Gary Lewis

For all that may be watching this, Marc is investigating in the background, as am I. And I found one more data point that may be worth other Invision Cloud customers checking, which I've shared with him. Our Google Search Console Performance graph shows a very abrupt drop in Google impressions and clicks around May 4–6, months before the August bot-mitigation incident we've been discussing. Impressions went from roughly 2,000/day to almost nothing and have never recovered. Search Console shows no Manual Actions and no Security Issues. I'm attaching the graph. If anyone else here runs an Invision-hosted community, it might be useful to look at your 12-month Search Console Performance graph and see whether anything similar happened around early May. I'm not saying this was an Invision-wide event. I'm trying to determine whether the timing is unique to our community or shared by others.

Sorry, I missed that. But I have now responded to the ticket as well.

Hi Marc, Yes, please pass this on. I agree that the TameTheBots test Chris ran may have been classified as an AI bot. We used that only to demonstrate that Invision's Cloudflare layer is returning a 403 challenge to some automated traffic. But that is separate from the original issue. The 171 examples I supplied came directly from Google Search Console's Crawl Stats report for bullnoseforum.com. Google identifies those as Googlebot crawl requests, and reports that they received "Other client error (4XX)" responses. Cloudflare's current documentation also distinguishes crawler behavior by purpose and notes that some crawlers may have more than one behavior, including Search and Training. So an "AI bot" classification in Cloudflare does not by itself establish that the request was unrelated to legitimate search crawling. So the question is not whether the TameTheBots request was an AI bot. The question is why Google's own Search Console records legitimate Googlebot requests receiving 4XX responses from the forum. Please do pass this on for further investigation. Thanks, Gary

Hi all, Looking for anyone else seeing this, or who has already solved it. The problem: Google Search Console shows severe indexing failure on our Community in the Cloud-hosted forum, bullnoseforum.com. Google knows about roughly 39,000 URLs, but currently only 2 are indexed. Crawl Stats shows about 84% of Googlebot requests over the last 90 days failing with “Other client error (4XX).” This is not new. Invision Support has confirmed that automated traffic was temporarily blocked during platform instability in late August, and our Search Console data shows very large failure spikes in late August and again around September 1–4, with failures continuing through at least September 15. What we have ruled out on our end: Our own Cloudflare account is DNS-only, not proxied. Bot Fight Mode is off, there are no WAF or rate-limiting rules, and there are no Security Events because our Cloudflare zone is not in the HTTP request path. In Invision AdminCP, robots.txt does not block /forum/ or /topic/; there are no per-page noindex overrides; live pages do not return an X-Robots-Tag; there are no banned IP addresses; and the login, posting, and registration protections do not apply to ordinary anonymous page requests. What we found directly: A third-party fetch/render test against one of the affected URLs returned HTTP 403 with cf-mitigated: challenge and Cloudflare’s “Just a moment...” challenge page. Since our own Cloudflare zone is DNS-only, that challenge is coming from Cloudflare in front of Invision’s hosted infrastructure. I realize that test is not Googlebot itself, so by itself it does not prove Googlebot is being challenged. The unresolved issue is that Google Search Console itself records real Googlebot requests to ordinary public forum and topic URLs receiving 4XX responses. One example: September 15, 2026, 3:26 PM PT https://bullnoseforum.com/forum/23-for-sale-trade-or-free-to-a-good-home/ Search Console records that Googlebot request as “Other client error (4XX).” What Support has said: We were initially told that automated traffic had been blocked during the August platform instability and Google may have been caught temporarily. We were later told that AI bots are blocked but Google is exempt. Most recently, Support stated that “we do not block Google search bots to any degree on our platform.” That leaves us with a contradiction we have not been able to resolve: Google says Googlebot is receiving 4XX responses, while Invision says Googlebot is exempt from its bot blocking. There is also a recent Cloudflare change that may be relevant to failures from September 15 onward, although it cannot explain the August failures. On September 15, Cloudflare changed its handling of mixed-use crawlers such as Googlebot. A Training setting of Block now blocks those crawlers for search as well, while the new Disallow AI Training setting is intended to permit search crawling while refusing AI training. Has anyone else using Community in the Cloud checked Google Search Console Crawl Stats and seen a similar pattern of 4XX failures? If so, did you determine what was generating them? And have you gotten it fixed? We are essentially non-existent to Google. Thanks, Gary

And I should have said I'd be happy if both menus stayed, but can live with just the one that we've drilled down into.

Well, I guess I didn't ask that correctly and confused everyone. But I've learned a lot and taken a different direction so want to restate the problem. We've quit trying to do this via CSS and are now trying to do it via menus. What we have is three top-level menu items: Forum as a sub-menu with other forum-related stuff under it, like an About page, Activities, and Browse Library as a sub-menu with other library-related stuff under it, like a different About page, the start of a database to serve as "card catalog" to tell people where to go About Bullnose Enthusiasts - a page with nothing under it. This works, but when we click on something in the dropdown below either Forum or Library both Forum and Library go away and all we are left with is About Bullnose Enthusiasts and an empty More. It seems like we are doing something incorrectly as we expected at least the menu section we are in, either Forum or Library, to show - if not both. Can anyone tell me what we are doing wrong? Please?

