Shadow82x

Introducing Community Content System

Many clients have expressed interest in tools that would allow them to extend IP.Board's traditional forum community functionality by providing methods of creating new pages within the IP.Board framework.  Uses for such a system span from a simple custom portal all the way through to a complete website built utilizing IP.Board's powerful backend codebase.  When your community and site systems are truly integrated, single sign on and a matching website/forum theme become much easier.

Our new Community Content System lets you do all of this and more. CCS is a new application that allows you to create content for your site. Blog entries over the next several days will discuss some of its powerful features in more detail along with examples showing you just how easy it is to create website pages and other content just by clicking through the admin control panel. For now in this introduction, here is a brief overview of its main features:

• Page Templates
  If you are creating many pages for your website you will find that they generally follow a similar structure each time.  By utilizing page templates, you can create templates complete with the full functionality of our skin system, including use of template conditionals and plugins. You can create the HTML structure once, and reuse it for some or all of your pages. Novice users can type in normal HTML code or power users can choose to use the powerful skin tags.
  
  
• Page Manager
  The core of CCS: this tool allows you to create pages, plain and simple. No fancy terminology or new methods to learn. A wizard will guide you through creating your pages, and allow you to configure things like permissions for who can view the page, which page template to use, and more. Pages can be edited as raw HTML, raw PHP, or through our traditional WYSIWYG editor using BBCode. You can also set page-types as JavaScript or CSS and the system will automatically detect those special types.
  
  
• Media Manager
  A tool to allow you to manage images and other media for your site.  You can define the root path to your file storage directory, and then create folders and upload image files within that directory via the ACP.  You can move and delete files and folders from the ACP as well.
  
  
• Block Manager
  An extremely powerful tool that allows you to create "blocks" for your pages. Blocks are inserted utilizing template plugins so you can insert blocks anywhere in the CCS content or even anywhere in your forum community using the skin manager in the admin control panel. This means that content blocks you create in CCS are not just limited to that application!  There are three types of blocks you will work with:
  
  
  • Custom - create blocks by editing BBCode (using our WYSIWYG editor), raw HTML, or raw PHP. Input any information you like.
    
  • Plugins - some blocks require code to execute in order to determine what should be shown.  For instance, you may wish to show a mini-calendar on one of your pages or a login box so users can login right from your home page.  Plugin blocks allow developers to create blocks that can easily plugin to the system without having to create code modifications.
    
  • Feeds - not just limited to RSS.  You can create "feeds" of almost any type of data - forums, topics, replies, calendar events, blog entries, gallery images, download manager files, and of course traditional RSS imports.  A wizard will guide you through creating these feeds, allowing you to specify how the feed should be pulled (do you want to show the last 5 gallery images?  what about a random sampling of forum topics? how about all topics from the visitor's friends list since their last visit?) to make it simpler for you to define the block.

The system is very flexible, allowing you to do nearly anything you want, while at the same time providing a simple user interface and wizard-based approach for creating content to keep things easy for newer users. Power users can ignore all the special features and just type in raw-PHP if they prefer. The choice is up to the administrator.

The CCS supports friendly urls (you define the folders and page names while creating pages), and does not require the page output to be accessed through your forum directory. This means you can have your community at example.com/forums but your main web site can show under just example.com easily. You can use IP.Board's skin system (inheriting the forum skin) or you can elect to create raw pages without inheriting any CSS, wrapper, or JavaScript from IP.Board.


Pricing and Availability

The CCS was developed completely separately from the IPB3 and applications process allowing us to develop CCS without any delay in IPB3's development time. As such, we are happy to say we will be able to release CCS about two weeks after IPB3's first supported release! Pricing will be announced at that time.


We are sure there will be many questions about the CCS and we welcome them. Over the next several days there will be blog entries on our company blog going into greater detail on each of the core features of CCS. Hopefully all of your detailed questions will be answered then. Please accept our apologies if we may sometimes ask you to wait for the next blog update before answering your questions. Thank you!

Welcome to IP.Board 3.1.0 Beta 1!
Welcome to the latest development version of IP.Board 3.1.0. We're excited to reveal the product we've been working on for the past few months. This build contains all the features we've blogged about recently including the search improvements, Twitter integration, Profile Customization and more.

As always, this is a very early beta build so please expect to find the odd bug here and there. Please report any bugs found into the tracker as usual.

As always, we'd love to hear your feedback. Happy clicking!

