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We are happy to announce the new Invision Community 4.3 is available!
Some highlights in Invision Community 4.3 include...
Improved Search
We now support Elasticsearch for scalable and accurate searching that MySQL alone cannot provided. There are also enhancements to the overall search interfaces based on your feedback.

 
Emoji
Express yourself with native emoji support in all editors. You can also keep your custom emoticons as you have now.

 
Member Management
The AdminCP interface to manage your members is all new allowing you easier control and management of your membership.

 
Automatic Community Moderation
You as the administrator set up rules to define how many unique member reports a piece of content needs to receive before it's automatically hidden from view and moderators notified.

 
Clubs
The new Clubs feature has been a huge hit with Invision Community users and we are expanding it to include invite-only options, notifications, exposure on the main community pages, paid memberships, and more.
Custom Email Footers
Your community generates a lot of email and you can now include dynamic content in the footer to help drive engagement and content discovery. 
New Gallery Interface
We have reworked our Gallery system with a simplified upload process and more streamlined image viewing.
 
The full list follows. Enjoy!
Content Discovery
We now support Elasticsearch which is a search utility that allows for much faster and more reliable searching. The REST API now supports search functions. Both MySQL and Elasticsearch have new settings for the admin to use to set search-defaults and default content weighting to better customize search logic to your community. Visitors can now search for Content Pages and Commerce Products. When entering a search term, members now see a more clear interface so they know what areas they are searching in and the method of search. Member Engagement
Commerce can now send a customizable account welcome email after checkout. You can whitelist emails in the spam service to stop false-positives. REST API has many enhancements to mange members. Ability to join any OAuth service for login management. Invision Community can now be an OAuth endpoint. Wordpress OAuth login method built in. Support for Google's Invisible ReCaptcha. Groups can be excluded from Leaderboard (such as admins or bot groups). All emails generated by Invision Community can now contain admin-defined extra promotional text in the footer such as Our Picks, and Social Links. Admins can now define the order of Complete Your Profile to better control user experience. Clubs
Option to make a Club visible but invite-only Admins can set an option so any Club a member is part of will also show in the parent application. So if you are in a Club that has a Gallery tab then those image will show both in the Club and in the main Gallery section of the community. Club members can now follow an entire Club rather than just each content section. There is a new option on the Club directory page for a list view which is useful for communities with many Clubs. If you have Commerce you can now enable paid memberships to Clubs. Admins can set limits on number of Clubs per group. If a group has delete permission in their Club, they can now delete empty containers as well. Members can ignore invitations. Moderation and Administration
Unrestricted moderator or administrator permission sets in the AdminCP are visually flagged. This prevents administrator confusion when they cannot do something as they will be able to quickly see if their account has restrictions. You can choose to be notified with a new Club is created. Moderators can now reply to any content item with a hidden reply. Download screenshot/watermarks can now be rebuilt if you change settings. Support for Facebook Pixel to easily track visitors. Moderators can now delete Gallery albums. Automatic moderation tools with rules to define when content should auto-hide based on user reports. Totally new member management view in AdminCP. More areas are mass-selectable like comments and AdminCP functions for easier management. New Features
Commerce now has full Stripe support including fraud tools, Apple Pay, and other Stripe features. Commerce packages can now have various custom email events configured (expiring soon, purchased, expired). Full Emojii support in the editor. Complete overhaul of the Gallery upload and image views. Announcements system overhaul. Now global on all pages (not via widget) and new modes including dismissible announcements and top-header floating bar option. Many new reports on traffic and engagement in the AdminCP. Blog has new view modes to offer options for a traditional site blog or a community multi-member blog platform. The content-starter can now leave one reply to Reviews on their item. Commerce now makes it much easier to do basic account-subscriptions when there is no product attached. Useful Improvements
Forums has a new widget where you can filter by tags. If tags are not required, the tag input box now indicates this so the member knows they do not have to put in tags. Member cover photos can now be clicked to see the full image. Any item with a poll now has a symbol on the list view. Twitch.tv embed support. You can now update/overwrite media in the Pages Media Manager. Mapbox as an additional map provider to Google Maps. Technical Changes
Direct support for Sparkpost has been removed. Anyone currently using Sparkpost will automatically have their settings converted to the Sparkpost SMTP mode so your email will still work. Your cache engines (like Redis) will be checked on upgrade and in the support tool to ensure they are reachable. Third-party applications will now be visually labeled to distinguish them from Invision Community official applications. The queued tasks list in the AdminCP is now collapsed by default as queued tasks are not something people need to pay much attention to during normal operations. When upgrading from version 3 series you must convert your database to UTF8 and the system saves your original data in tables prefixed with orig. The AdminCP now alerts you these are still present and allows you to remove them to reclaim storage space. On new installs there are now reasonable defaults for upload limits to keep people from eating up storage space. Categories in all apps (forums, gallery albums, databases, etc.) no longer allow HTML in their titles. This has been a concern both in terms of security and usability so we were forced to restrict it. Large improvements to the Redis cache engine including use for sessions. The login with HTTPS option has been removed and those who were using it will be given instructions to convert their entire community to HTTPS. Images loaded through the proxy system now honor image limits for normal uploads. We now consider BBCode deprecated. We are not removing support but will not fix any future issues that may come up.
 
