WebCMS

While using the website, do logged-in users refresh cache for guests? Or is the cache meant for guests refreshed only by guests?

Yep, understood. However, on new sites, due to low traffic, guest users almost always get served with cached pages regardless of if it is 5 minutes or 15 minutes (because there is only guest A but no guest B), so 5 minutes would be more ideal and shorter based on activity. They want to see the activity first if it is worth even going through the pains of signing up.

On IC cloud, Guest users who are not logged-in are served with cached pages which are cached for 15 minutes which is too long and not good for conversions/sign-ups. There is currently no way to configure this setting. People want to see the web pages and site activity before they decide to go through sign up. If the pages are refreshing once in 15 minutes, that's a bummer! Using the same setting for ALL the sites, regardless of their activity, is not optimal. It should be based on the site traffic and activity. Please provide an option in the ACP to set Cache-Lifetimes: 5 minutes, 10 minutes or 15 minutes. Site operators will choose an ideal cache lifetime based on the site traffic and activity which are controlled per-site using PHP. This will not disable caching but allows the minimum lifetime to be set to 5 minutes for guest users. For newer sites with least activity, 5 minutes is very ideal. 15 minutes will kill newer sites.

15 minutes is too high and not good for conversions/sign-ups. People want to see the web pages and activity before they decide to sign up. If they are refreshing once in 15 minutes, that's a bummer. Creating a request for an optimal solution for this.

How much is the cache lifetime for guest users? For how many minutes are the pages cached?

On IC cloud, Guest users who are not logged-in are served cached pages. Any way to disable cached pages to guests who are not logged-in and serve live data?

I turned off signatures for members but want them to see signatures of other groups who have signatures enabled. Because members don't have signatures enabled, they don't have access to View Signatures switch on the Signature page under Account Settings because the Signature menu itself is not rendered for members to access the View Signatures switch. Maybe, the Signature menu and page should be rendered with View Signatures switch but the Signature box should not be rendered for members with this config? It may be graceful to have this switch at the group level too in ACP. Most members never visit their Account Settings to turn on the switch (even if it is available) and never get to see others' signatures. Please clarify...

There is a permission to "Show signatures to guests?" under Profiles in the ACP and the signatures are visible to guests with this enabled. But the signature of other users/mods is not visible to logged-in members as this setting is at the user-level accessible only in the ACP > Member > Edit Preferences. It is not practical to configure this setting for each registered member in the ACP. I guess the permission "Show signatures to" should have the checkbox list of all groups (Administrators, Moderators, Members, Guests, etc) instead of just Guests.

Cross-posting of articles as forum topics functionality currently has some issues - The entire article body along with a link to the original article is cross-posted into topic (the link to article will show the exact same full body content). Cross-posting the entire article body may get penalties from search engines for duplicated content. It is perfectly fine to post a link+snippet to another content in SEO terms. The content in the forum topic can also go out of sync if the original article is modified which is not graceful. A new option may be provided to post just an excerpt/snippet OR the full article body (current default) along with the link to the article. If possible, the link may be embedded in the topic so it will include an excerpt in the embedded box. If the article is posted by the Admin, it gets cross-posted as a forum topic automatically by the Admin user but the same Admin user is not able to edit the cross-posted forum topic (to convert its posted body content into an embedded link to the article). Cross-posted forum topic can only be edited if the original article was posted by a mod/user. However, this behavior of editability is inconsistent as it seems to be using some caching as it shows the Edit menu item at times but not always. Even if a user posted the article that got cross-posted to a forum as a topic, neither the user nor the admin are able edit the forum topic at times (but again, it works sometimes). Currently, it can cross-post every article to only "one" specified forum which is not optimal. The article posting form should have a Forum dropdown option to select to which forum the article should be cross-posted into. If the optional forum to cross-post is not chosen on the Article form, it should preferably not get cross-posted (this approach makes the cross-posting option dynamic per-article and the forum to cross-post setting at Articles level in ACP obsolete). Alternatively, if the forum to cross-post the article into is not chosen (in the optional forum dropdown on the Article form), it should cross-post to the default forum set in the Articles in ACP. TIA

Or, if the forum to cross-post is not chosen on the Article form, it should not get cross-posted (this approach makes the forum to cross-post setting at Articles level in ACP obsolete).

