princeton

Welcome to Invision Community 5!
Over the coming weeks, we'll be exploring a bunch of new features and improvements coming to our user interface including our brand new theme editor, a new mobile UI, dark mode and performance improvements thanks to a reduction in both JavaScript and CSS. To kick off this series, let’s take a closer look at the new sidebar layout and new view modes for the forum index and topic pages.
Sidebar Layout
Traditionally, Invision Community has shipped with a horizontal header and navigation bar at the top of the page, which is still available in version 5. We're introducing a brand new (and optional) sidebar layout, which can be enabled or disabled easily from within your theme settings. The sidebar not only provides convenient access to your applications, activity streams and search bar, but you can now add links to nodes for even easier access to popular or commonly used areas of your community. For example - a category from your forum, an album from the Gallery, or a product group from Commerce.
Sidebar-zoom.mp4
Forum Index: Feed view
One of our goals for version 5 was to re-imagine new ways for your visitors to consume content, and the sidebar layout is just one of our solutions. Table view has been the typical way of displaying forums, providing visitors with a simple summary of the most recently active topic. Grid mode introduced cover photos to forums and is a great way to make your page more visually engaging, while fluid view allows visitors to filter through a list of topics to easily focus on multiple areas of the community.
Joining these view modes in version 5 is our new Feed view. Optional cover photos and featured forum colours allow you to personalise each forum, and a list of recently active topics with snippets of the most recent reply allow you to easily see what each forum is focusing on at a glance. The topic list drops below the cover photo and converts to a scrollable list on small devices. It's our fresh take on content display, and we can’t wait to hear your feedback!

 
Topic pages: Compact view
In addition, Invision Community 5 also introduces a new, compact layout option for topics. We wanted to create a layout which placed focus on your content while still keeping all of the authors profile information easily accessible within a mini profile. Stats, rank, badges, reputation points and more can be found by tapping the icon at the top of every post. The mini profile strip has also been added to other areas of the software too, such as comments and reviews in applications like Gallery and Blogs, and will appear on the mobile layout when the traditional "table view" is used in topics.
Switching between the new compact view and the author sidebar view takes just seconds giving you complete control over your community.
Mini profile.mp4
 
As part of this view, you also have the choice to feature/pin the original post to the top of every page, making it a breeze for your visitors to easily understand the context of replies without navigating back to page 1. Pinned posts have a slightly larger font-size to distinguish them from replies, and we've thoughtfully truncated them on pages beyond the first to keep scrolling to a minimum.

 
The new sidebar layout and view modes offer a fresh and innovative approach to navigating and interacting with your community. We’re really keen to hear your thoughts on these new views and whether you’ll be unleashing them on your own sites! We appreciate that no two sites are the same, and those who are a fan of the classic header look will benefit from quick styling tools and a visual way to re-arrange the header elements which we’ll cover in a later blog.
We’re looking forward to showcasing a whole bunch of new features over the coming weeks - so stay tuned, and we’ll see you then!
 

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We do have plans for an opt-in before viewing embeds but it'll likely not be in 5.0. Version 5 is the start of the next chapter and it'll mature quickly over a number of releases.

Self-hosting license prices have already been released for v5. You can even switch to the pricing now (Client Area > Manage Purchases > "Change your license to new Invision Community Classic terms"

Our mariadb slow query logs pointed to poor results when guests were viewing the new 'combined view' topic listing  (it was fine when members were viewing)
4.8 seconds + for the query below
/*xxxx::IPS\Helpers\Table\_Content::getRows:489*/ SELECT forums_topics.*, author.*, last_commenter.*, core_tags_cache.tag_cache_text FROM `ibf_forums_topics` AS `forums_topics` FORCE INDEX (last_post) LEFT JOIN `ibf_forums_forums` AS `forums_forums` ON forums_topics.forum_id=forums_forums.id LEFT JOIN `ibf_core_tags_cache` AS `core_tags_cache` ON tag_cache_key=MD5(CONCAT('forums;forums;',forums_topics.tid)) LEFT JOIN `ibf_core_members` AS `author` ON author.member_id = forums_topics.starter_id LEFT JOIN `ibf_core_members` AS `last_commenter` ON last_commenter.member_id = forums_topics.last_poster_id WHERE forums_forums.can_view_others=1 AND forums_topics.approved=1 AND forums_topics.approved!=-2 AND forums_topics.approved!=-3 AND ( NULLIF(forums_topics.moved_to, '') IS NULL ) AND forums_topics.forum_id IN(1,2,128) ORDER BY forums_topics.last_post desc LIMIT 0,50;  
this slow query appeared to be due to the effect the where clause ' forums_forums.can_view_others=1'  was having on the query, maybe index issues?
removing this clause via the getItemsWithPermissionWhere function
if ( !$member->member_id ) { /// $where[] = array( 'forums_forums.can_view_others=1' ); } resulted in a 'normal' speed listing of 0.8 seconds for guests
maybe worth a dig ?
 
