Matt

One of the many pleasures of running your own forum is watching it grow as the years roll by. Sometimes it's fun to go back and look at old topics but they just get pushed further and further away from the first page until you end up with a large database full of posts that rarely get seen. Perhaps you run a massive forum with 10 million posts or more and you're starting to reach MySQL database limits and considering pruning back posts from 10 years ago just to free up some space. Maybe you just want to keep your number of active posts as low as possible for ultimate efficiency. IP.Board 3.3 has a new an innovative way of handing these problems! Introducing the archive system Brand new to IP.Board 3.3 is the archive system. This is a very easy to use system of archiving off old posts. You get complete control over what is archived too but more on that a little later. The archived posts are moved to a different table but it doesn't have to be in your current database or indeed your current server (though of course it can be too)! You can set up a new server just for older posts and move them all there thus freeing up your forum post table again. This means less overhead for MySQL to manage when people are browsing your community. Searches are faster, look-ups are faster and everything zips along. Archived topics still show in the forum view as normal. You can still view them as normal. They still get all the skinning as normal so everything works just like a regular topic. Their URLs do not change so SEO is not impacted. However, as they are archived, you cannot reply or follow the topic, so all that is removed from the display which actually saves your server a lot of work! It doesn't have to load up the editor javascript or load up any follow data from the database. In testing, it actually saves 30% database access showing an archived topic. The topic title isn't changed and the URL isn't changed so there's no need for complex 301 code redirects for search engines. If you change your mind or archive a topic without meaning to, you can unarchive a topic. The Admin CP Interface The Admin interface consists of just two screens. The overview deals with a snap-shot of stats and data and the manage rule screen is where you set up which topics to archive off. Let's start with the overview screen. Here you can see how many topics have been archived already via the big progress bar at the top. Underneath is the number of topics to unarchive. In this screen shot, I've decided to unarchive all topics that have had a post within the last 600 days. Here's where you can set the unarchive preferences: Now let's take a look at the rules screen. It's simple enough. There are two tabs "Archive Where" and "Don't Archive Where". This allows you to either set up an inclusive or exclusive list of rules. The green strip at the top shows you how many topics the current settings will archive. This is automatically updated each time you change a setting so you get an on-the-fly update of how many topics to archive when configuring this form. A quick look at the forum filter: And the topic starter filter: The public interface So how do you know when a topic is archived? Simple! When viewing the topic as an administrator, you get the option to selectively unarchive a topic - and this will exclude it from being archived again. A regular member or guest will just see: Summary We really feel that this feature will benefit everyone. You can effectively lock older topics to prevent confusing 'bumps' or replies after a few years Free up your forum post table so it runs speedy again by giving MySQL less old data to have to work with all the time Use a remote server to house the archives so it can freely grow over the years Get a 30% reduction in SQL usage when viewing archived topics which is great news if you get a lot of good search engine placement. Quick and easy to configure Archives are done via a task that runs at regular intervals. It does a small number of posts each execution to prevent timeouts. It doesn't confuse search engines as the title and URL don't change (and even the H1 tag doesn't change). We hope you enjoy using the new archive system!

IP.Board 3.2 was a major new version boasting a new sleek skin with a major overhaul to the user interface. We also added in long requested features such as tagging, the shared media panel, and a brand new moderators control panel along with many more improvements. We have been thrilled with the overwhelmingly good feedback since 3.2's release and we are ready to take IP.Board to the next step by targeting specific needs with laser-like precision. The next version of IP.Board will be 3.3.0. But what is in a number really? Do not worry, we are revising our version numbering so that a major increment reflects any added functionality. The development cycle between 3.1 and 3.2 was lengthy because of the massive changes we made. This cycle will be much quicker. We want you to think of IP.Board 3.3 as improving and refining what we already do - not as a huge update that will require extensive changes. In fact, unlike the 3.2 update, the 3.3 update will not have a new default skin or sweeping code-base changes that impact existing hooks/apps. So lets look at the areas we are targeting. Search Engine Optimization We have had lots of feedback about this area of the software. We have made huge strides in the past by ensuring the correct headers are sent and the HTML is as clean as possible. We even have our free-to-customers product IP.SEO. We are taking this a step further in IP.Board 3.3. We set up a small focus group earlier this year and asked them directly where we can improve and we received some great responses which we will work on. Moderation Key to running your community efficiently is good moderation tools. IP.Board has tons of functionality but sometimes there is a little overlap or areas that are not crystal clear. We will be working on some of the moderation tools to improve that and we are also introducing a major overhaul to a popular moderation feature! Admin CP Our admin control panel is incredibly comprehensive but we are looking to make it a little smoother and easier to use in common areas. We have some specific ideas on how to speed up common tasks which we will implement in 3.3. Large Boards Many of our customers have grown with us and taken their small community into new territory with millions of posts. Other customers have converted to us from a large established community. Either way, there are some specific needs that larger community owners have that we are working on for 3.3. We have an innovative cool new feature currently being written that we know large community admins will love! Refinement As always we continue to refine existing areas of the software. Our development staff continually works through our bug tracker and support tickets to fix reported bugs. Beyond bugs we often make little changes that make a big difference. Simply rewording the text of a button or moving a link to a more logical location can make things work more smoothly. All those little changes add up to the overall polish of the software. We are happy to say that IP.Board 3.3 will not mean a complete new skin and neither should your custom skin need reworking from scratch. Existing modifications and hooks should operate just fine too. Everyone at IPS is very excited about this release and cannot wait to start blogging about the new features and improvements we have implemented. We are shooting for an late first/early second quarter 2012 release date (a release date from IPS!). Keep an eye on our blog for more news soon!