@opentype - Thanks! We will give that try. It'll just be a page title and URL. There will be three fields, with the 3rd being metadata, but I'll have to enter that later.

Thanks

We’re using a Pages database as a card catalog and need to seed a few hundred records from a CSV (Title, URL, & metadata). We don’t need a new content app — just a bulk importer. Is that something you’d consider building, and if so, what would be the ballpark cost?

@Cedric V Does your Community Items allow CSV file import into a database? As said, we have ~950 pages on Weebly and it would be nice if we didn't have to manually enter all that info manually.

Is it possible to import a CSV file into a database on V5? If we go with Pages we will have a hybrid environment for quite some time with both Pages and Weebly since we have ~950 pages on the latter. So we are considering building a "card catalog" that will list all the pages, regardless of where they reside, have some metadata so users can search, and a URL to get them to it. But it sure would help if we could import a file.

As you know, we’re working with a trial of Invision Community v5 Pages as we are considering bring a portion, if not all, of our huge Weebly website over. And are intentionally trying to separate navigation between Pages (reference/library content) and Forums (community content) so it looks like our forum is standalone from the "library" on Pages. On desktops we’ve successfully controlled menu visibility by app context (Pages vs Forums) using theme CSS. However, we’re seeing inconsistent behavior on mobile and tablet iOS devices, and before making architectural decisions I’d like to confirm what is and is not supported by the platform. What we’re observing • iPhone (Safari and Chrome): When viewing Pages content, the hamburger menu still shows forum-related items (Activity, Browse, About), even though those items are hidden via CSS elsewhere. • iPad (portrait and landscape): When viewing Pages content, the “More” menu appears but is empty. This is probably because the items that would normally populate “More” have been intentionally hidden via CSS; however, the responsive menu still renders the “More” container itself. We have not yet tested Android devices, so we are not assuming identical behavior there. Questions In Invision Community v5, are the mobile hamburger menu and tablet “More” menu rendered from the same theme/DOM layer as desktop navigation and therefore intended to be fully controllable via custom CSS? Or are the mobile and tablet navigation elements generated by responsive or device-specific logic that is not designed to be selectively modified or hidden via CSS on a per-app (Pages vs Forums) basis? Is it supported to hide or alter mobile and tablet navigation items based on app context using CSS alone? Is the behavior described above on iOS (persistent hamburger items; empty “More” menu after items are hidden) considered expected behavior or a known limitation of responsive navigation in v5? A clear explanation of what is and is not supported across desktop, tablet, and mobile would be very helpful, as this will determine whether we attempt to present Pages content as visually standalone on smaller devices or accept unified navigation there. Thanks for the clarification. Gary

Thanks, Cedric. I'll check it out.

No, I don't think you told me. I'm interested, but am not sure how it fits. Our documentation/libary isn't community-sourced. I've created the ~950 Weebly pages over the last 10 years, keeping them pretty much to Ford-sourced documentation. So the "card catalog" will determine whether the user is going to a document on Pages or one on Weebly, and that is something I'll set up. I've read what you have on the page, but it seems mostly targeted for community-sourced things. Right? Maybe I'm missing something?

Ok guys, thanks. Here's more background and then the plan to try this afternoon. I currently have an Invision forum and a huge documentation website on Weebly - both for Ford's 1980 - 86 light trucks. But the documentation site serves all owners of those trucks across all forums and Facebook pages, not just our forum on Invision. So we'd like it to stand alone - at least visually if not actually. We've come to realize that Weebly lacks tools that would help the documentation effort, like the database function which Pages has. But Pages doesn't have some things that Weebly does, like picture galleries. And no one has a migration tool to move a Weebly site. So we are looking at a hybrid, with some of the documentation on Pages and some on Weebly, and a database (we call it the card catalog) on Invision that sends the user to the right document, whether on Invision or Weebly. Over time we'll probably manually migrate some Weebly pages to Invision, and most new documentation will be done on Invision - save for picture galleries unless or until Invision has that capability. But the "separation" is the issue. As said, we got it working via CSS looking at navitem id, but that is fragile. So now we are looking at using the URL as it appears to be fairly straightforward and stable. Comments? Better ideas?

If we had a Forum instance and a Pages instance then their menus would be separate. But does that require separate licenses and cost?

Thanks, Jimi. @Cedric V suggested that we use CSS to hide menu items, and we've proven that concept via the code shown below. But, as you can see, the code relies on a stable menu as it calls for a specific menu item to be hidden, so that means we'd have to lay the menu out once and for all times or go back and edit the code. So having Forum and Pages be separate sounds cleaner. Is that something Invision has to do? /* ========================= NAV / MENU VISIBILITY ========================= */ /* BB (Pages + Databases): hide nav item 46 */ body[data-contentclass^="IPS\\cms\\"] [data-navitem-id="46"] { display: none !important; }

I have a forum on Invision and a very large reference library on another platform. The library serves a large audience beyond that of the forum, and I want to keep it at least appearing to be separate from the forum. However, I'm considering moving at least some of the library to Pages, and worry that having the two applications sharing a global header will tell everyone that they are really joined at the hip. One approach I've considered is to use conditional logic in the header to present different menus/headers depending on the application. But I worry that upgrades in Invision will break the logic in the future, and I'm not really able to make changes once someone else gets it working. And at 78 years old I'll need to pass this on to someone else some day, and doubt she or he can maintain it either. So, how sustainable would that approach be? Or are there other or better ideas to keep the two separate - at least in the view of the user?