Note: Please perform a hard refresh / delete temporary items in your browser to ensure you get the correct CSS and JS

Preview Only: IP.Board 3.1 is in preview only. It is not yet available for download. Keep an eye out for a future announcement.

What's New
Link Sharing
Easily share links from your community to Facebook, Twitter, and more. Great way to drive traffic to your community!

Status Updates
Enhancements to the existing member status system in IP.Board to include the ability to reply and more.

Topic Preview
Preview the first few lines of a topic without loading the entire topic.

View Reputation
Optionally allow your members to see who gave reputation points on their posts.

Twitter Integration
Your members can now link their account with their Twitter account!

Improved Facebook Integration
Further enhance the link between your community and Facebook to drive traffic.

Advertising Code Integration: Part 1 and Part 2
Easily place advertising code throughout your community with simple settings in the admin area.

Profile Customizations: Part 1 and Part 2
Allow your members to customize the look and feel of their profile page.

Skin Upgrader
Upgrading your skin between versions of IP.Board just became a lot easier.

Soft Delete Posts and Topics
Rather than actually deleting a post or topic you can now hide it from view to easily restore it later.

Notification System
An easier way to be notified of all the various events that happen in your community.

Modification Development Enhancements
Great tools for those that create modifications for IP.Board

Hook System Improvements
Improvements to the IP.Board hook system to make it easier for modification developers to expand the functions in the software.

Search Engine Optimization: Part 1 and Part 2
Allow search engines to better index and rank your community in results.

Search Engine Overhaul
Search engine rebuilt from the ground up introducing more flexibility and power.

I just wanna say this: thank you!

Invision Power Services, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of IP.Board 3.2.0 and its Applications!

Everyone at IPS is very proud of IP.Board 3.2.0 and the Application updates. We have worked hard to create a quality, modern community platform and the feedback from our clients has been tremendous.

We are releasing the following new software:


IP.Board 3.2.0
Fully featured community platform including forums, members profiles, calendar, status system, integration, and much, much more.


IP.Gallery 4.1.0
Categories and photo albums for your members to share their images and videos on your community.


IP.Nexus 1.3.0
Fully featured commerce system to sell products, membership access, advertising, digital downloads, and more. Includes tools like a support desk to help manage you clients.


IP.Blog 2.4.0
Allow you and your members to post blogs on your community or syndicate externally hosted blogs easily.


IP.Downloads 2.4.0
Complete file management application including file version control, commenting, and forum topic linking.


IP.Content 2.2.0
Content management for your community - run a full web site or a simply community portal. The possibilities are endless.


IP.Chat 1.3.0
Engage your members in real time chat or send them private chats while in the chat room.


IP.Calendar 3.2.0
Event calendar for your community with multiple calendars, public/private events, and iCal support.




What's new in IP.Board 3.2!

In addition to this list there are countless other minor improvements and changes based on client feedback too numerous to mention.


Calendar Improvements

• SEO Improvements: http://community.inv...o-improvements/
  
• Consistency: http://community.inv...ii-consistency/
  
• RSVP: http://community.inv...-part-iii-rsvp/
  
• Simplification and interface changes: http://community.inv...erface-changes/
  
• iCalendar support: http://community.inv...lendar-support/

Moderator Functions

• Report Center improvements: http://community.inv...r-improvements/
  
• Editing Member improvements: http://community.inv...r-improvements/
  
• Moderator Control Panel: http://community.inv...-control-panel/

New Text Editor

• New editor and auto-save: http://community.inv...ew-text-editor/
  
• Cleaner interface, quick reply, quick quoting: http://community.inv...editor-part-ii/
  
• New post alert while typing reply: http://community.inv...ditor-part-iii/

AdminCP

• New style: http://community.inv...-admincp-style/
  
• New "like" reputation mode: http://community.inv...tion-mode-like/
  
• Easy member management: http://community.inv...ber-management/
  
• Improved restrictions: http://community.inv...s-enhancements/
  
• Forum Management: http://community.inv...rum-management/
  
• Remote skin editing: http://community.inv...e-skin-editing/

Core Functionality

• View new content and topic marking improvements: http://community.inv...d-topic-marking and part 2: http://community.inv...t-improvements/
  
• New Photo Editor: http://community.inv...w-photo-editor/
  
• Shared media: http://community.inv...e-shared-media/
  
• Tagging and prefixes: http://community.inv...g-and-prefixes/
  
• Notification enhancements: http://community.inv...n-enhancements/ and http://community.inv...cations-part-2/
  
