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Introducing new Page Builder tools in Invision Community 5 Widgets are an incredibly powerful tool for displaying curated content of your choice on any page of your community - and despite the extensive array of settings for customizing their data, they've often been limited in terms of their design options. But this changes thanks to the new Page Builder tools in Invision Community 5! Widget Designs Previously in version 4, widgets would often have 2 designs: one for the main content area and a more minimal version for the sidebar. This worked well, but it meant your page was very limited in terms of design as you'd typically need to use the same table-like layout for most widgets. Anything beyond that would typically require a custom block to be coded, often with additional HTML or CSS. Version 5 offers much more customization by allowing you to change the design of each widget with the click of your mouse - no coding necessary! When dragging a widget onto your page, a new toolbar at the bottom of the page appears, holding all of the widget design options. Lets take a look at some below! Grid A familiar a very layout used elsewhere in the suite, the Grid design neatly aligns entries in a grid with a large cover photo sitting up top. A great combination of visual imagery alongside meta data such as entry descriptions. Featured A spacious list and a great way to feature content, pardon the pun. Wallpaper Perfect for content which includes uploaded cover photos or thumbnails! The Wallpaper design stretches each image to make it occupy the entire background, overlaid by a minimal amount of content. A subtle gradient sits behind the text to ensure it's easy to read, even on detailed images. Rows (table) The Rows design is a very familiar one, used very often throughout other areas of the suite. Content is displayed in a neat table, that collapses into a more compact design on small screens. Minimal Great for displaying a lot of content in a compact area! Minimal only shows primary information and hides meta data such as entry descriptions and stats. Great for sidebars, or areas with limited width. Minimal Grid The Minimal Grid design removes large meta information and displays content in a nice, compact grid. A nice option for displaying a lot of content while being cautious of vertical space. Carousel The Carousel option is quite unique because it can be applied in tandem with other widget designs, and is a perfect way to make the existing layouts even more compact. For example, by default, the Wallpaper design is aligned as a grid, but with the Carousel option enabled, the layout is converted into a carousel instead: Carousel-widget.mp4 Here's another example, using the Featured and Carousel options: Blog - featured carousel.mp4 Fun fact for developers: All of these designs use the exact same HTML structure; the only thing that differs is the class name on the parent element. This makes it incredibly easy to adjust the design of your own widgets without needing to manually code multiple layouts. Widget Areas Version 4 was often quite limiting when it came to aligning widgets in pages. Widgets could be dragged into a stacked, vertical list but that was typically as far as you could go in terms of design. Version 5 introduces a new concept called Widget Areas, which allow you to align multiple widgets in a variety of ways. Lets take a look! To create an area, you simply need to drag one widget on top of another. Blog - areas.mp4 By default, they'll align themselves into a grid, but can be realigned with ease by using the toolbar at the bottom of the page. The toolbar also holds controls for adjusting the width of widgets, and the gap between them: Blog - alignments.mp4 Widget Designs and Widget Areas in Version 5 make it incredibly easy to create a completely custom page in a matter of seconds. We're really excited for you to get your hands on these new tools in Invision Community 5, and are looking forward to seeing all of these new page designs in the wild, in the very near future!View the full post

We recently announced the new Invision Community 5 editor which adds many new exciting features such as semantically correct header tags, custom boxes and more. As the new editor is a step forward in technology, some legacy features had to be left behind. We received a lot of messages about these changes, and have created new tools based on that feedback to ensure you still have the tools you need. The new features are based around restricting some high level editor functionality for specific member groups and enabling an easy way to add custom embeds. Permission Levels Invision Community 5 puts a lot of new tools in the editor, including header tags, boxes and positioning tools. These are useful features, but perhaps you do not want your members changing the semantic structure of the page by adding H1 tags. Or maybe you don't want them being able to add custom boxes wtih colors. Based on this feedback, we have introduced a permission levels system. At the heart of the system lies three editor permission levels: Minimal, Standard and Advanced. Specific editor features are assigned to one or more levels. For example, you may only want header tags and content boxes to be for the 'advanced' permission level which only administrators can use. These permission levels are configurable via the Admin Control Panel. When is Each Restriction Level Used? Now that we have set up the permission levels, we need to apply them to member groups. We do this by simplying heading over to the Member Groups section of the Admin Control Panel. In the "Content" section of that form, there are two new options: Default Editor Restriction Level: This is the restriction level the group uses by default, for example in Forum Topics and Blog Posts. Editor Restriction Level for Comments: This is the level used for Comments (including Topic Replies) throughout the Community. When a member has multiple groups, they will use the most permissible editor setting out of all groups. Custom Embeds With news that, because editor technology has moved on, the ability to toggle into 'source mode' and directly edit the underlying structure of the editor document was removed, many people told us they used that feature to add custom iframes from specific services they use. We understood the need for custom embeds, and we've added the option to create iframe elements with any whitelisted URL from a link. CleanShot 2024-06-20 at 15.49.43.mp4 Additionally, iframes created this way have configurable height and width so you can resize to your liking This feature has two editor permissions: "Can Embed External Content," and "Can Convert Links to iframes". Adding iframes into a post can potentially be a security issue, so strong controls are needed to ensure there isn't abuse of this system. The editor will only allow links to be converted to iframes if the domain has been whitelisted. The whitelist exists in the new tab, Admin Control Panel > System > Posting & Editor > Embeds. The feature can also be entirely disabled from here. That wraps up this round of changes based on your comments. We hope that you enjoy this update to our Invision Community 5 editor and we always appreciate your feedback.View the full post