There's a lot to talk about here so we are going to lock this entry to comments so things do not get confusing. Feel free to comment on upcoming feature-specific entries or start a topic in our Feedback forum.
 

Despite your best efforts, is engagement a problem for your community? You have your site promotion running well and you are seeing plenty of traffic but it doesn't convert into comments, posts or reactions?
Invision Community is a powerful platform that offers layers of complexity for the many sites it powers. When you are struggling to convert page views into comments, it's worth taking a step back and evaluating your site from a new user's point of view.
We'll take you through our 6 best tips to simplify your site and increase engagement using built in tools.
#1 Use Social Sign In with at least Facebook and Twitter enabled.
Social sign in makes it easy for causal visitors to become content contributors by creating an account. Social sign in removes the complex registration form that may put some off.

 
It's a fact that most people visiting your site will have either a Facebook account or a Twitter account. Use that to your advantage!
#2 Use Profile Completion
One of the biggest reasons sites fail to convert visitors into members is because of large or complex forms. If you have many required profile fields, your potential member is likely to abandon the form. Use the Profile Completion system with fewer fields where possible for a simpler registration form.

 
The Profile Completion system allows new members to complete their profile in their own time. Of course, you can still enforce vital fields before members can contribute.
#3 Use Fluid View
Traditional forums can be a little daunting to site visitors used to Facebook. The top down categorisation is a strength for separating conversations. Yet, it can be confusing for a first time visitor to navigate.

 
Fluid view breaks down these boundaries by presenting your conversations in one simple list. By removing the need to jump between forum containers, new visitors are encourage to keep diving deeper into your conversations. An engaged visitor is more likely to contribute.
#4 Keep your forum structure simple
Even with fluid view enabled, complex forum structures can confuse. Consider a brand new forum with a hundred different conversation areas. Would a new user know where to go and post? Would they be put off thinking they are posting in the wrong area? The best advice is always start off with as few forum containers as possible and increase them as your community grows.
#5 Use Reactions
One of the simplest ways to increase engagement is to turn on Reactions. Reactions allow other members to leave feedback on a post in a few clicks. The default reactions allow one to like, give thanks, express confusion, sadness or happiness. You can add your own reactions to tailor the platform to your niche and personality.

 
Non-verbal engagement is important for your active posters. If they receive reactions to their posts, they are more likely to reply more and return often to see what feedback they have received.
#6 Use the Sign In/Sign Up widget
A very simple way to increase visitor to member conversion is to just ask them to register. Invision Community ships with a drag and drop widget that you can use to outline what your site is about and encourage registration.

 
In one very simple but prominent box, you can see what the site is about and how to join in.
Summary
New and existing communities should take a moment to see their site through a new visitor's eyes. Consider how easy your structure is to navigate and how many barriers to registration there are.
You can streamline both registration and conversation presentation with our built in tools. The key to increasing engagement is to make it a simple as possible to join your community. Make sure your barriers or entry are set low.
Not using Invision Community? We can convert you from other platforms preserving your data. Our migration page has more information on the platforms we can convert you from.

We are working hard to get Invision Community 4.2 ready to go! If you have not been following this upcoming version, check out the details:
Over the last month we have released several beta versions and feedback from those that have chosen to jump in on the beta has been great. We really could not be happier. Feedback has included amazement over how stable the beta is to reactions from community members enjoying all the new features.
Everyone here at IPS is very excited to get the full release out so everyone can enjoy it. Not everyone is comfortable using beta releases .
Back in March when we first announced 4.2 was coming soon we said that it would be out in mid-2017 and we are still on track for that. Be sure to keep an eye on announcements for the full release expected in the next 3 - 4 weeks.
We really hope everyone is as excited as we are about 4.2's full release. Based on the feedback from those already using 4.2 beta on their live sites we really think this will be a huge hit with your community.
 

Here is the roundup of what's new in Invision Community 4.2!
Highlights
There's a lot of new feature in 4.2 but here are a few of the highlights:
Promoting Content - A new way to promote content in your Community internally, on Facebook, and on Twitter.

 
Clubs - Clubs are a brand new 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.

 
Reactions - Offer more fine-grained sentiments towards content than a simple up/down or 'like'. They are now in common usage on social networks, and so users expect to be able to be more nuanced in their response to something they see.

 
Complete Your Profile - Encourage or require members to fill out the details on their profile. Also now allows for quick registration to encourage joining.