• New mobile skin: http://community.inv...te-mobile-skin/
  
• Facebook, Twitter, and mobile updates: http://community.inv...mobile-updates/
  
• Visual Skin Editor: http://community.inv...al-skin-editor/

Miscellaneous Changes

• "Delete All" button has been added to the SQL error logs page
  
• Linear+ and Outline modes removed for topic viewing (they're a hold-over from an older time on the web and it's time to retire them)
  
• Support for IPv6
  
• You can now use the member management tools to search for incomplete members
  
• Pagination added to the incomplete members page of the ACP
  
• If only one skin or language is choosable, the dropdown selector at the bottom of the page will be hidden
  
• Member photos and member avatars are being merged into one function: member photo. There was too much overlap between the two features.
  
• IP.Calendar and IP.Chat will no longer be bundled in the IP.Board download zip to reduce the size of the download. This also allows clients who have no interest in IP.Chat or IP.Calendar to choose not to download or install those applications. Of course those who do wish to use those applications can easily download from the client area and install them.
  
• Rebuild FURL cache button has been moved to the cache management page.
  
• It is now possible to rename the "hooks" folder to something else editing the constant IPS_HOOKS_PATH in initdata.php.
  
• You can now edit each group's report center permissions directly from the group management area
  
• Report center now supports item marking to remember and indicate which reports you've viewed
  
• Customers who have purchased Copyright Removal no longer need to enter a separate Copyright Removal key. The copyright will automatically be removed when activating your license.
  
• New settings for attachments to limit size of files stored on disk
  
• Separate ACP restriction options have been added for managing spam users and incomplete users (access to these areas were previously controlled by the option "can manage banned users").
  
• "Show X Last visitors in profile" now shows always the last 5 visitors if the setting is enabled rather than having a 3, 5, 10 dropdown choice.
  
• New ACP tool to create the cronjobs to rebuild sphinx indexes
  
• When adding a ban filter in the ACP you will now have an option to enter a reason visible to all admins (the reason won't show in the public side).
  
• Pinned, polls, and moved topic prefixes have been moved to language files (they were previously in the settings area)
  
• Many redundant or pointless settings removed. Other settings moved to more logical locations. Some settings groups merged to create fewer groups to go through when setting up your community. System Settings menu item moved to a top-level menu item under System tab so it's available with one-click anywhere in AdminCP.
  
• The note box in your My Settings (UserCP) area has been removed. It is a hold-over from years past and doesn't seem to make sense in community software. If you are one of the very few people who use this: make a copy of your notes before upgrade.
  
• The unread topic marking system will now remember what page of a topic you left off reading rather than assume you read the entire topic on the first click.

IP.Nexus 1.3.0

• Global Changes http://community.inv...global-changes/
  
  • Updated to match the new styling in IP.Board 3.2 both on front end and AdminCP
    
  • Search functions integrated with AdminCP live search
    
  • Attention icons to display items needing your attention
    
  • 2Checkout.com gateway added
    
  • Support for PayPal subscriptions
    
  • Subscription option for packages so a member can only purchase an item once
    
  • Better support to remember a member's original member group when you are using IP.Nexus group promotion feature
    
  • More admin-level notification options of new activity
• Hosting improvements: http://community.inv...us-130-hosting/
  
• Customers and purchases: http://community.inv...-and-purchases/
  
• Support: http://community.inv...us-130-support/

IP.Gallery 4.1.0
http://community.inv...-41-dev-update/




Other Applications

Other applications have been updated to work with IP.Board 3.2.0, have received cosmetic improvements, and other minor updates to improve functionality. All applications will get larger updates now that IP.Board 3.2.0 has been released. Keep an eye on our news feed for information.

Code-Level Changes

These are changes made at the code-level of our software during this release phase that may interest our power-user clients.


Performance Improvements

• Reduced several cache-load queries on the ACP index page
  
• Combined two permissions queries loaded on every ACP page into one
  
• Added some additional cache-loading calls to other ACP pages (manage applications, manage hooks, manage members)
  
• Added some caching for fetching the max version ID in the upgrade_history table, which reduces the number of queries on the ACP manage applications page by the number of applications installed
  
• Changed how modules are grabbed when IN_DEV is enabled for menu building (runs one query instead of one query per application)
  
• class_forums was getting loaded and initialized twice in the Manage Forums page - fixed so it's not reloaded a second time. Also removed a shortcut for the class in the manage forums file to reduce small amount of overhead/memory.
  
