Matt

Spam is as much a part of life on the internet as emoji overuse, serial GIF abuse and regretful tweeting. But I'm not here to talk about how I conduct myself online; I wanted to talk about three spam improvements coming to Invision Community 4.6. As you may be aware, Invision Community has its own Spam Defense functionality, which uses a mixture of crowdsourced data, publicly available data and our own special sauce to help reduce the number of spam accounts that get through the registration system. Invision Community also has several other tools to mitigate spam post-registration. These tools have served us well, but as spammers evolve, so must our systems. Here's what's coming to our next release. Spam Defense Scoring I can't divulge too much on our Spam Defense system lest we give spammers targeting Invision Community information that can assist them. Still, we have made several changes to our Spam Defense system. These include rebalancing the score thresholds, checking against known TOR networks and proxies and using other data in the public domain to inform our scoring decisions. Spam Defense Blocking The current implementation of our Spam Defense only allows options to either prevent registration entirely or put the registration in an approval queue. However, the days when Spam Bots stood out from normal registrations are long gone, and it's hard to know if an account in an approval queue is legitimate or not. In 4.6, we've added a new Spam Defense option that you can choose to allow the registration but put the new members into the posting approval queue, meaning their posts will need moderator approval before being published. This reduces the decision burden and makes it easier to take a chance on a low score from the Spam Defense system and review their posts before they are made public. Word Filters We have added a new option to the Word Filters to allow content containing specific words or phrases to be held for moderator approval where the author has less than a set threshold of posts. For example, you may notice an increase in spam targeting "CBD Oil" and add it to the word filter list to hold the content for moderator approval. This works great and captures a good number of spam posts; however, your regular members get frustrated when they want to talk about CDB Oil in their posts. This new option allows you to set a trust level for allowing these words to be used without capturing them for approval. We hope these three changes to our spam controls will reduce the level of spam you get in your community! I'd love to know what's the weirdest spam (that is safe for work!) you've seen in your community.

Invision Community has an exciting opportunity for an experienced PHP developer to join our team. Invision Power Services, Inc. is behind the leading community software platform, Invision Community. Our tailored solutions serve clients of all sizes, from smaller communities to the world’s biggest brands. We have been on the forefront of independent and white label engagement communities since 2002. The Role As a back end PHP developer, you will be working closely within a tight nimble team. You are a clear thinking problem solver and are able to demonstrate skills in creativity and innovation with the ability to meet deadlines. You thrive when given a brief and create well structured efficient code. Your role will be varied and involve bug fixing, peer reviews, helping refine a technical specification and contribute code towards new functionality for Invision Community. The position is remote, but it will require significant overlap with the EST working day. We offer a friendly relaxed environment with an established team who have a passion for what they do. There is an opportunity to learn from others and progress into more senior roles. Key Responsibilities Write well designed testable efficient code by using sound development processes Cooperate with other team members to develop new features Gather and refine specifications are requirements based on technical needs Create and maintain software documentation The most important characteristic is a willingness to learn and to take on new challenges. The role is varied and you can be working on a launch with an enterprise customer or crafting code for our latest features depending on priorities. Skills & Experience Significant experience as a PHP developer in a commercial environment Experience with MySQL. Experience with github. Experience with various web services such as OAuth, SAML, REST, etc. Experience working within a team with a strong culture. Some experience with HTML, CSS and JS. Worked on large scale applications. Confident with modern OOP standards including traits, etc. The depth of experience can vary between developers. Please apply even if some of these areas are not your strongest points. We can offer training and mentoring for the right candidate and our team is very supportive. Location Remote but must be available for a significant portion of 9-5 EST working day. Salary Dependent on experience. Please submit your salary expectations on the application form. How To Apply Please complete the application form giving us as much information as possible.