IP.Gallery is our popular photo and movie sharing platform for IP.Board. We've been working on updates and I wanted to take you through several today. You've already read about the bigger features for IP.Gallery 4.2.0 such as tagging, quick navigation, moderators' control panel, album selector and the Admin CP updates. This entry covers a few of the smaller updates - most of which have been requested via our feedback forums. Image View Updates We've made a few cosmetic changes to the view image page to bring it inline with IP.Board 3.2's look and feel. The image title /follow image button is now in the same format as a topic title for consistency. Image Only Global Album We've now made it possible to have a global album that only accepts images and not albums. Sort by title You can now sort an album by image title. This can be set when adding or editing an album as well as being available dynamically. Like and Reputation We've added in the like / reputation button. The screen shot shows the system in the 'like' mode. If you chose reputation mode, it would display the plus and minus buttons as normal. Member's Album We've added in an enforced global album named 'Member's Album'. This is the default parent for any new member albums. This helps to separate the global albums a little and allows you to better set permissions. If you only want your members to create albums in your existing global albums, then you can deny permission via the edit album feature. This wraps up our series of IP.Gallery updates. I hope you've enjoyed them!

IP.Gallery is our popular photo and movie sharing platform for IP.Board. We've been working on updates and I wanted to take you through one today. The IP.Gallery 4 Admin CP Album Manager streamlined down the various Admin CP functionality for managing albums but it was hard to locate specific albums and to drill down through the global album structure. I've completely rewritten the Album Manager and put the focus on finding the albums you need as quickly as possible. I've broken the Album Manager down into two tabs: Global Albums and Member Albums. Each has a context sensitive search bar so you can quickly search through your albums. The global albums display. It now shows sub-albums under the parent album and also shows if the global album has any member albums attached to it. As you'd expect, clicking "Contains X member albums" takes you to the member tab with those albums displayed. The member albums display. Clicking on the owner name will bring up all their albums. It also shows the full parent tree so you don't end up confused if two albums have a similar name but in different areas. You can quickly search for a member's albums via the member tab. The album selector we wrote about previously is also in the Admin CP and works in the exact same way when you need to select an album. I hope you've enjoyed this blog entry. I'm sure you'll all love this feature and it'll make your album management much more enjoyable!

IP.Gallery is our popular photo and movie sharing platform for IP.Board. Today, I wanted to take you through an important part of the IP.Gallery 4.2 update; the album selector. At various places within IP.Gallery, there is a need to select an album. This may be because you're creating a new album; choosing an album to upload into; moving images or moving albums. In the current version, this is achieved with a simple drop down list to allow an album selection. This isn't ideal because it's unclear which albums are yours and which are global albums and when you have a lot of albums, it produces a very long and confusing list of album names. IP.Gallery 4.2 introduces a dynamic album selector that is used everywhere you need to select an album. It offers a much better view of available albums: The selector separates out global albums from member albums. You can also search for albums which is great if you're performing moderation tasks. You can quickly select from recently selected albums easily. It is context sensitive and displays only albums available for the task you're performing. I've recorded a short video so you can see this in action. I hope you've enjoyed this update. It'll certainly make your day to day Gallery tasks much easier! It's also available from the Admin CP too.

IP.Gallery is our popular photo and movie sharing platform for IP.Board. We've been working on updates and I wanted to take you through a few of them today. IP.Board 3.2 introduced many new core features such as tagging and a Moderators' Control Panel. These features were written to allow other applications to take advantage of them easily to unify the various apps. We've introduced these new features into Gallery 4.2. Tagging Tagging allows you to 'tag' an image with data. You can then search these tags to return all matches. This allows you to add secondary categorical data to your images and movies. You can allow your members to add new tags freely or limit them to presets you set up. You can override the presets on a per album basis. You can add tags when adding or editing images. The tags appear under the image name when viewing an image. You can search a tag and find all matching images. Quick Navigation IP.Gallery now supports the quick navigation panel which is launched when you click the icon just below the search box. It contains a list of all Global albums and also a list of your own albums so you can go to an album quickly. Moderators' Control Panel IP.Board added a central control panel for moderators. This makes finding and approving unapproved content much easier than navigating through the forums and apps to locate them. Both comments and images are supported. These additions tie IP.Gallery into the IP.Board framework for a cohesive integrated feel across the products. I hope you've enjoyed this update, we've got more to follow!

