Matt

Around 45 bugs fixed so far, with another 39 in the queue.

How's your Thursday going?

It is no longer flawless.

Well, it appears that after 4 minutes, it's entirely flawless so we may as well just release final?

I've invited about 25 people in for the first few days. This is just to control the flow of reports in the early days. We expect there to be a lot, from the new demo system through to the product. Once things are a bit more stable, we'll invite everyone else in that has requested to test. Thanks all!

Only 2? That's amazing as you built the deployment system. It means it only broke once?

Who is ready for an alpha site to play with?

No, but it might be worth considering a one-off script/tool that does this pre-upgrade.

Update: The alpha system has been built, and all the initial teething problems using Invision Community v5 without IN_DEV have been fixed. As mentioned above, currently all JS/themes and CSS is built on demand, and rebuilt on demand (often quite a lot). In v5 it's built once per version and stored in a new location, so there were some teething issues with that. We'll test this new system internally today and if all goes well, we can start getting people in tomorrow.

I mean, that's a work of beauty. I recently did something similar by collecting all the cables, small electronics (USB hubs, etc) and put them in a single plastic crate. Now I know where to go when I need something, and if it's not there, I can buy a new one. 😆 @Esther E. has been busy listening to your feedback, and she's implemented two changes (I'll update the blog shortly). The first, is that we're going to convert all your open tags over on upgrade, be that 10 or 10,000. You can then decide if you want to delete any from the AdminCP post conversion. The second is a bulk tag add/remove tool via multi-moderation.

The AI we use in v5 isn't what many think of. A lot of people think of ChatGPT and that weird formally informal homogenised output it gives. We are using AI in v5, but in terms of algorithms and models (spam analysis, topic summaries, trending content, etc). We'll talk more on that as we move towards release.

There's plenty of time to think about how you want tags to work in v5 and when you are ready to upgrade you can tweak tags on your v4 prior to upgrading.

Yes, all these, regardless of how many, will be converted.

See my post above. I think there's a little confusion over the tag conversion process. All 'closed' tags admins have created are converted over. We then offer to convert the top 25 user created tags over, as well as any per forum/category tags.

To be clear, all "closed" tags created are converted. These are the tags you set up as an admin. The 25 number is based on the top "open tags" that members have created.

That's correct. That's why we're here talking about it. We made decisions, and then adjust as needed based on feedback. However, I'm not sure that use of tags is mainstream. It's unusual to have 1000 tags, and the application is niche. But this is an open conversation.

We picked a number, if people need more then we can convert more. What we don't want to do though is set people up to fail by converting over hundreds of tags because it's likely you'll never get round to setting them up and managing them properly.

Try removing Discord and Slack branding. 😄

1) Each tag must be created in the AdminCP (Content Discovery > Tags). It's a bit like the current "closed" system where you have to add the tags manually if you want your community to use them. 2) No, this was a strong part in the new system; if it is going to work, it must be universal. To start omitting tags from some apps, some forums, etc weakens the entire system. This is a way to bring content across your community into one place. If you need tags like status labels (open, fixed, etc) then I would recommend a Pages database and custom fields. Think of it like organising your house. You have a lot of things that can be hard to find (I know I had a charging cable here somewhere...) so you buy 10 large plastic crates and organise everything into those boxes (electronics, clothes, toys, cables, etc). You label each crate and it's now easy to find what you want. Need a charging cable? Open the cables box. Need to find your Gameboy (it's 1999 in my head) then go to the electronics box. It's easy. If you then added a bunch of rules on top (blue cables can't go into any box, orange toys can't go into the toy box) then you break that simple and strong organisation. Likewise, if you chose instead to buy 500 small lunchbox sized boxes and put one item in each, then you have changed nothing, objects are still impossible to find and are not in the same place.

A lot of decisions to make. Why do you have 60,000 tags? How do they benefit your community?