 
And a whole lot more..
It goes on... here is the full list!
Leaderboard Enhancements Richer Embeds Group Promotion Improvement Fluid Forum View Member History Editor Uploading Improvements Authy Integration Commerce Improvements New REST API Endpoints Gallery Improvements Statistic Reporting Copy Topic to Database Downloads Index Page Blog Sidebar Promoting Content Clubs Reactions Calendar Venues Social Sign In Streamlining Calendar Add Similar Event Gallery Lightbox Navigation Letter Profile Photos SEO Improvements Device Management Delayed Deletes Calendar Event Reminders Content Messages Recommended Replies Complete Your Profile Be sure to visit each entry above for more information and screenshots. We hope you enjoy Invision Community 4.2!
 

Completing long and complex forms online is tedious. It can be off putting having to fill in a lot of information before you can join a site or service. You may find that potential members never bother to convert from a visitor.
How to convert guests into regular members is an often asked question. The simple answer is to lower the barrier to entry. Invision Community 4 already allows you to register with Facebook, Twitter, and other networks with ease.
"Complete My Profile" is a system that will lower the barrier of conversion. Guests only have to complete a very basic form to gain membership. Members are then asked to complete any custom profile fields you require.
You can also set up steps that group items together to encourage existing members to add more information to their public profile.
Members with a complete profile and user photo provide others with much more engagement and personality.
Registering
If we look at registering first. Clicking "Sign Up" will only show a simple modal form with as few fields as possible.

 
If you have required steps, and after any member validation flow, the complete your profile wizard is shown.

 
This enforces required fields and the member cannot skip them or view other pages until completed.
Of course, you may have steps that are not set to required. These are available too, but are skippable. Members can complete skipped steps later.

 
A dismissible progress bar shows to members that have uncompleted steps. Once dismissed, it no longer displays in the header of the site.

 
This same progress bar is always shown in the members' settings overview panel, in the user control panel. This will prompt members with incomplete steps.

 
If you set up a new required step, members have to complete the step before being able to browse again. This will ensure that all regular members have completed profiles.
Admin Control Panel
You will create new steps in the Admin Control Panel. Each step can contain multiple elements of a single group. This step can be set to required to enforce completion or suggested to allow it to be skipped.

 
The basic profile group contains things like user photo, birthday and cover photo. Choose any of these for this step.

 
The custom profile field group contains any fields you have set up already.

 
You can switch off this system if you feel it does not fit your needs. When disabled, you get the normal registration form.

 
Reducing the complexity of membership can only help convert more guests into contributing members. Enforcing required steps ensures that you capture data across your membership.
We hope you enjoy this feature and you see an increase in guest conversion with Invision Community 4.2.
 

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release
 
Top Members
For 4.2 we made some improvements to the Top Members section of the Leaderboard. A new overview page tab shows a selection of the top members across different criteria.

Top Members Overview Page showing members with Most Reputation and Most Content
The filter menu allows you to view more members in any chosen category, and a new AdminCP setting controls which categories should be available.

Top Members Categories
In the AdminCP you can configure which categories are shown on the overview page, the filter menu, and how many results show for each.

Top Members AdminCP Settings
 
Popular Contributors Widget
Another small change is the Popular Contributors widget now contains a link to the appropriate section of the Leaderboard.

Popular Contributors Widget

This is an entry about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
You are probably already familiar with our content embedding feature in IPS Community Suite. When a link to content in the community is pasted into the editor (e.g. a topic, or a post, or a gallery image, etc.) it is automatically expanded into a preview of the content, usually with an accompanying image, allowing users to click through to that content if they are interested.

An embedded Gallery image in IPS Community Suite 4.1
While it has proved a useful feature to members, each embed used essentially the same structure - a small thumbnail on the left, a title, and a few lines of text. This works fine for topics, but isn't ideal for other kinds of rich content that might be posted.
In IPS Community Suite 4.2, we greatly improved upon our embedding handling, giving every type of content within every application its own customized embed style, allowing that content to be displayed however works best. This means larger high-res previews of Gallery images, a button to download a file right from the embed for Downloads files, showing a map for Calendar events, and so on. We worked to keep a consistent overall style between apps, but allow each to display its own relevant information.
For users, things will work exactly as they do now - they simply paste a link to content, and it will continue to expand automatically. The changes are also backwards compatible. Any existing embeds in your community will automatically show the new styling you see below - no rebuilding necessary.
So with that in mind, let's take a look what the new embeds look like! I won't show every single embed here because there's a huge number, but I'll try and give you a feel for how we approached the embed styles for each app.

Gallery Image

Comment on a Gallery Image

Gallery Album

Forum Topic

Downloads File

Review on a Downloads File

Calendar Event

Comment on a Calendar Event

Commerce Product

Record from a Pages database
I hope that gives you a good overview of what to expect when your users try out the new embeds for themselves. As always, please share your feedback in the comments below!
 