You’ve probably already noticed that something looks a little different in our community today. As part of our ongoing community improvements, we’ve performed some housekeeping to streamline the forum structure, make more distinction between areas and open up a few areas to guests and friends. The big visual change is that we now have four separate areas: support, community, marketplace and developers. It should hopefully be clear what each section does, but let's go through a few examples. Support This area is where you can leave feedback on existing features, help shape Invision Community’s future by suggesting new functionality and also where you can get quick support from fellow Invision Community owners and our team. Starting today, you can post in the Help & Support forum to get help from our team. If you’re unsure what a feature does, or think you’ve spotted an issue that needs our help, then you’re welcome to start a topic. Of course, if you want private support, then you are welcome to create a ticket in the client area as normal. Community Even the most seasoned community manager needs a little help from time to time. This section is the place to ask about strategy, to blow off steam in the lounge or to ask for fellow owners to help with support requirements outside of official support, such as configuring servers, databases and so on. Marketplace Our Marketplace brings hundreds of new features, themes, language translations and plug-ins to your Invision Community. If you need support or have a request for something you’ve purchased from the Marketplace, drop into the forums here. Developers Invision Community is blessed with a strong developer community extending the rich functionality of Invision Community. If you’re looking to develop an idea for Invision Community, these forums will let you connect with our development team to answer questions as well as get help from other marketplace authors. Other Changes There are a few other changes of note that I’d like to go through. Firstly, ‘Visitors’ (that is a registered member without an active license) are now ‘Friends’. Who doesn’t need new friends? Guests and Friends can now view the official support forums, but cannot post a new support request or reply to existing ones. We’ve merged ‘General Chat’ in with the Client Lounge to form ‘The Community Managers’ Lounge’. This is still a perk for active customers and the topics are not viewable unless you have an active license. Finally, we’ve gone through and spruced up some of the forum rules, descriptions and custom error messages. I hope these changes make it easier to find what you need and get a little help when you need it.

What is Zapier? Zapier is a no-code solution to connect your Invision Community with other apps, such as Mailchimp, Google Docs, Facebook, Twitter and more. It allows you to trigger actions when new content is added to your Invision Community, and allows Invision Community to trigger actions when other apps receive data. For example, you may choose to add a newly registered member to a Mailchimp list, or send an alert to Slack when a topic is added in a specific forum. This guide will take you through the simple steps of setting up Zapier and your Invision Community and look at creating your first action. Setting up your first Zap The first thing you will need to do is register an account with Zapier. Once you are logged in, you can either search for "Invision Community" or head there directly with this link to view which triggers and actions are available. Searching for Invision Community Invision Community at Zapier Let's set up a test Zap. For this test Zap, we're just going to populate a Google Sheets spreadsheed with new post information. The first step is to search for Google Sheets in the "Do more with Invision Community" section. Scroll down until you see the section where you can select the trigger for Invision Community and action for Google Sheets. Finding Google Sheets Once you have chosen your two apps (Invision Community and Google Sheets) your can choose which action to take. Each time a post is added, add a new Google Sheets row You'll get a little preview of what the Zap will do. Click through the "Get Started" button. The first step is to connect your Invision Community. It's time to connect your Invision Community Clicking "Connect" will load a new window asking for your community URL and API key. The connection window Enter the URL as requested. The API key is located in your AdminCP > System > Community Enhancements > Zapier. Zapier in the Community Enhancements section. Locating Zapier in your Admin CP Clicking Enable shows the URL and key. The Zapier URL and API key Paste these details into the connection window. Entering the details, then hit "Yes Continue" Success! Now ensure you click the radio button to select this community. Select this newly connected community On the next screen, you can choose the criteria for allowing this post content to be shared with Google Sheets. I've chosen to only allow visible posts to be shared The next step is to go through the set up flow with Google Sheets. This flow is very similar to the the flow when setting up Invision Community. Authenticating with Google Once you have both apps connected, you can choose which spreadsheet to use. Selecting a spreadsheet Then, you can select which data to send across. I'm choosing to send the author's display name, the date and time of the post, the post URL and the post HTML content. Select the data you want to share You get a chance to name the Google Sheet columns differently from what's suggested. The final preview To test the Zap, Zapier pulls a post so you can see if the integration is successful. The Zap test Hitting "Send test" should result in success! You'll get a chance to look at the new spreadsheet. The magic of Zapier If it all looks good, proceed and ensure the workflow is enabled. And there we have it! Each time a post is made on the community, Zapier will send that across to the Google Sheet.

