Matt

Invision Community 4.7.19 will be released in November and contains many updates along with the report center improvements. While Invision Community 5 moves through the beta process, I wanted to let you know about all the updates coming in Invision Community 4. I've already spoken about the Report Center updates, which bring more professionalism and compliance to that area, and this blog will outline a few other highlights for the forthcoming release. Dormant Account Login Notification Keeping member accounts secure is a top priority for all community teams, and with data breaches containing usernames and passwords regularly shared on the dark web, it makes sense to be vigilant to a potential account takeover. Your members will now receive an email if a successful login occurs six months or more since the last log in to ensure the account is still in the right hands. If the account owner is not responsible for logging in, they can contact the community team to ensure the account is returned to the owner. Prepare for Invision Community 5 We have added a new information dashboard to the AdminCP so you can review the impact of the upgrade and ensure the PHP and MySQL versions are suitable. Of course, our Invision Community Cloud customers need not worry about this as we take care of it for you. You can also see impacting items you may want to know, such as deprecated and removed features that your community currently has enabled. This dashboard is a great starting point for evaluating your upgrade when the time comes. SEO Improvements We regularly review SEO best practices to ensure that your community presents itself in the best way to search engine bots and spiders. This update comes in two parts; the first is a new crawler setting to reduce links on the page for guests and search engine bots. This new feature removes hyperlinks around dates in comment feeds and removes the sharer menu item that shows the sharing box. These links dominate the crawl budget for little value, leaving little time for crawlers to work their way deeper into your content. The second SEO-focused feature is the permalinks to specific comments throughout the community. Currently, the permalinks point to a content handler (do=findComment&comment=123) that locates the correct page number and then issues a 301 redirect to the correct page (topics/1-topic-title/page/2/#comment-123). While 301 redirects are not a problem for search engines, and it's been a long time since a 301 redirect incurred any SEO penalty, the permalink is in a different format to the actual comment URL, which is handled via a fragment. Putting aside search engine optimization for a moment, working to eliminate a lot of redirects positively impacts performance. The new permalink is simply the actual link using a fragment to locate the post in the browser's viewport. This removes the need for a 301 redirect and reduces any search engine confusion over the permalinks canonical URL. Of course, the page number may change if topics are merged or many posts deleted, and we have some client scripting magic to handle that eventuality. It's an exciting time here at Invision Community with a brand new version in development and several new features for our stable product line. Let us know if you have any questions in the comments.

Invision Community 5 is currently in beta testing for all customers with the Invision Community Classic license. Invision Community Cloud customers can request a private demo to test the latest version. After months of development work, we're pleased to move Invision Community into beta testing, the final phase before its stable release. We'd love your help to find the last few bugs. You can join our Invision Community 5 Beta Testing Club and download the beta onto your test site or request a cloud demo. During the early stages of testing, we've implemented a lot of feedback, and I wanted to show you a few of the key changes we've not discussed in previous news blogs. Image Resizing Our brand new Invision Community 5 editor has many great features and quality-of-life improvements, one being the ability to resize images via drag handles. You can still specify a precise pixel value in the image menu, but the ability to resize using grab handles makes it easier to find the right size for your images. ResizeImage.mp4 Embed Resizing We can also resize embeddable media, such as YouTube, in the same way as you resize images. You can resize by using the grab handles or set a specific pixel value, giving you fine control over the size of your embedded media. embedresize.mp4 Page Editor Widgets We spoke about our new page editor in a recent blog, but a common request was to make it easier to find the right widget without a lot of scrolling up and down the menu bar. We've implemented a search filter enabling you to quickly find the right widget and a favorites system to pin your most used widgets to access them much quicker. widgets.mp4 Pages Database Layout Options A common request has been to make changing the look of the Pages database index and listing easier. Currently, with Invision Community 4, this means coding new templates by hand or using one of the many excellent pre-designed templates available from third-party developers. With Invision Community 5, we've brought the same magic we used with widgets to databases, allowing you to select from many layout options such as rows, grids, and wallpapers. You can still use a custom template, but these new layout options make it much easier to get the UI you need for your community. pagesDatabase.mp4 These are just a few of the many changes implemented since we opened Invision Community 5 for testing. We hope to see you in the beta club soon!

Invision Community 4.7.19 contains a significant upgrade to the Report Center to improve compliance and professionalism within the reporting workflow. The existing report center functions well enough but lacks some of the more professional tools modern communities need when managing complaints. In previous versions, a member or guest reported a piece of content, such as a comment or topic, which was then handled by the community team behind the scenes, and the report closed when dealt with. It was up to the community team to inform the original content author if any decision was made and to inform those who reported the content of the outcome. The Invision Community November update improves the report center with a better workflow, including asking those reporting the content the reason for the report, notifications on the report outcome, and the content author being notified as to why their content was moderated. Now, a report can be closed as valid or rejected. These new completion statuses allow you to signal whether your team found the report valid or whether you decided that the report was not required and thus rejected. Let's look at what has changed. Admin Control Panel The initial Report Center interface now has various options to control how the public reporting form works. From here, you can configure how reporting works for guests, whether they are required to leave a name (email is always required), and whether a message is required for the report. Content Author Notifications In this section, you can create notification templates that can optionally be sent to the author of the original content when choosing to complete or reject the report. Report Types In previous versions, report types were solely for automatic moderation. In this update, we've brought report types to both automatic moderation and public reporting. Gathering the reason content has been reported is vital in deciding the outcome. Each report type can also accept a message sent to the person who made the report depending on the valid or rejected outcome via an email notification that can be opted out of. Reporting Content Now, when a logged-in member or a guest user reports content, they can select from one of the pre-configured report types. If a guest is making the report, they are asked to leave their details along with a message to accompany the report. Managing Reports When managing reports via the ModCP, the interface has been updated to make the status of the report and the reasons for the report clearer. This screenshot shows green rows, which are new reports that still need to be managed by the team, along with yellow rows, which are currently under review. Each row of reported content can have multiple reports from different members, and the reason for those reports (such as Spam, Offensive, etc) is shown in labels. Viewing reported content now shows more detail in the user reporting section. If a guest has reported the content, the guest's name and supplied email address are shown, and clicking this allows you to send an email to them. The reason for the report is now shown. For each user report, you can change the submission reason, and this change is logged in the moderator comments to create an audit trail. You can now mark the report as Complete or Rejected, which will trigger an email for all those who have reported this piece of content. You can also send one of the notification templates to the content author to update them on why their content has been moderated. This email to each person who reported the content contains the date, content title, and reason for reporting, along with the pre-configured message for the report outcome. In this case, the report was flagged as valid, and the message to the person who reported it confirmed the outcome. Putting it together These changes help automate notifying both the author of the content and the person who reported the content on the outcome. Let's look at an example flow to understand how these new tools help the workflow. In this example, User A (Author) creates some content, and User B (Reporter) decides to report this content, choosing "Offensive" as the reason for the report. The moderation team picks up the report, examines the reported content, and decides that the report is valid, so they mark the report as complete and choose to use a notification template to tell the content author (User A) that their content has been removed. As the report has been flagged as complete, the person who reported the content (User B) receives an email telling them the report has been upheld and action has been taken. We hope these changes improve your experience with the report center. Let us know what you think below.