This is an entry about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
The ability to automatically promote users from one group to another based on set parameters has been a staple of community software for some time. Traditionally, the most common determination of promotion has been post count. Additionally, the 4.x Community Suite supports promoting members automatically based on the time elapsed since the user joined the site and based on their total reputation count.
With 4.2, we have completely overhauled and enhanced the group promotion feature bringing many new options to administrators looking to promote members through different group levels.
To start with, the group promotion options have been removed from the groups configuration pages into their own area.

Group promotion rules overview page
You will notice that rules are no longer strictly tied to a single group, and that rules can be sorted however you desire. When you create and edit rules, you can choose which groups the rule applies to, what parameters the user needs to meet in order for the rule to be activated, and then finally, which primary and secondary groups the user will be moved in to. You can also configure the rule to remove specified secondary groups, which can be useful if one rule adds a secondary group for users, and then the next rule should change them to be part of a different secondary group (i.e. add a new secondary group, but also remove the previously awarded secondary group).
The system uses the same member filters available when configuring bulk mail, and we have made some updates to the member filters area (and have introduced some new filters) in this release as well. For example, you can create a rule that only applies to members who have won the daily leaderboard at least once, or members who have created a blog.

Some of the group promotion filters, which are also available when sending bulk mails
Any time a member account is updated for any reason (a new visit, editing the member, the member makes a new post, etc.), the software will loop through all configured rules and the last rule in the list that matches the member will be applied. This approach allows you to create promotion levels, for instance when a member reaches 100 posted content items they will be promoted to a new group, and when they reach 1000 posted content items they will be promoted to yet a different new group.
Groups can be wholly excluded from any promotion rules, which is useful when you have administrator and/or moderator groups and you want to ensure that they are never moved to a different group. These groups will be disabled from selection when configuring group promotion rules, and these groups will be ignored if "any group" is selected for a promotion rule.
Finally, if a user is moved to a new primary group by Commerce because they have purchased a product which moves them to a new group, they will also be excluded from group promotion rules (however, Commerce purchases that only adjust secondary groups will not exclude users from being checked by group promotion rules).
 
Developer note: You can add your own filters for group promotion rules (and bulk mails) by adding MemberFilter extensions in 4.2, available in the Developer Center for your application.

This is an entry about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
When you have a diverse range of topics within your community, it makes good sense to separate topics within forums and categories. This will ensure that the viewer can find relevant content by scanning the list of forums first.
If you have a more focused community with fewer forums, presenting your community with a list of them can be daunting. This is especially true for less experienced visitors raised on social media.
Fluid forum view allows your visitors to get right to the meat of your community; the topics.
A fan site for a band is a good example of a community that will benefit with fluid view. There will likely be forums for album reviews, tour dates, general discussion and so on. Even though there are many forums, the common topic is the band. This makes fluid view ideal as your members can see all those related topics in one view. If your members wanted more specific topics, they could select a single forum to view.
Let us take a look at fluid view in action. We will then break it down and explain how it works in more detail.

 
The video shows the topic list and the forum filter box. As you can see, it is easy to change the topic list by changing the selected forums. This view replaces the traditional list of categories and forums.

 
Of course, you can permit your members to change the view to better suit their way of working.

 
You will notice a "grid" option. We have moved the grid forum theme setting into the main forum settings. This makes it an option for your members to choose, if the administrator permits it.

 
You have full control over the display options. This screenshot shows that the control panel option to choose the default view. There is also an option to control which views your members can select. You may also decide to not allow your members to switch views at all. This will ensure that they all use the view you choose.

 
You may have spotted that forum names have a colored background in some screenshots. We added the ability to define a feature color per forum. This feature color helps the forum stand out in a more visual way. This is especially useful when you select many forums in a single view.

 
This feature color also works on the table view.

 
We added a feature color hint to topic view to enforce the association between the forum and its color.
 

 
This screenshot also shows the removal of the forum breadcrumb in fluid view mode. Fluid view remembers your last forum selection so you don't lose your place when you go back to the listing.
The benefit of this feature is easy to see. It removes a potential barrier of entry for your audience. It puts the spotlight on topics themselves, and not the hierarchical forum structure. Your members will enjoy viewing many forums at once and switching between them without leaving the page.
We hope that fluid view is an asset to your community and your members enjoy this new functionality.
Technical notes.
The database stores the members' view choice. This remembers the selection across devices. Guests are not permitted to change between views.
 

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release
IPS Community Suite has supported drag and drop uploading to the attachments area at the bottom of the editor since 4.0. In 4.2 we're pleased to add the ability to drag and drop right into the editor, so you can drop your attachment exactly where you want it to show without having to add it afterwards.

