AndyF

We would like to take this opportunity to inform you of an important decision we've made with regard to the Invision Community Marketplace. After careful evaluation and consideration, we have decided to discontinue the Invision Community Marketplace, effective October 30, 2023.
 
Over the past several years, we have noticed a decrease in usage of the Marketplace, with a staggering 75% decline in sales. In addition, we have observed a growing trend away from off the shelf customizations towards bespoke tailoring of a community by working more closely with developers. While it has been a platform for many dedicated and talented contributors to share their work, we believe it is time to re-focus our efforts and resources to better serve your present and future needs.
 
We understand that change can be unsettling, but we are excited to share with you our new direction. We are putting our efforts into enhancing the newly introduced Providers Directory, a platform that will enable you to connect with third-party providers for a wide range of services, including custom development, community management/support, conversion services, and other valuable resources. Additionally, many providers will have independent websites you will be able to visit to explore and obtain existing and new premade resources.
 
More details are to follow soon, but we would like to highlight a few key points:
     • Marketplace renewals will cease effective immediately
     • New purchases will end September 15, 2023
     • The Marketplace will be removed in the October release and disabled on October 30, 2023
     • You will continue to be able to install and manage existing and new resources via the methods provided by their respective authors
     • You will be able to obtain a key for each of your current Marketplace purchases and provide that key to authors to transfer your purchases directly to the author
We invite you to visit the Providers Directory and start exploring the opportunities it offers. This will allow you to familiarize yourself with the database and the resources it will provide in greater depth. Many of the current Marketplace contributors have already created their profiles – please check them out!
Of course, this does not mean the end of aftermarket development with Invision Community. We are currently building new development tools for Invision Community 5 which have easier ways to add new functionality.
 
We want to express our sincere gratitude for your ongoing support and trust in Invision Community. We believe these changes will enable us to better position ourselves to continue moving forward in meeting the present and future needs of our customer base.
 
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out.
 
Thank you for being a part of the Invision Community family.
 
Update
We have posted our next blog covering the next steps for obtaining purchases from 3rd party developers.
 

Are you a vBulletin admin looking to stay on the leading edge of online communities? 
As an IPS client who frequents the Invision Community support forums on a daily basis, I often run across existing or former vBulletin admins looking to migrate to IPS.  In fact, based on my not-so-scientific survey, vBulletin is one of the most popular platforms from where admins migrate. Many of the vBulletin users are professional administrators looking for a stable company, rapid development, and a trusted platform to power their communities into the future. 
I interviewed 6 former vBulletin admins who are now Invision Community clients.  Most of these vBulletin admins have 10+ years of experience running successful forums, so their input was especially insightful.   
“I love the design of the admin and moderation back-end, a real treat after living with the antiquated and confusing vBulletin back-end.” -- @cfish
“I like the well-thought concept, the details, and abundance of features and functions.” --@Ramsesx
I’ve compiled the top 10 questions and answers from their interviews and the forums specifically for vBulletin admins for an insider’s perspective on how to convert from vBulletin to Invision Community.  You can also read their full interviews in my Community Guide attached at the bottom.
10. What is the typical lifecycle of Invision Community and what new features come out?
Invision Community is currently on 4.4.  It’s a great time to be migrating as both the software and converter are very mature.  You’ll be able to take advantage of all the new features from Invision Community 4.x such as Social Clubs, Subscriptions, SEO updates, and GDPR updates. 
In general, IPS publishes one major update like 4.4 once a year, with several bug fixes, security updates, and enhancements throughout the year.  The best place to read about Product Updates is the official IPS Blog in Product Updates.
9. What are the pricing options and how do they compare to vBulletin?
IPS is comparable in pricing when compared to vBulletin depending on your choice of apps.  The self-hosted option is cheaper when considering support and upgrades.    
The pricing for an active license is simple, easy, and comprehensive.  A new license includes professional ticket support, forum support, access to new upgrades, and managed spam service for 6 months.  Renew again in six months to continue those benefits.  If you choose not to renew, your software will continue to work.
8.  Is the software mobile ready like vBulletin?
Yes, the software is responsive by design.  This means the community naturally fits and beautifully displays in any device size, giving you a consistent look-and-feel across all devices.  Try it now by resizing your window! 
It also means you don’t need to pay for any extra “mobile bundles.”  This approach to mobile design was one of the reasons why @cfish chose IPS: “I didn’t like vBulletin’s approach to mobile. The IPS approach to responsive web design was inline with my own thinking.”
7.  What are the official Invision Community apps and how do they compare to vBulletin? 
@Steve Bullman converted to IPS because “IPS seemed to offer a better all-round package for what I needed.”  One of the biggest reasons for considering IPS is a broader approach to community.  Whereas vBulletin focuses only on Forums and Blogs, IPS empowers you to build a suite of applications customized to your needs.  Mix and match apps like Gallery, Blogs, Downloads, Pages, and Commerce to build a modern community with resource directories, databases, paid subscriptions, albums and more that go beyond forums.   
You can read more about the apps in Features. Calendar and Clubs are included for free! 
6.  What will be migrated from vBulletin? 
The free converter app will migrate all of your member and content items from vBulletin 3.8.x, 4.x, and 5.x.  This includes members, private messages, member groups, ranks, forums, topics, posts, and attachments.  You can view the full list on Migrate and choose your vBulletin version from the list of choices.
Obviously, you will not be able to migrate any custom themes or custom modifications.  @ChristForums adds, “I wish I had known that the converter was so easy to use and migrate from Vbulletin 5.”
5.  What are the channels for support? 
Every active license comes with professional ticket support, which should always be your first source of contact.  @Markus Jung highlights “fast support” as the item he appreciates the most about his license.  You can also obtain help from the community forums, help guides, release notes, and other public resources. 
If you’re not an IPS client yet, you can post in Pre-Sales forum or email sales@invisionpower.com. 
4.  How do I prepare my community?
The six admins that I interviewed offered several tips for new Invision Community owners.  Prior to the conversion, you should read through the converter package to see what will convert and redirect.  You should purchase other Invision Community apps in advance to fully convert vBulletin items as needed; not delete any old content since Invision Community includes an archive function; and not make drastic changes to allow members a chance to become accustomed to the new forum. 
3.  What will happen to my traffic and URL redirects? 
The free converter app will redirect your existing URLs.  This includes forums, topics, posts, member profiles, print view pages, archived content, attachments, and tags.  You need to leave your converter installed after migration to ensure the redirects will work.   
AlexWebsites wrote, “the converter came with built-in redirects and I was able to redirect most of my traffic. Traffic recovered within a few months.”
2. What are the server configuration and database requirements?    
If you choose cloud, then Invision Community will manage the hosting. 
If you choose on-premise, you can use the free ‘Get Ready’ compatibility file to check your server.  The latest version of Invision Community 4.4 requires:
PHP 7.1.0 or higher (7.3.x is supported) MySQL 5.5.3 or higher (5.6.2 recommended).  1. How stable is the company? 
Other companies lost their development talent. Other companies were bought and sold by multi-media conglomerates. Other companies have a history of lawsuits.
Through it all, Charles, Lindy and Matt have been here since the beginning providing steady leadership to Invision Communities everywhere.  If you’re looking for stability, it’s nice to know you can rely on the same people who started the company.  For serious and professional vBulletin admins looking to transition, you know you’re not just buying into the software, but investing in the development team, staff, and platform for years to come. Ramsesx shared his personal story: “I always prefer the best for my community from where I earn my income.  An important aspect was the longtime outlook.  Invision Community gave me the feeling of being trustworthy, they are more than 17 years in the forum software market.” 
It’s no wonder that so many successful vBulletin admins feel the same after moving to Invision Community.  You get stability, years of experience, a deep understanding of online communities, and a dedication to development that continues to innovate.  It’s time to bring your vBulletin community over to Invision Community! 
Bookmark this page for future reference and download the Community Guide for experiences from real clients who converted from vBulletin.  Much appreciation to @AlexWebsites @cfish @Christforums @Markus Jung @Ramsesx @Steve Bullman for participating in the interviews.  
- Joel R
Community Guide vBulletin Migration to Invision Community.pdf

