IPS News Updates

As we close out another year with Invision Community, I wanted to take this opportunity to review the progress we’ve made and look ahead to next year and beyond. It's certainly been another busy year with over 1,300 improvements, fixes and new features. We listen to your feedback and meet each month with many community management teams. These conversations help us understand what it takes to build and grow a strong community. This year was about listening closely to that feedback and then turning that insight into practical improvements across the platform. We launched major new features, reduced friction, improved insight, added new integrations and API endpoints, improv…

The Invision Community November edition includes numerous improvements, including customizable welcome emails and a new feature to keep your community running smoothly. Auto-splitting large topicsWhile most topics run their course over a small number of pages, some continue to receive daily replies for years, growing to quite a size. Many communities have breakout areas where people enjoy simple forum games or trivial social updates that help bond community members together. However, when forums reach hundreds or thousands of pages, they can struggle a little and may take a little more time to show. We all know how vital page loading speed is to both SEO and user experien…

The Invision Community October release is packed with improvements, updates, and new features, including app-like mobile menus, a curated profile photo gallery, and a popular club request. Mobile app-like menusOur October release features redesigned dropdown menus with an app-like design on mobile devices, improved accessibility, and smoother performance. Dropdown menus have received a significant redesign, resulting in a native, app-like experience on touch devices. Menus transition into view, occupying a larger area of the screen, which is great for accessibility. They can be dismissed by swiping the menu off-screen in a downward direction or by tapping the blank area a…

Leaders must show upVisible, active leadership sets the culture, drives trust, and sparks engagement. Communities reflect their leaders. If leaders are present, transparent, and approachable, the community thrives. If leaders are absent, culture drifts toward noise, conflict, or apathy. Members look for cues from the top. People follow your lead. Show how you want others to behave. Culture is contagious. Silence leaves space for chaos. Engagement sticks. People stay when leaders make them feel valued. Communities succeed when leaders act as participants. Be an active leaderLeadership isn’t about dropping in with polished statements and disappearing. It’s about being part…

Our Invision Community September release adds a wave of powerful improvements to our REST API, Webhooks, and Zapier integration, designed to give developers and community managers more flexibility, insight, and automation. ZapierZapier has long been part of Invision Community, helping you automate routine tasks and connect with apps you already use and make them work together automatically. Instead of copying and pasting information from one system to another, Zapier acts like a bridge that passes data between them the moment something happens. Our September release introduces numerous new triggers and polling endpoints, enabling automations to reach further across your w…

Our September release of Invision Community is packed with improvements and new features, including editor enhancements and a brand-new integration with a popular service. Our commitment to enhancing Invision Community, which is shaped by feedback from many of our customers and partners, continues with this release. In addition to the usual fixes, we have some exciting updates to share. Editor improvementsThe editor is one of the most important components of Invision Community, as it serves as the interface for contributing to the community. We have upgraded the editor by transitioning to the latest version of Tiptap for Invision Community 5. This update introduces severa…

Over the past year, Gatorade Performance Partner has built something special for athletic trainers, coaches and other sports performance practitioners: the Gatorade Fieldhouse. Gatorade Fieldhouse is a member‑only hub where professionals can ask questions, share best practices, and stay in touch long after an event ends. The online community was prominently featured at this summer’s National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA) conference in June 2025, where Gatorade’s booth invited attendees to “join the conversation.” A digital home for sports health professionalsGatorade Fieldhouse.mp4 Gatorade Fieldhouse is the first cross‑discipline digital forum for sports health …

When someone lands on your community for the first time, their decision to stay or leave happens in seconds. A confusing layout, long registration form or silent homepage can drive them away. To keep them around, provide an engaging first impression with clear next steps and a sense of progress. This guide will provide the tools and guidance community managers need to build a smooth onboarding experience for their community. 🛠️ Your onboarding toolsSocial & Enterprise SSO - One‑click registration with Google, Apple, and enterprise SSO protocols. Alert System - Send must‑acknowledge messages (welcome notes, rules updates) to individuals or groups. Profile Completion - …

