My Sharona

Dear All
I haven't looked at updates recently, nor browsed here - I've very much moved away from running a "forum" and now concentrate on running our "community". The result is I am behind what the software actually does, features etc.
Today, a Moderator reported that he was editing a post when he was confronted with a "Human Puzzle", which took three attempts to solve and then when he did solve it, the software didn't take him back to his edited post. I tried and pretty much had the same result.
How do I turn this "feature" (pain in the rear!) OFF?? (I've searched the ACP and done a serach here with no result)
Many thanks
 
Bill

Whether someone is paid or not, they are still representing your “company” so I would still suggest vetting that individual and formalizing the relationship to a degree. If little things like this are making you think twice on someone, it’s likely for the better you don’t make them a moderator. Or vice versa, if you as an admin are having second thoughts relinquishing control over small things like this, are you ready for/need staff or can you get by with the bare minimum? There are a lot more critical details staff will need access to as you grow so plan how that gets attributed/promoted too.
I don’t think many people know this but many of the IC staff became staff through having communities of our own. So I don’t mean to say these things from a “I know better” place but we do have real world experience, yet are happy to be proven wrong or if there are other scenarios.
I typically don’t have a “contract” for my community staff but a do/don’t list, minimum tenure before becoming staff, quick questionnaire wouldn’t be unheard of, training steps starting them out, etc… all a good time for you to vet them further or for them to opt out 😉 .

I was surprised to find that when I add a New Member manually (to prompt an interested party to register) that they get an email so they can complete their registration with a password and other profile information - but there is apparently no provision to have them Accept any Privacy and Terms of Use provisions - or Opt in/out in order to comply with GDPR and CPUU regulations. 
This has to be an oversight, and one that creates potential legal liability when using the manual registration option to help those having registration problems.
Shouldn’t be too hard to port them to the original registration page (or similar) and complete (or update) their registration/profile and Acceptance as it appears on that page already.
Thanks for your consideration.

Everything looks awesome so far!  One thing that I would love to see addressed with the notifications in IC5 is a better link between the actual notification menu (the red bubble where you can see a quick list of your notifications) and the little popup on the screen you get a notification while viewing the site.  Currently, if you click that popup box, you get taken to the item in question (great feature), but it does not clear out the notification in the menu bar.  
A minor issue, but it does lead to some redundancy in the user experience.  E.G., if Matt was on when I quoted this post of his and he clicked that pop-up box on the bottom of the screen to see the quoted message, the notification tray would still show him that he has an unread quoted post even though that would no longer be true.

Bring your community to life with the latest live community features coming to Invision Community 5.
Last year we introduced new features that immediately showed who was currently reading a topic and who was replying. This feature leveraged new technologies to connect members with each other instantly.
In this blog post, we'll delve into the latest live community features for Invision Community 5 and explore how they enhance our sense of togetherness within our communities. We'll examine how these features instantly notify us about new events, updates, or interactions and how they contribute to a shared sense of presence.
These features go beyond the static posts and comments we've grown accustomed to and introduce a real-time element. Whether you're part of a support community, a gaming forum, or a professional network, these features will have you feeling like you're interacting with other community members simultaneously, fostering a strong sense of shared experiences. 
 
 
Posting
We've all been involved in a busy topic where you're keen to see what replies your latest post has. Select packages on Invision Community 4 can see who is active on a topic and who is typing, but you have to hit refresh to see the new posts added to the topic. If you're anything like me, then you hammer refresh until something new appears.
With Invision Community 5, this is no longer a problem. As you interact with a topic, new replies are automatically added to the topic without needing to refresh. This one feature brings the conversation to life, and you get a real sense of other members interacting with the topic at the same time as you.
 

 
Reactions
Did you drop a razor-sharp GIF or post something applause-worthy? Watch as others react to your content in real time with Invision Community 5. There's no need to refresh or return to the topic later to see who enjoyed what you wrote.
Getting rewarded for your content is gratifying and encourages you to post more and show your appreciation for other's content via reactions.
Notifications
Notifications have long been a valuable way to be notified when anything important happens in your community. It may be that someone has quoted your content, tagged you in a post or started a new topic in a forum you're following.
With Invision Community 5, you can watch the notification count rack up in real time, alerting you to new events that you may otherwise miss as they happen.
 