• Removed a query for group data on Manage Forums page (group_cache is already loaded, so used that instead)
  
• Removed several deprecated functions, reducing the size of some classes and reducing their resulting overhead
  
• Edited language export routine (for IN_DEV mode) so that it only exports the data we absolutely need. This reduces the size of our language XML files significantly, and also reduces memory overhead needed to process the language XML files.
  
• Index added on ibf_posts.post_parent to speed up certain update queries that previously required a full table scan
  
• A lot of unused code in the friend management files has been removed
  
• Avatar or profile photo cleanup tools in ACP were unnecessarily loading and instantiating upload class
  
• Removed outdated/non-functional coloring in admin logs
  
• Calendar has been rewritten, and much unused code has been removed.
  
• Caches used by calendar were not being properly loaded at runtime
  
• Changed most of the file_exists call in the code with is_file for a faster code execution
  
• The bbcode cache now uses the ‘bbcode_tag’ field as array key instead of an incremental integer, that allows a faster data access for single bbcode tags as there is no need to scan the whole array with a foreach.
  
• An unnecessary query has been removed from the forum index view (the query used to verify the name used for the friendly URL is correct)
  
• Removed unnecessary query from report center report view
  
• A cache used by report center was being queried separately instead of at page initiation
  
• Report center plugins are now cached for quicker runtime lookup without having to query the database
  
• Useless queries removed from report center
  
• Some queries that selected all rows and counted them (instead of running COUNT style queries) were changed to be better optimized
  
• ACP skin files previously extended the output class unnecessarily. This was removed, resulting in approximately 20KB or more memory savings in each ACP page.
  
• Report center plugins are now cached for quicker runtime lookup without having to query the database
  
• RSS import now is much faster on boards with lots of feeds setup in the ACP.
  
• overWrite header query / method_exists moved from every page load and value is cached in app_cache

Developer-Oriented Changes
Changes that may impact resource authors and skinners (including removed functions, database changes, new hooks, etc.)

• $this->DB->force_data_type has been removed. Mod authors should now call $this->DB->setDataType( $column, $type ) instead.
  
• $this->DB->no_escape_fields has been hidden. You should use the available $this->DB->preventAddSlashes( array( 'col' => 1 ) ); syntax instead.
  
• Login management custom configurations have moved to database handling. conf.php (or conf.dist.php) files are no longer needed (though acp.php still is).
  
• search_results, sessions.location, and cache_store.cs_extra are all removed
  
• If you have a findIpAddress extension you can now add an array of additional columns to pull from your table as the fourth array member. i.e. "'posts' => array( 'author_id', 'ip_address', 'post_date', array( 'pid' ) ),"
  
• IPB will now do a better job of cleaning up centralized application data during uninstall, so applications don't have to do it manually. (http://community.inv...support-ticket/)
  
• The way hook data to-be-exported is stored has changed. This should have minimal impact on developers as the upgrade routine will update it for developers. This should make working with hooks between multiple developers easier, and make hooks import, export, install and uninstall in a much more consistent manner whether IN_DEV is on or not.
  
• Many skin system bugs have been resolved, and improvements implemented, making the skin system more flexible to developers using it outside of normal contexts, while allowing it to be more forgiving of various formatting possibilities (i.e. typehinting for function parameters and spacing around function parameter definitions).
  
• Central permission management now correctly can handle more than one permission type within a single application
  
• IPv6 is now supported. You should ensure any database columns holding IP addresses are varchar(46) or larger.
  
• You should use the new ipsRegistry::getAppClass( $app ); call to load your app_class_(application).php class. This ensures any library hooks execute as appropriate and consolidates duplicative code.
  
• You should use the new constants IPS_FILE_PERMISSION / IPS_FOLDER_PERMISSION for file and folder permission values. i.e. instead of chmod( $file, 0777 ); use chmod( $file, IPS_FILE_PERMISSION ); instead.
  
• Calendar has been completely rewritten - the DB schema has changed, dates are stored as datetime parts in MySQL, etc.
  
