Mike G.

4 hours ago, Joel R said:

My personal take is that we can wait for Google to scrape all of our content to start offering AI generated summaries on Google (which is already happening - hello Bard!), or we can start doing it ourselves.

I'm sure there's a worthy existential debate about the importance of sourcing content from reputable sources or trusted people on forums, but at the end of the day, if I'm a user searching for the fastest and most accurate solution, do I want a condensed topic (because honestly that's all the topic summary really is) of 30 discrete replies that I still need to read through and interpret or do I want an actual well-written summary that's short, sweet, to the point.

There's a race to convenience that LLMs are unleashing on our public content. We can either own those summaries ourselves, with links and references to other parts of our community, or we can let Google do it for us without ever giving us any traffic.  

Hey @Joel R, I hear you on that front and I don't think there's a right or wrong answer regarding the AI-generated summaries. Maybe "Topic summary" isn't the best terminology if it's causing some confusion. The way I'm looking at the Topic Summary is as if it were a 'Cliffs Notes' version of the topic.

Also, to quickly touch on the point that I bolded above - If used the way its intended, the new Helpful classifier should help users get to the most accurate solutions quickly.

I think the AI Topic Summaries is absolutely worth more discussion and consideration, but it's something that needs to be done right if or when it is implemented.

2 hours ago, AlexJ said:

I think we are saying the same thing for AI and that's what i mean by training AI models i.e. to provide better/accurate results. Same thing happening in banks as well, where AI results are used to check anomaly. I think it's industry wide adaptation ongoing at present. 

Also, Microsoft is pushing hard with their co-pilot program or bing chat. So Google is improving as well since their major revenue of 50-60% is from adds. 

Competition is always good for consumers. 

 

Sorry for the confusion, I completely misinterpreted your message. Thanks for the follow-up!

56 minutes ago, AlexJ said:

Google is taking seriously because of all the rush to get good data for AI models/search display and competition is getting spicy with Bing. 

I don't believe in this instance that's the case. I believe it has more to do with all the garbage SEO content taking over search and it's getting even worse due to AI. As it continues to get tougher to distinguish between AI content and human content, first-hand experience and demonstration of real knowledge are becoming more of a focus in Google.

A Google Engineer has been advising on how to improve and better position forum content in search since March. Recently Google's been actively showing more 'Perspectives' content on mobile as well as highlighting Discussions and Forums. Until now, most of those results have been from Reddit and Quora. These changes should help showcase more variety.

Engineer's Quote:

"And most importantly, thanks for making changes. It heartens me to see forum platforms moving to expose their content better. I really would like to see this content more in search results rather than low quality, over-optimized rehash articles."

I work for a publisher that is investing heavily in AI. I see it across many other publishers as well and it's only going to continue to ramp up. I hate the direction publishers are heading in and if Google doesn't get ahead of it, searchers aren't going to be able to trust any of the results Google delivers. There's a reason so many people add 'Reddit' to the end of their searches now.

User-generated content and real-life experience are becoming more and more important.

27 minutes ago, Daniel F said:

We’re already providing support for  ProfilePage and DiscussionForumPosting.

I have also made recently some adjustments to the QA stuff which will be included in a future release.

Sorry for the false alarm in that case, but that is great to hear it's already implemented. Thank you!

In that case, glad that GOOGLE is finally catching up with the times 😃

Changes to Q&A markup

Google also updated its Q&A markup to say if you are already using Q&A markup for your question and answer user forums. The company is updating the Q&A structured data documentation to be more in line with the richness of the new discussion forum guidelines. You don’t need to use both types of structured data on the same page. You should instead use the one that’s best suited to your use case:

• Q&A forums: If your forum is structured by a question that’s followed by answers, use Q&A markup.
• For general forums: If your forum structure is more general and isn’t strictly question and answer content, use DiscussionForumPosting.

Documentation: Q&A (QAPage) structured data

This is a big move by Google with the potential to showcase more forum content in search as well as highlight members of the community. Sharing this here hoping it can be natively added to IC5 🤞

Snippets below

-----------------------------------

New in structured data: discussion forum and profile page markup

Today we're announcing support for profile page and discussion forum structured data for use in Google Search, including new reports in Search Console. This markup works with Google Search features that are designed to show first-person perspectives from social media platforms, forums, and other communities. Implementing this structured data will help ensure what Search shows in these features is as accurate and complete as possible.