Drag and drop into editor
If your browser and OS supports it you can also copy and paste, either from the desktop or from other content on the web:

Copy and Paste
Naturally this works for ordinary files as well as images:

Drag and drop a file
 

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release
In 4.1.18 we added Two Factor Authentication. Already in 4.2 we have announced a new setting to trigger 2FA when logging in from a new device, and in 4.2 we are also adding Authy as an authentication handler.
Authy can send a user a text message, make a phone call, or send a push notification to a smartphone app to authenticate the user. You can enable whichever of these options you like.
 
Set Up
To set up Two Factor Authentication with Authy, the user will enter their phone number. To verify their phone number they will then enter a code shown in the Auhy app or have a code sent by text message or phone call. The system will automatically show an appropriate interface based on what options you have enabled - for example, if you don't want to enable the app as an option, it will not reference Authy.

Setting up Authy with the app available as an option

Setting up Authy with just phone or text message options enabled
 
Verification with Authy
When the user needs to verify their account, the system will automatically show an appropriate interface. If you allow verification with the Authy app and either it is the only option you allow, or the system knows that the user has installed the Authy app, the system will prompt them to use the app. This can either be done using Authy's OneTouch option (where the user will receive a push notification to the app, and when they click approve, the screen will automatically refresh) or their SoftToken option (where the user will be instructed to open the Authy app and enter the code they see). If you allow authentication by text message and/or phone call as well, the user will also see options for using those instead.
These screenshots show the process for OneTouch authentication:

The user is shown a waiting screen
 
Simultaneously they will receive a push notification and when opening it be able to approve
Once the user has approved, the waiting screen will automatically refresh with the user authenticated.
For SoftToken authentication, the user is prompted to enter the code shown in the Authy app:

Authy SoftToken option
 
Phone Verification
If you have disabled the Authy app as an option, or the user does not have it installed, they will be prompted to choose from the available options how they want to authenticate.
These screenshots show the process for authenticating by text message:

The user is asked how they want to authenticate

The user receives a text message or phone call with a code

The user enters this code to authenticate
 
Management
If the user changes their phone number they can reconfigure the system in their account settings. The system automatically shows "Phone Verification" rather then "Authy" if the app is not available as an option.

Account Settings showing Authy as Phone Verification
 

This is an entry about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release
Statistics can be an important part of monitoring your site and ensuring it grows and responds to your marketing and promotion efforts effectively, and several new statistic tools have been added to the 4.2 Community Suite which we know you will be excited to learn about!
A simple tool has been added that will allow you to look up and list all member accounts that have last visited the site within a specified time period.

Look up members who have visited within a set time period
Additionally, online user (both logged in user and guest) counts are now tracked every 15 minutes and graphed in the AdminCP for you to reference. You can view online user trends over a specified date period, view just guest counts or just member counts (or both), and view the graph in multiple different modes (such as an area chart or as a column chart). By default, the data is retained for 180 days, however you can control how often to prune this statistical data in the AdminCP.

Online user trends graphed
You can also view a graph of member activity on the site. Member activity is defined as any "activity" beyond simply browsing, such as submitting a new post, reacting to any content item or comment, or following any content item or node.

Activity information about your member base
You will also be able to define keywords that you would like to monitor and then see both a graph of usage of those keywords, as well as a table listing all usages of those keywords. You can use this to track usage of competitor names, find out if hash tags you define are trending, or learn if promotional materials are making an impact on your membership.

Keyword tracking can help you closely monitor your community
Along with these additions, we've cleaned up the menu and wording for the rest of the existing statistic options to make their functions more clear.
We hope these additions help you better track and control your community, making the most of your time and money.
 
Note for developers: A new chart class has been added which allows you to populate dynamic charts using callbacks, in addition to the standard methods that already exist for pulling data directly from a specified database table.

This is an entry about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release
We have introduced a feature which will allow moderators, with permission, to copy topics from the Forums application, into any custom database in the Pages application.

New Moderation Item
This feature will copy the contents of the first post of a topic, and copy it as the body of the new record. The moderator copying the topic will then be given a pre-populated form which will have the Title and Content fields automatically filled with the topic title and first post contents, which then can be modified to add any additional notes (such as an editors note at the bottom). The form will also include any custom fields that can be filled in, as well as all moderation options you would normally see when creating a record.

Form Input
In addition to all of the normal options you would typically see, there are two additional options. The first is the ability to copy all posts in the topic as comments on the new record. The second is the ability to post the record as the original topic author, or as the moderator copying the topic.
This new feature is very useful when you might see a topic in the forums that you want to copy to an article or keep in a permanent knowledge base.
 

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release
In IPS Community Suite 4.2 we have added a bunch of new settings for the Downloads Index Page.
 

Downloads Index Page - Settings
With 4.2 you'll be able to hide any of the boxes. 

Hidden Most Downloads Box
 
Another often requested feature was that people want to be able to choose the categories from where the files should be fetched
This way you'll be able to hide files from some very old categories.

Hidden Categories

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
We are happy to introduce the next major feature that will be available in IPS Community Suite 4.2 - Clubs.
Clubs are a brand new 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. Let's take a look at a few screenshots, and then go over what they are capable of doing.

