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I've used Cloudflare for years with IPS. Love it. However, I can't imagine using it for anything SPAM related. The built-in IPS tools, with some wise user/group setup, are almost perfect. 
I used to get thousands of SPAM per day. Now I know get about ten and they all come via the Contact Us form. If I could block all URLs in this form, life would be good. 

Ok... so as promised I am sharing some learning back to the community.
First - while I am not new to Google Analytics, I am new to Google Analytics 4 / GA4... and there is a lot of confusing information out there. GA4 is infinitely superior in my opinion, so it's worth the effort to dig into it so that I can get the metrics I want.
I found that there was so much information out there on the internet, and a lot of it was out of date. So to bring me up to speed I went to Udemy, and subscribed to their Personal Learning subscription. The first month is free, and the rest is around $26/mth... an amazing deal since there is so much content there.
I then started working my way through this course... it included free in that first month:
Master Google Analytics 4 Reports and GTM Basics in 2022
https://www.udemy.com/course/google-analytics-4-with-tag-manager/
This gave me some background information and was extremely helpful.
Then - I fixed the mistake that I had made... I had put my GA4 config on my site.
What you actually need to do is create a GTM (Google Tag Manager) account, and create a special tag that routes events from GTM through to GA4.
In all the reading I have done, it seems mixed as to whether you should also create a Universal Analytics account and also route those events. I chose not to as I want to craft the reports I get out of it and wanted to keep it 'clean'.
The next big trick is to work out how to get Invision events from GTM through to GA4. That was nontrivial as well... and while I know what I wanted to do ... I was still a bit confused... and then I found this web page... excellent!

Track Events with Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Google Tag Manager (analyticsmania.com)
The Invision events are non-standard from GA4. As this is new, and GA4 is the future of analytics from google, then why not use their standard events - the whole thing would largely have just worked.
So I routed the account_login event from invision through to the GA4 login event, and the account_register event from invision through to the GA4 sign_up event. Flick to debug view... and finally, the more detailed events I wanted to see are flowing through!
It's been quite the learning journey... and my recommendation for the invision team is to create a video tutorial where you take people through this from end to end.
Now... for the Invision team when will we be getting commerce events... which among other things is kind of the point of all of this?
Please also, do not make subscriptions a second-class citizen. It's the primary way I want to run my site.
Another thing with subscriptions that I get all the time is a request from my customers to get a special deal on them (as we want to encourage our existing customers to come over to our invision site). I am happy enough to do this, but I do not want this listed on my main page as then it would massively devalue our normal subscription. So an 'unlisted' version for subscriptions as well would be awesome... something where I can approve the subscription before it is switched on for the customer.
Great work from the Invision team... once you work your way through all of this, it opens up many cool use cases for the platform!

See here:  
 

Yeah, because Apple and Google know the value of creating a  "platform" and empowering developers.

@Lindy There is plenty of changes you, IPS, introduced recently. Some are scary, some leave a room for fear of what next..
I could read you say you are about to improve providers directory.. however.. for years there is area of your community that remains same for years.. feedback/suggestions. Are you going to take closer look on improvement on that area, so you implement more requested features in much higher frequency than it was till now? That could be great equivalent/replacement for retired Marketplace.

I don't think it is good idea  do this.
Apple and google never think about  to close apple store and  google play.
 
Marketplace is not making money or it is making more job . But It can make me go to this site everyday.
 

So unless I'm missing something, this means that if a developer doesn't have or is somehow unable to start their own independent website then they have no way to maintain their apps/plugins?

Really?  I'm no expert but I find the last part of this sentence hard to believe given that there are many gaps in IPB functionality which necessitated the Marketplace community in the first place.

I just checked the marketplace stats, and with 59 mods purchased to date, I think I can have a word about this decision:
For me, the marketplace was a great way to:
See what new addons have been released and decide if I should install them on the community I manage. Keep up with the updates and install when one is available. These things will no longer be possible without the marketplace, and I will have to check ten different dev sites, install updates manually, etc.  A major drawback for me.
I don't have access to financials, but from your latest actions, I see that you want to focus on the enterprise customers that take a cloud-managed plan because that's where the money is. And also, enterprise customers only install a few add-ons. 
 

