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Welcome to Invision Community 5! Over the coming weeks, we'll be exploring a bunch of new features and improvements coming to our user interface including our brand new theme editor, a new mobile UI, dark mode and performance improvements thanks to a reduction in both JavaScript and CSS. To kick off this series, let’s take a closer look at the new sidebar layout and new view modes for the forum index and topic pages. Sidebar Layout Traditionally, Invision Community has shipped with a horizontal header and navigation bar at the top of the page, which is still available in version 5. We're introducing a brand new (and optional) sidebar layout, which can be enabled or disabled easily from within your theme settings. The sidebar not only provides convenient access to your applications, activity streams and search bar, but you can now add links to nodes for even easier access to popular or commonly used areas of your community. For example - a category from your forum, an album from the Gallery, or a product group from Commerce. Sidebar-zoom.mp4 Forum Index: Feed view One of our goals for version 5 was to re-imagine new ways for your visitors to consume content, and the sidebar layout is just one of our solutions. Table view has been the typical way of displaying forums, providing visitors with a simple summary of the most recently active topic. Grid mode introduced cover photos to forums and is a great way to make your page more visually engaging, while fluid view allows visitors to filter through a list of topics to easily focus on multiple areas of the community. Joining these view modes in version 5 is our new Feed view. Optional cover photos and featured forum colours allow you to personalise each forum, and a list of recently active topics with snippets of the most recent reply allow you to easily see what each forum is focusing on at a glance. The topic list drops below the cover photo and converts to a scrollable list on small devices. It's our fresh take on content display, and we can’t wait to hear your feedback! Topic pages: Compact view In addition, Invision Community 5 also introduces a new, compact layout option for topics. We wanted to create a layout which placed focus on your content while still keeping all of the authors profile information easily accessible within a mini profile. Stats, rank, badges, reputation points and more can be found by tapping the icon at the top of every post. The mini profile strip has also been added to other areas of the software too, such as comments and reviews in applications like Gallery and Blogs, and will appear on the mobile layout when the traditional "table view" is used in topics. Switching between the new compact view and the author sidebar view takes just seconds giving you complete control over your community. Mini profile.mp4 As part of this view, you also have the choice to feature/pin the original post to the top of every page, making it a breeze for your visitors to easily understand the context of replies without navigating back to page 1. Pinned posts have a slightly larger font-size to distinguish them from replies, and we've thoughtfully truncated them on pages beyond the first to keep scrolling to a minimum. The new sidebar layout and view modes offer a fresh and innovative approach to navigating and interacting with your community. We’re really keen to hear your thoughts on these new views and whether you’ll be unleashing them on your own sites! We appreciate that no two sites are the same, and those who are a fan of the classic header look will benefit from quick styling tools and a visual way to re-arrange the header elements which we’ll cover in a later blog. We’re looking forward to showcasing a whole bunch of new features over the coming weeks - so stay tuned, and we’ll see you then!View the full post

The Marketplace is closing on October 30th 2023. If you haven't already read the announcement, please read it first. As our Marketplace prepares to close its doors, we want to ensure a seamless transition for our customers. To facilitate this process, we're introducing a new 'license key' system to allow you to transfer your purchases to the third-party developer website in a privacy-conscious way. On the 'My Purchases' page, you'll find an improved layout displaying each resource you've purchased from the Marketplace. This includes the original purchase date, the expiry date (if applicable) and the current renewal term (if applicable). Additionally, we've added two new enhancements. First, you'll notice the purchase-specific license key (depicted as XXXX in the screenshot). This license key is accessible to the third party author and can be provided to them through their website or other means. It enables them to confirm your payment for the resource and check its activation status. Secondly, we've added a link to their profile in the Providers Directory (if applicable). You can find contact details and a link to the provider's website on their profile. We hope that these additions will help make the transition as smooth as possible. Third Party Developers Developers can now access the new 'My Sales' area, where you'll find a searchable list of resources that have had sales on the Marketplace. This list may include resources that were previously hidden. Clicking on any of these resources will display a list similar to the old 'my paid files.' Here, you'll find detailed information for each purchase, including purchase and expiry dates. Additionally, the list now includes the customer's current renewal term, which may differ from the initial purchase due to pricing changes. Furthermore, you'll notice the new license key, conveniently searchable in the top right corner. We've also made the list of purchases available in CSV format, allowing for easy integration into your own website or marketplace. Please let us know if you have any questions and we hope these new tools will ease the transition from the Marketplace.View the full post