As for issue #3, if the forum to cross-post the article into is not chosen (in the optional forum dropdown on the Article form), it should cross-post to the default forum set in the Articles in ACP. This way, the cross-posting option is dynamic per-article or fallback on default forum.

I've seen analytics of a couple of forums including my own and forums module always gets most views and forum is the main/home page on most sites. As you are aware, there are a few types of forum sites. Specific forums like IC or dev sites who develop IC apps, general forums, legal forums, gaming forums... For forums like IC or IC devs, they just need a couple of forums revolving around their very product and they are done. There won't be anything else to discuss other than their product. And due to the single product/subject, they may be having a few more views on their articles and blogs also because there are people to write blogs/articles but forums will always be higher in terms of page views. I might have visited the IC blogs maybe a couple of times so far but forums mostly. For general forums dealing with all kinds of subjects, a couple of forums will not cut it. A few dozen forums may suffice. When I mixed up subjects like "Food & Wine", "Health & Fitness", "Software & Hardware" into single forums to have fewer forums, it still ended up with more than 50 forums. There are large forum sites having more than 360 subforums and running for over 15 years now. Nobody visits, writes or reads blogs or articles on general forums (except may be by admins/mods out of their own interest for SEO). Cross-posting links to new articles are likely to instill interest in them among users. On general forum sites, users have a problem, they come and post a thread, get the solution to their problem and they disappear for a while until they encounter another problem (except some die-hard experts who linger). On specific forums like IC, we need to keep checking for any product updates, tech/known issues, workarounds, etc. constantly to keep our sites running smoothly. On specific sites like IC and legal forum sites, topics/messages/etc. are locked immediately or after 10 minutes of posting due to documentary/evidentiary/contractual value of the posted content and prevent tampering. On general forums, we allow users to edit the posted content unlimitedly for a better UX. Blogs and articles have /blog and article/ in their URLs which may be treated differently by search engines for scoring the content's value as these are usually written by experts after doing due research. Does Discovery Feeds mean Similar Content widget? If so, we cannot cram a lot into it, maybe 10-25 topics tops. That's not enough when a general forum site has dozens of topics posted every day and there can be dozens or even hundreds of similar content. Cross-posting of articles as forum topics may already be used by other clients. However, it currently has some issues - Even if we turn it off, it keeps cross-posting every article as a forum post and doesn't function as expected. If the article is posted by the Admin, it gets cross-posted as a forum topic by the Admin user but the same Admin user is not able to edit the cross-posted forum topic (to convert the posted body content into a link to the article). Cross-posted forum topic can only be edited if the original article was posted by a mod/user. It can cross-post every article to only one specified forum which is not optimal. The article posting form should have a Forum dropdown option to select to which forum the article should be cross-posted into. Cross-posting the entire article body may get penalties from search engines for duplicated content. The content can also go out of sync if the original article is modified which is not graceful. A new option may be provided to post just a link to the original article instead of the entire body. It is perfectly fine to post a link to another content in SEO terms. If these issues are resolved, general forum sites who want to use cross-posting articles as forum topics feature would use it.

Correct. Most often, users don't care to add tags even when the topic is highly sensitive for workplace safety (Eg: NSFW) and even if it takes only one or two clicks. I meant to say, it should add the specified Tag and also make it as its Tag-Prefix (optionally) as part of the topic-posting logic without the user having to do these steps manually so it is all automatic with a better UX for a consistent behavior and predictable results. It makes sense when there can be only one tag for the specified forum. In this situation, the tags can be made readonly so user doesn't have to deal with them. Also, any topics moved into this specific forum should have its tags overwritten by the defined tag / tag-prefix. If the topic is moved out of this specific forum, its tag / tag-prefix should be cleared (or if the target sub/forum has only one tag defined, it should follow the above behavior again). Tags are useful to connect to other content in Similar Content widget.