• The ACP has a new interface implemented, some of the JS has changed, jQuery is now supported in the ACP
  
• Removed 4 data hooks in public_forums_forums_topics: topicViewTopicData, topicViewDisplayData, topicViewForumData, topicViewPostData. All 4 of them can be replaced with a simple skin overloader for the template "skin_topic > topicViewTemplate".
  
• Photos and avatars have been merged.
  
• Photos thumbs are now cropped at 100px and you can select which area to crop
  
• Twitter / Facebook photos are actually imported and re-sized where possible (needs fopen URL wrappers otherwise the thumb URL for the services is used)
  
• Some functionality for importing/exporting/rebuilding from and to XML files has been hidden unless IN_DEV mode is enabled
  
• Added a second parameter for the function “$this→cache→getCache( $CACHE_KEY, FALSE );” which allows to skip the loading from the database if the cache isn’t loaded already.
  
• A new option to define an application when creating an hook, if the application is filled the code checks if it is enabled and if not skips loading the hook file completely.
  
  
  
  class_forums::fetchTopicFolderIcon() has been changed to return an array of meta-data about the topic that can be used to generate the topic icon, although Rikki is changing how topic icons work in general anyways.
  pp_*thumb*_x is now pp_*small*_x
  
• The sessions API (admin/sources/classes/session/api.php) now supports a different cutoff time rather than the default one, additional joins, ‘where’ query bits, complete ‘where’ query part override.
  
• The function “IPSLib::unpackGroup()” now is “IPSMember::unpackGroup()”.
  
• ACP group_form.php plugins now support an optional third method: postSave(). This method accepts one parameter (the group ID), is only called if present, is called after the rest of the group data is saved, and should not return anything.
  
• Added a getCount() method to the like class to return just the number of followers
  
• The setting disable_reportpost has been removed. Our applications now check the report center permissions directly, instead.
  
• Hooks Improvements: http://community.inv...s-improvements/
  
• Applications Improvements: http://community.inv...s-improvements/
  
• A new extensions file per-app is supported: permissionsSync.php. Class name should be “(app)PermissionsSync” and supports a constructor (ipsRegistry reference passed) and one method with no arguments: updatePermissions(). This method can be used to rebuild application caches when the app permissions have been updated from the central permission manager.
  
• Deprecated function getBlogID() in the blog API has been removed, developers will need to use the more updated function fetchBlogIds()
  
• makeProfileLink, memberViewImages, makePassword, makeNameFormatted, canReceiveMobileNotifications have been moved to IPSMember
  
• unconvertSmilies has been moved to IPSText. The redirect method in the bbcode class has been removed.
  
• The “doneScreen” method in the admin output class has been entirely removed. Authors are encouraged to use the global_message/silentRedirectWithMessage() methodology instead.
  
• The “redirect” method in the admin output class now simply routes to silentRedirectWithMessage(), and is marked deprecated.
  
• The template “global_main_wrapper_no_furniture” has been removed from the admin skin.
  
• Function “rebuildSphinxConfig” has been moved from “IPSLib” to “admin_core_applications_applications”
  
• classCommunication.php was removed, and classFileManagement.php was extended to handle POST requests (encompassing the only functionality missing compared to classCommunication.php)
  
• Almost all private methods have been switched to protected to allow more robust hook capabilities
  
• New pagination potions to use a next/previous style pagination. Next/previous style pagination supports AJAX pagination.
  
• The column “ban_nocache” has been removed from the “banfilters” table.
  
• New adminOutput method setMessage() has been added. Allows to set the global_message, and allows to specify a “sticky” flag or not.
  
• ACP Settings are now in their own “settings” module and the templates have been moved as well in “cp_skin_settings”.
  
• menu.xml files for ACP modules now support specifying a language key, which can then be placed into “(app)_admin_menulang.php” as “menu__(language_key)” to support menu language abstraction in the ACP. This is optional for apps.

Shadow82x, on 19 June 2011 - 08:47 PM, said:

Agreed. I've received complaints that the profile picture is an annoying addition since most tend to just place their avatar there as well anyway, so it just creates an extra task when they want to change their avatar/general picture. A lot of users tend to remember who posted what based on visuals as well(that visual being an avatar) instead of remembering the username.

I see avatar only being the general image identity for a user as a great help for those of us that are more photographic/visual when it comes to memory.

Looking forward to this change in 3.2.

invisiblex_merged, on 14 June 2011 - 12:23 AM, said:

Oh god, you actually think vBulletin has a good default skin. *facepalms*

invisiblex_merged, on 13 June 2011 - 07:59 PM, said:

Troll status: confirmed.

