Matt

Hey, the 80s was peak civilisation.

Automated using various metrics. Yep.

How’s the music on this one @Dll?

This is correct. We have a new license for v5 which alters the renewal structure and removes the ability to "mix and match" apps. To download v5, you'd need to first switch licenses via the client centre. To be clear, you won't need to re-purchase a new license, just agree to switch to the v5 license.

We do have plans for an opt-in before viewing embeds but it'll likely not be in 5.0. Version 5 is the start of the next chapter and it'll mature quickly over a number of releases. Self-hosting license prices have already been released for v5. You can even switch to the pricing now (Client Area > Manage Purchases > "Change your license to new Invision Community Classic terms"

More news on theming coming soon.

I have a lot of thoughts on this which I’ll put in a blog at some point but we as a platform service two different community needs; transactional and social. The transactional topics benefit most from helpful/solved. Less useful for social conversational topics where notes and moderator tools come in.

Never gonna give him up! At the bottom near the footer currently. There is an 'auto' mode to take the value from your OS.

It's a setting, so it's up to you. 🙂

it's not something we have on our list at present. Yes, I see 'this is helpful' as being something outside of reactions. I may like/laugh/thanks at various posts but it does not mean that they fix the problem the topic poster had. "Helpful" is a clear signal that the post offered the topic starter a sensible answer. It's a useful tool for transactional type topics (I need an answer to _____ / I need _______ solving) and helps reduce the noise in a topic until the topic starter or moderator marks a specific post as the definitive answer.

Ok grandpa.

As you may know, Invision Community 5 is currently in development, and progress has been great, with many areas starting to come together. Almost all of the significant code restructuring has been completed, with much progress on the UI and the new theme bearing fruit. A fair few new features are complete, but some aren't quite ready to show, as they need a little love from Ehren. I wanted to share a little teaser of Invision Community 5; how many new things or changes can you spot? The small print Please remember that the features, functionality and UI shown in this little teaser are pre-beta, so they are subject to change. The features and functionality shown here aren't all that has been completed; many new features are 'code-complete' but waiting for some UI polish before we're ready to share more. Essentially, what you're seeing is a work in progress. We don't have a release timeframe in mind yet, but we'll let you know when we do!

Ah, I see it. Thanks.

Do you have registrations set to disabled or redirect elsewhere?

Do you have the Invision Community Geolocation service enabled (and an active license key)? (ACP > Integrations)

What do you see under the Spam Defense tab? The Contact Us verification is a setting under ACP > Settings > Contact Us.

We did that three years ago in a genuine attempt to increase sales and viability. It helped for a short while but the trend didn’t hold.

I hear you 100% but we are not the arbiters of human habits, we just respond to them. There are loads of old forums still busy but the bulk of those members and that content was generated a decade ago and they are kept alive by an older member base and probably good authority with Google bringing people in for short transactional exchanges. We have a responsibility to you and our other customers to keep driving forward, it is pretty relentless. The worst thing we could do is just continue doing the same things and we lose marketshare and your community stagnates and goes into a slow decline. Communities are more complex than a basic forum and very few have the patience to click loads of links in the hopes of having good content to read. v5 will help with transactional content (I need an answer to this problem) and more social content (Lets discuss Thing) as well as content discovery.

v5 is a significant step forward for UI, discovery, noise versus signal and brand matching. Change is hard but it is kind of inevitable. If nothing changed, then we'd still be using this: And while you could absolutely run a successful community on that product even now, the chances of attracting new members would be low given the expectations modern audiences have for UI and ease of use.

No. Just because a feature request is popular, it doesn't mean that it's right for the product, will enhance the community experience for community members and move the product forward. It is also unfair to have the product guided by a small number of customers that visit the forums and take time to comment on feature requests. The forum does not record the hundreds of conversations we have with other clients over email, regular meetings and so on. We try and account for most things but more often than not what is suggested in feedback is generally minor tinkering around the edges when more bold action is often needed. That is not to say that we do not read every topic and discuss most of them. Quite often a popular request that we hear over and over makes its way into the software but perhaps not in the way that the topic author described. I completely understand this feeling. The last six months or so have been a pretty dark timeline of mostly negative news, especially for self-hosted customers. The introduction of cloud exclusive features, talks of falling profitability for self hosted license sales, a long list of deprecated features people use, v5 dev tools overhaul, the marketplace closing - it's been a lot and we recognise that. Now that the bad stuff is out of the way, we can start talking about v5 and there is a lot of fun stuff to get into. Invision Community 5 is a new chapter for the product and us as a company. A more streamlined and focused operation fit for the next decade of community building.

We don't want to say too much for obvious reasons, but we use a mixture of sources to determine spam accounts and disposable email addresses.

Ryan and the team have done a fantastic job with these new tools and I'm really keen to see how they help in the current spam wave we're all experiencing.

If I was a new developer trying to gain trust, I'd spend some time in the community being helpful and getting to know people. You can quite quickly gain trust this way and then start to offer your services and products.

Most cloud packages can already use external uploads outside of marketplace. We'll remove the limitation for the others.

Yes, we have that functionality already built in and it can still be used assuming the developers have entered the correct URL and have the ability to check for updates. That's correct, you'll go through to the developer's own site. It's likely that you have more than just one modification from a single developer, so it may be less. Some of the developers are talking about forming a new site with a listing, so it may be somewhat centralised if they go ahead.