I'm thrilled to introduce the newest member of team Invision Community. You may recognise Jordan from his photo as he's been an active member of our community as BreatheHeavy. Jordan has been running his site BreatheHeavy.com using Invision Community for nearly a decade. Jordan's official title is "Community Advocate" which means that he will be working very closely with our community to guide and curate feedback, assist with support questions, to help educate and inform and to bring you news of the latest developments being cooked up by our development team. Jordan says: Your feedback, ideas and questions matter. I've spent the last decade discovering what it means to be a community leader in my own Invision Powered community, BreatheHeavy. Community building is an ongoing journey that's taught me invaluable lessons, namely the importance of absorbing feedback from the community then taking decisive action. I'm excited and honored to share that insight with the Invision Community. My new role is designed to shed light on what Invision Community members (that's you!) want and share it with the team. I'm looking forward to getting to know you! We're very excited to start a new chapter within Invision Community to improve communication, engage more Invision Community owners and make the most of the excellent feedback we receive. You'll be seeing more of Jordan on the forums in the coming days.

This is a maintenance release to fix bugs.

Invision Community is growing! We're currently recruiting three new roles, one full-time and two part-time. Applications are now closed, thank you to all those that applied. We'll be going through them over the next few weeks. It's been a very busy year for all of us at Invision Community and our continued success means that we're looking to expand our team even further with three new roles to fill. Invision Power Services, Inc. is behind the leading community software platform, Invision Community. Our tailored solutions serve clients of all sizes, from smaller communities to the world’s biggest brands. We are looking to kick start 2021 with a tight-knit customer-obsessed support team to build a positive support culture for our clients. All roles are fully remote-working. Customer Service Superstar We are in need of a full-time Customer Service Superstar, a new position within the company. You are solution-driven, customer-obsessed and passionate for cultivating a positive support culture for our clients. The person in this role: Answers client questions in a public-facing forum. Triages client requests to developers according to our processes. Deescalates problem or potential problem communications. Advocate for customers to our development team. Is comfortable with technology and willing to learn our platform. Why should you apply? You are a Customer Service Star - solution driven when helping clients. You are confident in conversing via forum style, public-facing support. You can clearly communicate both in writing and verbally. We primarily provide customer service in English. You see opportunity to streamline improvements to help our team better serve our clients. Excited about interacting with our clients within our community to build a vibrant support culture. You work well with a team remotely. You are personally organized, suited to excel in a remote work environment. Part-Time Community Support Assistant We are looking to add two part-time community support assistants to our growing team. You are self-motivated and focused on helping customers with support enquiries. Your role will be in assisting customers via a public-facing support forum. Ideally, you will have customer support experience, be familiar with our community platform and comfortable with technologies such as FTP, Amazon S3, PHP and MySQL. Work Location: Our company is headquartered in Lynchburg, Virginia with staff located around the world. These positions are remote working. Interested? Share your resume and characteristics that make you the best fit for this role. Please include your available work hours (timezone). As we are open to both entry-level and experienced applicants, you may choose to include a desired starting salary based on your own evaluation of your relevant skillset and experience. Apply now! Applications are now closed, thank you to all those that applied. We'll be going through them over the next few weeks.

Wouldn't it be great to know if a staff member had replied to a topic before you clicked to open it? When you're scanning a list of topics, knowing which have had a reply by a member of the community team can help decide which to read. Currently, you need to open the topic and scan the posts to see if there's a reply from the team. Happily, in our next release, we've made it clear which have had a reply by a member of a specific group. You can specify which groups to show as having replied via the Groups form in the Admin CP. The per-group setting in the Admin CP You can select to detect the group based on the member's primary group, secondary group or both. When viewing a list of topics, you will see a badge showing that a member of that group has replied. This simple feature will make it easier to highlight when important replies have been made to topics, which is a great addition for forums using the new 'solved' feature. Let me know below if you'll use this new feature and what you'd like to see in the future.

This is a maintenance release to fix bugs.