Ever since its first release, the REST API built into the Invision Community software has proven to be a very powerful and well-received feature.
We love seeing what our clients and modification authors are able to do with the level of integration afforded to them through this capability, and so it is only natural that we have looked to expand the functionality in our upcoming 4.4 release.
Poll Support
Beginning with 4.4, you will now be able to create and update polls for both topics and blog entries through the REST API. Of course, modification authors can use this new endpoint.
Warn Reasons
You will also now be able to manage warn reasons through the REST API. This includes fetching a list of reasons, as well as fetching an individual reason, creating warn reasons, updating existing warn reasons, and deleting warn reasons.
Event Venues
Event venues can now be listed and individual venues fetched through the REST API, and you can now add, update and delete event venues through the REST API.
Member Notifications
You can now retrieve a list of notifications for a specific member through the REST API, useful if you were to attempt to recreate the notifications menu on a third party website (for example).
Warning Users
The REST API will now expose the warnings a user has received through a new endpoint. Additionally, you can fetch individual warnings, issue new warnings, undo and/or delete issued warnings, and acknowledge warnings through the REST API. If you are building a site wrapper around your community, you can leverage this functionality to ensure that users are unable to post elsewhere on your site if they have unacknowledged warnings within the community (and also to provide them with a way to acknowledge those warnings right on your site).

The REST API Reference
Node permissions
Beginning with 4.4, you will now be able to set the permissions for a node when adding or updating it through the REST API (for example, you can now adjust the permissions for a forum or a downloads category through the REST API). Many clients noticed that while they could create new nodes through the API, the nodes would be unusable until an administrator manually went in and specified the permissions, so this change can eliminate this extra step in many situations.
Event filtering
You will now also be able to filter the events you pull through the Calendar REST API endpoints by start and end date (e.g. so you can show events within a specific time frame, such as the current week), and you can now also specify to sort the events returned by the event start date or the event end date.
Clubs
And finally, for those who leverage clubs on their communities, we have built in full REST API support for clubs. You can list all clubs, return a specific club, create new clubs, update existing clubs, and delete clubs through the REST API. Further, you can list all members in a club, add a specific member to a specific club, remove a member from a club, fetch the content types available for use within a club (i.e. so you can determine which applications are installed and have club support on a given site), fetch the nodes (displayed as tabs/sections within a club) created within a club, and delete nodes from a club. Important behind the scenes steps, such as generating invoices for members requesting to join paid clubs, are all handled automatically for you when using the REST API.
We believe these changes will help clients better integrate with our software and open up new possibilities with their websites.
Would you like us to add any other endpoints? Let us know in the comments below!

It might seem a little odd starting a blog on increasing Invision Community's speed with the word "lazy",  but I'll explain why this is a good word for performance shortly.
Earlier this year, Google announced that page speed is a ranking factor.
Simply put, if your site is slow, it will be ranked lower in Google's search results.
It is always a challenge making a large application like Invision Community as efficient as possible per page load. A single Invision Community page can pull in widgets from multiple applications as well as a lot of user-generated content with attachments, movies and images used heavily. 
This is where being lazy helps.
Lazy loading is a method by which attachments, embeds and images are not loaded by default. They are only loaded when the viewer scrolls down enough to make them visible.
This allows the page to load a good deal faster now it doesn't have to load megabytes of images before the page is shown as completely rendered.
I was going to take a fancy video showing it in action, but it's hard to capture as the system loads the media just before you get to it, so it looks fairly seamless, even with sluggish connections.

Not the most dynamic image, but this shows the placeholder retains the size of the image
In addition to image attachments, we have also added this lazy loading to maps and Twitter emoji images.
Improving non-image attachments
Once we had implemented the lazy loading framework, an area we wanted to improve was non-image attachments.
We have listened to a lot of the feedback we had on this area, and have now made it very clear when you add an attachment into a post. We've even returned the download count now it's being loaded on demand.

Using attachments when posting
All the letters
When we first implemented the letter avatars in 4.3, we discussed whether to use CSS styling or use an image.
We decided to go with an image as it was more stable over lots of different devices, including email.
We've revisited this in 4.4, and switched the letter avatars to SVG, which are much faster to render now that the browser doesn't have to load the image files.
Other performance improvements
We've taken a pass at most areas with an eye for performance, here is a list of the most significant items we've improved.
Several converter background tasks have been improved, so they work on less data Duplicate query for fetching clubs was removed in streams Notifications / follower management has been improved Member searches have been sped up (API, ACP live search, member list in ACP, mentions, etc.). Stream performance has been improved UTF8 conversions have been sped up Elasticsearch has been sped up by using pre-compiled queries and parameterisation, as well as the removal of view filtering (and tracking) HTTP/2 support with prefetch/preload has been added Several PHP-level performance improvements have been made Implemented rel=noopener when links open a new window (which improves browser memory management) Several other performance improvements for conversions were implemented that drastically reduce conversion time IP address lookups now fetch IP address details from us en-masse instead of one request per address Cache/data store management has been streamlined and centralised for efficiency Many background tasks and the profile sync functionality have all been improved for performance Brotli compression is now supported automatically if the server supports it Redis encryption can now be disabled if desired, which improves performance Phew, as you can see, we've spent a while tinkering under the hood too.
We'd love to hear your thoughts. Let us know below!
This blog is part of our series introducing new features for Invision Community 4.4.