Since the release of IP.Board 3.2 a few months ago, our immediate focus has been on fixing the bugs that have been reported and making fairly frequent releases to our customers. We're thrilled that IP.Board 3.2 has been a huge success and we've received a lot of feedback which we've enjoyed reading. Now that the initial wave of bug fixes have been made, we've found the time to add in some functionality based on feedback from our customers. Here are some of the IP.Board enhancements that have gone in for 3.2.3. HTML Emails This has been a very popular request for a long time now and we've included this into 3.2.3. By default it is off, but you can enable it from the Email settings page in the admin control panel. This will also resolve issues with non Latin characters, right to left languages and more. The HTML email wrapper is fully editable via the Look & Feel templates as normal and it automagically converts the current plain text templates into HTML so you don't need to change anything! Import a URL Photo We've had a fair number of requests for a simpler way to import a photo so we've included the ability to import a photo from a URL when in the photo editor. This copies the image to the forums server so it can be checked (to make sure it's actually an image!) and to create the thumbnail copy. Editor Improvements IP.Board 3.2.0 introduced a brand new editor and it really is one of the most complex areas of the software (no, really!). We've put a lot of focus into squashing those annoying BBCode bugs. We've also gone ahead and added the auto-save and 'toggle mode' functionality for editors in the admin control panel. Of course, there are also numerous other bug fixes and improvements including more efficient Sphinx index building, iPad compatibility and more!

Since the very first release of IP.Board, those with a working knowledge of HTML and CSS have been able to alter the look and feel of the board to better match their site. Over the years, we've made many improvements to the skinning system. For 3.2 alone we've added remote skin editing and more modular CSS to make editing much quicker. Last year, we introduced the skin generator for customers with an active license. This has been a very popular service and quickly allows customers to produce a new skin that better matches their site colors. However, we felt that we could do better than this tool and do better than our competitors who allow you to 'blindly' change colors from the Admin CP without seeing the immediate effect it has on the board. Wouldn't it be so much easier to just change the colors while browsing the board? We thought so. Introducing the Visual Skin Editor This brand new innovative new feature allows you to edit the board's colors right from the board itself! You don't need to know CSS, you don't even need to remember hex codes and you don't have to blindly edit oddly named CSS classes from the Admin CP. Live Demonstration As this feature is best demonstrated, I've recorded a short video in which I make a brand new red themed skin in about five minutes using this new feature. The usual disclaimer applies: this is work in progress and contains some rough edges that will be smoothed out before release. As you can see from this video, it's a cinch to create a brand new skin in IP.Board 3.2! If you can point and click and use a basic paint editor on your computer then you're able to use this tool. We're thrilled to announce this feature and look forward to your feedback and questions.

IP.Board was one of the first boards to recognise the importance of attracting visitors via popular social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook. We have matured this integration over the past few years and IP.Board 3.2.0 offers several new enhancements. Firstly, the pop-up dialogs have undergone a facelift to make them easier to use and easier to recognise which social networking account you are posting from. We've used the modal functionality to display these pop-ups to give some more room to display the data. The Facebook pop-up also has the 'Like' button included inside the box. Many customers were uncomfortable with strong Facebook branding appearing prominently on their site. Although in many ways the 'Like' functionality is similar to 'Share', there are some keen differences on how the 'Like' data is displayed in one's Facebook feed so we felt it pertinent to keep both methods. IP.Board was also ahead of the curve in providing a dedicated mobile theme for your users on smart phones. We recently blogged about this but we've gone ahead and added full Facebook and Twitter functionality to the mobile theme. You can now log in using Facebook or Twitter and share topics to Facebook and Twitter. Below are some screen shots of this new functionality in action.

Long before we threw the doors open to our IP.Board 3.2.0 preview board, we blogged about our new text editor. We reasoned that maintaining our own in-house post editor was becoming more time intensive due to the speed at which new versions of all the popular browsers are released. We chose CKEditor in the end because it's a very popular and capable editor that allows one to extend the core code. We had a lot of compliments on the new functionality of our editor but most were put off by its look. We agreed that the default skin is a little ugly and not really suitable for a professional application like IP.Board so we took an afternoon to skin it to fit in better. We're pleased with the end result. In a very short space of time, we were able to match it to the current editor which will give you and your members that familiar IP.Board feel. Not only were we able to easily match the current IP.Board editor look and feel, but we made it easily skinnable via the normal Admin CP interface so skinners won't have to settle for the default look in their skins. After all, if you have a dark or strongly colored skin, you're not going to want to settle for the mundane grey default CKEditor skin. Here's a few screen shots of our CKEditor implementation: It's also worth noting that the CKEditor is 'hidden' in the fast reply area so that it when you're ready to make your post, a simple click into the area expands the textarea into a fully operational editor without it grabbing focus on the initial load. We hope you've enjoyed this blog entry and we're thrilled to be able to make improvements based on your feedback so far. Keep an eye on this blog for some further entries about other tweaks and improvements!