We are pleased to announce that Invision Community 4.5 is now available and packed with new features, enhancements, and even a new look! Major New Features / Enhancements - New Front-End Design - AdminCP Dark Mode - Site Statistics, Search Insights, and Club Statistics - Marketplace now built into the AdminCP - Mobile App for iOS and Android (Beta) - Zapier Integration for Invision Cloud Communities In addition to these new enhancements, there are countless other additions and improvements. Check out our product blog to see what we have been up to. Before Upgrading Before proceeding with your upgrade, please note that all third party resources are disabled during the upgrade process. We strongly recommend ensuring that all of your installed applications, plugins and themes have Invision Community 4.5 compatible updates available to allow continued use. Please see the full release notes for other important changes, feature removals and deprecations.

One of the most commonly asked questions we get is how to ensure your new community launch is successful. You may think that if you have the right features with the correct configuration, success is guaranteed, but it requires more than that. Way back in the early 2000s when the internet was in its infancy, there was an explosion of new communities. If you had some webspace, a little technical knowledge and a forum script you were almost guaranteed to attract people into your community. These days it takes a little more work to get your new community off the ground. There’s a lot of books and resources out there to help, but focusing on your purpose, value, and emotion will give you a bright star to sail by. Purpose The purpose of your community should be very clear from the first visit. You want your new visitors to instantly understand the reason your community exists and the benefit they will get from it. This can be implicit with a short written mission statement at the top, or it can be through robust visual design and structure. When launching a new community, aim to be as specific as possible with your purpose. You can always broaden when it grows. This may go against your instinct to cast a wide net to catch as many people as possible, but resist that temptation! For example, a community focused on fitness has a vague purpose. Fitness is a broad topic, and there are many niches inside of it. This could be anything from losing weight, to running faster to increasing the weight on a barbell. Narrowing the focus to running helps a little, but there’s a lot of space in that field. You have marathon runners, ultra runners, Sunday park joggers and everything in between. A better starting point for a community may be “Run your first 5k”. This instantly makes it very clear to your audience that you intend to help new runners develop their ability enough to finish a short race. The sense of purpose is clear, and it is easy to know what to ask of this new community and the benefit you may get. Asperger Experts has a strong design and mission statement above the fold, which makes its purpose clear from the first visit. Asperger Experts Make your purpose very clear and don’t be afraid to niche down to a specific area, to begin with. Value The earliest communities allowed people from all around the world to gather and talk. Anyone who had the technical skill to host a community could be virtually guaranteed members and just being able to meet was all the value needed. We now live in more sophisticated times and crave more than facilitation. Your community needs to add value beyond companionship and knowledge. One of the simplest ways to give value to your members is through sharing your expertise. A steady flow of written articles or videos gives your members a reason to come back. IG, a fintech company use their expert articles to draw their audience back to their community to contribute. IG is a known leader in their field, so their blog is a real draw for those investing in the markets. IG.com Never post for the sake of it, always inform, educate or entertain your community. Emotion At the heart of every conversation is emotion. We pride ourselves on being logical and thoughtful creatures, yet our emotional brain responds first and makes a judgement often subconsciously. Setting the pitch and tone of your community is critical from its earliest days. As the community manager, you get to define the tone by modelling the behaviour you want to see in your own content. Some communities do well with dark humour and snark; while others require positivity and fun. “Humans are herd animals. We want to fit in, to bond with others, and to earn respect and approval of our peers. Such inclinations are essential to our survival. For most of our evolutionary history, our ancestors lived in tribes. Becoming separated from the tribe—or worse, being cast out—was a death sentence.” - James Clear Hang out where your audience hangs out and develop your tone so that it resonates with your community. Starting a community is a rewarding experience, but you need to do more than just open your doors to ensure a successful launch. Checking to make sure your site has a strong purpose, that you offer value to your members and the emotional pitch is right will set you on the right course.