It's very easy to focus on a single metric to gauge the success of your community.
It's very common for community owners to look at page hits and determine if their SEO and marketing efforts have paid off.
Getting traffic to your site is only half the equation though. The most valuable metric is how many casual visitors you're converting to engaged members.
Invision Community already makes it easy for guests to sign up using external services such as Facebook, Twitter and Google.
However, there has to be a conscious decision to click that sign-up button. For some, this may be a barrier too many.
Invision Community 4.4 reduces this barrier by allowing guests to create a post to a topic they want to engage with.
Once they have posted, they are asked to simply complete their registration. They are more likely to do this now they have invested in your community.
This will be incredibly valuable when you consider how much traffic a forum receives from inbound Google searches. With Post Before Registering, you'll increase your chances of turning that inbound lead into a registered member contributing to your site.
Let me take you through the feature and show you how it works.
When browsing the community guests will see the ability to submit a post, with an explanation that they can post now and complete registration later. The only thing they have to provide in addition to their post is an email address.

Posting as a guest
This works in any application for new content (topics, Gallery images, etc.) as well as comments and reviews. It will only show when a newly registered member would be able to post in that area - for example, it will not show in a forum that only administrators can post in. 
After submitting the post, the post will not be visible to any user, but the user will immediately be redirected to the registration form with an explanation to complete the registration. The email address they provided will already be filled in.

Registration form after posting as a guest
At this point, the user can either fill in the registration form, or use a social sign in method like Facebook or Twitter to create an account. After the account has been created, and validation has been completed if necessary, their post will automatically be made visible just as if they had registered and then posted.
If the user abandons the registration after they've submitted their post, an email will be sent to them to remind them to complete the registration.

Email reminding user to finish registering
 
Some Notes
Invision Community already has a feature that allows guests to post as guests without registration if granted permission. That feature has not been removed and so if you already allow guests to post, the behaviour will not change. This new feature is only available when a guest can't post in a given area, but a member would be able to. The entire feature can also be turned off if undesired. If the area the guest is posting in requires moderator approval, or newly registered members require approval of new posts, the post will enter the moderation queue as normal once their account has been created. Third party applications will require minor updates to support this feature. Once your casual visitor has invested time in your community by crafting a post, they are much more likely to finish the registration to get it posted. If you have set up external log in methods, then registration only takes a few more clicks.
This blog is part of our series introducing new features for Invision Community 4.4.

Despite your best efforts, is engagement a problem for your community? You have your site promotion running well and you are seeing plenty of traffic but it doesn't convert into comments, posts or reactions?
Invision Community is a powerful platform that offers layers of complexity for the many sites it powers. When you are struggling to convert page views into comments, it's worth taking a step back and evaluating your site from a new user's point of view.
We'll take you through our 6 best tips to simplify your site and increase engagement using built in tools.
#1 Use Social Sign In with at least Facebook and Twitter enabled.
Social sign in makes it easy for causal visitors to become content contributors by creating an account. Social sign in removes the complex registration form that may put some off.

 
It's a fact that most people visiting your site will have either a Facebook account or a Twitter account. Use that to your advantage!
#2 Use Profile Completion
One of the biggest reasons sites fail to convert visitors into members is because of large or complex forms. If you have many required profile fields, your potential member is likely to abandon the form. Use the Profile Completion system with fewer fields where possible for a simpler registration form.

 
The Profile Completion system allows new members to complete their profile in their own time. Of course, you can still enforce vital fields before members can contribute.
#3 Use Fluid View
Traditional forums can be a little daunting to site visitors used to Facebook. The top down categorisation is a strength for separating conversations. Yet, it can be confusing for a first time visitor to navigate.

 
Fluid view breaks down these boundaries by presenting your conversations in one simple list. By removing the need to jump between forum containers, new visitors are encourage to keep diving deeper into your conversations. An engaged visitor is more likely to contribute.
#4 Keep your forum structure simple
Even with fluid view enabled, complex forum structures can confuse. Consider a brand new forum with a hundred different conversation areas. Would a new user know where to go and post? Would they be put off thinking they are posting in the wrong area? The best advice is always start off with as few forum containers as possible and increase them as your community grows.
#5 Use Reactions
One of the simplest ways to increase engagement is to turn on Reactions. Reactions allow other members to leave feedback on a post in a few clicks. The default reactions allow one to like, give thanks, express confusion, sadness or happiness. You can add your own reactions to tailor the platform to your niche and personality.

 
Non-verbal engagement is important for your active posters. If they receive reactions to their posts, they are more likely to reply more and return often to see what feedback they have received.
#6 Use the Sign In/Sign Up widget
A very simple way to increase visitor to member conversion is to just ask them to register. Invision Community ships with a drag and drop widget that you can use to outline what your site is about and encourage registration.

 
In one very simple but prominent box, you can see what the site is about and how to join in.
Summary
New and existing communities should take a moment to see their site through a new visitor's eyes. Consider how easy your structure is to navigate and how many barriers to registration there are.
You can streamline both registration and conversation presentation with our built in tools. The key to increasing engagement is to make it a simple as possible to join your community. Make sure your barriers or entry are set low.
Not using Invision Community? We can convert you from other platforms preserving your data. Our migration page has more information on the platforms we can convert you from.

When I started creating communities close to two decades ago, getting new members was easy. All you had to do was put up a script, create some "Chat here" forums and email your friends. It didn't take long for word to spread and you had a healthy forum buzzing with conversation.
Now, it's different. The internet is a crowded space. No matter what your niche, you will be competing with other businesses for visitors.
You need a solid strategy to succeed, and I want to help you.
Before you open the doors to your new community, consider the following questions.