One of our main goals for IP.Board 3.2.0 was to revamp certain areas of the interface to make it easier to interact with the board. We also wanted to put controls at your fingertips rather than make you root through pages of settings. This blog outlines some of these changes. User Control Panel In many ways the user control panel follows the old computing convention of a special area for configuration and settings. The idea being that you keep all configurable elements in a single location. This works well for the most part but there are many times when you have to go looking for a setting to control how the board works often meaning you have to leave the page you're on, change the setting and then return to what you were doing. We wanted to move specific controls to their contextual location. We've also merged a few areas together such as "Settings" and "Profile Information", "Email" and "Password". This reduces the number of links and allowed us to merge the "Profile" and "Settings" panes into one. We've revamped the User Control Panel and stripped down many of the settings and put them in their relevant areas. For example, we've already moved the View New Content settings into the View New Content interface. The attachment system now 'sniffs' out whether the user can use the better Flash based uploader and uses that if no other settings have been set. If the user decides to switch to the basic uploader, then this preference is stored and used on the next page load. You can now disable your personal messenger from within the personal messenger itself. You can elect to do this if you do not want to receive PMs from other members. Once it has been disabled, you can re-enable it by visiting the personal messenger again at any time. There was a single option to remove signatures from the topic view. We've enhanced this to allow you to remove a single user's signature if desired. When you mouseover a post, a little "X" appears in the signature. clicking this brings up a menu. Ignoring a user's signature will add them to the 'Ignore Preferences' page so you can remove them. Other Enhancements The current "Mark As Read" found in the board's footer marks all applications as read which may not be the desired result. In IP.Board 3.2, clicking this link brings up a menu so you can mark a single applications or all applications as read. We've removed the old style forum jump form drop down interface in favour of a much enhanced "Quick Navigation" link that is in the footer of every single page. This Navigation panel is extensible via the application's extensions folder so third parties can update their applications to take advantage of it. The tabs down the side are loaded by Ajax, so you can quickly tab between all your applications to locate the page you want. We've also gone ahead and updated all the areas where the mini profile card was activated with the green icon next to a user's name. Currently you have to click this icon to load the mini profile card. Now, simply hovering over a user's name will make the mini profile card appear. The main user drop down menu has also been enhanced. You can now update your status via the menu which means you can do this from any page on the board. We feel that these small enhancements make a huge difference in your workflow and in the general feeling of the board. Feel free to comment on this blog entry below or, if you have feedback unrelated to this blog entry, start a new topic in our feedback forum. If you have feedback related to changes beyond what this entry is referring to, please start a feedback topic. Be sure to check the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for a running list of announced changes!

IP.Board's Admin CP comes with many useful and powerful tools to edit your board's skin. You can edit virtually all of the HTML as well as the CSS from within the "Look & Feel" interface. This suits most people but sometimes you just want to use your own desktop editing tools so you can take full advantage of your text editor's syntax coloring, search and replace, merge and other tools. We added a tool back in IP.Board 3.1 to enable this in a limited way. If you put the board into 'developer mode', you could export the templates into a PHP file per skin group. This worked reasonably well but many found it tricky to put the board into developer mode as it requires different folders and files to be created and exporting the templates into a single PHP file meant that an external merge tool wasn't effective. We're pleased to say that we've overcome these issues in IP.Board 3.2 by using the popular WebDAV protocol. This protocol is already used by many popular applications like Dropbox to synchronise files between your desktop and their servers. We've used this existing technology to allow you to edit your board HTML and CSS in a totally native format right on your desktop. Indeed as far as your computer is concerned, these are local files! I've taken a short video (sorry, no sound!) that takes you through a template and CSS edit. I've used the mobile skin for this demonstration as we're not ready to reveal the new skin just yet. Here's a quick walk through of what you see on screen. - I log into 'Transmit' which is an OS X FTP/WebDav app. You can use the 'Connect to server...' option in Finder for this task but I find Transmit faster as it caches requests whereas Finder does not. - I use my forum ACP username and password to log in. - I browse the template groups, select 'global' and then globalTemplate.html. - I make a simple edit and save. - I browse the CSS folder and open ipb_styles.css - I make a simple edit and save. - I then refresh the board and you can see the changes have taken instantly. I hope you enjoy this great addition! You can use this with OS X, Linux and Windows and we'll prepare some guides nearer to IP.Board's release on how to make best use of this feature for your OS. I'm sure you'll agree that this offers an excellent way of editing templates outside of the Admin CP that doesn't need a special 'developer mode'. Feel free to comment on this blog entry below or, if you have feedback unrelated to this blog entry, start a new topic in our feedback forum. Be sure to check the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for a running list of announced changes!