Moats have been used for centuries as a way to defend a building from potential attack. A flooded ditch around a castle is a great way to make it harder to be taken. You can't push battering rams against walls, and neither can you dig under the castle. Quite frankly, a moat is a pretty decent deterrent when there are plenty of other castles to pillage. What does this mean for your business? A community can be an economic moat, or in more simple terms, your competitive advantage. When your product or service is surrounded by an engaged community that feels invested in your brand, you'll be able to resist challenges from competitors looking to tempt your customers away. Humans are social creatures, and we love seeking out and joining a tribe that aligns with our values. The intangible value of belonging creates a sense of momentum for your brand and helps champion it to others. The statistics back this strategy; 88% of community professionals said in a recent survey that community is critical to their company's mission and 85% said that their community has had a positive impact to their business.[1] Your competitive advantage One of the cheapest ways to create momentum for your product is to build a community around your startup. A community is much more than a one-time marketing campaign and can help you throughout your company's life cycle if you take the time to grow it right. [2] Creating a buzz around a product can take a lot of time, effort and money. Traditionally, this buzz would be created with a mixture of videos, websites, influencer reviews, and heavy advertisement spends across multiple channels, including social media. Your community can create a shortcut and reach an audience without those costs and increase the chance of your product being shared virally. Your community creates a bond over a shared interest that continually re-enforces loyalty to your brand. This creates a personal investment which makes it less likely your customers will try a competitor. Put simply, if a company can move from just shipping a product to building a community, it can benefit from several competitive advantages such as: Engaged members help acquire new members, lowering the cost for customer acquisition. Increased customer retention through community loyalty. Members won't want to abandon the community they enjoy. Reduced support costs as members support each other. This benefit forms a loop that generates more value as the community grows. Brand building Another area of opportunity for social marketing is "brand building" - connecting enthusiastic online brand advocates with the company's product development cycle. Here, research becomes marketing; product developers are now using social forums to spot reactions after they modify an offer, a price, or a feature in a product or service. Such brand-managed communities can have real success. One well-documented example is IdeaStorm, Dell's community discussion and "brainstorming" website, which saw a measurable increase in sales following its launch, by providing a forum for meaningful dialogue and "to gauge which ideas are most important and most relevant to" the public. [3] By creating a community around your product or service, not only do you create brand advocates, but you also gain powerful insights into what your customers want through research which drives marketing. Consumers today crave a stronger bond with brands. It's no longer enough to give them a customer support email address and a monthly newsletter. They want a much more in-depth interaction with the company and other users of the product or service. One tactic for success is for brands to move away from the hard-sell to instead embrace the notion of "co-creation". This means moving beyond "old-school" approaches to website advertising to embrace the principles of relationship marketing - building virtual environments in which customers can connect with each other to share insights and relevant information. To capitalise on currently available opportunities, marketers need to find or establish real brand communities, listen to them, and then create special programs and tools that will empower potential and existing community members, rewarding existing consumers and eliciting behavioural change from potential consumers. [3] Evernote, the note-taking app, is a great example. Their lively community encourages customers to interact directly with staff, post their wish-lists for future versions and learn more about what happens behind the scenes. The community creates evangelists for Evernote and makes it harder for competitors to gain a foothold with a potent mix of dialogue, access to other customers, transparency from the brand and many opportunities for co-creation of content. Co-creation fundamentally challenges the traditional roles of the firm and the consumer. The tension manifests itself at points of interaction between the consumer and the company where the co-creation experience occurs, where individuals exercise choice, and where value is co-created. Points of interaction provide opportunities for collaboration and negotiation, explicit or implicit, between the consumer and the company. In the emergent economy, competition will center on personalized co-creation experiences, resulting in value that is truly unique to each individual. [4] In simple terms, a community allows your customers to feel closer to your brand and the products you sell. What are you waiting for? Nearly 80% of founders reported building a community of users as important to their business, with 28% describing their moat as critical to their success.[1] Our team at Invision Community has over two decades of community building experience and are trusted by brands of all sizes. Whether you have an existing community, or you're taking your first steps to create your own, our experience and expertise will guide your success. [1] https://cmxhub.com/community-industry-trends-report-2020 [2] https://viral-loops.com/blog/your-company-needs-a-pre-launch-campaign/ [3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268200746_Social_media_and_its_implications_for_viral_marketing#read [4] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jhm/Readings/Co-creating unique value with customers.pdf

If you're preparing to upgrade to Invision Community 4.5, there's now an easy way to test it out. We have updated our Invision Community demo system to use Invision Community 4.5! This is a quick and easy way to take 4.5 for a test drive and test all the new functionality before making your upgrade plans. Taking out a demo is very simple, just head over to our demo sign up page, follow the instructions and within a few minutes you'll receive your own private demo log in. We'd love to know what you think! Please let us know in the feedback forum.