What is your vision?
Your community must have a strong reason to attract visitors.  Write down your community's purpose and bullet point how you will achieve it. When you configure and set up your community, keep asking yourself "does this fit my vision".
For example. Consider a fitness professional who is launching a community. The vision is to educate your audience on good nutrition and exercise. You then have subscription based packages for one-to-one coaching.
This is a very focused vision. You will create one or two forums for the public areas. You will leverage clubs for the paid memberships. You wouldn't create forums for non-fitness areas such as technology or movies.
You will strip the complexity back to encourage interaction as your target market may not be very technical.
What is your voice?
You will lead your community and set the tone. If you are handling investment portfolios then you will want the tone to be friendly, but professional.
If you are creating a forum for marathon runners, you'd want to use a lot of running "lingo" and be informal and fun.
Consider your target audience. Think about how they would like to be treated. How would they like your interactions to be?
Once you have found your voice, keep it consistent. Your members will follow your lead and keep your community positive.
How are you going to onboard new members?
If you want people to join in with your new community, you need to hold their hand and show them why they are important to you.
They will want to feel comfortable and valued in your community.
When you are starting out, take the time to welcome each new member and point them to any welcome guides you may have. You can create and pin a topic that explains how to get started. When a new member joins, link them to that topic.
You should also use profile completion to politely enforce the use of a user photo. A photo personalises a user's profile and reminds that you are speaking to a human!
Remind them to set up email notifications so they won't miss any exciting updates or new topics.
What is your promotion strategy?
No matter how great your content is, it needs promoting. There are several great ways to do this.
You can create a monthly email sent to all members. You can outline any important topics or articles. You can list upcoming events.
You can promote your articles to Facebook and Twitter. Make the headlines interesting to encourage clicks into your content.
By driving traffic back to your site, you will increase your membership.
How often are you going to contribute to your own community?
In the early days of your new community, you will have to be very active. You will want to welcome new members and keep conversations alive. You will be creating new conversations for others to contribute in. You must budget time for this and be consistent. Show up every day.
I recommend setting aside two blocks of 30 minutes each day. Use that time to reply to any new topics and to kick off a few of your own. Visit early in the morning, and again in the evening.
How are you going to reward active members?
Once you community gets going, some individuals will stand out as leaders. These leaders are well respected and encourage others to take part.
Create a special member group with better privileges such as increased storage space, or the ability to create post signatures. Give them a special badge and member title.
It will show that you respect and appreciate their contributions. Having a small number of community leaders will save you time. They will always have their fingers on the pulse and can feedback any issues before they develop into something serious.
Are you going to funnel discussion into your community?
Your community is one part of your site. If you have pages and articles up elsewhere, I recommend you encourage posting in the forums. At the end of each article, link to a related forum and ask for their thoughts.
People love sharing their thoughts and opinions.
Summary
Taking the time to create a strategy will pay dividends later. Getting into a professional and focused mindset will make you stand out from the crowd. Knowing the exact purpose of your community and how to execute it is key for success.
Thinking about the questions posed above is a great start. It should make you think about your target audience and how to serve them. It may even create more questions. I'd love to help you answer them.
Let me know what your plans are for your community.

 

It's hard to believe that we're close to wrapping up 2017 already. It seems like only yesterday we were putting the finishing touches to Clubs, Fluid View, Profile Completion and all the other new features added this year. We're not resting though, Invision Community 4.3 is well underway and we'll be releasing news of its new features soon.
Our developers have been busy squashing bugs and release Invision Community 4.2.6. Regular visitors to our own community may have noticed that we've been running several search tests to improve the results search brings.
Our latest community articles continue to be well received. This month's highlights are:
In team talk we post a simple question that proved hard to answer.
As always, we'd love to hear what you think of our articles. If there's anything you'd like covered, just let us know below!
Thanks!
 
 
 

Making security considerations a key part of your community setup and maintenance can save you from many future headaches.
You've worked hard to get your community moving. Don't make yourself an easy target and undo that work.
Here’s our current advice to our customers.
 
1. Enable HTTPS
HTTPS is fast becoming the standard way to serve websites. In 2016, more than 50% of web requests were served under HTTPS for the first time. Chrome and Firefox now explicitly warn users on login forms that aren’t sending data over HTTPS, and it’s not hard to imagine that in the near future all insecure pages will receive the warning.
HTTPS simply means that website data is served over a secure connection and can’t be read or tampered with by a ‘middle man’ hacker. You can identify a site using HTTPS because the address in your browser will show ‘https://’ (instead of http://), and normally a lock icon or the word ‘secure’.
Invision Community supports HTTPS by default simply by changing your base URL configuration to include HTTPS. Of course your web host will need to support it as well and our Invision Community Cloud services support it by default. Contact support if you have any questions.
Recommendation: Set up HTTPS for your entire community to prevent ‘man in the middle’ attacks.

2. Set up Two Factor Authentication
Invision Community supports Two Factor Authentication (2FA for short), and we highly recommend making use of this feature for your users, but especially for your administrator staff.
2FA is a system that requires both a user’s password and a special code (displayed by a phone app) that changes every few seconds. The idea is simple: if a user’s password is somehow compromised, a hacker still wouldn’t be able to log in to the account because they would not have the current code number.
You may already be familiar with 2FA from other services you use. Apple’s iCloud, Facebook and Google all offer it, as do thousands of banks and other security-conscious businesses.
Invision Community supports 2FA via the Google Authenticator app (available for iOS and Android) or the Authy service, which is able to send codes to users via text message or phone call. You can also fall back to security questions instead of codes.
You can configure which members groups can use 2FA, as well as requiring certain groups to use it. 
Recommendation: Require any staff with access to the Admin Control Panel or moderation functions to use 2FA, to ensure that no damage can be done should their account passwords be discovered. Allow members to use 2FA at their discretion.
 
3. Configure password requirements
The password strength feature displays a strength meter to users as they type a new password, showing them approximately how secure it is, as well as some tips for choosing a good password.
While you can leave this feature as a simple recommendation for users, it’s also possible to require them to choose a password that reaches to a certain strength on the meter. 
Recommendation: Require users to choose at least a ‘Strong’ password.
 
4. Use Admin restrictions
It’s very common that many different staff members need access to the Admin Control Panel depending on the role. You may have design staff, billing staff, community managers, and so on, all with particular tasks they would like to achieve.
Invision Community can help improve the security of your Admin Control Panel by allowing you to restrict the functions available to each administrator, granting them access to only the tools needed to do their job. 
Recommendation: Audit your community’s administrator accounts and applying restrictions where it makes sense to do so.
 
5. Stay up to date
It’s important to ensure you’re always running the latest release of Invision Community. With each release, we add new security features, audit code and fix any issues reported through responsible disclosure. Falling behind can therefore make your community a tempting target for potential hackers.
Your Invision Community Admin Control Panel will let you know when a new release is available, and you can also check out our Release page to track releases.
For our Enterprise customers, we’ll automatically apply updates for you shortly after release as part of your plan. For our self-hosted and Cloud customers, you can easily apply new updates via the Admin Control Panel with a couple of clicks.
Our Invision Community Cloud contains all best practices for security. However, if you are self-hosted, be sure to work with your web host to ensure your server is setup properly. Ensuring that server software, firewalls, and access controls are in place is very important as an insecure server can be your worst enemy.
Recommendation: Aim to install latest updates as soon as feasible.
 