We recently blogged about the notification interface enhancements. I'd like to take a moment to go through some further enhancements we've made in this area. We want the notification system to be something you and your members use regularly to keep updated on new events and new content. We've really re-designed the alert system from scratch to make it simpler to use and indeed more useful. First up, lets take a look at a little interface update from the last blog entry: You'll note right away that we're using icons instead of text links and that the 'tab' of the menu is correctly colored to give a full application feel to this system. We've also added a link to the notification 'options' so you can fine-tune your preferences quickly. The more eagle eyed among you will notice a few entries for "New topics" and "new replies" but we'll get to that shortly. Here's what the notification system looks like with new alerts ready to view. We've spent some time looking at the various uses of the system and made some improvements to the preferences form: We've moved 'notification list' as the first column. This is the first stop for many people as they may only want to have a 'red alert' box show when something happens. We've removed the option to send a notification via personal message. We found that virtually no one uses this option and it creates a chain-effect when you have certain notification combinations. Now that the notification 'red alert' box works correctly by only showing an un-acknowledged count which disappears when you click to view the drop down, we felt that having a separate personal message alert just duplicated this. We've also moved the "show an inline pop-up" option directly inside the "Private Messages" section. Now, you will only get an inline pop-up for a personal message and not for other alerts. This was a very popular request! Also, when you receive a new personal message, you no longer get a notification about this. The new inbox alert system works exactly like the notification alert system in that the list retains the most recent items but the 'red alert' box disappears when you click the list. Now that we've moved the 'watched topics and watched forums' over to the 'follow' system, we can tie this neatly in with the notifications system. You can elect to receive an alert when someone replies to a topic you're following just as long as you've selected an 'immediate' notification. This will be great when you want to continue browsing the board but need immediate notification when someone replies to a topic or starts a new topic. I hope you enjoy these further updates to the system and find it a very useful way to be kept up to date with new events! Feel free to comment on this blog entry below or, if you have feedback unrelated to this blog entry, start a new topic in our feedback forum. Be sure to check the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for a running list of announced changes!

We've added a lot of exciting new functionality to IP.Board 3.2.0 already, such as tagging, shared media, enhanced calendars, "like" for posts and much more but we also haven't forgotten the most important part of the user experience: the interface. A good example of re-working certain interface elements to improve work flow or to make a common task less daunting is the forum management screen in the admin CP. We've not added a bunch of new features or radically altered how it works but we feel that we've made a significant improvement on the interface and thus the experience. We felt that the current forum management screen was very cluttered and the forms to create or edit a forum were a little confusing and not a little daunting as you are presented with a whole page of configurable settings and buttons. Here's what the new overview screen looks like: Better use of color and spacing makes it much cleaner and more readable. The create a forum form is now split into three distinct sections to break down the information: Of course, all the usual functionality is still present: the ability to re-order forums and categories, resynchronize data, etc. This is just a single example of our commitment to improve the user experience in all areas of the board. Feel free to comment on this blog entry below or, if you have feedback unrelated to this blog entry, start a new topic in our feedback forum. Be sure to check the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for a running list of announced changes!

We added a notifications system in IP.Board 3.1.0 and it's been a very popular addition allowing your members to select the type of notification they receive for specific events like a new personal message, quoted post, etc. However, we've received a lot of feedback since and we wanted to make some enhancements to address some common issues. I'm happy to say that we've completed a lot of interface work in this area and we feel we have a much better system. The actual functionality hasn't changed. You can still elect to receive and/or a personal message, email or inline notification for certain events and you can still elect to receive an inline 'pop-up' (it's actually an inline javascript modal box but we've retained the familiar phrasing) when you receive a new inline notification. Many members set their notifications up so they receive an inline notification with pop-up when they get a new personal message, for example. Interface As IP.Board 3.2.0 has a completely revamped skin, the actual "PM count" and "Notification" boxes have been removed from the drop down icons and placed with a high visibility count. Please keep in mind that IP.Board 3.2.0 is still in heavy development so this interface may change between now and the first release. Here's what you'll see with some new personal messages and new notifications: And here's what you'll see without any notifications: Regardless of if you have any new messages or not, clicking the inbox link will bring up a list of recent personal messages: Likewise, regardless of if you have any new notifications or not, clicking the notifications link will bring up a list of recent notifications: The inline 'pop-up' has been re-styled: Enhancements The eagle eyed among you may notice that the new inline pop-up contains the proper personal message text and not simply a copy of an email that could be sent out. We've made it so each notification can have 'meta data' attached to link the notification to the piece of content. This means that the pop-up can correctly fetch the live data without any additional mark-up or text. More excitingly, we now mark the notification as read when the personal message has been read. This was a long standing complaint about the system and I'm pleased to say that we've now addressed this. We've also changed how the 'red alert' counts work. In the old system, when you viewed the notification drop down, the count and the menu contents were removed so that on the next click, it would tell you that there were no notifications to view. We've now changed that so the count will disappear when you click the link, but the actual contents will remain so you can go back after a page reload and view it again. Likewise, previously the 'new' personal message counter didn't vanish when you viewed your inbox. Now, when you click the inbox link the alert count will disappear but the drop down will show you the recent messages still. They are highlighted with a blue background in the screenshots above. We feel this makes the alert system much more useful as you truly only get alerted when there is new content you've not acknowledged without losing the read/unread status of each item. Recap To recap the new functionality: - Redesigned inline pop-up window - Inbox link available at the top of the page at all times - Notification link available at the top of the page at all times - 'Alert count' for each only shows content you've not acknowledged. - Once you've viewed the drop down list the alert count is removed until fresh content arrives. - Reading a personal message will mark any associated notification as read. We really hope you enjoy these enhancements and that you find them very useful to keep track of new content or items requiring your attention. Feel free to comment on this blog entry below or, if you have feedback unrelated to this blog entry, start a new topic in our feedback forum. Be sure to check the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for a running list of announced changes!

