superaven

Awesome that worked, thank you! Still getting used to this new interface and features. Have two more questions... 1. Is there a guide of some sort so we know what color variables in the theme section of admin affect what areas on teh front end? Obviously its broken down into tabs which respresent sections and the names themselves are somewhat descriptive, but wondering if there's any sort of map or guide for this? 2. Likewise, I'm confused about the Light / Dark mode works. How do we create the two versions? In other words, how do a make all the color tweaks to the theme and then how do we add that to the section for Light / Dark mode? Thanks again.

Hello, I seem to be having some pretty major issues after upgrading IPB and the forum. I'm not trying to install a clean copy of the mdPanel theme but its not allowing me because it says I already have it installed and that it is up to date. I do not want to delete the old versions of it since I'd like a reference for the changes I made. What can I do? Thanks

Actually, I think I just found this. Default feature that is in the Admin CP under Forums in the dropdown to the far right of each configured forum in the list.

Hello, Maybe a dumb question but I'm trying to organize a fairly large forum (5+ million posts). I do not want to archive older topics, since this means they are no longer searchable. Also as mentioned by IPS, its not such a big deal anymore with the advancements made with the forum software and MySQL. I'm mainly doing this because our forum is pretty old and we've only hosted uploads for the last couple years. As such we have a lot of topics with broken images with no solution to fix. The conversation / posts still hold value, so I would rather not delete and do now want to archive as they'd no longer be searchable. So my solution is to create an 'archive' category and mirror the basic forum structure. Then run something that allows me to initiate a mass move, between a specific target and with a specific destination, any thread with latest activity that is equal to or greater than [input date]. Going to assume this feature probably doesn't exist, but wanted to verify it after a fruitless search on here. Maybe there's a plugin or some other similar feature? Any advice / suggestion? Thanks!

Hello, Just a note that the plugin is now broken as of yesterdays IPB update. Would love to get an update so we can reactivate your plugin. Seems to cause a ton of javascript errors that make the forum unusable. Thanks

Yes indeed, an out of date plugin. Sorry about that... Since its months between times when I dig through the technical side of the forum on top of all the software platforms I deal with, I overlooked the obvious. Issue is resolved, thank you.

Follow up... This is a huge one but my forum is not allowing new posts. *Edit: I just tested with the IPB default theme and see the same issues so seems to be a forum issue. Will follow up with them.

Hello, Suddenly seeing some issues after upgrading IPB today. Noticed there was an mdPanel update so I Installed that as well, but didn't seem to fix the issues. I have yet to do a thorough audit, but here's the obvious issues I spotted: Main menu is no longer functional on mobile Manage blocks menu no longer functional on mobile Our Picks (renamed on my site as 'Spotlights') is no longer displaying on the forum index (was set to be the first content block above forum listing) and is displaying incorrectly on the actual Our Picks page. Even the menu in the Admin section is acting a bit weird. Not seeing tabs for the theme but rather all is displayed on a super long page. Link: https://forum.12ozprophet.com/ Appreciate any help. Please contact me if you need access. Thank you.