Hey guys, just to let you know we've figured this out. In our trial of Pages V5 we've created a database for Ford's technical service bulletins, TSBs. The user can sort the database by applicable year and/or category, like body or electrical, and then see all the TSBs that apply. Click on any TSB and the code hands the URL of that TSB to the Adobe API and the TSB then opens on the page - quickly. The user can then search for anything in the TSB, use any bookmarks that have been added, or download the file itself. This is a really powerful tool for our documentation library which, by the way, is the place on the internet for Bullnose (1980 - 86) Ford trucks. (So much so that we are recognized by Ford.)

The V5 editor is missing the indentation function, something I use freqently in V4. And no, the tab function doesn't do the same thing as it doesn't indent the subsequent lines. Please add it back.

Thanks! I'll go look...

That is out of my wheelhouse, but might not be out of that of Chris, our IT guru. I'm going to ask him to get involved, maybe not on here but at least on our forum. As for Adobe, you may be right. It worked two days ago but yesterday I added another 40 TSBs and that was the straw. But it gave me the heads-up that I was going in the wrong direction. Could I see your community? Maybe that would help me understand how to do that. As for the iframe/embed, if the source is on Google it is easy for them to download it after viewing it and determining that's what they want. But maybe that's not the best way. We have owner's manuals, brochures, sections of the factory shop manuals, sections of the Master Parts Catalogs (6000+ pages), copies of the "dealer facts books" which Ford gave to the dealerships each year, etc. And in the background I personally have copies of the MPCs in microfiche, paper, & DVD. And paper copies of many other Ford pubs that I hope to eventually get on the site. But I need to stop and figure out the best way to do that, and so far I've found 3 that aren't it. My worry is that Edison said he found 10,000 ways it won't work. ☹️

Are you British? I was quite au fait with that terminology when we lived in London. Anyway, if you could have someone look at that I'd appreciate it. I've found several ways not to present all the info I have, but there has to be a good way. And if Community is it then I'm ready to sign up and start migrating my Weebly website. I've not found the compelling reason to do so yet, but if we/you can solve this problem that might be it. Let me set out the issue again, just to make sure we are on the same page. There are many similar opportunities, but the issue of how to save & display Ford's Technical Service Bulletins for the 1980 - 86 trucks is a classic example. I have all of the TSBs and have scanned ~150 of them but there are thousands more. Here's what I've tried: Pages: I've created a page for each of the TSB's within the 9 high level categorizations Ford used. You can see that by going to our main page (our Invision forum embedded on Weebly) and then using the menu above to go to Documentation/TSBs and then each of the categories with the TSBs below them. But that is getting really, really fiddly and hard to use - and I don't have that many of the TSBs on there yet. Spreadsheet: I've created a spreadsheet, which you can see at Documentation/TSBs/TSB Index. But that is a huge pain to manage and since it is currently on my MS OneDrive it doesn't always load. I could move it to my Google Drive but emedding it on Community doesn't have the same effect due to the Oembed function. Maybe there's a better way to use Google Sheets on Community? Adobe Embed API: The latest attempt has been to create one large PDF with all the TSBs in it and display it on a Weebly page via Adobe's Embed API. You can see it on our page at Test TSB Page on Weebly. It works well - on a desktop - as you have the bookmarks I added and the ability to search the document for any term. But on my iPhone 14 Pro Max it has gotten large enough it won't load - and I only have ~100 TSBs on. So this isn't the way either. Again, I'm looking for a better way. I've Googled it and AI says: Website Content Management Systems (CMS): If you have a website, you can integrate a PDF library. WordPress: Plugins like Document Library Pro or Filr can be used to create searchable and organized PDF libraries directly within your WordPress site. (Hmmm, tab doesn't do what indent does, but there's no indent function in the editor in V5?) So, can Community do anything like that?

Do you have an example of someone that's done this? I'd like to see what it might look like. And I'm still interested in seeing what your documentation says - but I can't see it as I don't appear to have the right permissions.

I think you are suggesting that I put a single PDF on a page via Pages, right? But by "put ... on a page" do you mean embed? And that then gets to the previous discussion where it is something like Oembed that, in the case of Google, gives a thumbnail and then you click to open it? Or am I off on a tangent? If so then I'd create my own "library", page/pdf at a time. But I can do that in Weebly. In fact, I have done. I really don't know what I'm looking for. But I think I'm looking for the ability to build a library that allows me to put the index on a webpage and then let users easily navigate to see what they are interested in with a single click. Or search for key words.