As work progresses on the new interface for IP.Board 3.2.0, we can now go into some more detail about the new functionality that's already been added. I must of course stress that the only screen shots I can show are closely cropped to not reveal too much and please keep in mind that IP.Board 3.2.0 is still very much in development so some details may change before the public reveal. Tagging An incredibly popular request has been the ability to 'tag' content with special keywords and then find other content tagged with the same keywords. This gives a secondary way to organise data beyond the administrator defined 'categories' and 'forums' set up. We're very pleased to say that this functionality is now available in IP.Board 3.2.0 and we've spent some time to make sure we have a robust and thoughtful implementation. A tale of two modes Our tagging implementation is available in two modes: - Open Mode: Where allowed, your members can create new tags on-the-fly and add them to content. - Closed Mode: Where allowed, your members can select from pre-defined tags and add them to content. We feel this gives you the best of both worlds. Some communities may not need a full tagging system, but you may wish to enforce secondary categorisation via pre-set tags that you as the administrator control. Alternatively, you may wish to throw the doors open and let your members tag their content as they see fit. The choice is yours! As you'd expect, this feature comes with many controls. You can define the minimum and maximum number of tags per item, the minimum and maximum length of each tag and more. You can even override the pre-defined tags on a per app (and thus per-forum) basis giving full control over the tagging system. Prefixes Another very popular feature request is the ability to assign a custom or pre-defined prefix to a piece of content such as a topic or blog entry. In many ways this works very similarly to tagging so we've created a single system that allows the use of a tag as a prefix! As you'd expect, you can disable prefixes and tagging on a per member or per group basis giving you complete control over your members' permissions. You can even set the system to be used solely for prefixes by limiting the number of tags to one and enforcing the use of pre-defined tags. It really is a very flexible system. This screen shot shows how you add tags when creating a new topic. This is in 'open' mode with prefixes enabled. This shows a topic that has been tagged and a prefix added. This shows the search page which is shown when you click a prefix or tag. This shows the Admin CP settings page. This shows the per-forum settings. We hope you enjoy this new functionality. We'll be rolling out tagging in our applications once IP.Board 3.2.0 has been released! Feel free to comment on this blog entry below or, if you have feedback unrelated to this blog entry, start a new topic in our feedback forum. Be sure to check the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for a running list of announced changes!