-----------------------------------

Discussion forum (DiscussionForumPosting) structured data

In general, we recommend nesting comments under the post they relate to. If the forum has its own threading structure, use a tree of comments to represent its structure

If it's more linear in nature (for example, an original post followed by a series of replies), nest them all under the original post as comments. Ideally, later pages of content in multi-page forums include the original post with the main page URL

-----------------------------------

Profile page (ProfilePage) structured data

The primary focus of the page must be a single person or organization that is affiliated with the overall website. Here are some examples of profile pages:

Valid use cases:

• A user profile page on a forum or social media site
• An author page on a news site
• An "About Me" page on a blog site
• An employee page on a company website

Invalid use cases:

• The main home page of a store (usually contains lots of non-profile info)
• An organization review site (the organization isn't associated with the website)

-----------------------------------

@Daniel F - Tagging you in case you haven't come across this yet. I know you make THE SEO application and probably have as much SEO knowledge as anyone in the space.

3 hours ago, Matt said:

We will have something tomorrow. 😬🎉

Similarly to the Helpful button, I'm really looking forward to this change for a myriad of reasons. Brilliant thinking on having it work on a forum-by-forum basis. Since that's the case, would it work with club forums as well?

Thanks for everything! ❤️ 

On 10/25/2023 at 12:54 PM, WebCMS said:

Hi Mike,

I have the setting exactly like yours above but the Fluid view button doesn't render on forum page. Maybe it is because I have only one main forum and no subforums. I do have multiple club forums.

How many forums do you have? Can you show me your frontend forum page where it renders Fluid view button with forums & clubs forums consolidated in a list with checkboxes?

Cheers!

The subforums aren't required for clubs to show. I have 12 (main) forums and I have the club checkboxes hidden via CSS. I have all the club forum content show in fluid mode if a member switches to that. I'm using the Combined Fluid Mode for categories though which is accessible for guests. Here's an example of the General Entertainment category.

On 10/25/2023 at 1:07 PM, WebCMS said:

Mike,

I see what you are saying. I saw before that all the topics from all the forums and club forums are consolidated into one view on forums page with this setting. I saw this consolidated before for guest users (without any View selection buttons apparently because they want to save that preference for the user) but after login, it defaults to Table view and no Fluid view button (I mentioned this before). Apparently, the forum data and club forum data are stored in the same table otherwise, they would have to do a SELECT UNION with some poor performance.

However, the view mode apparently gets cached once switched to Table view and it does not render the Fluid view button.

But the shortcoming with this approach (even if it works without hiding the Fluid view button) is that it does not render the forums widget to filter the topics by forums/club forums. If this forums widget with filter checkboxes is rendered without hiding the Fluid view button, this issue will be resolved gracefully.

Without the forum widget to filter topics, this consolidated view mode won't be much useful as users won't be in control of what topics they want to view.

Reading your next post, this sounds a bit above my technical knowledge though without seeing it, but if you want to send me a DM, I wouldn't mind chatting it out and seeing if I can lend a hand. 

The 'Helpful' option is one of the features of Invision Community 5 that I'm most looking forward to. I expect it to give a lot of communities a nice organic boost. I love the implementation. 🔥

Once again, great work!

Hey @WebCMS. I'm using the Fluid Mode as an option for members, Club forums included. If the club forums aren't displaying, it may be disabled in the Admin section.

Community > Clubs > Settings > Show Club Content Areas > Enable 'Throughout the community'

4 minutes ago, Stuart Silvester said:

Edit the Pages database and select 'inherit' for the new 'comments per page' setting. This will solve the issue.

Thank you for sharing the fix, @Stuart Silvester

2 minutes ago, Marc Stridgen said:

Thank you for letting us know. This is one we are aware of, and have resolved in the next beta

I was hoping that was the case and it wasn't anything on my end. Thank you for the update!

One other question if you don't mind. Would re-uploading the files from the stable version be the correct method to roll back?