Conspiracy theories have roots in the 19th century and have been popular for decades. Until recently, conspiracy theorists have lived in the margins. They are often convinced the earth is flat, Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone, and the moon landings were faked in a Hollywood sound stage. More recently, with 9/11 and the coronavirus pandemic, these conspiracy theories have become more mainstream, with celebrities and politicians sharing them over their official social media channels. From the evil machinations of Bill Gates, the rise of QAnon, to the conflation that 5G is responsible for spreading coronavirus, it's hard to ignore the impact they have in creating misinformation which undermines attempts at effective communication from governments and public health bodies. Despite reams of facts, logic and critical thinking, those that follow conspiracy theories will not be budged from their positions. They trust their sources implicitly, and a mountain of research disproving the argument does not interest them. The number of people that succumbs to these narratives grows every day. When you consume the content shared by the primary sources of this misinformation, it's easy to see why. Conspiracy theories are created and shared in a way that is engaging and irresistible to many seeking stability in a confusing world. Whatever your position is on these conspiracy theorists, you can leverage these tactics to make your own content more engaging and shareable. Lesson 1: Make it emotive Human beings have two distinct and independent thinking centres in the brain. One works on emotion (the limbic system) and the other on logic (the neocortex). The emotional brain works much faster than the logical brain. It is what has kept us alive as a species. If you hear a loud bang, your emotional brain processes this first and triggers the urge to move before your logical brain kicks in and deduces the bang was from a book expertly pawed from its shelf by your cat. The emotional brain is continually processing the world, and even though it's part of you, you do not have much control over it. Your logic brain, however, works on facts, truths and analysis. When you watch harrowing whistleblower testimony telling of their suffering in a conspiracy theory video, your emotional brain is powerfully stirred. It's why challenging conspiracy theorists who are emotionally committed to the point of view with just logic often fails. The emotional commitment is incredibly powerful, and when you challenge them, the logic brain is short-circuited, and the emotional brain becomes defensive. In fact, the more logic and evidence you provide, the more the emotional brain digs in and refuses the new evidence. How can you use this to your advantage? Work on creating an emotional response with your content. Don't purely rely on facts and logic to persuade your audience. Try and evoke an emotional reaction through imagery, metaphors and similes. President Obama was a powerful orator and used emotion often to create a strong message. When he spoke of investing in education, he invokes emotion by saying "We believe that when she goes to school for the first time, it should be in a place where the rats don't outnumber the computer." Lesson 2: Tell a story Conspiracy theory videos don't just reel off a list of events and facts, they tell a story. Some of the more complex theories are akin to a sprawling TV series with several characters linked by circumstance. Humans have always been curators of stories. From religious texts to morality fables, we learn and process the world through stories. Stories are memorable. Most adults can recite fairytales read to us when we were children. Use a story to link together critical points within your content. Consider how "Gamification has been proven to make communities more sticky and encourage more engagement" reads compared to "It was 3am, the flicker of the TV set was the only light in the room. My palms, slick with sweat, fought to keep the controller sticks moving. Even though I had a 6am start, I couldn't put the controller down. I had to finish the quest and collect the reward. Your community is no different." Take your reader on a journey, and they're more likely to finish your content. Try and make it personal. When we read, we always try and put ourselves in the shoes of the author or the protagonist. Stories and emotion go hand in hand. Recently, the Huffington Post ran a story with the headline "One death a minute" which is a very emotive and powerful alternative to the raw fact that 1,461 Americans lost their lives to COVID-19 on the 29th July. Lesson 3: Make it easy to consume A key strength for any content creator is to know when to create long-form content and snackable content. A single meme is more potent than 300 links to PubMed. A single YouTube video can be more persuasive than an expert in her field. Conspiracy theory creators use over-simplification to reduce a complex issue into an easily digestible entertaining snack. A meme generally contains a single idea that is easy to grasp and engaging. You don't have to work very hard to understand it, your visual brain processes it in 1/10th of a second, and it triggers a moment of delight. Infographics and memes are often smart ways to create an entrance to your content. If an image containing a straightforward idea from a more complex piece of content is digested quickly, it can leave your audience wanting more, and therefore more likely to involve themselves in your more complex work. When creating long-form content, consider the use of iconography, infographics and photography. Visuals help us remember and understand content quickly. I could say that 63% of this blog was written on an iPad, but a piechart would make this easier to process and more memorable. No tin foil hats required Creating compelling content is key to building your community. Your content sets the tone, helps drive re-engagement and positions you as a key expert in your field. Using the techniques many conspiracy theory creators use to spread their narratives will help your content be more memorable and shareable A well-created story with emotional cornerstones made more accessible by key points simplified into snackable quotes or images will help your content find a wider audience, whether you believe Neil Armstrong landed on the moon or not.

