Booth

Thanks for the positive feedback, and yes, we have every plan to continue development of IP.Content, particularly to lower the "learning curve".

Invision Power Services, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of IP.Board 3.1.4

IP.Board 3.1.4 is a maintenance release that fixes issues reported in the previous version and also adds required support for the new application updates scheduled to be released over the next few weeks. We were forced to release patches to 3.1.3 to address a few unforeseen issues with updates to IP.Board so it would be compatible with our new application releases. Version 3.1.4 is a version-number increment so all of our customers can be sure they are fully up to date with those patches. In addition to the 3.1.3 patches it also contains a few other bug fixes and small changes however there are no skin template, CSS, or language changes.


Downloading

You can download IP.Board 3.1.4 in the client area. You might also read our general upgrading instructions for our software.

If you are already running IP.Board 3.1.3 you can also download an upgrade pack in the client area that contains only those files changed between 3.1.3 and 3.1.4 which allows for a faster upgrade process.


Support Note

As with any release, please expect support response times (particularly for install/upgrade requests) to be longer than usual for the next few days. Refer to your license terms for support response SLAs. The upgrade pack for 3.1.3 to 3.1.4 makes upgrades much faster and easier so, whenever possible, you may wish to consider taking advantage of that option.

In our spirit of keeping everyone up to date, this topic will serve as a running list of what's new in IP.Board 3.2.0. As we make changes we will update this topic so check back now and then. This is not yet a complete list as we are still making changes, adding new features, and doing other work. If you don't see what you're looking for here just yet please check back later!

As always with IPS, everything listed here is not part of a "possible" roadmap. We will only post items on this list when they are 100% complete and included in IP.Board 3.2.0 so you can trust that what we post in public is what you will get.

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/

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.

Other Important Changes

• IP.Subscriptions, our simple application to allow you to sell member group promotions on your community, will be updated to work with IP.Board 3.2 but this will be the last update to IP.Subscriptions. IP.Subscriptions has been around for many years - long before communities were assumed to bring in revenue - and it's time to retire it to focus on our more modern application: IP.Nexus. With the release of IP.Board 3.2, IP.Subscriptions will be considered end of life (EOL) and will no longer be supported. Clients should switch to the new IP.Nexus product which is continually updated and contains many more opportunities to monetize your community. A member of our community, Andy Rixon, has agreed to take on continuing development of this product so those of you who use it will still have a solution.
  
• The Portal application in IP.Board has existed from the very early days of our company. It was only ever intended as a simple portal and demo of the software but grew a bit over time. It has had minimal updates and the feature set is very minimal when compared to today's expectations of community owners and operators. The Portal application will not ship with IP.Board 3.2 and should be considered EOL. It will be available in the IPS Marketplace after IP.Board 3.2's release for those of you who do use it so you can still upgrade to 3.2. We will also post information on how to easily replicate the Portal's functionality in IP.Content which offers all that the old Portal did and much, much more. A member of our community, Andy Rixon, has agreed to take on continuing development of this product so those of you who use it will still have a solution.
  
• As IP.Board 3.2 will have a whole new default skin, the CleanCut skin will become redundant and will therefore no longer be updated by IPS.

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 cached 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.

In our continuing efforts to enhance the support services offered by IPS we recently made several changes that should help you to enjoy your IPS-powered community even more.

Easier Documentation Search

In response to customer feedback we have enhanced our documentation search system to search our official documentation, community-submitted articles, and resource downloads all at once.

Read the full information on search changes...

This change should allow you to more easily search all the various resources available to you as an IPS Community Suite user.

Try new documentation search now...


Reorganization of Documentation

We have a lot of great information in our documentation but it is often difficult to find as it is spread out into so many articles. As an example, Sphinx search setup alone has three separate articles explaining search settings, setting up Sphinx, and troubleshooting Sphinx. Using this example, we are working on merging all these various articles into one "everything you need to know about Sphinx" article and will be doing this with other articles as well. Another example may be the System Settings overview: rather than 10 mini-articles on settings you will now have one, comprehensive article to read.

This change does mean we will have to eliminate the current IP.Board option of the in-line AdminCP article view but we believe eliminating that one option in return for overall more comprehensive and easier to read documentation is one that will benefit everyone.

These changes will take place over the next several weeks as we merge things and add in more documentation content.


Official Support on Company Community

For years IPS has only offered official support through our support ticket system but today that finally changes. We are renaming the Peer-to-Peer Technical Support forums and will begin having IPS Staff monitor those forums and provide official support responses right here on the IPS Company Community.

Having forum support will be a great benefit to all IPS Community Suite users as it allows everyone to engage each other to help in a group effort. We have an amazing customer-community here at IPS and between customers helping each other and the addition of IPS Staff assisting in forum questions we believe that the overall support experience will greatly improve for all.

Guaranteed support will still only be offered in tickets and we may still ask you to submit a ticket if, for example, we need to login to your community to diagnose a problem. Forum support will be available to anyone with an active support service for IP.Board or the applications.


Community Hosting Improvements

We are making several large changes to our community hosting services which will benefit all new and existing customers of IPS community hosting.

• All new account orders will have the IPS Community Suite software included in the packages automatically installed.
  
• We are introducing a new Starter plan at just $4.99 per month for those just getting started in online communities.
  
• The current $5 per month add-on package that includes IP.Content and incoming email will be changed to offer both IP.Content and IP.Nexus (when it is released) and will be available on all packages excluding the Starter plan.
  
• Incoming email will now be a feature of all packages.