Everyone at Invision Community is pleased to introduce Community Hive. We are creating a new free-to-use service to help independent communities reach new audiences and re-engage existing members. Community Hive delivers updates from your favourite communities and helps you explore new ones by bringing all the communities you follow into a single feed with optional email updates. The Invision Community September 2023 release will bring Community Hive integration to Invision Community and we're also releasing integrations for XenForo, Squarespace and WordPress. More integrations for popular platforms are planned over the coming months. The "Why" We believe in the power of independent communities. Technology has changed over the two decades we've been building community tools and despite the advances in technology a key problem independent communities still have is re-engaging existing members and finding new audiences. Social media has diminishing returns, and search results continually down-rank user-generated content. Reaching new audiences has never been more challenging. Community Hive solves that by providing a single platform to showcase your content to new and existing audiences. We don't keep your content; the only way to engage is to visit your site, ensuring you retain complete control and ownership. Regular updates via email and push notifications reach your existing members wherever they are. As our attention spans shorten and our online time becomes more cluttered, checking in with each community becomes more of a struggle. Independent and forum based communities fight for attention with social media, and owned platforms like Discord and Slack. Allowing your members to follow your community with Community Hive gives you increased visibility and discoverability and helps level the playing field. The Platform Community Hive has a familiar feed view with two main areas. "Following" shows a feed of communities you already follow to ensure you see more of what you like. This feed learns over time what content you favour and ensures you see more of what you like. The "Discover" tab shows you a feed of content from communities outside of your following list, which is a great way to discover new online communities to join. Following is easy; you don't even need to register on the community to add it to your followed list on Community Hive. Robust account management makes it easy to unfollow communities and set your desired audience classification preferences. Community Hive is mobile-first with push notifications and is ready to be added to your phone's home screen as an app. Integration Community Hive will launch with integration for several platforms such as XenForo, Squarespace and WordPress. Invision Community integration has several tools to nudge your members to add your community to Community Hive with buttons in key follow areas. Following from a community only requests your email address. You can optionally set a password later on Community Hive to enable your feed to be viewed on multiple devices. Clicking "Follow on Community Hive" from an Invision Community when you have an account with that community. Clicking "Follow on Community Hive" from an Invision Community when you do not have an account with that community. Community Hive will be launched in beta alongside Invision Community's September 2023 release, with integrations released for other platforms. You can visit Community Hive now and join in the discussion on the Community Hive forums. We look forward to seeing you there!View the full post

Spam has always been an ongoing battle for community owners as spammers find new ways to circumvent existing anti-spam practices. We have seen an uptick in new ways spammers are breaking through existing defense. As such, we here at Invision Community continue to look at new ways for community managers to combat against spam. For our September release, we have added several new tools that can prevent spammers from registering in the first place and help combat them even if they register successfully. Let's take a look at these new tools and settings. Geolocation based registration filtering Oftentimes, spam attacks can originate using bots and servers from specific regions. Using our existing Geolocation service, we have now added filters that will allow administrators to hold registrations from specific regions for administrator review, or deny the registration entirely. Using this, administrators whose communities are under a spam attack from a specific region, can temporarily filter registrations from that region. Multiple regions can be defined at once, and each individual region can either be held for administrator review, or denied completely. Disposable Email Filtering We have added an extra option to our spam defense system to filter users registering with throwaway disposable emails, which are often used by spammers to bypass email validation. During Spam Defense checking, we now also check the domain in use for the registration against a frequently maintained list. If the user passes through the normal spam defense checking, but is found to have a disposable email address, then the administrator can define one of the following actions to be taken. Allow the registration to proceed Allow the registration, but moderate all posts (which an option to remove moderation after a certain amount) Flag the account for administrator review Register the account but immediately ban it Completely deny the registration For both Geolocation and disposable email filtering, the existing Spam Defense Whitelist is always honored ahead of these filters. Contact Us Email Verification A common pain point has been the Contact Us page. While the spam does not go to a user facing location, it does still land in the administrators inbox, or other area defined by the sites Contact Us settings. To help with this, if a visitor who is not logged in attempts to use the Contact Us page, then in addition to the existing CAPTCHA, the administrator can optionally require the person to verify their email address before the message is ever sent. This applies to all Contact Us behaviors, including any added by third party applications. Cloud Content Analysis For our Invision Community Cloud customers, we have also added an additional layer of spam prevention after registration. After a user registers, or if the account has been dormant, then the first few content submissions will be analyzed using a custom developed algorithm within our platform. The algorithm takes into factor many different elements of the content, and will rank the post between 1 (not spam) and 5 (definitely spam). The algorithm can be constantly adjusted and improved based on trends without any intervention from the administrator, and without the need to update to new releases of Invision Community. The administrator can then decide one of the following actions to take based on the score that was received. Allow the submission Hold the submission for moderator review Deny the submission completely Of course, specific groups can be made exempt from this and not have their content checked at all, which is useful for sites with subscription based registrations which may not want to have this applied to new subscribers, but do want to have new non-subscribers checked. Spam can quickly become a headache for most community managers, and these new tools will help further combat it at the source. For our enterprise and Invision Community Cloud customers, being able to check for spam when posting is a new tool which will further filter out more of those annoying topics and posts. We hope these new features give you additional tools in the fight against spam. The features and changes presented here are available in the following packages: Geolocation based registration filtering, Disposable Email Filtering, Contact Us Email Verification: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise, Invision Community Classic (Self Hosted). Content Analysis: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise.View the full post