XiuzSu, on 13 June 2011 - 02:37 PM, said:

No, I don't think you can.  People don't realize how small of a percentage of IPS's customers actually visit the feedback forums.  And even based on what's been posted, just because 15-20 people respond saying they support a particular topic, there are likely at least as many if not more people who have no problem with the topic and thus don't even bother to come into the topic to talk about it.

In addition, these 'cram a bunch of things into one topic' topics are always a bad idea.  There's never any organization to them, people go off into their own little tangents, and it's impossible to maintain a coherent message.  Just talk about the individual issues in the existing individual topics.

EDIT: To clarify, I'm not saying there's no merit to any of these, but each issue needs to be discussed separately, and just because a handful of people agree does not mean it's a sweeping popular movement among the entire customer base.

Yeah, this was removed and I can see how this would be something some would want.  I think it's a testament to the ease at which IP.Board 3.2 can now be modded that it was only about a 20 minute job to whip up a hook that brings this functionality back:

IP.B IMO has one of the worst developer experiences i have ever had. No documentation, Very few Tutorials, A very overly complex system. It is really just a nightmare to wrap your head around.


IP.Content, however, Is actually fairly simple to use


I figure I will go over the basics of setting up a homepage.

This homepage will have 2 sections:
1) a news section
2) a reviews section

Setting up a page.


When creating a homepage The first thing you are going to want to do is create a "Page".
Simply click on IP.Content under "my apps" and you will automatically be brought to your list of pages.









Fill out your details the way YOU want.
I would suggest using the IPB wrapper or else you may find yourself in some trouble.








In your Content add the following:

echo '
{ccs special_tag="navigation"}
{parse articles}
';

The only line in here that you really need to pay attention to is {parse articles}.
Remember this because I am going to talk about this in more detail  later.



Cacheing you can leave blank if you'd like. You can play around with that when you become more advanced.



Permissions is pretty self explainatory.


and when you get to your finish page you will find your link. go to that page and hold on to it because we are going to be using it for testing.


Playing with the article settings

So IPS has done something pretty nice for us. They have done almost all the work for us as far as getting the news articles to the homepage.

The only think you will likely have to touch in "article Configuration" is the permissions. also be sure to look at "manage editors" if you are having further permission trouble.

Therefore, First thing you may want to look into is the Promote article settings. This puts a very nice button at the bottom of every post this will help you promote news articles that members post on your board straight to your homepage!




After that go to " manage categories". Add a category for each news and reviews. (feel free to delete the crap IPB puts there)





Looking at your homepage you will likely see a large amount of formatting issues and other crap like that.

Therefore, we are going to skip the rest of the article section and pay attention to the "templates"
Click article templates,

We are going to add our own template.


IMO the only two settings here are the Frontpage template and the View template.


The frontpage template is where all of your articles will be listed. In this example there will be 3 major places where you will see this template.


1) the outermost front page.
2) The front page of your news section.
3) The front page of your reviews section.



View Templates are what You see when you are viewing an article.

Incase you aren't exactly getting it think of hierarchy like this.

Homepage > Section view > Article view

This is much like how your IPB board already goes

Board Index > Forum view > Topic view



In this example we are going to create one universal frontpage for all the sections, and one for the view article template


This is where I need to let you do your own creativity. This is the actually design that your homepage will follow.


If you want to change the CSS you can go to your look and feel tab. Pick your skin and find the CSS tab.


There are two MAJOR CSS files that are imported.
One is your IP.Content css file known as ipcontent.css
The other; ipb_styles.css


ipb_styles is what is used universally used on your board already. Therefore, you can easily grab design concepts from your forum. Alternatively, If you have something that you want to use only on your IPC files. Then edit the IPContent CSS.

Yes, you can get away with putting everything in ipb_styles.css, however, since this CSS file is also used for you IP.Board it doesn't make sense to put all that unneeded CSS into that file.



IPB automatically assigns your most recent articles into the array $data['records'].

If you want to access the first article you would do so by calling
$data['records'][0]

second article
$data['records'][1]


and so on and so forth.

Each article has several elements to it. Such as, a title, a URL, a content body.

