Matt

Just for clarification, Pages is getting a substantial update for v5 and is a core part of our community platform strategy.

Time machine to 2025 and download v5.1 🤣

Yeah, until they scrap pages too 😄

No, live topics are not cached.
The vast majority of traffic for any forum is guest traffic. This can be from bots, as well as people coming in from external links. We have some communities that may have 1500 people online, but 10,000 guests. Caching via CDN allows us to serve that traffic without touching any processing (PHP/MySQL/Redis, etc) for maximum efficiency. The cache lasts for around 15 minutes which is absolutely fine for communities. If your guests want 'live' updates, then simply encourage them to sign up. Logged in members will be served the live pages, not the CDN cache.

As an addendum, I would say that a core part of any community strategy is to convert guests into members. Members have more tools including notifications to make your site more 'sticky'.
Allowing guests too much scope will reduce the number of sign-ups you ultimately get. There is a balance of course, I dislike things like restricting viewing attachments (often photos) to members only and restricting the number of topics they read, but finding ways to encourage registration is a good long term strategy.

As an addendum, I would say that a core part of any community strategy is to convert guests into members. Members have more tools including notifications to make your site more 'sticky'.
Allowing guests too much scope will reduce the number of sign-ups you ultimately get. There is a balance of course, I dislike things like restricting viewing attachments (often photos) to members only and restricting the number of topics they read, but finding ways to encourage registration is a good long term strategy.

Interesting. Thank you for the clarification.

No, live topics are not cached.
The vast majority of traffic for any forum is guest traffic. This can be from bots, as well as people coming in from external links. We have some communities that may have 1500 people online, but 10,000 guests. Caching via CDN allows us to serve that traffic without touching any processing (PHP/MySQL/Redis, etc) for maximum efficiency. The cache lasts for around 15 minutes which is absolutely fine for communities. If your guests want 'live' updates, then simply encourage them to sign up. Logged in members will be served the live pages, not the CDN cache.

No, live topics are not cached.
The vast majority of traffic for any forum is guest traffic. This can be from bots, as well as people coming in from external links. We have some communities that may have 1500 people online, but 10,000 guests. Caching via CDN allows us to serve that traffic without touching any processing (PHP/MySQL/Redis, etc) for maximum efficiency. The cache lasts for around 15 minutes which is absolutely fine for communities. If your guests want 'live' updates, then simply encourage them to sign up. Logged in members will be served the live pages, not the CDN cache.

No, live topics are not cached.
The vast majority of traffic for any forum is guest traffic. This can be from bots, as well as people coming in from external links. We have some communities that may have 1500 people online, but 10,000 guests. Caching via CDN allows us to serve that traffic without touching any processing (PHP/MySQL/Redis, etc) for maximum efficiency. The cache lasts for around 15 minutes which is absolutely fine for communities. If your guests want 'live' updates, then simply encourage them to sign up. Logged in members will be served the live pages, not the CDN cache.

Glad you were able to resolve the issue 🙂 .

In case anyone else has this issue, I figured it out. There is a separate Logo setting for e-mail headers. I was thinking it was sharing the same header as the forum theme -- this is not the case.
Found this in General > Settings > E-mail Settings when looking for something unrelated. 😄 I believe the behavior is it pulls in the first logo you upload and keeps that setting, as when I changed the forum theme to a smaller logo, the large email header remained. Then I uploaded the smaller logo here. Just make sure to hit Save!

Now a normal size!!

This is the support forum and we can only inform you on what is possible today. If you want to request things for the future, please use the Feedback forum as mentioned. In order to separate types of requests and ensure they are properly reviewed, they need to go in the proper places. I am sorry you do not like that but it is the current steps. You don’t want feature request cluttering up support requests and potentially missing something important like a site being down, right? So organization is important.  
Please remember that our developers do not work on projects out of thin air. There is quite a significant amount of planning involved to build a software like ours. To voice your suggestions, the Feedback forum is how you get your idea started. 

Ah, ok. I can disable it programmatically for cloud clients.

Awesome changes as usual, very well made.
Looking forward to them

Yeah, I think we can stick in a bug report for this. It does make a pretty big loophole for spammers and bad actors.

Yeah, I think we can stick in a bug report for this. It does make a pretty big loophole for spammers and bad actors.

Yeah, I think we can stick in a bug report for this. It does make a pretty big loophole for spammers and bad actors.

Yeah, I think we can stick in a bug report for this. It does make a pretty big loophole for spammers and bad actors.

Really like the improvement to Tabs on Profiles on mobile, with the horizontal scroll. 
The dropdown menu in v4 basically hid all of the tab options unless you knew of the tabs in advance.

Do we get…

I truly appreciate all the effort that was made to simplify the code to keep it lightweight, while in the meantime modernizing the UI. It looks very sleek.