6. IP address restrictions
For organizations where staff are centrally-based in one location, or are required to use a VPN, you can improve your community security by restricting access to the Admin Control Panel to the IP addresses your staff will be using. This is a server-level feature, so contact your IT team to have this facility set up your installation. Enterprise customers who wish to utilize IP restrictions should contact our Managed Support team, while Cloud customers can submit a support ticket to have this set up.
Recommendation: Where staff all access the community from a small number of IP addresses, restrict Admin Control Panel access to those IPs. 

Summary
Don’t leave security as an afterthought. Invision Community includes a range of tools to help you ensure your data and members protected, as well as industry-standard protections ‘under the hood’. Make use of these features, and they’ll help ensure the wellbeing of your site.
As always, if you have any questions or need advice, our support team are on hand to assist you.

It's that time of year again!
Have you been thinking about starting your Invision Community? Or perhaps you're currently using another service and want to take advantage of our modern, mobile ready and social media equipped platform?
This has been a great year for Invision Community. We've added many new features including Clubs, Fluid View, Profile Completion and more.
We've been adding useful articles such as the benefits of owning your own community versus a Facebook Group, how to optimize your community's SEO, and how to stop spam.
And we're already working on our next major release due out early 2018.
To celebrate, we have two new coupon codes for you!

 
20% OFF ALL CLOUD PACKAGES
Start with Invision Community today with our hassle free cloud packages. There's nothing to upload and nothing to install. You don't need to know your FTP from your MySQL. We do all that for you!
Use coupon code during checkout: CICBF2017
15% OFF SELF HOSTED LICENSES
Prefer to manage your own hosting? No problem. Grab your downloadable license today.
Use coupon code during checkout: SHBF2017
 
The small print
These coupons are valid from today right through to midnight Monday 27th November (EST). Note, the self hosted coupon is not valid for renewals.
Thanks and happy shopping!

Are you a member of a busy Facebook Group? Do you find it overwhelming trying to sort through all the posts to find something posted the day before? Are you now missing new posts and only seeing them a few days later?
Facebook Groups are tempting to use as they are free to set up but is this the best decision for the future of your business?
At the beginning with just a handful of members, things may fun fine. But fast forward to where your group becomes busy with thousands of members posting and reading.
Your group becomes overwhelming. You find it hard to locate posts made on previous days and search is of no use. It is getting harder to keep on top of troublesome and spamming members.
Worse still, Facebook's changing algorithms mean that your members are not seeing every post you make. You do as Facebook asks and link your page to your group to find that you must now boost posts to reach your members.
This is getting to be a very common scenario.
Even more worrying are rumours that Facebook is bringing advertising to groups. Will this allow your competitors to target your hard won membership?
Will Facebook roll out the "Discover" tab across all continents? This alone has destroyed organic reach for many brands.
What would you do if Facebook blocked your account for a week? Would your sales suffer?
There is a way to take back control of your membership and secure your business' future. Building your business on your own land is a powerful way of retaining complete control over your community regardless of what happens to Facebook longer term.
Created in 2002,  Invision Community has always adapted to the changing habits of the internet. Our latest product is clean, modern, mobile ready and equipped to integrate with social media. It can power your conversations, website and shopping cart. It features single click Facebook sign in and tools to promote scheduled content to your Facebook page.
We recently wrote why you shouldn't settle for a Facebook Group when building a community.
The benefits of an owned Invision Community are:
You own your own data. Your data is not mined for Facebook's benefit. Make it yours by branding it your way You're no longer boxed in by the Facebook format Seamless integration to your shopping cart for more monetization opportunities Set up permission levels to better control what your members can see Lets dig in a look at some of the tools you can leverage to make the migration easier.
Mobile Ready
Invision Community works great on your mobile. It resizes the page perfectly to match whichever device you are using. You don't need to install special apps or mess with themes. It just works out of the box.

 
Facebook Sign In
The first thing you'll want to do is turn on Facebook Sign In. This adds the familiar Facebook button right on the sign in page and register form. Clicking this logs them into your new community with their Facebook account. It even imports their profile photo so they are familiar with other members.

 
Make use of embeds
A great way to keep incorporating content from your Facebook Group or Page is to use embeds. Post a link to your content on Facebook and it transforms into a rich media snippet.

 
Social Promotions
Share your community content with your Facebook Page. Click the "Promote" button on any content item and you can customize the text and images shared. The promotion system offers a full scheduling system much like Buffer or Hootsuite. This is all built in at no extra cost.

 
Find Your Content
Unlike a Facebook Group, your Invision Community makes it easy to find older content. A powerful feature is activity streams. These are customizable "feeds" much like the Facebook News Feed but completely editable to you and your members needs. You can even make this the first page your members see for easy content discovery.

 
Use Clubs
Clubs allow sub-communities to run inside your main community. Let's look at a real world example.
A FitPro has several different fitness products for sale. Each product is a Facebook Group. She posts daily workouts and answers member's questions.
Using many groups can be very time consuming to manage.
Clubs puts these sub-communities right on the page making it easy to drop in and update.
These Clubs can be private and members invited to join allowing full privacy. This is like a closed Facebook group.

 
We're only scratching the surface of what Invision Community can offer you. You can take back control of your membership and be free from the fear that Facebook will change something that will impact your sales.
We're experts in this field with 16 years of experience. We've helped grow thousands of communities from the very biggest brands to the smallest of niches.
We'd love to talk to you about your needs.

We all know what a pain spam can be. We deal with it daily in our inboxes often relying on clever software to filter it out for us. Even worse, some spam is so well disguised that it can fool you into thinking it is a genuine message.
You've put in the hard work with your community. You've used the built in social promotion tools and SEO features to get it noticed. Now that it's indexing well with Google, you've become a target.
Invision Community has several tools in its arsenal to deal with spam leaving you free to concentrate on your members and content. We'll take a look at these tools in more detail.
First, it's important to know that there are two main types of spam. Computer generated and human generated.
Computer generated spam is malicious software that throws millions of messages out and hopes some sticks to high profile communities.
Human generated spam is more pernicious as it can often bypass automated measures. Human spammers often register accounts and post as members on your community.
 
