SC36DC

Everything you wrote 👏 
When I'm on Instagram and I see someone's comment or photo I like, I click their username to check out their profile and am instantly taken into their world. 
I think the Connections app by @Andy Millne was a step in the right direction.
 
 

This is a carryover from the invisionalpha thread I made on this matter. Check there first before commenting here as there was a bit more added there and I don't want to have to re-cover everything unless it's a copy and paste from there.

IPB 4.5 is looking great! I'm stoked for it for sure. However even with all of the improvements I was surprised to see profiles are still as stagnant as ever. While I understand not everything could be covered in 4.5, not seeing some sort of profile update was a bit of a surprise.

We've all see the threads and posts about social media and forums. That while forums still serve a purpose, they seem to be losing the war to social media. A lot of ideas are floated around about how to change that such as you can log-in using social media, share stuff to social media, post links from social media, maybe gain a few social media type of features. But still it's just a bandaid. So where does the real problem lie? It lies with how forums are still stuck in an old way of thinking, as well as the fear of just becoming a social media knock off. VB, IPB, and Xenforo profiles are generally pretty blah. Most people tend not to really do much with them or pay attention to them in general.

When people come to a forum, they are generally limited to just what they see. The key is to engage them. Not just with content, but with each other. It's not always an easy task, but it can be done. Members should do more than just come to a forum for content or to share content. They should be able to engage with members on the forum, but also much more efficiently through the profile on a more personal level rather than just a basic one.

So how do you encourage members to do something with their profiles, while also getting other members to engage with them on their profiles. Part of this I believe lies in the postbit. It's being used wrong. 

Right now even with 4.5 when you hover on their username you get a generic popup with any header they have posted (which for many forums isn't often it seems), last visited, content count, joined, Message, Find, and Ignore User. All pretty generic and useless content overall.  Then you go to their profile and it's generally still pretty generic. Sure admins can make some uneven adjustments, but generally it's still not enough to engage the members to engage more directly with other members. Sure you can add a widget to the homepage showing latest statuses, posts, etc., but how many really pay attention to those?

The profile page and postbit could be used to better enhance member engagement on the forum, but also with each other. Content on the profiles should be more front and center rather than clicking a bunch of tabs. It should want to engage the other members that visit it. Forum owners could have the ability to drag and drop profile specific widgets similar to how Pages works, into specific blocks. 

The post bit should be a window into that profile. Rather than hovering on the name to see a generic useless profile info, why not click on the name that would bring that profile page into the current page? It could take up maybe 25% of the bottom part of the screen (though would be adjustable by owners), pushes the current page up or pops up over that bottom part, then when you are done you can click on the current page you are on and the profile page will drop back down. You're not leaving the page you're on, you're engaging not just in the existing thread but also that members profile. 

The postbit could also be used to share statuses and status updates on the fly. Remember, the profile is to reflect who the member is. Not that they are just a random name with no face. 

These are suggestions and ideas that should be looked at. Social Media is meant to bring people closer together, even if they disagree. Forums easily should be able to be that and more. And while some things could be done by CSS changes or what not to fix the profile issue, it will take some re-imagination on how to make it more than just a static page most people ignore and the closest they get to knowing other members are some random posts on forums. 

Just like with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and others, you have a profile. You use that profile to share content but also to have others come to your profile and engage with you. Forums should be doing the same thing rather than just seeing profiles as a generic thing. Involve them. Bring them more front and center. I think it's time to take a closer look at them and how members can become more excited and engaged to use them. It benefits the forum as it not only keeps people on the forum a bit longer, but also helps create a more personal and social atmosphere. 

What are forums? Are they just a place for the faceless and rely on content posted by random members most will never get to really know? Are they meant to just be anonymous sources of info? Or do they help broaden the social aspect by engaging content AND social aspects of members? Time to start asking some of those questions. What is the purpose of the profile page? How can it be used to better motivate members and help create a more social atmosphere? Etc Etc. 

It's absolutely time to re-evaluate their role on forums. I see tons of potential with them and member engagement on the forums but also amongst each other. 

 

Is this for the sidebar widget? There should already be something to truncate longer text after 6 lines.

Can we have a way to delete adverts by filter, so all the sold items can be manually deleted in bulk in ACP.

Please can we have the published date on the advert too. We have time left, but above that if it could say - Advert Created: 1 Day ago

Finally!!!! It worked. Such an easy fix, but again, something very different than what's in the guide. Not sure what the issue was with that. But I am very thankful for you taking the time to provide assistance and a solution for my issue. Many thanks!!!

When you put it this way, this is something I can understand. Thank you for all your help with this. I hope others see this that may be struggling with the same thing and can use the info you've provided.

Thanks again Morrigan. 

I'm just adding this here for anyone that sees this after so they know what I suggested IS correct and so is the guide. By default the Members group is what people are thrown into (aka the NEW group). The Validating group is basically Pre-Members. They are a member a unvalidated member in the Members group (What the old validating group used to be in the 3.0 days).
What Brandon suggested is required when you've created a completely separate group and want to change that to the new "default" group. As he said "3" or the "Members" group is the default group people are assigned to when they are first joined. This group should be your "new" group by default. Any promotions etc should be created from there.
So you change the Members to "New" and you create a new group called "Full Member" and you use the group promotions (whatever you want the criteria to be) to promote from the default group to the "Full member" group.
Basically you did it backwards. You created a new group and wanted that to be your "new members" group instead of editing the default group and creating a new group for your "full members".