1) The top three items are from the normal "Featured Content". Oh, actually, we haven't spoken about that much have we. So we merged "featured" and "Our picks" into one thing. The old "feature" didn't really do much apart from allow you to filter in a widget and show a featured block above the content. This new page is much simplified. You can still feature replies and show the post at the top of the topic as you can now. I should probably do a blog on all the other stuff we did but haven't spoken about. 🫠 2) Right now, all tags but I think it would be nice to have a toggle in the AdminCP form to determine this. 3) Yeah, nice idea. We'd need to be careful with Pages collisions. 3) Um. We can add a bunch of hook points ads can use on that page. Absolutely. It offers another way to categorise content across all apps within the suite which was the primary point - we wanted a way to bring all that content into one place and have it all look universal. It will require some thought and it works best with fewer tags, not more. If you have 100+ tags then it's not as effective. Ideally you want broad tags rather than narrow tags. It uses the standard autocomplete form widget which will offer a search box if there's more than N items (can't recall offhand what that is) I think we will need to add some bulk tag management in some form. Right @Esther E.? 😅 It still lives in another branch. I'll be updating the alpha site soon.

Added a note on your account, thanks! 😂

I'm unsure how you've drawn that conclusion, I've explained the next steps and why we're doing it that way. It won't be "another year or so" before downloadable betas are available. Current status: The tagging blog has just been posted (it takes a fair while to get the videos and other assets together 😅 ) We found a few issues in v5 with IN_DEV off, which have been fixed this week and just need reviewing and testing. It's likely the limited alpha demo system will be ready next week now. I'll keep you updated.

Invision Community v5 takes a fresh approach to tagging and content discovery. It overhauls the concept to bring content across different sections together with a beautiful new tag page. Tagging is a powerful concept but underused with Invision Community 4 due to overly complex interfaces in different areas of the suite, a confusing open tagging model option and no real benefit in content discovery beyond a simple list of content items. A driving force behind Invision Community 5 is the question of how we can help time-pressured community members find the content that most interests them. Invision Community has robust taxonomy through forum and category structures, but what about content in less visible areas such as Blogs, galleries or Events? How can we bring those together to homogenise the type of content and focus on the content itself? Taxonomy via tagging across all applications in the community suite is the answer. However, we needed to re-approach how tagging was implemented in the Invision Community to bring our new vision to life. Out with the old The current tagging system is implemented loosely, allowing open tagging, which is more akin to hashtags than high-level taxonomy. Allowing forums, albums, and blog categories to define their own tags turns tagging into more of a status label, which does nothing to help bring disparate content together. In with the new With a new focus on taxonomy and content discovery, we set about rebuilding tagging for Invision Community 5. The UI to tag items is the same, but now each defined, globally available tag has its own page with cover image and ability to feature items within that tag page. A uniform approach to different content items in the UI breaks down the barrier between content types and focuses solely on the content. Tags featured on its page are automatically displayed on the community Featured Content page. Finally, tags can now be followed, allowing your community to get a daily or weekly digest of all new tagged items, bringing people back to read more of the content they love. Let’s take a closer look In Invision Community 5, all tags are defined in the Admin Control Panel. The ability to use open tagging and per-node tags has been removed, but don’t worry—the upgrade system will offer conversion for those tags. Once defined, the tags are available for all content types and feature on a dedicated new tag page. This page features cover photos and more information on the tag via a description. Content from across your suite will be displayed on this page. If a single piece of content has multiple tags, it will appear on every relevant tag page making it easy to have content in multiple areas. If you want to permanently or temporarily feature individual content, perhaps your latest news or product release, you can do so right from the tag page. Featured content will show on the community’s Featured Content Page. Blurring the lines Now that we have an attractive and focused page for each tag, we can start to blur the lines between applications and, indeed, forums and categories, offering a new way to organise content. For some communities, the need for multiple forums to categorise content is diminished, and instead, tagging can be used to separate and find content from across the community. Tags can be featured in the menu system, offering new ways into your community for new visitors, regular community members, and even those who visit daily. Invision Community 5 is fearless in challenging past decisions or streamlining features to make them stronger and more focused. Our new approach to tagging takes a vague and underutilised concept and pushes it front and centre in any content strategy. How will you use it in your community? View full blog entry