We've been on a little journey together since we announced the first Invision Community 4.5 feature way back in November 2019. The first feature we announced was a revamped Admin Control Panel interface which created more visual space and brightened it up. Actually, we made it so bright that the first feature request was to add a dark mode (which we did). In the space of three short months, we had spoken about Club improvements, invites and referrals, RSS feed improvements, blog categories, the simple stock photo picker, search insights, security enhancements, user interface updates, new statistic views, and notification improvements. Most will agree that March and April seemed to last months, thanks to a global pandemic. We used these extra days to talk about marking posts as a solution, topic view summary, Zapier integration, forum view updates, post-installation onboarding, private staff notes, page builder widgets, theme designer improvements, a new default theme, language system updates and everything else we missed. We have also revamped the front end user interface to modernise the look and feel but also to introduce new CSS frameworks, variables and other time-saving features our design team have been eager to implement. On the subject of modernisation, we've deprecated some legacy functionality. We've given up trying to make anything look good with IE11 which last saw an update in 2013. We've also deprecated older caching engines like Memcache, APC and Wincache and recommend using Redis instead. The web hosting and domain management features of Commerce are also deprecated as is BBCode. BBCode has its roots in the earliest bulletin-board systems long before rich text editors were common use. It's 2020; we should no longer be asked to type in special codes in square brackets to format text. BBCode is still functional in Invision Community 4.5, but it is likely to be removed in a future version. Now that primary development has finished, we move onto the beta testing stage. This is where you get to try it out and evaluate the new features before scheduling your own upgrades. As always, we do recommend that you only test early betas on staging sites or simple test sites. Many a weekend has been ruined by over-enthusiastic upgrading of live sites; so we don't recommend that. You'll also notice that we're running Invision Community 4.5 on our own site. If you do spot an issue, please let us know in the bug tracker. I've been creating and releasing products for close to twenty years now, and I still get a real buzz out of hitting the release button. It's always a pleasure to see the result of hundreds of hours of coding, dozens of meetings and numerous passionate exchanges among the team. You can access the beta in your client area. We hope you enjoy Invision Community 4.5!

We are pleased to announce that Invision Community 4.5 is now available and packed with new features, enhancements, and even a new look! Major New Features / Enhancements - New Front-End Design - AdminCP Dark Mode - Site Statistics, Search Insights, and Club Statistics - Marketplace now built into the AdminCP - Mobile App for iOS and Android (Beta) - Zapier Integration for Invision Cloud Communities In addition to these new enhancements, there are countless other additions and improvements. Check out our product blog to see what we have been up to. Before Upgrading Before proceeding with your upgrade, please note that all third party resources are disabled during the upgrade process. We strongly recommend ensuring that all of your installed applications, plugins and themes have Invision Community 4.5 compatible updates available to allow continued use. Please see the full release notes for other important changes, feature removals and deprecations.