You've no doubt heard of the term' engagement' many times when designing and managing your community, but what does it mean? Every community is different, but they all share the three main types of engagement. 🚀 Active engagement is centred around creating, including posting, replying, voting, and reacting. 📖 Passive engagement is based around consuming, such as reading, logging in and following content areas that interest them. 🤝 Relational engagement is based around networking, such as following members, private messaging and joining clubs. Every community is unique, so it's essential to start by defining what meaningful engagement means to your community. If you're a s…

Imagine empowering your community members to take real-world actions and instantly see their achievements recognized online. That’s the power of Quests, a brand-new feature coming soon to Invision Community. What are Quests?Quests are a flexible, engaging way to gamify experiences both in-person and online. They’re made up of challenges that members complete to finish a Quest. Each completed Quest rewards your members with badges or other rewards of your choice, fostering deeper connections and continued participation in your community. Real-World ImpactQuests were designed to bridge the gap between in-person experiences and online communities. For example, at an event, a…

Imagine empowering your community members to take real-world actions and instantly see their achievements recognized online. That’s the power of Quests, a brand-new feature coming soon to Invision Community. What are Quests?Quests are a flexible, engaging way to gamify experiences both in-person and online. They’re made up of challenges that members complete to finish a Quest. Each completed Quest rewards your members with badges or other rewards of your choice, fostering deeper connections and continued participation in your community. Real-World ImpactQuests were designed to bridge the gap between in-person experiences and online communities. For example, at an event, a…

Imagine empowering your community members to take real-world actions and instantly see their achievements recognized online. That’s the power of Quests, a brand-new feature coming soon to Invision Community. What are Quests?Quests are a flexible, engaging way to gamify experiences both in-person and online. They’re made up of challenges that members complete to finish a Quest. Each completed Quest rewards your members with badges or other rewards of your choice, fostering deeper connections and continued participation in your community. Real-World ImpactQuests were designed to bridge the gap between in-person experiences and online communities. For example, at an event, a…

Enhancing the Mobile Experience with New PWA FeaturesAs part of our ongoing mission to ensure Invision Community 5 feels as smooth and modern across all devices, we’re pleased to announce several improvements in 5.0.10 that enhance the Progressive Web App (PWA) experience. What is the PWA and how do I use it? A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a mobile-optimized version of your community that users can add to their device’s home screen, just like any regular app. It launches in full-screen and supports push notifications and badges (when enabled). To install the PWA: iOS/iPadOS: Tap the Share button in Safari (square with an arrow), then tap "Add to Home Screen." Android: T…

We've all been there. You accidentally remove the wrong block when using the Page Editor, and that custom HTML or WYSIWYG editor block is gone forever. You may have also moved some blocks around, only to realise the layout was perfect before. The new Invision Community 5 Page Editor is a powerful tool that enables you to create custom pages using your community data. We know how effective it is; we have used it to build out this site. We also know the pain of deleting the wrong block or wanting to revert to a previous layout. Our Invision Community 5 July release introduces the ability to roll back to a previous version, providing confidence in using the Page Editor, kn…

Invision Community's advertising system enables the inclusion of linked images in your community's feeds to highlight events, draw attention to important updates, and promote external services. You can even monetise your community by selling advertising space via the built-in commerce tools. In Invision Community 5’s July release, we’ve added several improvements to the advertising system to make advertisement placement more flexible and even allow them to be placed in emails. Let’s dive in! A flexible approach to advertisement placementThe system enables you to place advertisements between topics when viewing a list and between posts when viewing a specific topic. Howev…

Invision Community proudly powers the newly launched AI Skills Hub, created by Innovate UK in partnership with PwC! Invision Community 5 offers a broad range of capabilities beyond just classic forums that enables you to build out an entire interactive website with community at its heart, and that is what we did for Innovate UK. The AI Skills Hub is part of the UK’s national push to upskill workers across high-impact sectors like agriculture, construction, creative industries, and transport. With an urgent need for practical, ethical, and industry-specific AI training, the Hub brings together learners, employers, and training providers in one seamless digital environment.…

You can get a lot of data from your Invision Community. We have charts and graphs for almost every item you can think of from reactions used to time to solution. However, it can be hard to extract meaning from the raw data and even harder to organise the charts. Our June release of Invision Community 5 aims to solve both of these problems with “My Charts” transforming into a much more useful “Saved Reports” feature and the addition of a key community health metrics dashboard. Let’s dive in! Saved ReportsPrevious versions of Invision Community had the ability to save charts to a single page that only you could see. This was fine but it meant that all your key metrics were …