Thanks again! 🤘

Hey everyone. I updated to the recent Beta and started receiving an error on all of my page articles

Example Page:
https://www.fanclubs.org/articles/entertainment/movies/movies-like-the-town/ 

Beginning of the log:

Quote

SELECT cms_database_comments.*, author.* FROM `cms_database_comments`  LEFT JOIN `core_members` AS `author` ON author.member_id = cms_database_comments.comment_user WHERE cms_database_comments.comment_record_id=466 AND cms_database_comments.comment_approved!=-2 AND cms_database_comments.comment_approved!=-3 AND comment_database_id=2 ORDER BY comment_date asc LIMIT 0,-1
IPS\Db\Exception: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MariaDB server version for the right syntax to use near '-1' at line 1 (1064)

Outside of disabling plugins and applications and clearing the cache, I'm not sure what else to try. I appreciate any help anyone can provide.

Thank you.

2 hours ago, 403 - Forbiddeen said:

How will work the SEO? 

It's a better user experience, easier navigation, quicker to access content, requires less scrolling, has a much-improved mobile experience, showcases helpful replies, and so on.

From my point of view, it's very SEO-friendly.

This looks absolutely amazing! 

On 7/31/2023 at 8:05 AM, Matt said:

What would you like to see? We have our SEO reviewed quite often by our brand customers and while there is always room for improvement, most are very happy with the performance. We always watch changes to Google's algorithms and adjust where required.

I'm a big fan of the SEO tools in place, but I'll jump in. There's one small nitpick and one feature that would be a big help for me. 

1. When a URL changes, custom Page Titles don't follow. They show in the adminCP under the previous URL.

2. I would love to be able to create my own Title Templates for specific URL Paths. I realize that might be a bit of a niche request, however.

3. Clubs (Non SEO) - I'm using an unsupported plugin for categorizing Clubs. If there was a way to categorize or organize Clubs natively, that would be immensely helpful.

Can't wait to see what the team is cooking up. 

I know absolutely nothing about development, but this has been a fun follow. Thanks for the continuous transparency and updates as things are being finalized.

On 6/18/2023 at 6:35 PM, BradSmith said:

FYI we are able to use the embeds again, I was about to open a ticket with DigitalOcean, maybe someone beat me to the punch?

Unfortunately, it's still not working for me. Hopefully it magically starts working again, soon. 🤞

2 hours ago, Randy Calvert said:

I'm wondering if it's possible if Twitter is rate limiting or otherwise blocking the servers as well.  They've been making a ton of changes that have broken a lot of things.  It would not surprise me if this was one of them.  

That's my fear. Twitter has recently disabled embedding on Substack, so it wouldn't surprise me if they're expanding that rollout. I'm hoping that's not the case, though.

31 minutes ago, Ryan Ashbrook said:

Looks like it's a Twitter issue: https://publish.twitter.com/?query=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FInterior%2Fstatus%2F463440424141459456&widget=Tweet

Their own tool for embedding seems to be broken as well.

Thanks for chiming in @Ryan Ashbrook. That tool that you linked appears to be working fine for me 🤔

3 minutes ago, Jim M said:

I have tagged a developer to see if there is any further insight into why this may be happening.

If you're using CloudFlare, you may wish trying to disable that temporarily. Something might be happening there?

Hey Jim, thank you for flagging this. I'm hoping this helps narrow it down, but to follow-up, I'm not using Cloudflare (or any CDN).

I started having the same problem on both of my communities a few days ago. I'm on the latest software and I'm up to date with optional patches. I have had my host (Cloudways) looking into it the last 2 days with no luck as well. I'll update if I figure anything out, but I'm semi-glad to see it's not just me.

On 5/19/2023 at 2:31 PM, Jim M said:

That is why you should also be adding decent Q&A challenges, ones that are in your niche and not easily Googled. hCAPTCHA and that will put a good dent in preventing spam. 

My one community is very broad, so a Q&A wouldn't be the best option for new members. It's unfortunate that spam is still such an issue, but as spam blockers get more sophisticated, so do the spam bots/spammers. To add to the conversation and what works the best for me, I'll share my approach, below.

1. Switched to hCAPTCHa
2. Require the first post to be approved by the staff before a new member's content can be seen.
3. Subscribed to and setup Cleantalk. Toy around with sensitivity until you find what works best for your community.
4. Consider setting up alternative registration methods (Google, Apple, Facebook, etc.) if you can, making it easier for real people to register.

Good luck spam-fighters! 🤜🤖

40 minutes ago, opentype said:

Please start by uploading a screenshot that is publicly visible. 

Is it showing for you, now?

Thank you.