The Club directory

A Club homepage

Club member listing

Example of content within a club (topics, in this case)
There's a lot to digest there! Let's go over the basic functionality.
 
Club Types
Four types of club are available:
Public clubs
Clubs that anyone can see and participate in without joining. Open club
Clubs that anyone can see and join. Closed club
Clubs that anyone can see in the directory, but joining must be approved by a Club Leader or Club Moderator. Non-club-members who view the club will only see the member list - not the recent activity or content areas. Private club
Clubs that do not show in public, and users must be invited by a Club Leader or Club Moderator As the site admin, you can of course configure which club types can be created and by whom. You could, for example, allow members to create public and open clubs, but allow a "VIP" group to also create Closed and Private clubs.

Admin configuration option for Club creations
 
Club Users
Each club has three levels of user:
Leader
A leader has all of the permissions of a moderator, and can add other moderators. They can also add content areas (see below). The club owner is automatically a leader. Moderators
Moderators, as the name implies, have the ability to moderate content posted within the club. As the site administrator, you can define which moderator tools can be used. You could, for example, prevent any content being deleted from clubs, but allow it to be hidden. Moderators can also remove members from a club. Users
Anyone else that joins the club.
Defining the moderator permissions available to club moderators
Your site administrator and moderators, with the appropriate permissions, are able to moderator content in any Club regardless of whether they are a member of it. 
Clubs can be created by any user who has permission. As you would expect, this is controlled by our regular permission settings.
For closed clubs, there's an approval process. Users can request to join and the request must be approved by a leader. Leaders get a notification when a user requests to join; the user gets a notification when their request is approved or denied.

Approving and declining join requests
 
Club Content
Club Leaders can add a variety of content areas to their club - forums, calendars, blogs and so on. It's important to note that these content areas are fully functional just as if they existed as a top-level admin created area. They will appear in search results, activity streams, users can follow them, embed links to them, and so on. If a user has permission to see a forum (for example) within a club it will behave exactly like other forums they see - and the same for all other kinds of content.
Each content area a leader adds can have a custom title, and will appear in the club navigation. This means, for example, that you can have multiple forums within a club, and give each a different name.

Adding content areas to a club
 
Club Custom Fields
Clubs also support custom fields. Custom fields are defined by the site administrator and can be filled in by Club Owners. The values they enter are shown (along with the club description) on the club homepage.

Custom fields in a club
On the Club Directory page, users can filter by the custom club fields.

Filtering clubs
 
Club Locations
Clubs have built-in support for Google Maps, allowing users to specify a physical location for their club. Let's say you run a community for car enthusiasts; each club might be tied to a particular region's meetup. The Club Owner specifies the location when setting up the club, and clubs are then shown on map on the directory page:

Club locations
And within a club, the location is shown too:

 
Club Display
We offer two ways to display club headers within the club - the standard way, shown in the screenshots you've seen up to this point, but we also have a sidebar option. This is something the admin sets globally for the site, rather than per-club. This is useful where your site design doesn't facilitate another horizontal banner taking up valuable screen real-estate; moving the club banner to the sidebar alleviates this pressure on vertical space.

Sidebar club style
Using Clubs in Other Ways
There's a lot of scope for using clubs beyond allowing users to create their own groups. You do not even have to call them "clubs" if that does not suit your use case. For example, on a company intranet you could rename Clubs to "Departments", and create a private group for each of your main roles. This would allow each department to have its own community, with its own forums, gallery, file sharing and so on, private and separate from other departments.
Similarly, they'd also work well in situations where you as the site admin want to create entire micro-communities. Take for example a video game publisher. Using Clubs, they could create a micro-community for each of their games, complete with forums, galleries and so forth, and then set the Clubs directory as their overall community homepage. Immediately, they have a setup that hasn't until now been possible out-of-the-box with IPS Community Suite.
 
We expect our clients will come up with some really innovative uses for the new Club functionality, and we can't wait to see what you do. We'd love to hear your feedback - let us know what you think in the comments.

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
IPS Community Suite has long had a reputation system; first we had a simple up/down system, later updated to introduce a Likes system as an alternative. Whichever system you chose to use, it tied in with our reputation system.
We're pleased to introduce the latest updates to the reputation system, and it's something that has been requested for quite some time: Reactions.
Quite simply, reactions allow users to offer more fine-grained sentiments towards content than a simple up/down or 'like'. They are now in common usage on social networks, and so users expect to be able to be more nuanced in their response to something they see.
Let's see how they work in a post, and then cover the options you'll have available.