It’s been four months since Invision Community 5.0.0 was released and we’ve had a lot of feedback over those months which has fed into a number of improvements. While we have a number of bigger features in the pipeline, sometimes the smaller improvements which improve your time on the community can have a bigger impact. Let’s take a look at those changes. Tag usage chart filtersOur re-imagined tagging system brings content from across the suite into a single page offering opportunities for secondary categorization. The AdminCP statistics chart for tag usage was updated with a customizable filter so you can drill down by app and sections allowing you to look at tag usage i…

It’s been four months since Invision Community 5.0.0 was released and we’ve had a lot of feedback over those months which has fed into a number of improvements. While we have a number of bigger features in the pipeline, sometimes the smaller improvements which improve your time on the community can have a bigger impact. Let’s take a look at those changes. Tag usage chart filtersOur re-imagined tagging system brings content from across the suite into a single page offering opportunities for secondary categorization. The AdminCP statistics chart for tag usage was updated with a customizable filter so you can drill down by app and sections allowing you to look at tag usage i…

There's a lot for your members to love with Invision Community 5, and we recently covered five of the best features. Today, I want to discuss five features your team will love. One of the main concepts for Invision Community 5 was to reduce the complexity of power-user tools like theming and page building. These functions had been built around those with deep technical and coding knowledge, locking out many community teams. We also wanted to build new tools to help busy community teams organise, moderate and identify trusted members. Did we achieve that? Let's look at five new features we think your team will love in Invision Community 5. The new them…

As we move closer to releasing Invision Community 5, I wanted to review a few key features I believe your members will love after you upgrade to Invision Community 5. The all-new editor We have to start with the brand new editor, recoded and redesigned from the ground up. The new editor is not just faster and leaner, but also remarkably user-friendly, ensuring an upgraded experience for your members in Invision Community 5. Your members will love the streamlined toolbar that no longer hides buttons on smaller devices. They'll also appreciate the new emoji and icon panel, which allows them to insert over 1,700 icons to enhance their posts. Content boxes, r…

Invision Community 4.7.19 will be released in November and contains many updates along with the report center improvements. While Invision Community 5 moves through the beta process, I wanted to let you know about all the updates coming in Invision Community 4. I've already spoken about the Report Center updates, which bring more professionalism and compliance to that area, and this blog will outline a few other highlights for the forthcoming release. Dormant Account Login Notification Keeping member accounts secure is a top priority for all community teams, and with data breaches containing usernames and passwords regularly shared on the dark web, it mak…

Invision Community 5 is currently in beta testing for all customers with the Invision Community Classic license. Invision Community Cloud customers can request a private demo to test the latest version. After months of development work, we're pleased to move Invision Community into beta testing, the final phase before its stable release. We'd love your help to find the last few bugs. You can join our Invision Community 5 Beta Testing Club and download the beta onto your test site or request a cloud demo. During the early stages of testing, we've implemented a lot of feedback, and I wanted to show you a few of the key changes we've not discussed in previous …

Invision Community 4.7.19 contains a significant upgrade to the Report Center to improve compliance and professionalism within the reporting workflow. The existing report center functions well enough but lacks some of the more professional tools modern communities need when managing complaints. In previous versions, a member or guest reported a piece of content, such as a comment or topic, which was then handled by the community team behind the scenes, and the report closed when dealt with. It was up to the community team to inform the original content author if any decision was made and to inform those who reported the content of the outcome. The Invision Comm…

Can you start from a stock Invision Community 5 installation and have it themed, customized, and a new homepage built in under an hour without relying on custom templates and coding? Yes, and Jimi Wikman, a long-time Invision Community customer, did just that in his latest YouTube video. Jimi has over twenty-five years of experience in development and twenty years of experience in graphic design. Invision Community 5 has been in testing for a few months now, and Jimi produced this amazing walkthrough of Invision Community 5's new page editor and theme editor while re-creating his own site. Our vision for Invision Community 5 was to put the power into t…