IPS News Updates

Courses is a new, lightweight learning platform designed to help you provide a new learning experience for your members. Courses are perfect for requiring your community to read and understand documentation and to deliver training and lessons to your community. Let's take a look at how it works! Instructor led courses are comprised of separate modules, each containing lessons. New courses are created and managed through the AdminCP under Community. Each course has the option to be assigned one or more instructors. Instructors play a crucial role in developing the course content via the frontend, and they are available to assist members throughout the…

Our May update brings Email Bounce Management to our Invision Community cloud platform. In this blog entry, I'll go over what it is, why it's important, and how you can use it when needed. What is it? For those who may not know, an email bounce occurs when an email message is sent and the recipient either doesn't exist (hard bounce) or they have blocked the sender (you!) in a spam complaint (soft bounce). When an email message bounces we block that address at the cloud level so it cannot receive new messages from any community. This is considered good practice for email service providers, and ensures that we maintain a low bounce rate when sending emails on…

The longest awaited iPhone feature is almost here, native iOS notifications, and we couldn't wait to ensure it is enabled for your Invision Community. Invision Community 4.7.9 is iPhone push notification ready for when Apple release their latest iOS update later this month. This means you'll finally get notifications on your phone, even when you do not have your browser open, to alert you of new content on followed items and more. A feature Android owners have enjoyed for a while. With notifications, you can have an authentic native app experience with built-in Invision Community features such as the manifest editor. The manifest editor allows you to …

I am excited to officially announce the first release of Live Topics coming in our April release of Invision Community for selected cloud plans! Live Topics is a hosted live chat and question-and-answer event that is converted into a forum topic upon completion. It combines the fun and togetherness of a live event with the permanence of a forum topic allowing you to continue the conversation long after the event has ended. Recap: The first look at Live Topics including a video showing the main features. I know many of you on our community have already had sneak peeks and have been patiently waiting, so without further ado, let's get into it. Who is Liv…

You may have noticed many of the Invision Community apps getting updates recently. Over the last several months we have revealed revamped Events, Gallery and Downloads apps and have listened to how you have been using them. As a result, we are including some further app refinements as a direct result of that feedback. Gallery Many of you asked for more customisation options with the new overview page so 🎉 it is now possible to hide and show different sections of the overview using simple toggle settings without the need for theme edits. You can also adjust the number of items that show. Searching for existing Gallery images to include in topics h…

We love talking about our big new features, such as GraphQL and Live Topics, but we also like to shine a light on some of the smaller updates we've made to existing applications. In this blog, I'll take you through a few changes to the Download app and an update on our various API integrations. Downloads After the success of the Events and Gallery refreshes, we've brought some of those changes over to the Downloads application. Our Invision Community March '23 release will feature subtle theme updates to bring the Downloads app more in line with other applications. In addition, we have also added a grid mode for files. As in other areas of the platform, y…

This week, we're excited to preview some of the UI changes which will be included with Invision Community 4.7.8. These changes result in improved performance for Google Fonts and better contrast for accessibility, while also fixing a few bugs along the way. When combined, these small improvements result in a much more polished UI, so lets dive in and take a look at some examples below! Google Fonts Google Fonts are now imported using the latest version of their API, which includes support for font-display:swap. This CSS property prevents FOUT, or the Flash Of Unstyled Text, where fonts would temporarily be invisible if the Google Font hadn't finished downlo…

Over the past several years, you have seen us add many improvements to our platform packages. New features and capabilities leveraging the advanced technology we can offer you have really moved so many Invision Community powered sites into new areas of engagement. We have been investing heavily in our platform resources and have seen hundreds of clients move from classic, self-hosted environments to our platform to take advantage of new features, and the peace that never having to run a server brings them. It's incredible how often the number one reason for moving is never having to utter the term VPS again! Our packages used to limit based on online users…

We're excited to bring you a first look at our new and innovative Invision Community feature: Live Topics. Live Topics is a hosted live chat and question-and-answer event that is converted into a forum topic upon completion. It combines the fun and togetherness of a live event with the permanence of a forum topic allowing you to continue the conversation long after the event has ended. Your event doesn't have to just be text based! Live Topics allows you to feature a live video for your attendees. You can present to your attendees while fellow hosts select messages from the attendee chat to raise as questions for answers via the video or message replie…

We are excited to announce that the Invision Community GraphQL API is now available. This blog takes you through what GraphQL is and what makes it better than existing APIs present in Invision Community. It does get a bit technical, but you don't need to be a developer to appreciate how GraphQL will make life easier for those that do develop. What is GraphQL? GraphQL describes itself as a query language for APIs that gives clients the power to ask for precisely what is needed and nothing more. GraphQL was created by Facebook in 2012 and is now an open-source project governed by the GraphQL Foundation, which operates independently of Facebook. What…