I would like to ask why the structure of the Invision Marketplace couldn't still exist here, but instead of financial transactions and downloads being handled by Invision, just remove the commerce aspect of it and just let it be a "Downloads" directory with hyperlinks back to the author's site. The author could still update the application or theme's description, changelog, and compatible versions here at Invision, and the client would still be able to shop around here where they feel comfortable, and if they find something in your [former] Marketplace, they click through to the authors personal site.
Downloads allows for URL submissions as it is. Why not retain that directory of applications here? What Joel is proposing to do, you could set up in a short amount of time and then it would be almost on autopilot. An existing Invision directory would only increase exposure to the applications that 3rd party devs have created and sell.

That's the biggest rewind I've seen from IPS in years of service. 🤯
The marketplace is an excellent showcase for small and big developers to publish their work that would have a potential chance of being bought, you've killed every chance for these products to be discovered.
There are many small modifications that enrich the IPS, and now they will no longer have visibility.
People will now have to apply for paid service one by one, for features that were already available in marketplace.

So basically if the author doesnt put another way for us to get it up we lose our purchases.
I mean the timeline and warning should have been a bit longer. Losing the ability (an ability we had in the past) to download a copy thus losing our purchases for good is a bit nuts.
I dont know why foot keeps meeting mouth with some of these changes.

This would be helpful.

I would have hoped for a 6 month notice period to be honest not 2 1/2 months.
Considering we cant download addons any more other than through admincp we cant even back up for a wayward plugin dev who is sick or unable to handle the change in 2 months.
Please at least let us download what we own to self install for now.

Hm, I can see why IPS made this change but to be honest, asking clients to seek custom app/plugin development is going to be a lot more expensive than finding an app on a marketplace that many customers will be able to purchase. I guess it will make me a lot more hesitant to spend my money on third party apps.

Thank you for the prompt reply, seeing that you have extensive experience with this platform, would you be interested in creating a custom solution for the functionality we desire? If so, please get in touch with me via PM to discuss further.
Thank you

Thank you for the prompt reply, seeing that you have extensive experience with this platform, would you be interested in creating a custom solution for the functionality we desire? If so, please get in touch with me via PM to discuss further.
Thank you

@TAMAN
Yes this happens only with Dreadnought and not with default IPS theme. I've sent you a PM with instructions on how to see the page, thank you for the prompt reply!

Update // September 14, 2021: WE MADE IT! 
After months of hard work behind-the-scenes, we launched our newly-refreshed website and community theme. We have a formal blog post about it on the way, but we wanted to share this soft launch with you first 🤫. Feel free to share your feedback in the comments; we're here for you and are chatting! 
 
Earlier // May 12, 2021:
 


Hey all, Happy Hump Day!
@Charles and I joined forces here in Las Vegas this week because we're planning something super exciting. 🤐😎 
After 4.6 rolls out, we're focusing on freshening up our homepage/subsequent pages and match that branding with this community. That may or may not be an understatement, but if there's anything to take away from this teaser it's that there some slick visual changes on the way!  
If you guys have any websites/homepages which are clean & minimal that inspire you, we'd love for you to drop some links in the comments. We already do have a firm idea/concept planned out, but your opinions matter to us! We'd like to hear from you. 

@Adriano FariaGoing forward could you please let folks know the moment you decide not to continue updating one of your apps.  This would give us some time to figure out an alternative solution if one can be readily had and if not give our members a head's up that your apps functionality will be disappearing on a certain date. 

Need blocks for club feeds.  
Trying to revamp my homepage.  No blocks to pull content from clubs.  

Club Activity: shows every album image in the stream.    This really needs to be fixed, because an upload of an album floods the stream.  
Please give us configurable options over the club activity stream.

I use the clubs app but as @Joel R points out it's well undercooked.  Hopefully there will be a complete overhaul of the system for 4.4 but nothing has been said to assume that it will be updated.  I've meddled with the templates and the CSS to get a look that I want from the clubs app, but it has taken a good while to sort it all and even then some of my changes have affected other parts of the site requiring even more template editing, which most likely will be lost when the templates are updated.
I also use the clubs addon from the marketplace and it has helped considerably by extending the app features.
You can take a look at what I have messed with (bear in mind that this site is still a WIP and will change over the coming months) here >>>  https://lonelypeople.co.uk the clubs are on the home page as I made them the default, so just scroll down.

The whole reasons you have mentioned are why we removed it from our forum.
It is half finished and undercooked and needs a lot more work which an expensive plugin from the market cannot fix.

Yes.  I'm still going to yell at IPS though.  
I want these members to auto-follow the club's content.  I'd rather be more aggressive with my marketing than less.  
I know.  I installed your plugin before I even enabled Clubs.  It's the only way I didn't have a complete meltdown in clubs.