What you see above is the default setup for a site that has used the Like system in version 4.1. We include 5 reactions by default:
Like Thanks Confused Sad Haha If you currently use the older style up/down reputation system, don't fret - you'll still get the new reactions on upgrade, but they'll be disabled by default and instead the new reaction UI will show up/down reactions. This gives you the flexibility to decide which of the new reactions, if any, you want to allow.
So, those are the basics - but what configuration options can you expect to see? First, you can of course add your own reactions! We expect that beyond the default reactions you'd expect to find, some sites will want reaction types specific to their use-case. On an intranet, you might want to have 'agree' and 'disagree' reactions for staff to use when responding to discussions. On a gaming community, you might replace the icons to be some graphic from a video game that means something to your particular userbase. There's a wealth of possibilities.
Each reaction you set up can be configured to adjust the original author's reputation count - a reaction can be positive (i.e. award a reputation point), negative (i.e. subtract a reputation point), or neutral (i.e. leave the reputation count unchanged). Our default set won't include any negative reactions, but you are free to configure these and new reactions to suit your own use-case. A user's total reputation count is still shown alongside their content and in their profile, of course.
If you don't want to use the new reactions for whatever reason, you can disable all of them except Like, and it'll behave just the like 4.1-and-earlier system:

 
Sites that currently use the up/down system don't show a list of names of users, and instead show an overall reputation score for the content. With the new reaction system, you can enable this even if you don't use up/down reactions. This is great if you plan to use reactions as, for example, an agree/disagree system, or where the content score is more important to your site than the individual reaction types.

How the reaction UI looks with the 'count only' setting enabled
As you'd expect, you can click individual reaction counts (or the overall reputation score, if you enable that setting) to view who reacted to the content. This remains a permission setting that you can apply per-group.

On touch devices, on-hover functionality is not suitable, and so for these devices the reactions UI looks like this:

Reactions play well with all areas of the suite, including Recommended Replies:

...and activity streams...

...and a couple of places we aren't quite ready to reveal yet  
 
We hope you're looking forward to this new feature as much as we are. It's already been a hit on our internal testing site, and we're looking forward to seeing how clients customize it for use on their own community.
Developer note: Reactions are one of two new features (the other currently unannounced) so far that make use of PHP Traits.

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
Following on from our previous news entry "Add Similar Event" we are pleased to announce another feature that will make adding and discovering new events as easy as possible.
Support for geographic event locations has been in Calendar for some time now but with 4.2 we have taken this a step further with venue support. When enabled, members can set the event location from a list of pre-defined venues. Address details and maps will then be automatically shown in the event view.

Event view shows the venue map and address as well as a link to other events at the venue
Additionally, a link will be added so that other events occurring at this venue can be discovered.

Venue view shows all events at the location
Venues can be added via the admin control panel or inline when adding events (for users with permission)

ACP venue management

Inline adding of venues when adding events
If a venue has not already been added then a fallback to the standard address form input is provided.
We have a few more Calendar improvements still to reveal so be sure to follow News & Updates for further announcements.

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
Recurring events are not new with IPS Community Suite but often you may wish to create similar events that don't necessarily occur on a regular schedule. Previously this has meant creating a new event for each and then manually re-entering the information for event description, location, cover photo, RSVP options and so on. Often the only thing changing between the events would be the date and time.
Starting with IPS Community Suite 4.2 it is now possible to create a similar event based on one you have already added with a single action.

Create a copy of an event in one simple step
After opting to add a similar event you will be presented with the add new event form with all of the event info already filled out for you. Just set the date and time, make any required adjustments and submit your new event.
Note: This option is only presented to the author of the original event in order to reduce visual clutter for regular visitors.
We will be announcing many more interface improvements such as this in the coming weeks so be sure to follow the News & Updates section for updates.

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release
IPS Community Suite comes with a default profile photo which is used when members have not set a profile photo for their account. While this model has served the software well for years, we felt it was time for an update to the software to keep pace with current internet trends. This has led to one of the latest changes you can expect to see with version 4.2: letter profile photos
When upgrading you will be asked if you wish to use letter profile photos, or if you wish to stick with the generic per-theme default profile photo that is used presently. You can change your mind any time after upgrading by adjusting the setting in the AdminCP as well.

AdminCP members list
We have tested many languages to ensure maximum compatibility. The font used in the image is automatically selected based upon the characters to be written to the image, so sites that have more than one language will see compatibility for all of the profile photos that are created automatically.
The colors are not set for each letter. You will notice in the screenshot that each "A" letter photo has a different color. They are chosen randomly when generated.

Letter photos in a sidebar widget
We hope that this change helps bring your communities to life with a little more style, flair, and uniqueness for each new user on your site.
 
Developer Note
The code is structured in such a manner that third party developers can further extend the feature with plugins. The methods for writing text to images are exposed through our central \IPS\Image class introducing new possibilities in your own custom code.

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release
I made a quick video to demo things we have already announced for 4.2 so far.
Enjoy  

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
I am sure we have all accidentally clicked delete on a post in your community and then realized you needed it. Luckily we now have Delayed Deletes to easily restore deleted content.