I didn't see a topic like this posted anywhere so thought to kick it off and share some recent observations and thoughts that I'd assume would be very interesting to a community that is focused on building online communities... Though I think it would be hard to argue how social media all but stole away the audiences from private / directional online communities found on forum systems, it's been very interesting to now observe what I believe is the decline of the social media era. Obviously social media will not disappear in the near future and who's to say if a new platform or perhaps a killer feature or rethinking of existing social media platforms manage to breath new life into the existing one (though IMHO, I seriously doubt the latter). There's a lot of articles and data around the web talking about engagement levels in steady decline across most demographics, new membership growth flat or in decline and in many areas, existing users that are simply deleting the apps from their mobile devices, if not altogether canceling accounts. Considering all the various scandals regarding various violations in individual privacy (at best) and some pretty profound implications regarding the manipulation of people and elections (at worst?), it's no wonder that more and more people are growing weary of mega tech companies like Facebook / Instagram, Google and so many others. This morning someone was just commenting on our own forums in regards to the US Government response to the TikTok in regards to their concern that it might be a way of gathering user data about Americans from a Chinese owned social media platform. What was most interesting to me about the response wasn't so much that information was likely being gathered, but rather that it was being gathered by a foreign country in this instance. Anyhow, not to don the tin foil hat or derail my own topic by going down that rabbit hole... I just wanted to lay down some context to my statement that I believe we might very well be seeing the downward side of the social media era. At the very least, I do believe that there is a very real opportunity for people like the community here on Invision to take advantage of the dynamic we're beginning to see and tempt users back towards private and more directional communities as those built and hosted by all of us. It would seem to me that privacy is much more in the social consciousness and that likewise, the one size fits all approach (in general) to social media, is getting old. The super user friendly, steady stream of bite sized content that replaced the longer form, ongoing discussions found on forum systems has lost a lot of its novelty and that people are yearning for the more satisfying content experience found by deeper explorations of topics and richer showcasing of photo, video and other asset based content. At least on our forum, when we started using our Instagram to point out the flaws of that platform and put out a rallying cry that we were 'moving the conversation back to our forum', we saw a good many users old forum members that were following us get get vocal about being excited about our decision to refocus on our forum, while being exceptionally critical of what the experience on Instagram has become. Being honest, many did express difficulty in transitioning from those tiny bits of steady content to suddenly reading long posts and even longer threads, but most seem to have stuck it out. We managed to double our traffic in a couple weeks, then double it several more times over the following few months. No doubt a lot can be explained simply by the fact that we've been focused on promoting our forum, but I can't ignore how many DM and comments I've seen both on our Instagram, via email and on our forum about how perfect our timing was and that people were looking for an alternative so they could stop going to Instagram. In any case, I'll be honest... I don't have all this figured out yet, but I am seeing something very interesting (and promising) starting to happen. People seem to be fed up with social media in increasing numbers, yet the desire to interact online, share and discuss with like minded people remains strong. Not to beat a very dead horse, but I really wish IPS had a slick dedicated app as that has become the request I keep hearing. I've been following a few discussion on this forum and elsewhere online in regards to 'progressive web apps' and do believe this is liklely to be the future for mobile usage. Anyhow, I wanted to share some recent occurrences / observations and open it up for discussion with the hopes we might build on the topic and see how we might collectively take better advantage of this situation as I really do believe that now, more than ever, the private directional communities that can be developed by forum systems like IPS have a better chance at success. I'm not saying that any of us pose any significant threat to monster platforms like Instagram and Facebook, but I do believe that collectively, we stand to steal back massive amounts of market share, that could very likely accelerate the dynamic we're seeing of people dropping off them. ---------- In regards to the above, I'm wondering what else could be added to IPS to allow it to become that much more compelling an alternative? Recently it was brought to my attention that the younger generation, a demographic that makes up the majority of Instagram's users, grew up in a post forum era. As such, they're used to seeing all content in reverse chronological order. I've been on forums since the late 1990s so that format makes no sense in terms of reading on going discussion, but in terms of SEO and in terms of younger viewers, I was recently told that it works against what they've grown accustomed to. I know this can be changed in the Admin CP, but I'd like to propose that a per user setting to adjust this would be of great benefit. Expanding on the above, having a way to also change the default view of comments to instead show comments that have been highlighted - based upon mod / admin selection or user reactions - could be a third view that is more in line with how a lot of users on social platforms are used to seeing comments. (think of Reddit for example, where you see top comments and can then expand the view to see them expanded into a chronological view). Another area I would love to see improvement in, or at least a more robust plugin solution for, would be in regards to the emails. Would be awesome to see metrics for the transactional emails and especially with any 'newsletter' type emails. In fact, more control to develop templates for dynamically generated emails and then an ability to track their success would be pretty huge. And last, but not least... The optimized mobile view of the forum is pretty standard, and expected, at this point. Again, I know this topic has been discussed to death here, but it remains of critical importance considering for most of us, mobile traffic represents the majority of all traffic. With technologies like Progressive Web Apps (PWA) evolving and maturing, I very much hope that we see significant improvements in the mobile experience with IPS. In fact, I think this aspect of the forums will likely make or break, or at the very least accelerate or postpone the opportunity we're likely seeing for a huge resurgence in forums. ---------- For those of you that made it this far into my post... Thank you for reading. I very much look forward to the insights and experiences of other forum owners on this topic and really do hope to hear from IPS staff about whether they've noted the same and what plans they have (that they're willing to share) as to whats in the road map to help capitalize on all of this. Cheers!

Going to bump this. Recently I had an expert come in and evaluate my site (shop, forum, etc) and they brought up a very interesting point regarding the sort order of posts. The younger generation that grew up on social media and often represent the most active users online, grew up only seeing content in reverse chronological order. Though I personally like reading things in order and have always viewed it that way, the younger generation has not. They've grown up on social media where the newest content is presented first and you can then dig deeper for the older content. Admittedly this makes conversation a bit odd in my opinion, but we're seeing so many of our Instagram followers dropping off that platform and / or expressing discontent with it and reading so many articles talking about the decline across most demographics on that platform, that I believe there is a real opportunity for a resurgence with forums. People are just fed up with Facebook and Instagram and want something else. I know in most cases its ludicrous for a forum owner to think they can actually compete with platforms like that, but reality is we have a real chance at growing significant market share, if we can provide a compelling alternative. I believe that starts with an easy transition and it would seem that allowing for reverse chronological ordering (or better yet an option for a user to set this preference at the account level), would be a great step in the right direction. Anyhow, might loop back to this over arching topic in a new thread to keep it clean, but the specific request here is hoping I might compel the forum developers to strongly consider implementing this.

Hello, Wondering if this plugin I still available and updated to the current forum software? Recently I had one member mention that they don't come on to the forum often due to eye strain. Was surprised when so many others jumped in and expressed the same sentiment. Obviously on desktop you can over ride certain styles and increase font size as you wan't but with most the internet connecting via mobile (75%+ in our case), there's no simple way to do this in most mobile browsers. Very much wish there was a way to develop of use a white boxed version of a dedicated forum app, but for now it would seem we just need to optimize the mobile view. As such, the closer we can get to the feel of a dedicated app, the more compelling the user experience. Great for IPS and for their customers. Anyways, the ability to increase / decrease font size as a user selectable feature (maybe from their account settings), would be very helpful. Seems that what this plugin does, but looks largely abandoned. Thought I'd check in and ask. Thanks

+1

Thanks @TAMAN, For some reason when uploading an image, its not showing up. Any suggestions?

Hello @TAMAN, Wondering if you can please post the default Swiper Slider code and / or links to any instructions on the code you can enter for this that calls the default classes? Accidentally deleted the sample code and can't seem to figure out the formatting / markup you used for the demo. Thanks!

Hello @TAMAN, As you know via DM, I've recently upgraded my forum and MD Panel theme. Shortly after I got a few complaints regarding a change that occurred within the thread pages and wondering if there's a setting that might affect this or if it was a change to either the forum or theme? At the bottom of threads, where it says "go to topic listing" it used to also have the forum section name. Then on the other side where it says "go to next unread thread" it would have the thread name underneath. Honestly its been so long since I dove deep into code or templates that I can't remember if this was somehow coded in after. Also, its not a feature I use so am only going off what a bunch of our forum users have said as they really seem to miss this after the upgrade. Thanks for any help on this.