 
We hope that you've enjoyed reading about these new features and look forward to them coming to select packages for Invision Community 5. They provide a sense of togetherness and immediacy, making it feel like we're interacting with fellow community members simultaneously. 
We're keen to hear what you think, please leave a comment below.
The features discussed in this announcement will not be available for Invision Community Classic. Click here to learn more about switching to our platform to get this and other benefits.
 

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I see this has been fixed. Not sure when it was resolved but thank you, greatly appreciated.

Interesting. Thank you for the clarification.

No, live topics are not cached.
The vast majority of traffic for any forum is guest traffic. This can be from bots, as well as people coming in from external links. We have some communities that may have 1500 people online, but 10,000 guests. Caching via CDN allows us to serve that traffic without touching any processing (PHP/MySQL/Redis, etc) for maximum efficiency. The cache lasts for around 15 minutes which is absolutely fine for communities. If your guests want 'live' updates, then simply encourage them to sign up. Logged in members will be served the live pages, not the CDN cache.

That means guests generate cache meant for guests (logged-in users do not refresh cache meant for guests). If any new content is created after a cache is created, guests have to wait until it expires to see the new content (until then, they will see the stale pages). Typically before each page view, the logic checks to see if its cache is expired, if so it will regenerate cache or else it will use the cache.
Wondering for reasons why caching on IC cloud is implemented at the infra level instead of at the individual website level as data is specific to each website and not common to all websites (We are referring to data caching here or caching entire pages, not op code caching)

Yep, happening here as well. I would think that it is a Xer issue though. 

While using the website, do logged-in users refresh cache for guests? Or is the cache meant for guests refreshed only by guests?
 

It's not something we've planned for an initial release, but it's quite easy to achieve with the new CSS framework and is possibly something we can implement in the future.
With that said, browsers are very capable of scaling font sizes these days and since the entire UI is built using em's for sizing, the whole interface scales neatly. The color scheme also passes all contrast tests so far, and can be customized further using the Theme Editor if necessary 🙂

Oh I see, thanks. So I guess the solution with that issue is to have a setting that allows the Admin to choose whether a topic or the page keeps the "canonical" tag and supersedes the other. That'd be nice to see. Might have a positive impact on how your community's content is displayed in Google search results too (although I'm obviously not holding my breath 😄)

Currently, when a record is created, you have the option of posting that record as a thread within a specified forum. If you utilize that option, both creations come with a canonical tag that gives the 'thread' preference. It would be nice if there was an option to give the 'Record' prominence over the 'Thread.'

Having Google being directed to not rank the database page in tis manner kind of defeats the whole underlying purpose of a CMS system.

TYIA

Google claims to not penalize duplicate content on a site but regardless, it can still hurt your SEO practices. The problem lies in the fact that IPS places a <link rel="canonical" ...../"  /> tag (which directs a search engine that this is the master copy) on both the page and the topic. You can easily see this by viewing the page source of both the page and topic. It should be line 171. You shouldn't have a canonical tag on both pages claiming to be the master.

I have reported this previously but never followed up on it by placing the topic in the Feedback sub.

As showcased in our past blogs, Invision Community 5 introduces a brand new, modern interface which brings improvements to performance, aesthetics and mobile usability.
An optional side navigation panel, new view modes, light/dark modes, customizable header layouts, a search modal and a mobile navigation bar are some of the things we've showcased previously. Today, lets take a closer look at some other miscellaneous changes that we've been working on while developing Version 5, including some of the code reductions and performance improvements that we've been able to achieve in the process.
For those of you who are developers, we'll also give some simple explanations of how (and why) we've implemented these changes.
 
Widgets
Sidebar widgets are perfect for displaying content feeds, featured members, announcements, advertisements and more on your page. In version 4 however, the widget column would often become an empty space once the widgets had been scrolled past:
  widgets-v4.mp4  
In version 5, widgets now stick to the screen once the last widget has been reached, ensuring your readers have more convenient  access to your widgets rather than a void space:
  sticky-widgets-v5.mp4  
 
Messenger
The Messenger is a great way to reach out to members when a private chat is more appropriate than a topic. Inspired by modern email clients, the messenger in Version 5 has been revamped with a full-height, sticky inbox, a longer message snippet, mini profiles and a more polished UI - all with a 25% reduction in CSS and a 100% reduction in Javascript.
messenger-v5.mp4
 
Sticky elements
We've mentioned sticky elements a couple of times now, so lets take a look behind the scenes at how they're created, and some of the performance improvements with Version 5. Traditionally, sticky elements were created using Javascript which would calculate the position of the element on the page and adjust it's stickiness every time the page was scrolled. Scroll events can be quite taxing for browsers, and when it comes to Javascript, the less, the better (especially when aiming for great page speed scores)!
With that in mind, all sticky elements are now handled using sticky positioning via CSS, which is a native and much more performant way of controlling these elements. We've been able to replace an entire 400 line Javascript component with just 3 lines of CSS.
 