Settings in AdminCP
You can delete just as you normally do as you moderate and your posts will be removed just like now. The main difference is that you can now view recently deleted content and restore as needed in the Moderator Control Panel.

Easily view what is pending delete
All you have to do is click the deleted item and you will be taken to that item in context of where it used to be. This makes is much easier to understand why it was deleted and decide if you should restore.

Restore and view deleted content in context
Delayed Deletes is a feature that could be a life saver for your community and we cannot wait to get it out to you.

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
Following on from our previous entry about the new Recommended Replies feature, we also have one more small feature change that will be very useful.
Content Message is a small feature available in all IPS Community Suite content areas (forums, blogs, gallery, etc.) and allows a moderator to put a message at the top of any item.

Topic with a moderator message
This is useful if you have a special use for the area people are posting in, need to encourage conversation to stay on topic, or perhaps the conversation is becoming heated and you need to remind people to behave.
Sometimes the smallest features can prove the most useful and already I have found myself reaching for this feature out of habit from using it on our test 4.2 installs and missing it on our production site. I cannot wait to have it available and I am sure you will enjoy the ability to add custom notes to any area of the Suite.
 
Development Note
For our power users: this feature and the Recommended Replies feature use a new content meta data capability. This allows you to store miscellaneous data that is attached to a content item which does not need to be otherwise searched or exposed unless you are viewing that item. We will provide technical details on this later but it is a really easy way to store data about content without having to create additional tables or methods.

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
Sometimes you may find situations where you want to highlight one or more replies to a content item to bring attention to a really great response. This is especially true on busy communities where you might have dozens or even hundreds of replies in a single discussion.
There is now an ability for a moderator to Recommend a reply (or multiple replies) and even leave an optional note explaining why they think you should view that post.

Moderator Permission

Optional note for recommended reply
When a reply is Recommended you will see a snippet at the top of the content item along with the optional moderator note and a link to jump right to that reply.

A topic with a recommended reply.
You can Recommend more than one reply and this feature works through IPS Community Suite in forum topic, blog entries, gallery images, and so on. You can set this permission along with other moderator permissions in the AdminCP.
We really think this will allow moderators to bring attention to some of the best replies and guide users to the best content your community has to offer.

We are well into development on IPS Community Suite 4.2 and are excited to start announcing all the new features and improvements.
Our next big release is focused on engagement with your members. You will see enhancements to our Reputation system, new ways to encourage people to register on your community, and enhancements to existing features to make them more interactive. There are also entirely new capabilities we cannot wait to show you ranging from new ways to organize content to tools to help promote your community.
Version 4.2 also features a refreshed AdminCP and default front-end design. Theme changes in 4.2 are mostly in the CSS framework so your existing themes will either work without issue or require minor changes to work in the new version.
Over the next several weeks we will be posting news entries with previews of upcoming features fairly often. Be sure to follow our News section, our Facebook, or Twitter to stay up to date.
We expect IPS Community Suite 4.2 to be out in mid-2017 with a public preview available sooner.
Everyone at IPS has worked very hard on this update and we think you will love it!

Google has recently been stressing that sites should use secure connections (served via HTTPS) whenever possible. They have recently also started warning sites that collect password on non-secure pages and will also be updating Google Chrome to warn users when a password is being entered on a non-secure page. You can read more information at Google and a good article on Ars Technica.
There are two ways on IPS Community Suite to avoid these alerts. Keep in mind that doing nothing will not cause you any problems, your site will still work, but users will get warnings and this may impact how people perceive joining your community.
 
Make your Community 100% Secure
The easiest option is to make every page on your IPS Community Suite use a secure connection. To do this you would need to ensure your web host has HTTPS support enabled on your site and then simply edit conf_global.php and change the URL field to https:// and that's it.
One thing to keep in mind is that your users, if you allow it, can still paste in links to externally hosted images which might not be secure. This does not impact the security of your site but it may generate a browser warning indicating your site has "mixed content" meaning some is secure and some is not. You can optionally enable the Image Proxy feature to make externally linked images route through a proxy on your local server to maintain 100% secure content.

Image Proxy Options
 
Only Login/Registration Forms and AdminCP Secure
If you prefer not to use HTTPS for your entire site, we do have a setting to only use secure connections for login, registration, and AdminCP. 

Use HTTPS for Logins and AdminCP
When the login-only secure option is enabled the quick login drop down is also disabled and instead users are sent to a full page to login. This is a small change required to avoid browser warnings. Although the quick login menu submits to a secure connection, the form field itself may show on a non-secure page which would generate a warning.

Quick Login not Available when Login-Only HTTPS Setting Enabled
 
IPS Community in the Cloud
Those using IPS CiC can get secure connections for a $15 setup fee plus $5 month on our 40, 65 and 100 user Cloud plans. You can either bring your own certificate or we can provide one for you. On the 200, 450 and 750 plans, SSL is completely free - again, either your own or we can provide one.