The first line of defense
Invision Community comes equipped with Spam Defense. This is free with all cloud and licensed plans. Spam Defense harnesses the combined knowledge of thousands of Invision Communities. It will assess the potential threat of each new user and stop them before they can cause any problems.
To date, Spam Defense has blocked over 3,000,000 spam accounts.
Spam Defense works by evaluating the registering member against its database. It will score the account from 1 (not a spammer) to 4 (a known spammer) allowing you to decide what to do with each level.
 

If a spammer gets past the Spam Defense, flag them as a spammer using the built in tools. This will clear up all their posts in a single action and report back to Spam Defense that this account has spammed your site. These community led reports allow Spam Defense to learn and adapt.
 
Preventing spammers from registering
The CAPTCHA ("Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart") is a well tested and robust method to defeat computerised spammers. It is usually a small widget on a sign up form that asks you to re-enter words shown in an image.
Invision Community supports Recaptcha2 by Google, meaning that in most cases your users don't even have to type in random letters. Instead, Google algorithms determine if the user is human or otherwise. Invision Community supports KeyCaptcha. This requires guests to solve a simple problem before they can contribute.

 
The Question and Answer challenge works on its own or in conjunction with a CAPTCHA. This system allows you to create simple question and answer challenges unique to your community. As these answers are unique, computerized spammers cannot solve them. Also, human spammers not knowledable with your niche are often unable to solve them too.
While the above are great for reducing the number of computerized spammers, we need to be especially clever to weed out human spammers.
 
Dealing with human spammers
Smart configuration of your community will also help in defeating spammers. Invision Community supports posting without registering. This feature allows for fast engagement but use it with caution. It works best if you only allow it for specific forums.
Invision Community's membership promotion system also has tools which you can leverage.
To make your site less appealing to human spammers, you can configure two membership groups. Let us look at an example which uses "New Members" and "Members".
"New Members" is the default group for new registrations. In this group you can remove the ability to add a signature to each post. Often spammers use signatures to earn referrals on links.
You can also define a limit for posts per day. This will throttle the number of spam posts a member can make.
 

Now that you have your "New Members" group set up to build trust, you can promote them using Group Promotions.
A good strategy is to promote them to "Members" when they have reached a certain level of reputation. This shows that they have become a trusted member of the community.
You may wish to promote them a week after joining knowing that spammers usually leave after a day or so.
There are many different criteria you can use allowing you to tailor it for your own needs.
 
Summary
Dealing with spam is a reality for every successful community. Invision Community has several features to mitigate its impact.
Through leveraging its built in tools to smart configuration, you can make your community a fortress against spam. In addition, our exclusive Spam Defense system grows and learns every day stopping spammers from registering.
To learn how to configure Invision Community's spam prevention tools, please see our help guide.
Not using Invision Community? We can convert you from other platforms preserving your data. Our migration page has more information on the platforms we can convert you from.

Our recent release of Invision Community 4.2 was the most well-received version ever! The feedback we received on new features like Clubs, Reactions, and Promotes was better than we could have hoped and we really enjoyed seeing all the creative uses as people implemented them on their own communities.
We have been hard at work on version 4.3 with a goal of improving on all the great new features. It is well under way and we are happy to able to start announcing what's new over the next few weeks.
Invision Community 4.3 will not only contain new features but also have a core focus on refinement from 4.2's new features. You will see many improvements to Clubs, new integration options, large application improvements, new promotional features, and more changes large and small.

 
You can expect to see news posts about new features and changes very soon with a release date in early 2018. Follow our news section or subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates.

Whatever the purpose of a community - be it customer support, fan engagement, interest-based groups and so on - there's usually a need for site staff to communicate important information to users.
Of course, in some cases this information is best suited to a site announcement, which by design has a lot of visibility and authority. But it's important that day to day staff posts stand out too. As we'll discuss in future articles, a key part of engagement is that users see your organization's team interacting with the community. In many cases, users will expect and appreciate acknowledgement from your community team, and by highlighting those responses you can add a visible stamp of authority.
Invision Community has a few different tools to help you highlight staff posts, so let's take a look at them in more detail. 

Group badges
With group badges you can upload a small image that is shown beside a user's posts. It's shown alongside the user's group name, so you don't need to repeat that text.
Each group can have a different badge, perfect for communities that structure their staff groups based on role type. It's common to color-code group badges for easier identification - support as green, product development as blue, and so on (and you may want to coordinate these colors with the prefix and suffix you use, which we cover later in this article).

 
It's not just staff groups that can have badges, either; your regular member groups can too. However, a word of caution! If every group has a badge, they may lose their distinctiveness. We recommend reserving group badges for those groups you specifically want to draw attention to.

Post highlights
Second is a feature more explicitly designed to highlight a post rather than simply draw attention to the author. Group settings in Invision Community enable you to choose to have posts by users in each group show with a distinctive background color and border. The color is defined by your theme and so is easily configurable, too.

 
As with group badges, it may be tempting to highlight every group's content, but we recommend not doing so as that reduces the overall impact of the feature. Keep it reserved for your key staff groups, and especially those that regularly interact with the community.

Group prefix/suffix
Invision Community allows you to define a custom prefix and suffix for each group. This is used in key locations, including to highlight usernames in the Active User block and to style member group names alongside content.
An important part of this feature is that it accepts HTML tags, which gives you a lot of scope for customizing the display by adding an opening and closing HTML tag to the prefix and suffix settings, respectively. For example, let's say we want to add a shield icon before the name, and make the text purple.
Prefix: <span style='color: #9013FE'><i class='fa fa-shield'></i>
Suffix: </span>
Simple! Now our staff members will display in the Active User block and elsewhere like this:

 

Bonus feature: Staff activity streams
I wanted to also mention a feature that achieves a slightly different goal to those we covered above, but nonetheless is an important way to bring additional visibility to staff content: activity streams.
As well as an overall “All Activity” stream that shows everything happening in the community, Invision Community allows you to define pre-made streams that are available to all users. You can use this to build streams of content with particular tags, certain types of content - or, as in this case, content by users in specific groups.

 
Simply create a new activity stream in the Admin Control Panel, set the configuration so that it only pulls content from members in your staff groups, and you're done. Users will now be able to visit the stream page to get a handy overview of everything staff members are doing in your community.

 
I recommend checking out the other filter options available for streams while you're setting this up - there's a huge amount of power available!

Summing up
I hope this quick overview of content highlighting features has been useful. When users visit your community, they're usually looking for authoritative information and that often comes right from your own team. By utilizing the features we've discussed here, you can make that information stand out more against the other content in your community.