If you look at the conf_global.php file in your FTP, there is a line member_group that defines the default registration member group (usually group ID 3). Effectively what you want to do is
Set conf_global.php member_group to be the group you want all newly registered users in (in your example "NEW"). Set up a group promotion rule so that after 10 posts, the user is moved into the better member group ("Members" in your example) That's it.

Okay so IPS 101... the member group is default group. You can't get them out of it.
Basically:
Join:
Pre-Member (not approved member)
Member (Approved member)
If you don't want them in your base member group you need to enable admin approval.
 
IF you want something where they upgrade after X posts you need to create a secondary member group that is the "true members" group. That is promoted after X posts.

@Patrick Ewing what @SC36DC said mostly. But that's only if you use the promote. If you use the "share" feature its best to add an image in the first post (an uploaded not a linked image) as it will take the first uploaded image from the thread and use that in place of your sharer image in most instances.

Hey IPB fam, I want to upgrade my email template game for ALL emails being sent.
That includes:
Auto-responding emails, like when a new user registers, If they opt-in to receive a notification via email Or an auto-drip campaign (If there are any others, those too!) I want all of the emails to look uniform and branded to my website's color schemes, which is navy blue, two variants of purple, pink and white.
Below is an example of an email template I'd love to use. I created this through SendGrid's email template creation tool, and I would love to mirror this in IPB. 
 


Any help would be greatly appreciated! 
1.) Logo
I want more control over how my logo looks in the email template. 
Using the upload option in the Email settings works, but the logo is compressed and loses quality (even if I change the file upload settings in Image settings to the best of the best on both .jpg and .png, it still looks low quality compared to the original png version).
Anyone know of a way I can tell the template to us a custom link to the .png - so it can be hi-res - versus having to use the upload form?

2.) Background color
I would also love to set the background of the entire email. I know there's an email wrapper plugin, but I also want the body of the email to also be dark navy blue as well.

3.) Font color
I know I can manually set the font to be white in the editor, however it'll be easier to use if I can always see the text, and instead tell it somehow to display as white text when it's emailed out (otherwise white on white is... no bueno).
 
Eventually it would be super dope for IPB to create their own email template editor, but for now I could use some advice. I know how amazing and talented this community is, so any help would be more than appreciated! 
Sidenote: If someone advises that I should hire a developer instead, I am open to that as well. 
Thank you 🙏 

Thanks, hadnt spotted that

It shouldn't be too much longer.

Also don't forget, just because the update is out, does not mean we have to upgrade to it right away. I will probably wait until some of the minor tweak, bug fix updates get released, and for the plugins I use to all get updated for 4.5, then at that point, I will clone my site (Cloudways makes this extremely easy to do) and test things out on a test installation. Hopefully I can do it this way. 😕 Good luck with everything moving forward though, exciting times for sure. 4.5!!

That’s true. They usually release the .1 after a week or so with fixes. Probably worths to wait. 

@Sonya* Does the social media promotion option not work anymore? I was never able to set it up.
Also @Patrick Ewing with that plugin, it only uses images that we're attached to a post, not ones you may have posted directly in a post. 
"This plugin will use the first image uploaded as attachment in a topic and set it as as Open Graph image (“og:image”), so social media sites (Facebook, Twitter and more) can use it as thumbnail image to represent the link."
 

Agreed, not that bad. I’ll take a look to see if it can be improved when I have to update it.

Hello,
Does it show up in mobile devices? I honestly don’t remember. I guess it shouldn’t as there is no much space for it.

Works great. Exactly what I needed for a specific section on my forum. Looks good on desktop. Any way to style it better for mobile?
Thank you.

Yes, I started to do it in the most selled ones as you already might know. Of course still there are a few out there, as I have almost 200! Will done. 😂

There are two possibilities. The first one using AdminCP:
Go to AdminCP -> System -> Site Promotion -> Search Engine Optimization Add Meta Tag on the tab Meta Tags Click on +Add Enter topic URL in Page Address Select Other for Meta Tag Name, type og:image in Meta Tag Name and the URL of the featured image in the Content Save (you probably have to refresh the facebook via https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/ to see the change before sharing) Or use this plugin
 

I would be great to be able to move the placement of the bookmark to to  where @OliverKapunkt has suggested, and to allow each member of the forum in settings to place the Bookmark icon where @Phil Këvin has suggested. This way people could get to their bookmarks faster.
 
I managed to change the word Bookmark to an icon, thanks to Oliver's post. I then added a Red Icon to indicate the post has been bookmarked and they could remove the bookmark by clicking the red icon.



This kind of works. 

If I Bookmark a post, then decide to unbookmark it while I'm still on the page, it changes the icon back to normal, but the bookmark is still there if you visit My Bookmarks.

If I bookmark a post, visit another page, then come back to the bookmarked post, unbookmark it, then it does remove it from My Bookmarks.

Hopefully people will not bookmark, then unbookmark it at the same time. It is possible someone will change their mind and do just that. Is there any way to address this?

Thanks.
 

I'm thinking of adding Pages to my forum, but I don't want the Pages installation to become the 'home page', I'd want the forum to be the home page with Pages as an additional section. 
If I purchase and install Pages, will that automatically become the Home Page or would I have the option of designating that?