As showcased in our past blogs, Invision Community 5 introduces a brand new, modern interface which brings improvements to performance, aesthetics and mobile usability.
An optional side navigation panel, new view modes, light/dark modes, customizable header layouts, a search modal and a mobile navigation bar are some of the things we've showcased previously. Today, lets take a closer look at some other miscellaneous changes that we've been working on while developing Version 5, including some of the code reductions and performance improvements that we've been able to achieve in the process.
For those of you who are developers, we'll also give some simple explanations of how (and why) we've implemented these changes.
 
Widgets
Sidebar widgets are perfect for displaying content feeds, featured members, announcements, advertisements and more on your page. In version 4 however, the widget column would often become an empty space once the widgets had been scrolled past:
  widgets-v4.mp4  
In version 5, widgets now stick to the screen once the last widget has been reached, ensuring your readers have more convenient  access to your widgets rather than a void space:
  sticky-widgets-v5.mp4  
 
Messenger
The Messenger is a great way to reach out to members when a private chat is more appropriate than a topic. Inspired by modern email clients, the messenger in Version 5 has been revamped with a full-height, sticky inbox, a longer message snippet, mini profiles and a more polished UI - all with a 25% reduction in CSS and a 100% reduction in Javascript.
messenger-v5.mp4
 
Sticky elements
We've mentioned sticky elements a couple of times now, so lets take a look behind the scenes at how they're created, and some of the performance improvements with Version 5. Traditionally, sticky elements were created using Javascript which would calculate the position of the element on the page and adjust it's stickiness every time the page was scrolled. Scroll events can be quite taxing for browsers, and when it comes to Javascript, the less, the better (especially when aiming for great page speed scores)!
With that in mind, all sticky elements are now handled using sticky positioning via CSS, which is a native and much more performant way of controlling these elements. We've been able to replace an entire 400 line Javascript component with just 3 lines of CSS.
 
Grids and Masonry
Grids have previously been handled in a similar fashion. Javascript would scan all elements within a grid to determine how many could fit on a single line, and would then shuffle these elements into position after the page was loaded or resized. CSS has since introduced its own grid properties, which has allowed us to replace more than 350 lines of Javascript with just a few lines of CSS, resulting in more performant page rendering and nicer looking grids (especially on small-medium displays such as mobiles and tablets).
 

 
Fun fact: We first introduced a similar performance improvement to "masonry grids" in our Gallery update from January this year, by replacing more than 400 lines of Javascript with, you guessed it, just a few lines of CSS.
 

 
 
 
Click targets
We wanted to make Version 5 as simple as possible to navigate, and one way of doing that has been by implementing larger click targets. Clicking anywhere inside an entry in a table or grid will now take you to that entry (you can still click on other links like normal within the click target, such as subforums or profile links). Click targets are optional and can be disabled via your theme settings if necessary.
 
click-targets.mp4
 
Data Lists (tables)
Speaking of tables, they too have been revamped. Tables automatically adapt to the space they've been assigned to (for those curious, this is done using CSS container-queries), so they're always neat regardless of the screen size, with no overflow or squashed layouts. Behind the scenes, the two columns below are created with identical code, yet they're quite different visually due to the size which they've been allocated. Even with these improvements, tables have received a 25% reduction in CSS.
 

 
Profiles
Profiles have been polished for Version 5 and include some nice improvements such as sticky widgets and tabs. 
profile-desktop.mp4
 
On mobiles, the side column collapses into a carousel, and the sticky tabs allow you to easily flick between content types without scrolling to the top of the page.
profile-mobile.mp4
 

Tabs
You may have noticed in the above clip that tabs on mobiles are now scrollable, compared to a dropdown menu from version 4. We made this change to ensure that tabs are given more equal exposure on small devices, and have managed to reduce the CSS by a whopping 80%.
 
Carousels
Last and certainly not least, are carousels. Carousels are great for displaying large amounts of data in a confined space and they've been rewritten from scratch for version 5. Previously, a Javascript library was used to create the "scroll effect", however this has never been the smoothest experience on laptop trackpads and touch devices.
In version 5, carousels are powered by native smooth-scrolling and scroll-snapping, which results in a much nicer user experience, especially on touchscreens. We've been able to remove a staggering 95% of the Javascript, substituting it with just a few lines of CSS.
 
carousel.mp4
 
To be honest, we've only just scratched the surface here! In addition to these changes, we've modernized (and reduced code) in almost every component throughout the suite including avatars, cover photos, dropdown menus, forms, inputs, buttons, lists, off-canvas menus, side menus, columns and more!
Combined, these changes result in not only a significant reduction in code, but also a polished UI that performs smoothly on desktop and touch devices. We're excited to continue modernizing Invision Community well into the future as new technologies and techniques become available to us, and are looking forward to getting it in your hands in 2024.

View full blog entry

Hi @Dreadknux
Funnily enough, this is something we discussed internally a few weeks ago. We're working hard on revamping Pages at the moment, so we'll be able to provide more information in the future about widget customizations 🙂 

It would be great if, when we refer someone to another topic by embedding a solved forum topic, the embedded topic would show that it is solved.