This week, the team have been discussing their very first computing memory. This will probably reveal a lot about the age of some of our team. We recently worked out that when Matt and Charles first met and started producing community software, some of the younger members of our team were still in primary school.
What is your first computing memory?
An easy question for tech-heads as we've all been toying with computers since our earliest days.
Brandon (Senior tech support and development)
We had a VIC20 and a Commodore128 growing up. In 6th grade I got into BASIC a little bit and wrote my own home-grown computer program for my school's science fair on the Commodore. It had a 'moon' and a rocket ship sprite, and the sprite flew around the screen and landed into the moon, ending with a quit or play again option. I won the science fair that year.

Mark H (Tech support)
My first "Computing Memory"...... that would be the mainframe I got to play with in 10th grade, one which some wealthy benefactor donated to my Junior High School, 1970. Magnetic core memory and drum memory, and not a transistor to be found within it..
 

Marc S (Tech Support)
First memory of an actual computer, rather than just a games console, would be the Atari 65XE. My parents got me one for Christmas, along with a few different books and games. My parents were expecting me to hit the games the second I got it, and instead I was copying out the code for making the computer 'Do things'. I guess that was my introduction to programming at the time. 

Rhett (Cloud Support)
"Learning "Basic" on an Apple II in College with 5 1/4 floppies! followed by building my first PC, a 386DX 40, then doing home banking via dial up and dos prompts"
 

Matt (Senior Developer)
The BBC Micro. It was a computer developed for the classroom to encourage a nation of coders. My dad brought one home along with a magazine and we spent all night typing in a Star Trek game from the magazine and debugged it together. I still have nightmares over my brother reading it out and calling a full colon "a double dot". I loved that machine and often tinkered with it between playing games and using it for homework. I remember writing a Naughts and Crosses (tic-tac-toe) game in school that my teacher did not understand and assumed I had cheated. Special shout out to "Elite" the space trading game that stole most of my youth.

Ryan (Senior Developer)
My first real computing memory was on a Packard Bell running Windows 3.11. I performed my first "echo" at the MS-DOS Command Line, and it was all downhill from there. 
 


Andy (Senior tech support and development)
My first computing memory is probably playing Sim City on the BBC micro at school aged 6 or 7 but computers were a part of family life from before I was born so I must have had some interactions before this I can’t remember. My first Internet memories were getting home from school aged 10 helping dad build PC motherboards he designed from scratch. I would help place the components before they were soldered and then I would get to use the single machine set up in the corner which had the Mosaic browser and then later the first version of Netscape Navigator installed. I still have an original Internet Movie Database account from 1993. This was probably also my first “Job”. I’m still waiting for my first pay packet!

Jennifer (Designer)
My first really strong memory of computers in general was a Mac. It was Oregon Trails at school with those huge 5 1/2 floppy disks. I always remember how excited I would be to see that black and green screen with that 8 bit old west adventure. True facts. If there was a modern like Conan Exiles survival game that was Oregon Trail based I would most probably get it. If it exists don't tell me about it!

Daniel (Senior tech support and development)
My first coding experience was in the school with really, really old DOS computers.. No Basic, No Pascal ... it was the famous TURTLE aka LOGO!
 
Stuart (Senior tech support and development)
My first real computer related memory was having a Commodore 64 and an early Amiga with Theme Park. For some reason we also had an external drive for the Amiga that meant we could copy games. After that it was a steady progression of Windows based PCs and now I've got a "large" Laptop that everyone at IPS loves to joke about.

We are working hard to get Invision Community 4.2 ready to go! If you have not been following this upcoming version, check out the details:
Over the last month we have released several beta versions and feedback from those that have chosen to jump in on the beta has been great. We really could not be happier. Feedback has included amazement over how stable the beta is to reactions from community members enjoying all the new features.
Everyone here at IPS is very excited to get the full release out so everyone can enjoy it. Not everyone is comfortable using beta releases .
Back in March when we first announced 4.2 was coming soon we said that it would be out in mid-2017 and we are still on track for that. Be sure to keep an eye on announcements for the full release expected in the next 3 - 4 weeks.
We really hope everyone is as excited as we are about 4.2's full release. Based on the feedback from those already using 4.2 beta on their live sites we really think this will be a huge hit with your community.
 

This is an entry about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
When you have a diverse range of topics within your community, it makes good sense to separate topics within forums and categories. This will ensure that the viewer can find relevant content by scanning the list of forums first.
If you have a more focused community with fewer forums, presenting your community with a list of them can be daunting. This is especially true for less experienced visitors raised on social media.
Fluid forum view allows your visitors to get right to the meat of your community; the topics.
A fan site for a band is a good example of a community that will benefit with fluid view. There will likely be forums for album reviews, tour dates, general discussion and so on. Even though there are many forums, the common topic is the band. This makes fluid view ideal as your members can see all those related topics in one view. If your members wanted more specific topics, they could select a single forum to view.
Let us take a look at fluid view in action. We will then break it down and explain how it works in more detail.

 
The video shows the topic list and the forum filter box. As you can see, it is easy to change the topic list by changing the selected forums. This view replaces the traditional list of categories and forums.

 
Of course, you can permit your members to change the view to better suit their way of working.

 
You will notice a "grid" option. We have moved the grid forum theme setting into the main forum settings. This makes it an option for your members to choose, if the administrator permits it.

 
You have full control over the display options. This screenshot shows that the control panel option to choose the default view. There is also an option to control which views your members can select. You may also decide to not allow your members to switch views at all. This will ensure that they all use the view you choose.

 
You may have spotted that forum names have a colored background in some screenshots. We added the ability to define a feature color per forum. This feature color helps the forum stand out in a more visual way. This is especially useful when you select many forums in a single view.

 
This feature color also works on the table view.

 
We added a feature color hint to topic view to enforce the association between the forum and its color.
 

 
This screenshot also shows the removal of the forum breadcrumb in fluid view mode. Fluid view remembers your last forum selection so you don't lose your place when you go back to the listing.
The benefit of this feature is easy to see. It removes a potential barrier of entry for your audience. It puts the spotlight on topics themselves, and not the hierarchical forum structure. Your members will enjoy viewing many forums at once and switching between them without leaving the page.
We hope that fluid view is an asset to your community and your members enjoy this new functionality.
Technical notes.
The database stores the members' view choice. This remembers the selection across devices. Guests are not permitted to change between views.
 

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
Recurring events are not new with IPS Community Suite but often you may wish to create similar events that don't necessarily occur on a regular schedule. Previously this has meant creating a new event for each and then manually re-entering the information for event description, location, cover photo, RSVP options and so on. Often the only thing changing between the events would be the date and time.
Starting with IPS Community Suite 4.2 it is now possible to create a similar event based on one you have already added with a single action.