While posting a topic into a specific sub/forum which can have one (and only one) fixed/pre-defined tag, it would be ideal to automatically assign the singleton tag as a Tag-Prefix for a better UX (as opposed to offering the dropdown of all irrelevant/default tags to choose from).

Similar to how RESTful APIs are implemented using versioning for external clients, will there be an option for users to switch between v4 and v5 UIs pointing to the same database? For instance, the new v5 UI could be pointing to same the doc-root while the v4 UI could be relocated to /old. Users could still use /old for v4 UI until they get used to v5 UI for which /old is not required. Or more ideally, the /old could be stored in the session as a preference so both UIs can be pointed to doc-root. Site owners could set up an Announcement deadline by which the /old version will not be available to users and they should get used to the new version before that. Sites like Google offer such feature with an option to switch back-n-forth whenever they release new versions - New UI Switch to Classic UI That would make the transition seamless for site owners and users.

How often can we request for a site backup on IC cloud? Please implement a backup feature inside ACP so we can do it ourselves. Another feature to backup just the configuration of the site without the member data, posting data (forum topics, articles, blog entries, events) would be nice so that we can export the config setting data and use it to start another forum site quickly.

I was using a separate Chrome profile where this issue manifested. Trying the other profile worked fine. Cleared cache and it seemed to have resolved the issue.

When the Topics view is filtered using a Fluid View filter checkbox, it shows the Moderation toolbar at the bottom saying "With 1 selected" even though no topics are selected. Clicking [] Select Rows dropdown in the list header and selecting “None” does not remove the toolbar. Clicking the Home/logo link retains the moderation toolbar (URL has /?forumId=n). Refreshing the page makes the toolbar go away temporarily (URL has /?forumId=n). Clicking logo brings back the toolbar. Unselecting all the filter checkboxes makes the toolbar go away (URL points to home /). Seeing this issue only today.

In ModCP, it would be ideal to display the counts of pending items for each menu item on the left and bolden the menu items for a visual cue. For instance - Reported Content Approval Queue (15) Deleted Content (5) Member Management (3) Warnings Topics (7) Posts (12) Blog Entries Articles (2) Article Comments ... Without the above, we have to click on each menu item to see what's pending.

In email notifications, there are 3 links back to the website as "http://website.com". Where is it getting this value from? Why can't it use the actual web address of the site in IC cloud along with https://www. ? However, the Logo, buttons, Notifications and Privacy Policy links are marked up properly.

It works. However, it would be graceful to provide this option (for Moderators to approve members) in a future update within ModCP to limit moderators to their ModCP UI and in one place for a unified experience instead of switching between ACP and ModCP which is not intuitive. It will also keep mods out of ACP.

Will try that. Thanks.

That may be ideal for a site like invisioncommunity.com or developer sites that develop plugins/apps. That's not ideal for every site. Most sites usually give restricted Mod permissions, leave alone admin rights.

For approvals by moderators, there should be an option in the ACP - (o) Moderators should wait for new members to confirm their email address before they can approve account However, Admins should be able to wait for confirmation before approving new members or Admins should be able to approve new accounts even before receiving the member confirmation. Generally, there is a single Admin and multiple moderators. In the event the admin is unavailable, this feature will help with new user account approvals in a timely manner for a better UX

When I set the Login & Registration > Registration > "Validation method for new accounts" to (o) Email and administrator validation (The user will be sent an email containing a special link they have to click to validate their account after which an administrator will need to manually approve the account from the Admin Control Panel) I assume, after registration - An email is sent to the new user to validate/confirm their email address (similar to a double opt-in) Only after the above step, Administrator should approve the account However, the step 1 above is not performed in the workflow as the new user never receives an email to validate/confirm their email address and the account is waiting for admin to manually approve/ban the account. At this stage, admin has no clue if the email is valid/existing (username+domain) and has only the options to approve/ban. If the email is incorrect, future emails to the user will bounce as undeliverable and likely result in the mail server getting blacklisted as a spamming server by DNSBL/RBL resulting in subsequent emails to anyone ending up in users' spam folders. https://clearout.io/blog/email-blacklist-removal/ Please resolve step # 1 above.