Of all the features we receive feedback on, view new content receives the most. To many this is their primary browsing page and it's vital that it works accurately. We've had database level topic tracking for many years. It was introduced in 2.0 and has gone through many refinements for efficiency and accuracy. We rewrote the system in IP.Board 3.0.0 as a global framework that all applications can use via a small extensions file. This provided great flexibility and a centralized storage area for the marking data. However, there were some technical limitations which made 'View New Content' a little unreliable in certain situations due to the partial reliance on cookie data to provide a full picture of what is unread. Another common complaint is that partially read topics 'vanish' from the view new content list as they are marked read even when some pages are left unread which leads to confusion about which topics have been fully read. As always, we listen very carefully to feedback from our customers and this feature kept coming up time and time again so I'm very pleased to say that we've tackled these issues head on in IP.Board 3.2! Improved View New Content Tracking We have rewritten large sections of the view new content tracking and parsing to make it much more accurate. We now fetch the data in a large chunk and then post process it against the topic marking table to ensure complete accuracy. This means that you won't have 'read' topics showing up in your view new content list again. Sphinx Usage We have added a setting to enable Sphinx users to use plain SQL View New Content to avoid the 15 minute 'delay' in the results due to the delta indexes being cycled. The SQL view new content is incredibly efficient so you can still use Sphinx for the general search areas but give your members instant view new content results. Improved Topic Marking Purely based on the feedback we've received from our customers, we've implemented a change so that a topic with many pages isn't marked as read until the last page has been loaded. This means you can partially read a topic and come back to it later. We've made it even easier to locate your last read position with a handy link on the topic page. Improved View New Content Overview Another common source of confusion was our two areas "View New Content" and "View Active Content". Most people were confused by the difference and ended up loading the wrong view to locate their unread content. We have now merged these views into one single "View New Content" page. This will instantly resolve that confusion and make it much simpler to fetch the data you are looking for. The view new content page remembers your last selection preferences and stores them in the database so next time you load the view new content page, it'll automatically use those preferences. There's no need to go into your User CP to set them anymore! Filter by "Followed" items only In a future blog entry, we'll discuss the change from "Watched Topics/Forums" to "Follow" but for the purpose of this entry, assume that they are synonymous. In IP.Board 3.2.0 you can now elect to filter the view new content result set by items you follow. This will search forums and topics you are following (in other words, 'watching') and present topics inside forums that are new or topics that you're following that have new posts. This makes the view new content area much more useful as it is delivering just the content that you want to read. Please remember that the screenshots are taken from my development board and I've made little effort to 'style' the new additions as we're planning an interface update to some of these areas. This shows the view new content page showing all unread content from items that I follow. I am following the forum "A Test Forum 2" and the topic "Test counters" but I am not following the forum "Sub Forum". This shows the 'view first unread post' link available on partially read topics. Clicking it takes you to the first post that you haven't read based on marking data stored in the database. We really hope that you enjoy these new features and improvements and please keep posting your feedback, we really do listen. Feel free to comment on this blog entry below or, if you have feedback unrelated to this blog entry, start a new topic in our feedback forum. Be sure to check the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for a running list of announced changes!

In IP.Board 3.0.0 we added a reputation system. This allowed your members to "up-vote" and "down-vote" a post's "reputation". This not only allows you to quickly identify "valued" replies but you can also elect to filter out replies below a certain threshold. This system has worked very well over the past few years and our own community receives many hundreds of positive votes for good or helpful content. It's a nice visual way of saying "Thanks!'. We have extended this system in 3.2.0 to add a new reputation 'mode' selectable from the Admin Control Panel. This new mode works in the same manner as a "like" system often seen on social networking sites. This "like" system is an even better visual way for identifying good content and makes it more personal by leaving your name in the "like" list rather than it being an anonymous donation. Here are some screen shots: Note: the following screen shots have been taken from my local development board. Expect the final interface to change Here you can see that I've "liked" this post along with some other members. Clicking the '1 other" link brings up an inline pop-up showing exactly who has "liked" this post. Here's a brief video showing the system in action: We hope that you "like" this new enhancement to our reputation system and find it brings a new level of interaction with your members. Feel free to comment on this blog entry below or, if you have feedback unrelated to this blog entry, start a new topic in our feedback forum. Be sure to check the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for a running list of announced changes!

This entry rounds up our series of blogs on the new text editor and how we've enhanced other areas of the interface that use it. I recently introduced the new text editor and then showed you some basic integration such as fast reply and instant quote. I want to now show you the last piece of this feature set and resolve a common issue when making a reply. Quite often you're on a busy board such as ours and you're using the fast reply to make a post and when submit the post you realise that others have posted in the mean time making your reply either redundant or out of context. To solve this, IP.Board now checks at regular intervals to see if any new posts have come through and if so, you can add them to the page. This screen shot shows the inline notification stating that there are new replies. Clicking on the link adds the replies into the topic. This video shows the system working. Note, for this demo I increased the polling frequency to every few seconds. So how does it work? Will it crash my server? It's a bit clever and no! When you start typing you trigger the polling action which checks every 3 minutes for new posts. This is a very fast and light query that requires far fewer resources than a simple page refresh. It will continue polling until you either add the reply or an hour has passed. We added this upper limit to prevent instances where a reply is started but then the member changes tabs, etc. I hope you enjoy this feature and all the new functionality we've added in this crucial area. Making posts is the very lifeblood of your forum and making it easier to contribute can only increase the number of posts made. Feel free to comment on this blog entry below or, if you have feedback unrelated to this blog entry, start a new topic in our feedback forum. Be sure to check the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for a running list of announced changes!

One of our main goals for IP.Board 3.2.0 is to streamline the interface and make it easier to work with. We're also taking full advantage of modern techniques to ensure that IP.Board has more of an application feel by eliminating page reloads and using rich web technologies. We've revamped the photo editor to make it easier and simpler to use. The first thing you'll notice is that if you've connected your forum account to Twitter and/or Facebook, you can quickly select to synchronise your photo with the service on the same page. We're also using square cropped images for the user's photo for a more uniform feel and you can adjust the crop viewport if the default center crop doesn't catch all the detail. Here's the new photo editor complete with all the options available to me for my photo. After uploading a new custom image, I can quickly re-crop it to better capture the relevant portion of the photograph. And finally, here's a little video of it in action! We really hope you enjoy this new interface and we're sure it'll make changing your photo an easier and more pleasant experience!

