Matt

Some good, practical advice here. Definitely food for thought!

Nice article and highlights many of the new improvements in 4.2.  
Don't forget about the Streamlined Social Sign-in, which adds a social sign-in button at the forum reply. This helps convert guests into members at the point of engagement.
Another often overlooked but built-in tool is the "Popular Now" widget, which can be placed anywhere including the top of the page, bottom of the page, or sidebar.  This widget highlight the hottest topics that are being discussed at the moment and helps first-time visitors jump into the action.  

This is great and all but you know we're all waiting for the 4.3 topics. hehe

Great article Rikki
I am thinking about upgrading to HTTPS, but I have to do some research on it... 
I have no idea how to do....

For anybody else who wants to combine the savings from IPS on a new license with the best prices of the year from the IPS Marketplace, be sure to visit the Marketplace's official Black Friday topic:
 

I like the last two especially.

Hi, if you are looking at cloud plans, the coupon is for 20% off the first month.

Can I use coupon to add application to existing licence?

Bingo! Been waiting for this. Will be buying on Monday, once the deposit for a car I'm hiring this weekend has been returned

screwdriver
tweezers
pliers
soldering iron
multimeter
With them I can always make money for everything else, incl. smartphone, laptop, car, beer, scotch and condom

This creates "double" bugs

I like the last two especially.

My wife, and my 2 daughters, makes 3. Add beer and Jack Daniels and I is a happy bunny

Great ideas, thanks!
That's a great set up and feature suggestion, thank you.

Great ideas, thanks!
That's a great set up and feature suggestion, thank you.

In my expirience unfortunately there is too much false positive bans with "spam defence" even if only "User is a known spammer" option is used, so i'd recommend to use this feature carefully and set it to "Flag the account for manual review" instead of instant ban or preventing from register.
Also it would be great to have option "Allow user to register as normal but mark it as possible spammer for further review" which will allow to register without any restrictions but moderators will able to check this account later (for links in profile, etc).

Thanks for you work IPS! You create very powerful, smart and modern systems!
Our experience of spam blocking gave to us simple rule: spam result cost must be cheaper than working for bypass instruments, needed for start spamming. We have a different user database and registration, outside from framework. So most of systems we can't use. But our solution is simple too - users can start posting something in newbie support and offtopic forums only after obtain more than 10 battles from game. More popular and serious forum categories will open after 100+ game battles. This simple rules are very expensive for spammers for make a spam, which will delete after few minuts before posting (we have moderators, which are working by scheduled plan 24/7).
So, i hope some framework systems (such as promotion) will be simplier for extend for make a custom logics. Custom logics with simple development provide very strong solution for clean up all same platforms from scripts at all and humans too (not to easy to register many accounts with different systems. a lot of service, which provide human captcha solver will be out of boat).
And thanks again! 

We use Sharing to our corresponding Facebook.Group as a method of getting new members. It drives a lot of traffic to the site, and many then Sign Up for broader access. The last snapshot I took, 12% of our new traffic was coming from Facebook.
That is why I was so disappointed not to be able to Promote to a Facebook Group....

Spot on, Rikki. I'm working on an educational project at the minute and the team has an idea that "we can create a Facebook group!" as a way of setting up a support community. Little do they know what I have in store ...

Excellent work IPS.  Your attention to detail on these apps so far is the reason I continue to hold out hope for a full Commerce update. 

Skin tone? Really?

Thank you for all your hard work. Very excited to see the upcoming announcements!

Totally Awesome
Our Community is super Excited for the new Version, and know that it will only make our Community and site better!
Thx IPS 

Excited!

WOW!
This is great, and needed for us little ppl that are still learning how to better our Communities! 
Thx @Rikki