Create a copy of an event in one simple step
After opting to add a similar event you will be presented with the add new event form with all of the event info already filled out for you. Just set the date and time, make any required adjustments and submit your new event.
Note: This option is only presented to the author of the original event in order to reduce visual clutter for regular visitors.
We will be announcing many more interface improvements such as this in the coming weeks so be sure to follow the News & Updates section for updates.

This entry is about our IPS Community Suite 4.2 release.
I am sure we have all accidentally clicked delete on a post in your community and then realized you needed it. Luckily we now have Delayed Deletes to easily restore deleted content.

Settings in AdminCP
You can delete just as you normally do as you moderate and your posts will be removed just like now. The main difference is that you can now view recently deleted content and restore as needed in the Moderator Control Panel.

Easily view what is pending delete
All you have to do is click the deleted item and you will be taken to that item in context of where it used to be. This makes is much easier to understand why it was deleted and decide if you should restore.

Restore and view deleted content in context
Delayed Deletes is a feature that could be a life saver for your community and we cannot wait to get it out to you.

We are well into development on IPS Community Suite 4.2 and are excited to start announcing all the new features and improvements.
Our next big release is focused on engagement with your members. You will see enhancements to our Reputation system, new ways to encourage people to register on your community, and enhancements to existing features to make them more interactive. There are also entirely new capabilities we cannot wait to show you ranging from new ways to organize content to tools to help promote your community.
Version 4.2 also features a refreshed AdminCP and default front-end design. Theme changes in 4.2 are mostly in the CSS framework so your existing themes will either work without issue or require minor changes to work in the new version.
Over the next several weeks we will be posting news entries with previews of upcoming features fairly often. Be sure to follow our News section, our Facebook, or Twitter to stay up to date.
We expect IPS Community Suite 4.2 to be out in mid-2017 with a public preview available sooner.
Everyone at IPS has worked very hard on this update and we think you will love it!

Version 4.1.18 is now available in the client area!
Two large changes include Two Factor Authentication:
And changes to make Google less jumpy about password inputs:
Some smaller changes include:
Pinterest share link has been added Images embedded in the editor can now have an alternative title set for accessibility The Approval Queue page now has a "Hide" button to hide content (rather than only being able to approve / delete) Disabling Profile Photo uploads will now also disable importing from a URL The Admin CP will now indicate whether or not a member is connected to a social network The Admin CP will now display more information for a user who has been banned imgur embedded is now supported Check out the Release Notes for a full list of changes.

Google has recently been stressing that sites should use secure connections (served via HTTPS) whenever possible. They have recently also started warning sites that collect password on non-secure pages and will also be updating Google Chrome to warn users when a password is being entered on a non-secure page. You can read more information at Google and a good article on Ars Technica.
There are two ways on IPS Community Suite to avoid these alerts. Keep in mind that doing nothing will not cause you any problems, your site will still work, but users will get warnings and this may impact how people perceive joining your community.
 
Make your Community 100% Secure
The easiest option is to make every page on your IPS Community Suite use a secure connection. To do this you would need to ensure your web host has HTTPS support enabled on your site and then simply edit conf_global.php and change the URL field to https:// and that's it.
One thing to keep in mind is that your users, if you allow it, can still paste in links to externally hosted images which might not be secure. This does not impact the security of your site but it may generate a browser warning indicating your site has "mixed content" meaning some is secure and some is not. You can optionally enable the Image Proxy feature to make externally linked images route through a proxy on your local server to maintain 100% secure content.

Image Proxy Options
 
Only Login/Registration Forms and AdminCP Secure
If you prefer not to use HTTPS for your entire site, we do have a setting to only use secure connections for login, registration, and AdminCP. 

Use HTTPS for Logins and AdminCP
When the login-only secure option is enabled the quick login drop down is also disabled and instead users are sent to a full page to login. This is a small change required to avoid browser warnings. Although the quick login menu submits to a secure connection, the form field itself may show on a non-secure page which would generate a warning.

Quick Login not Available when Login-Only HTTPS Setting Enabled
 
IPS Community in the Cloud
Those using IPS CiC can get secure connections for a $15 setup fee plus $5 month on our 40, 65 and 100 user Cloud plans. You can either bring your own certificate or we can provide one for you. On the 200, 450 and 750 plans, SSL is completely free - again, either your own or we can provide one.

Version 4.1.17 is now available!
You can upgrade by downloading in the client area or just click upgrade in your AdminCP.

Next week, IPS will be implementing the pricing changes to our product lineup that we published in 2015. In the spirit of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we are extending an opportunity to purchase a new license or add new applications to your existing suite at 15% off our current pricing.
To take advantage of this offer, please use coupon code IPSPROMO16 at checkout. This promotion is active starting now and valid until 1 December 2016 (EST) and applies to new purchases only. We are unable to retroactively apply the discount.
This promotion also applies to Community in the Cloud for your first month of service!
If you’ve been waiting to purchase a new license or add products to your suite, this is the last opportunity to obtain this level of pricing! Happy shopping!

We are excited to announce the Leaderboard as the latest all new feature of IPS Community Suite. The new Leaderboard is designed to better highlight your most active members and content based on reputation and other metrics. The Leaderboard will greatly enhance both member and content discovery on your community.

Leaderboard Home
First you will notice the new feature of member leaders based on a specific time frame. In the example above it is set to All Time showing those members with the most reputation overall on your community. It also shows the content with the most reputation for the same timeframe so you get a snapshot of both popular members and popular content in one view.

Past Leaders
The Past Leaders tab shows the "winners" of each day in a history. The system counts all reputation made each day and logs the members who had the top reputation counts that day. Using reputation rather than post count encourages your members to post quality of quantity which is really important to any site.

Winner Profile Badge
Those who win the day also get a badge on their profile page to highlight that they were the member with the most reputation for a particular day.

Top Members
Top Members shows you a list of all members sorted by various metrics. By default you will see members sorted by reputation but you can also easily sort by total post content Suite-wide or per-app. All of these views can be linked directly to so if you wanted a menu item to show members who post the most files in Downloads you can just directly link to that sort view.

Leaderboard Settings
There are various settings to control the default behavior of the Leaderboard. You can define the default view and how many members to show which is helpful to tailor it to your needs.
We hope you enjoy this initial launch of the new Leaderboard feature. We are excited about the new content and member discovery abilities this offers and look forward to adding new options to the Leaderboard as we continue to develop!
 
This change will be in version 4.1.17 which is scheduled to be released in early December 2016.