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.View the full post

Our June release includes enhancements to our various statistics and reporting features included within the community. Statistics are important for a community platform because they provide valuable insights about user engagement, preferences, and behaviors, which directly inform the platform's strategy and design. Furthermore, statistics enable the monitoring of the platform's growth and user retention, which are essential for maintaining a vibrant and active community. In our June release, we have made some enhancements to those features that will allow you to more quickly monitor those trends. Saved Charts In Invision Community 4.3, we introduced the ability to save charts to allow you to view them multiple times without needing to reset your filters each time. This works well, however there are three notable downsides. You could only save a chart if there were filters to apply, such as Warning Types, Device Types, Member Groups, etc. Any specified timescale was not retained in your saved chart. There was no centralized location to view every chart you have saved. In our June release, we have resolved both of those issues. Now, every chart can be saved regardless of if there are filters or not, and when saved, will now also retain your timescale as well. In addition to that, we have added an additional My Saved Charts page. This page will show you every chart you have saved, including all filters and timescales that have been selected. From this page you can quickly review all charts, temporarily adjust their timescales and filters to quickly see other information, as well as download each individual chart as a CSV directly from this page. Don't worry, though - your saved charts will also still show in their original locations just as they have in the past. Content Level Statistics Later on, in Invision Community 4.5, we introduced an improved Topic View that included various statistical information about the topic including the top comments, popular days, top commenters, and more. This, however, was only limited to topics in the forums, and not the rest of the community. In our June release, we have taken this and expanded it to content in every application. This includes Blog Entries, Gallery Albums, Gallery Images, and more. Each content item (such as a topic, blog entry or image) will show a new button for those with moderator permissions which opens a full statistics and analytics modal, providing expanded statistical information related to that particular piece of content specifically. Clicking this new button opens up the statistics and analytics modal. Our Classic customers will see the following view: Cloud Powered Historical View Tracking For our Invision Community cloud customers, we have expanded our infrastructure to allow for storing historical views for all content. On the previously mentioned Statistics and Analytics modal, a chart will be shown that outlines the amount of views that content has gotten every single day over a period of time, to allow you to see when specifically content was popular. This chart allows you to view trends for up to a year in the past. Additionally, we have expanded this to content containers Forums, Downloads Categories, Blogs, Blogs Categories, Gallery Categories, and more will all report their own historical view trends. Finally, these trends can be exported as a CSV file for your own personal processing if desired - and if needed, you can choose to only include certain types of content if you are focusing on one particular section. We hope these changes help you to identify trends from within your own community to help you promote and grow it further. The features and changes presented here are available in the following packages: Saved charts and content item level statistics: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise, Community Classic (Self Hosted). Saved charts, content item level statistics, analytic report generation, content level historical view tracking, container level historical view tracking: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise. If you do not see your product or package listed, please contact us to talk about upgrading your Invision Community.View the full post