I recently introduced the new text editor in 3.2.0. This new text editor brings a robust rich text editor coupled with custom BBCode and an auto-save feature. Today, I wanted show some user interface and usability improvements we've made in this area. Firstly, where space is tight or where you don't want to be overwhelmed with the text editor, it is shown 'minimised'. The screenshot below shows this minimised state and the editor looks just like a regular HTML text area that everyone is familiar with. Upon clicking the text area to begin making your post, it'll expand into the full editor ready for use: We've also gone ahead and added 'Ajax reply' and 'Ajax quoting'. This improves the responsiveness of IP.Board by removing the page reloads and gives it more of an 'app' feel by posting and updating the page instantly. I've taken a short video of this in action. Please note that you are viewing an in-development feature so the final design is not set for both the board and the editor and also that I'm currently working in "development" mode with CKEditor which means that there is a slight pause as it loads. This will not be the case when we package it up for release. We hope that you enjoy these enhancements to commonly used areas and that it makes a common task more enjoyable. Please do keep in mind that cosmetic style issues and such will be addressed in future blog entries.

Nearly ten years ago, IP.Board shipped with a pretty advanced functional editor that allowed you to quickly format your text in a rough "WYSIWYG" format. This was an exciting technology. As the main browsers started adding better support for this functionality we updated our own code to keep up. The internet is a constantly evolving space and web browsers and technology rise and fall and keeping up with these changes gets harder and harder. This is why we've added a new editor to 3.2.0 that is developed by a dedicated team outside of Invision Power Services. IP.Board 3.2.0 will come with the excellent CKEditor as standard. It's a well developed and well tested editor that is very extensible. It's constantly updated which means that we simply have to update the version that comes with IP.Board to get all the latest fixes. In general use, the new editor is much better at "WYSIWYG" (rich text editing) than our own current implementation and we've extended it further. Please keep in mind that the screenshots and videos below are using a very early development copy of IP.Board 3.2.0 and the editor will likely be skinned in a little more to match IP.Board before we release. All the usual IP.Board tools are present We've written a lot of plug-ins so that no functionality is lost. You can still create custom BBcodes and add buttons to the editor easily via the Admin CP and you can still use your own smilies. Switching between modes We love the new editor and as it supports nearly all major browsers, it's the first choice for replying and adding new topics. However, there are times when you want to edit the BBCode directly and with that in mind, you can switch between rich text editing mode and simple text mode without a page reload. Auto Saving Text A new and really handy feature we've added is auto save. As you type, the editor checks to see if there's any new content and if there is, it'll ping off via Ajax to save what you've written. If anything happens to your page, upon reloading you'll see it's stored your content and you can quickly restore it. You won't lose another post to a browser crash or server time out. IP.Board saves as you go. A refresh without posting allows you to view and optionally restore any content that has been auto saved. We hope that you enjoy the new editor in IP.Board 3.2.0 and the extra functionality we've added. We're excited to use it ourselves!

As the beta process for Gallery continues, I've found the time to implement the mobile theme that can be used by any mobile handset's browser or by the iPhone app we have available for free in the App Store. The mobile theme is lightweight as expected and makes good use of the small cropped thumbs as well as the new 'small' image that is created. This saves a lot of bandwidth which will be a huge relief to those that don't have a good 3G signal. I'll be updating Gallery here later today so you can see this live. The mobile theme will be available with Gallery 4.0 Beta 3. The Gallery homepage: If you scroll down you can access the global and member albums: Album view: Viewing an image: I hope that you enjoy this new functionality when it's available!

IP.Gallery 4.0 is now available to use on our forums! Please keep in mind that this is beta software and still very much work in progress so expect to come across bugs and such. As there is bound to be a lot of feedback, I'll close this blog for comments and kindly ask that you post any feedback in the Gallery forum Please report all bugs in the tracker as usual Please let us know your thoughts!

I've seen a few topics in our feedback forum asking how media uploads are handled in IP.Gallery 4. The current version allows you to upload certain video files via a separate upload interface and displays them using basic embed tags which may ask the viewing user to download special plug-ins such as Quicktime to view them. Video encoding is beyond the scope of IP.Gallery 4.0 as such functionality would need server level software to be installed. Similarly, to fetch a keyframe or thumbnail from a video file needs the same server level functionality. However, media uploading and viewing has been much improved in Gallery 4.0. You can upload videos alongside normal photos and quickly add a thumbnail to the video. If you upload a m4v, certain mov files and flv files, these are played in a Flash video player much like YouTube. I've recorded a quick screencast of the process used to upload a video taken from my iPhone to IP.Gallery 4.0. As always, full screen HD is recommended.