Giphy platform, allowing for ease of use, and expression through short media videos The Invision Community platform allows you to set up giphy integration, by simply adding your giphy API key into the platform, requiring no coding knowledge to add. Adding Giphy to your site You can switch on Giphy integration by visiting the following location within your adminCP. System -> Site Features -> Community Enhancements Select "Enable" under the giphy option, and optionally select the ratings of GIFs you wish your users to see. If you do not wish to use the preinstalled default key provided for your use, you can enter your own API key using the option provided API Key Entry Using Giphy Once you have completed the above steps, you will see a new button on your toolbar which you can click to search an add gifs to the page, as shown below. If you do not see the button, you may need to add this. Please see the following guide on how to add buttons to your toolbar

What is Mapbox used for? Enabling integration with Mapbox provides autocomplete functionality when a user enters an address (which is particularly useful if you are using the Commerce application) and can display maps when looking at IP addresses and elsewhere. This is an alternative to the preferred googlemaps enhancement, where google maps may not be an option. Creating a Mapbox Key In order to create a Mapbox API key, you will first need to create a Mapbox account on their website. Once logged in, you will see you are automatically given a public token (this is your API Key) for use on your site. Copy this token which will be used in the next step Get your key Adding Mapbox to your site Now you have your API key, you can add mapbox to your Invision Community site. To do this, visit the following area within your admin CP System -> Site Features -> Community Enhancements Once here, select the "Enable" button under Mapbox. You will then be shown the following where you need to enter the key you have just created and select 'Enable'. Enter your API key in the ACP Once done, this will enable the integration in various areas of your site where locations and addresses are shown. For example the location shown here in the admin CP on a members profile Map example

What is Facebook pixel? The Facebook pixel is an analytics tool that allows you to measure the effectiveness of your advertising by understanding the actions people take on your website. You can use pixel data to: Make sure your ads are being shown to the right people Build advertising audiences Unlock additional Facebook advertising tools The Invision Community platform allows you to set up facebook pixel, by simply adding your pixel ID into the platform. Pixel Stats Getting your Pixel ID In order to integrate your facebook pixel, you must first create one on the facebook business site. Once logged in, you can create a pixel by selecting "Get Started" as shown in the image below Getting Started You will then be asked to create a name for your Pixel, along with giving your sites URL Add your name and URL here As you are using the Invision Community platform, the next step in creation is not needed. We have added the integration to the software already, so you need only your pixel ID in order to continue here. Therefore we will simply close this screen. Integration is already done You will now see that you have a pixel ID in the top left of your screen, you will need to copy this, as this is what you will need to get started on setting up in the Invision Community platform. Copy your pixel ID Adding Pixel to your site Now you have your Pixel ID, you can add facebook pixel to your Invision Community site. To do this, visit the following area within your admin CP System -> Site Features -> Community Enhancements Once here, select the "Enable" button under Facebook Pixel. You will then be shown the following where you need to enter your pixel ID and select 'Enable. You can also set a delay if needed, which can avoid re-targeting bouncing users, by adding a delay before the pixel loads. Integrating your pixel

Often there will be resources you wish to use within pages, pages templates, or theme templates, such as images, fonts and more. While you could upload these via ftp to somewhere on your server, or another server, with the pages application Invision Community 4 provides a way in which you can upload these directly from your admin CP. Media Manager The Media Manager can be found in the following location within your ACP Pages->Page Management->Media Page Management->Media From here you can upload new items using the button provided. This can be files of any type that you wish to use within your templates or pages. In addition, you will notice in the top left you can create folders for these, in order to categories as needed. Using Media Tags Once you have your media uploaded, if you click on any of your resources you will see the info panel open on the left. This shows the media tag for that resource, which can be used to point to that resource in any location of your templates or pages. Info Panel You can use these in any way that you need. For example here I have added an image to the top of the Category Index within the default database templates as follows <img src="{media="1"}" /> Example

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.