These changes will be applied to all existing customers on the package types listed on our web site and all new orders as well. If you are on an older package that is no longer offered on our web site your services will remain unchanged.

We are also discontinuing traditional web site hosting so that we may better focus on our core expertise of community services. If you are currently on a traditional web site hosting package your service will remain unchanged.

All of these changes will be phased in over the next few weeks.



Everyone at IPS hopes you enjoy these new changes and enhancements to our support and services!

As a long time webdeveloper and webdesigner that have worked with Wordpress for the last 5 years or so I see some issues with IPC and from the response I see here this is shared by others as well and this is why IPC is not more successful than it is, despite being an excellent product.

The biggest problem with IPC is that out of the box it does not behave like most database applications like Wordpress and article managers. The Articles feature would be ideal for blogs or content sites like articles, knowledgebases and so on, but the strange navigation issues makes it confusing and annoying rather than easy and logical. The archive system is an interesting way of handling things, but it does not work practicly and it does not mimic any system I have ever seen...and I have seen alot.  This makes articles confusing and annoying to work with. The fact that you can only have one set of articles also makes this feature limited instead of inspire creativity.

Databases are awesome in so many ways and where the archive system for the articles fail, databases work perfectly. The big problem with databases is almost identical with articles, meaning that navigation is a pain in the...if you want to build anything but a list since the categories template is built as a list and it's not exactly straight forward to change that layout to a design like found for the articles.

In both cases the breadcrumb completely ruin the navigation experience to the point where its completely useless to use the wrapper, especially since the wrapper comes with a huge CSS file which you probably never will use and which will only make your website slow for no good reason.

Without good examples on how to add different designs and implement different functions for both the Articles system and the Databases IPC is failing in my opinion.

With a few good examples to work from and with the possibilty to remove the confusing navigation quirks in the Articles this would change dramaticly. Rework the breadcrumb issue so it makes sense and work on a separation of necessary code in the header so that the CSS is slimmed down for only what is needed for the wrapper with options to add more CSS individually in each file rather than dump it all in wether you need it or not...well, then you have a real winner here!

Wordpress has an equally complicated system if you want to diver deep into it, but there each function has it's own page with examples and I often return to those for ideas and examples to wok from and this is something I deeply miss for IPC.

Keep up the good work and I look forward to see IPC rise to new heights

I have put together a patch zip which resolves the following issues:

• Multiple "5030" error message emails
  
• (Safe Mode Enabled) Missing language strings from the ACP
  
• (oAuth PECL extensions) Twitter 'cannot redeclare class' / blank page issue
  
• (Non CURL) Twitter log in returns to log in form
  
• (Non .htaccess FURL) Gallery FURLs not working correctly.
  
• (Non .htaccess FURL) Facebook LIKE button incorrectly 'liking' root URL

http://www.invisionp.../310patches.zip

The main download zips have been updated at the time of this post. If you are not affected by any of these issues then you do not need to apply the patch.
Further details are available in our knowledge base: http://community.inv...knowledge-base/

Just my 2 cents here.



1) Why are you not able to see a snippit of a notification, like with a PM? Even as an option. For quoted posts, I would rarther see a link to the quoted post or something in the in-line popup - having to click to it takes way too much time.
http://screencast.com/t/ZTMxNjIzYTUt

2) I think the ordering of the links is backwards.
http://screencast.com/t/ZTMxNjIzYTUt

3) Clicking on the "notifications" button should take you back to the list. For some longer notifiations, scrolling all the way down to the button is time consuming
http://screencast.com/t/ODZjZjgyN

IP.Content 2 will be released under the same price as now.

Should be back online now.

IP.Board 3 was released on June 25, 2009 and through the various update cycles is now a stable, mature product with a version 3.1 release forthcoming.

So that we can focus all of our development, support, and service efforts on our new version 3 platform, we are announcing the end of support (sometimes called end of life or EOL) for the following IPS software versions (and earlier versions than those listed):

• IP.Board 2.3.6
  
• IP.Blog 1.4.2
  
• IP.Gallery 2.2.4
  
• IP.Downloads 1.2.2

Technical support, installations, and related services will end for these products on July 1, 2010. On that date all technical or service requests will be advised to simply upgrade to the most recent versions of the products. We will not force upgrades but will also not be able to diagnose issues or answer questions relating to the older software. Also, on that date, IPS will no longer address any new issues or bugs reported in the older software versions.

Security Updates

In the event an issue is discovered impacting the security of these older versions of the software, IPS will provide a patch posted in our announcements forum. We will continue to provide security updates until January 1, 2011.

I wasn't originally going to reply to this, but the OP's attitude just frustrated me so much

To be honest, at the end of the day, you made a complete impulse buy. Be a man and accept that you were foolish enough to purchase an ONLINE INTANGIBLE GOOD without doing any research into it.

I advise you re-read some of your previous posts and have a long hard think about the image you're creating for yourself

иэvo, on 18 January 2010 - 02:37 PM, said:

Psst: Go use the demo first.

Lewis P, on 18 January 2010 - 02:32 PM, said:

Sigh, you know what, fine. Ill take the credit. Ill take IP content instead.

I bought the blog mod only to find out its nothing what i thought it was. When i requested a refund, i get bombarded with "we cant do that for you" crap.



Heres my pretty conversation with Nakisha.

Quote

Quote

Quote

Quote

Quote

Quote

Quote

Like wow, i just want my 50 bucks back and its leading to be so difficult. I never thought IPS would have this kind of problem. Normally any other Company goes, okay, your not satisfied, thats alright, we WILL give you back the money. The real drag is... i thought IPS was all about Customers, no?


What do you all think about this?