 

Hello,
I was wondering if you had any plans to enable the creation of Commerce Product Groups which are only visible to/accessible by certain member groups?  I see some organisational benefits to this, as in my specific case (and I presume others) it would save having to tweak individual products if you only want them visible to certain groups.  It might also be a good promotional strategy to show people what they can't have unless and until they upgrade their membership etc.?
Thanks!

It sounds like PHPRedis may be returning an unexpected value on your server (this value should always be an array, whether it's empty or not).
We'll make some minor robustness changes in a future release to handle this situation though.
Edit: A workaround in the meantime would be to disable the 'Use Redis to reduce MySQL overhead' setting in your data storage configuration

I have Part of Leaderboard selected. When I go to the leaderboard and click on "Top Groups" I get the following error:
Sorry, there is a problem
Something went wrong. Please try again.
Error code: EX1064
This error was probably caused by application [GT] Members | Group Enhancements.
If the issue persists, disable it and contact the author for further assistance.
SELECT * FROM `core_members` WHERE completed=1 AND last_activity>=1597043560 ORDER BY `last_activity`  desc LIMIT 0,-1
IPS\Db\Exception: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '-1' at line 1 (1064)
#0 /var/www/html/system/Db/Select.php(373): IPS\_Db->preparedQuery('/*IPS\\Helpers\\T...', Array, true)
#1 /var/www/html/system/Db/Select.php(436): IPS\Db\_Select->runQuery()
#2 /var/www/html/system/Helpers/Table/Db.php(397): IPS\Db\_Select->rewind()
#3 /var/www/html/init.php(820) : eval()'d code(56): IPS\Helpers\Table\_Db->getRows(NULL)
#4 /var/www/html/applications/membergroupenhancements/modules/front/groups/directory.php(197): IPS\Helpers\Table\membergroupenhancements_hook_table_db->getRows(NULL)
#5 /var/www/html/system/Dispatcher/Controller.php(96): IPS\membergroupenhancements\modules\front\groups\_directory->manage()
#6 /var/www/html/system/Dispatcher/Dispatcher.php(152): IPS\Dispatcher\_Controller->execute()
#7 /var/www/html/index.php(13): IPS\_Dispatcher->run()
#8 {main}

Where is the Standalone Directory? I can't find it on the front end or menu options in admin. What I was hoping I could do was create a page and have groups as a block option to choose which groups to show along with their description on the page. Is this possible?

Can you give me some examples of how you'd like to use Pages in clubs?

What sort of functionality would you need?

Version 6 Released!
Allow/disallow based on primary member group. As requested @princeton
Tested but yell if there are problems.

Topics are already optional. Just don't select a  forum, and no topic will be created.
No, sorry. Filters are only by member group.

Already present. You can "View Subscribers" for each newsletter. You can also "Manage Issues" for each newsletter, which shows distribution total. Please read the documentation that is provided with the modification; this is included.
This has been requested before, but I'm not going to be doing this any time in the near future. It's going to make an already complicated mod a lot more complex, and I don't have the availability right now to support all the issues that will come along with it. I'd rather not build something I can't support properly.
I like this suggestion. I'll add it to my list.
Again, please read the documentation. Some of these issues are explained and documented. Many of these others are due to the way that different email clients render your template. Not all clients support all HTML properties. This is just something you'll have to play with via trial and error. I don't provide support for the templates themselves; there are just too many variables at work. I suggest you start with this link: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/. This is from Campaign Monitor, and they provide a good guide for what is commonly supported.
Not at this time. If you integrated with SendGrid or SparkPost, they take care of that for you.
Thanks. I'll take a look.

Good idea.
I think the "member inactivity" (=last visit or real last visit) should get more attention
f.e.
only award reaction points if member's last visit isn't older than x days only award response posts points if member's last visit isn't older than x days only award weekly/monthly/yearly points if…. only award bank interest if ... There are many cases where it would make sense, if we could exclude inactive members from receiving points, if they are offline for a longer time. If my members would know, that they won't receive anymore points after day x, they would login more often and it would drive up the community engagement.
Similar to the "inactivity rule" it would also be great to do the same with f.e. "bulk email opt-ins", so we as admins can choose to not award members, that are currently not subscribed for bulk email. That would help the email marketing a lot.

I wonder if you can do daily points, but make them negative.  For example, for every day you're a member -2?

No, it doesn’t work this way in mode 2 and 3. You turn the review system off, so there shouldn’t be a review button under the entry. The users will instead go to the separate review database and add a new record there – just like they would add a new article to a Pages article database. Feel free to add a link to this function to your menu, so users can find that more easily. 

Sure. Mode 3 uses two databases, so you would limit the product creating to staff and let members add entries to the review database.