Grids and Masonry
Grids have previously been handled in a similar fashion. Javascript would scan all elements within a grid to determine how many could fit on a single line, and would then shuffle these elements into position after the page was loaded or resized. CSS has since introduced its own grid properties, which has allowed us to replace more than 350 lines of Javascript with just a few lines of CSS, resulting in more performant page rendering and nicer looking grids (especially on small-medium displays such as mobiles and tablets).
 

 
Fun fact: We first introduced a similar performance improvement to "masonry grids" in our Gallery update from January this year, by replacing more than 400 lines of Javascript with, you guessed it, just a few lines of CSS.
 

 
 
 
Click targets
We wanted to make Version 5 as simple as possible to navigate, and one way of doing that has been by implementing larger click targets. Clicking anywhere inside an entry in a table or grid will now take you to that entry (you can still click on other links like normal within the click target, such as subforums or profile links). Click targets are optional and can be disabled via your theme settings if necessary.
 
click-targets.mp4
 
Data Lists (tables)
Speaking of tables, they too have been revamped. Tables automatically adapt to the space they've been assigned to (for those curious, this is done using CSS container-queries), so they're always neat regardless of the screen size, with no overflow or squashed layouts. Behind the scenes, the two columns below are created with identical code, yet they're quite different visually due to the size which they've been allocated. Even with these improvements, tables have received a 25% reduction in CSS.
 

 
Profiles
Profiles have been polished for Version 5 and include some nice improvements such as sticky widgets and tabs. 
profile-desktop.mp4
 
On mobiles, the side column collapses into a carousel, and the sticky tabs allow you to easily flick between content types without scrolling to the top of the page.
profile-mobile.mp4
 

Tabs
You may have noticed in the above clip that tabs on mobiles are now scrollable, compared to a dropdown menu from version 4. We made this change to ensure that tabs are given more equal exposure on small devices, and have managed to reduce the CSS by a whopping 80%.
 
Carousels
Last and certainly not least, are carousels. Carousels are great for displaying large amounts of data in a confined space and they've been rewritten from scratch for version 5. Previously, a Javascript library was used to create the "scroll effect", however this has never been the smoothest experience on laptop trackpads and touch devices.
In version 5, carousels are powered by native smooth-scrolling and scroll-snapping, which results in a much nicer user experience, especially on touchscreens. We've been able to remove a staggering 95% of the Javascript, substituting it with just a few lines of CSS.
 
carousel.mp4
 
To be honest, we've only just scratched the surface here! In addition to these changes, we've modernized (and reduced code) in almost every component throughout the suite including avatars, cover photos, dropdown menus, forms, inputs, buttons, lists, off-canvas menus, side menus, columns and more!
Combined, these changes result in not only a significant reduction in code, but also a polished UI that performs smoothly on desktop and touch devices. We're excited to continue modernizing Invision Community well into the future as new technologies and techniques become available to us, and are looking forward to getting it in your hands in 2024.

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Just to confirm, had the errors issue here. And it may have been the same time, depending upon time zones. The minutes match up.

Just to confirm, had the errors issue here. And it may have been the same time, depending upon time zones. The minutes match up.

Hi @Dreadknux
Funnily enough, this is something we discussed internally a few weeks ago. We're working hard on revamping Pages at the moment, so we'll be able to provide more information in the future about widget customizations 🙂 

Yes 🙂 

What browser are you using?
If you're using Google Chrome, click the padlock in the URL field, and make sure Notifications are enabled?

Or go to Google Chrome > Settings > Privacy and Security > Site Settings > Permissions > Notifications, and make sure Invision Community is allowed to send notifications? 

I thought that but can't see anything dodgy in the header. I'll ask Giphy if I can and report back.

What you are having isuses with there is not related in any way to this setting. As mentioned above, if your IP is changing constantly, its very likely this that is causing your logout issues