So say we wanted to access the first articles title.
we would call

$data['records'][0]['article_title']


OR

$data['records'][0]['record_link']




Accessing the content body is a little different. While one could just call

$data['records'][0]['article_body']

Most people would probably want to only display a certain amount of text from that article. Therefore we are going to have to do some trimming


{IPSText::truncate( strip_tags( IPSText::stripAttachTag( IPSText::getTextClass('bbcode')->stripAllTags( $data['records'][0]['article_body'] ) ), '<br>' ), 255 )}

This method will first stripp all the BBcode out of the variable (images and other formatting will likely screwup your homepage display)

Then we are going to trim the first 255 chars from that string and display it.


After you finish styleing your templates you will have to assign them to be used.



For the homepage go to "front page manager" and set that frontpage to use your new frontpage template.

After that go to your categories and set them both to use the same template.

Lastly go to "article configuration" expand templates and set the article view to your new article view.








Blocks (for real customization)

Blocks are by far IPS's greatest invention they have ever made. Using blocks almost eliminates having to deal with IPBs faecesty application development system.



There are 3 block types

I haven't played with plugins very much sorry :/

But the other two i have.

feeds are very nice as they will pull data from a variety of places. if your php isn't great and you want to do something quick feeds are great


However, Custom blocks are what make IPContent the greatest thing IPC has done.

At first they may not seem like anything special until you learn that you can query the database strait from one of these blocks. (read and write)


What we are going to do is create a moc tagging system for our homepage.



For starters we will need to create the field for tags.
Go to "manage fields" under articles and add an input field.



Now what we are going to do in our PHP.


First we are going to query the database




--- Sorry i ran out of time But I'll finish this off later

I don't get why pagination is needed. All you do is click where it says Page X of XX, and you can type in a page. Seems to be an entirely better system, imho.

It's resource intensive to calculate the number of pages. Besides, knowing number of pages doesn't really seem all that necessary in view new content. You're either going to read the unread content or not after all

We have upgraded the IPS Community to IP.Board 3.2.0!

This is the first step in the testing process for IP.Board 3.2.0's upcoming release. We will be testing the new version here for several weeks and working on fixing issues with the goal of our first public beta release being as stable as it can be.

Please look around and help us in testing by submitting reports to our bug tracker so we can all work together to create a stable release. Keep in mind that our applications - IP.Gallery, IP.Blog, IP.Calendar, IP.Chat, IP.Downloads, and IP.Content - have also all been updated to be compatible with IP.Board 3.2 so please also test those. Your help is greatly appreciated!

You may wish to review the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for information on the exciting changes in IP.Board 3.2.


Downloading IP.Board 3.2.0

IP.Board 3.2.0 is not yet available for download.

We are using it here on our company forums both as a preview for feedback and to identify any possible issues before release. Before a final release we will be testing it here on our company forums for a few weeks and then posting betas for download for all active license holders and invite you to participate in the beta testing process when we reach that milestone. When the final, supported release is made available we will make an announcement here.

I upgraded my board 3.0.x to 3.1.3 about 2 weeks ago and i thought its some bug with 3.1.x. Unread notifications does not mark as read after checking contents. today i upgraded my forum to 3.1.4 and all notifications are still there.

I just checked tracker and found out its not a bug and its designed to be like that. and its really annoying. right now i have at-least 10 notifications in sidebar hook since last 2 days. also there are 20 notifications number in user bar on top.

I'm thinking if its not designed to like that then why its called "Unread" Notifications.

So can you please change the setting and its should mark notification read after checking contents or if it does not mark it read then there should be a link/option under notifications to clear them all. just like Delete My Cookies option. i will really appreciate if you consider this suggestion for next release.

Thanks

PhunStyle, on 18 January 2011 - 03:00 PM, said:

I'm clearly not an objective person in this matter, but I consider it fair. As simple as the modification might seem, and conceptually it really is, the code needed to make it happen is quite a piece of work. The code totals roughly 50KB, including the admin module, additions to the forum manager, and ten separate front-end hooks [soon to be eleven] covering all the filters, searching, moderating options, post screens and places where the prefixes show up. In addition to initial development time, I also pour a not insignificant amount of time into it periodically in order to fix any bugs that were found and add in additional features, and I pride myself in providing a high level of support constantly to anyone who needs it. Also consider that there are no renewal fees, so that $15 covers you as far as support, fixes and upgrades go for as long as I end up supporting it.

That ended up being a lot more than I intended. Basically, people tend to undervalue the time and effort required for these things. I respect the value of money, though, and I try to avoid pricing things too high relative to the cost of the software itself.