Our June release of Invision Community introduces several new improvements for your community to increase privacy controls and consent of personally identifiable information. In today's digital age, privacy and the protection of personally identifiable information (PII) have become increasingly important. By incorporating improved privacy and PII data features into Invision Community, we are creating a more secure and inclusive environment within your community. In this blog post, we will take a quick look at what PII is, and the new features Invision Community has to improve privacy within your community. What is PII? PII, or personally identifiable information, refers to any data that can be used to identify, contact, or locate an individual member. When users sign up and visit your community, they may provide various types of PII, either voluntarily or as required by the platform's registration process. For example, an email address is required to complete the registration, and in some cases and IP address may be logged to authenticate a session, or to provide some context to the person posting content. Invision Community introduced new data control tools in a previous release, so let's take a look at the improvements coming in our June release that improves cookie management, IP address management, PII data requests, and the right to be forgotten. PII Data Request and Right to be Forgotten Your members now have the ability to request their Personally Identifiable Information (PII) data directly from their account settings page. Upon submitting a request, administrators will receive a notification alerting them to the new inquiry, where they can choose to either approve or deny it. If approved, the member will be notified and provided information on how to download their requested data. Additionally, members now have the option to request account deletion. After submitting this request, they will receive a confirmation email to verify their intent. Once confirmed, the request is forwarded to administrators, who can then decide whether to approve or reject the account deletion. IP Address Management Invision Community has had tools to prune IP addresses within a timeframe for a while, but we have conducted a thorough evaluation of the data framework in Invision Community to ensure that all recorded IP addresses are systematically purged according to the designated timeframe. Cookie Management Empowering members to control which cookies are stored is an important aspect of fostering trust and security within an online community. By granting users the autonomy to manage cookie preferences, you demonstrate a commitment to respecting their privacy and protecting their personal data. This level of transparency not only helps build a strong sense of trust between the community and its members but also helps with compliance, ultimately contributing to a more engaging and responsible user experience. The Invision Community cookie consent page has been revamped and now displays a list of essential cookies. Visitors have the option to opt out of non-essential cookies for a more customized browsing experience. Additionally, we've introduced a new feature that allows for the inclusion of an optional third-party Cookie Description on the cookie consent page, further enhancing transparency and user control. We trust that these enhancements to privacy and data collection practices will simplify compliance with various regulations and, most importantly, ensure that your community members feel secure and well-protected while engaging with your platform. The features and changes presented here are available in the following packages: Beginner Creator Creator Pro Team Business Enterprise These features are also available in the Invision Community Classic (self-hosted) product. If you do not see your product or package listed, please contact us to talk about upgrading your Invision Community.View the full post

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 their learning journey in the course. Courses can be set to be optional, or required meaning members must complete this course before progressing to others. Furthermore, courses tie into Achievement Rules, so you have the ability to grant points and/or badges to a member once they finish a course. Courses can be free or paid, and comprise of one or more modules, each of which contain multiple sessions and an optional quiz. Modules and Lessons Courses wouldn't be much without some lessons! Lessons are grouped into modules, that can have an optional quiz. Quizzes are a great way to verify members' learning progression and understanding. You have the option to configure modules to be completed sequentially. This pairs nicely with quizzes as you would need to complete the current module before moving on to the next one, ensuring a structured and progressive learning experience! The lessons themselves are the main content of Courses. Lessons are comprised of the material that students will engage with during their learning journey. Lessons can be designated as optional, so they can be skipped. This is handy when you want to provide organised supplemental information that is not essential. Managing Enrollments As an administrator or instructor, you may need to manage course enrolments from time to time. This can involve enrolling a member on their behalf, withdrawing a member from a course, or deleting an enrollment altogether. There are two ways for managing those enrolled in courses, either through the administrative control panel or the course roster on the frontend. To access the course roster via the frontend - just click on 'View All Members' when on the course homepage. Course Manager Managing a course is handled via the frontend. Individuals such as instructors, admins, and other authorized members can create and edit modules, lessons and quizzes for a course. You manage quizzes and lessons from within the module view. I hope that you have enjoyed this overview of Courses. This is just the beginning, we're already considering various possibilities such as integrating with Live Topics, incorporating discussion sections within a lesson, and enhancing the required courses feature so stay tuned! The features discussed in this announcement are not available for Invision Community Classic. Click here to learn more about switching to our platform to get this and other benefits.View the full post