We recently announced the new Invision Community 5 editor which adds many new exciting features such as semantically correct header tags, custom boxes and more. As the new editor is a leap forward in technology, some legacy features had to be left behind. We received a lot of messages about these changes, and have created new tools based on that feedback to ensure you still have the tools you need. The new features are based around restricting some high level editor functionality for specific member groups and enabling an easy way to add custom embeds. Permission Levels Invision Community 5 puts a lot of new tools in the editor, including header tags, boxes and positioning tools. These are useful features, but perhaps you do not want your members changing the semantic structure of the page by adding H1 tags. Or maybe you don't want them being able to add custom boxes with colors. Based on this feedback, we have introduced a permission levels system. At the heart of the system lies three editor permission levels: Minimal, Standard and Advanced. Specific editor features are assigned to one or more levels. For example, you may only want header tags and content boxes to be for the 'advanced' permission level which only administrators can use. These permission levels are configurable via the Admin Control Panel. When is Each Restriction Level Used? Now that we have set up the permission levels, we need to apply them to member groups. We do this by simplying heading over to the Member Groups section of the Admin Control Panel. In the "Content" section of that form, there are two new options: Default Editor Restriction Level: This is the restriction level the group uses by default, for example in Forum Topics and Blog Posts. Editor Restriction Level for Comments: This is the level used for Comments (including Topic Replies) throughout the Community. When a member has multiple groups, they will use the most permissible editor setting out of all groups. Custom Embeds In response to news that the ability to toggle into 'source mode' and directly edit the underlying structure of the editor document was not implemented because editor technology has moved on, many people told us they used that feature to add custom iframes from specific services they use. We understood the need for custom embeds, and we've added the option to create iframe elements with any whitelisted URL from a link. CleanShot 2024-06-20 at 15.49.43.mp4 Additionally, iframes created this way have configurable height and width so you can resize to your liking This feature has two editor permissions: "Can Embed External Content," and "Can Convert Links to iframes". Adding iframes into a post can potentially be a security issue, so strong controls are needed to ensure there isn't abuse of this system. The editor will only allow links to be converted to iframes if the domain has been whitelisted. The whitelist exists in the new tab, Admin Control Panel > System > Posting & Editor > Embeds. The feature can also be entirely disabled from here. That wraps up this round of changes based on your comments. We hope that you enjoy this update to our Invision Community 5 editor and we always appreciate your feedback.View the full post

Invision Community v5 takes a fresh approach to tagging and content discovery. It overhauls the concept to bring content across different sections together with a beautiful new tag page. Tagging is a powerful concept but underused with Invision Community 4 due to overly complex interfaces in different areas of the suite, a confusing open tagging model option and no real benefit in content discovery beyond a simple list of content items. A driving force behind Invision Community 5 is the question of how we can help time-pressured community members find the content that most interests them. Invision Community has robust taxonomy through forum and category structures, but what about content in less visible areas such as Blogs, galleries or Events? How can we bring those together to homogenise the type of content and focus on the content itself? Taxonomy via tagging across all applications in the community suite is the answer. However, we needed to re-approach how tagging was implemented in the Invision Community to bring our new vision to life. Out with the old The current tagging system is implemented loosely, allowing open tagging, which is more akin to hashtags than high-level taxonomy. Allowing forums, albums, and blog categories to define their own tags turns tagging into more of a status label, which does nothing to help bring disparate content together. In with the new With a new focus on taxonomy and content discovery, we set about rebuilding tagging for Invision Community 5. The UI to tag items is the same, but now each defined, globally available tag has its own page with cover image and ability to feature items within that tag page. A uniform approach to different content items in the UI breaks down the barrier between content types and focuses solely on the content. Tags featured on its page are automatically displayed on the community Featured Content page. Finally, tags can now be followed, allowing your community to get a daily or weekly digest of all new tagged items, bringing people back to read more of the content they love. Let’s take a closer look In Invision Community 5, all tags are defined in the Admin Control Panel. The ability to use open tagging and per-node tags has been removed, but don’t worry—the upgrade system will offer conversion for those tags. Once defined, the tags are available for all content types and feature on a dedicated new tag page. This page features cover photos and more information on the tag via a description. Content from across your suite will be displayed on this page. If a single piece of content has multiple tags, it will appear on every relevant tag page making it easy to have content in multiple areas. If you want to permanently or temporarily feature individual content, perhaps your latest news or product release, you can do so right from the tag page. Featured content will show on the community’s Featured Content Page. Blurring the lines Now that we have an attractive and focused page for each tag, we can start to blur the lines between applications and, indeed, forums and categories, offering a new way to organise content. For some communities, the need for multiple forums to categorise content is diminished, and instead, tagging can be used to separate and find content from across the community. Tags can be featured in the menu system, offering new ways into your community for new visitors, regular community members, and even those who visit daily. Invision Community 5 is fearless in challenging past decisions or streamlining features to make them stronger and more focused. Our new approach to tagging takes a vague and underutilised concept and pushes it front and centre in any content strategy. How will you use it in your community?View the full post