As the deadline slowly comes down, two last feature additions race towards the descending door and slide in underneath with seconds to spare. If you've never seen "Raiders of the Lost Ark", then you probably think this is a weird way to start a blog. As we wrap up development for Invision Community 4.5, we squeezed in two extra features that I want to talk about today. Per Topic Post Approval The first is a way to cool down a heated topic without locking it. Right now you can put an entire forum on post-approval. This means that moderators must review and approve all new posts before they are allowed to be publicly displayed. As of Invision Community 4.5, you can now choose to set a single topic to post-approval regardless of the forum setting. This is a great way to let a topic cool off but still receive new replies to review before adding to the topic. Club Terms and Conditions The ways that clubs are used throughout the many communities that run Invision Community are becoming increasingly varied. A popular request is to allow members to agree to a set of club-specific terms and conditions before they can contribute to the club. Invision Community 4.5 now allows the club owner to set up its own terms and conditions. You can optionally enforce that members agree to them before continuing. That's it for feature announcements. We're excited to be closing development on Invision Community 4.5 and move towards a beta in the coming weeks.

If your brand sells a product or service, the first thing that comes to mind as a benefit to building your community is support deflection. And it's easy to see why. It's something you can quickly calculate an ROI for. Let's say every 20 hits to a public question with a solved answer from a client or team member equates to one less ticket. If a ticket costs $10 to solve on average, it's straightforward to see the value by calculating deflected tickets. Let's say your busy public support community had 20,000 hits a month; you've just saved $200,000 a month in support costs. Great! But before you finish there, I want you to consider the rewards a brand community can offer. A public support desk isn't a community. It's likely most of your customers join because of an issue with your product. They tap in some keywords on Google and come across your site. They see a bunch of solved questions like theirs, and they either get the fix and bounce out, or post and wait for a reply. With nothing to get them to come back, once they have the answer they'll likely bounce out then and only come back when they hit a new problem. That's not a community. A community is a place where people return multiple times to collaborate, learn and grow together. "[A brand community is] a group of people who share an identity and a mutual concern for one another's welfare - who participate in shared experiences that are shaped by a brand." - Carrie Melissa Jones For that, you need to look beyond the support desk and expand into more use cases, and there are compelling reasons to do this. Shared experiences Allowing your customers to share their experiences with your products can lead to unique brand stories that reinforce bonds between members and creates social solidarity in the community. A few years ago, I remember reading a post on a travel community. A family were flying with Delta and their son who has autism was becoming more and more distressed with the change in routine for that day. A Delta employee saw this and came and spoke with the family, helped settle the boy and ensured they boarded early to avoid the crush of passengers. It's a small moment of kindness that wouldn't make headlines, but it was very memorable for this family; enough so that they posted about it. This post had numerous replies in praise for the airline and no doubt made many of them think of Delta when booking their next flight. "[Social solidarity is] not just passive tolerance but felt concern for what is individual and particular about the other person." - Alex Honneth "The Struggle for Recognition" All those stories, connections and moments build social capital and loyalty for your brand. Feedback Your customers are already talking about your product. Some of it will be good, and some of it won't be good. They are already talking about it on social media, and in numerous communities, they belong to. If you do not have space within your community for your customers to leave feedback, then you're missing out on a massive benefit. You get a chance to address negative feedback before it spills out further into the public domain. Likewise, positive feedback makes for compelling customer success stories. Feedback is a great way to crowdsource innovation and to guide sales and marketing on how your customers are using your products and where the gaps are. Owning your niche Allowing space for conversations relating to your product makes good sense. If you sold a fitness tracker, then it makes good sense to have areas for discussions revolving around wellness areas such as sleep, diet and exercise. Likewise, a mobile phone network will do well having areas related to the various brands of mobile phones. "There is status that comes from community. It is the status of respect in return for contribution for caring for seeing and being in sync with others. Especially others with no ability to repay you." - Seth Godin Creating these spaces encourages return visits beyond direct support for the product. Those return visits are what makes your community a community.

We started talking about Invision Community 4.5 way back in November of last year. Now, less than six months later, it's ready for you to test. While we put the finishing touches to a few features, we have set up a preview site so you can test out the new features, leave your feedback and make a note of any bugs you spot. Head over now to the Invision Community Alpha test site. Please be aware that this test site is running in 'development mode' so it is automatically updated with the latest fixes throughout the day. This means it has to work extra hard on each click as there are no caches, pre-built languages or templates to use, so it will be a lot slower than a production version. So please don't worry about it being a touch slow, and definitely don't try and run Page Speed analysis tools on the alpha site! You can read about the headline features over in our product updates blog. Let us know what you think!