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A minor security issue has been discovered within the forum password system that could allow exposure of topic titles in password-protected forums. This issue does not allow the topics to be viewed and only affects forums that are password protected.

We have released a simple patch for this issue. To apply, simply download the correct zip file and upload the file(s) over the ones on your server. There is no need to rebuild or reset any templates or language packs. Customers with active support are welcome to ask technical support for assistance if required.

IP.Board 3.0.x
 patch-feb-3.0.zip   10.87K   537 downloads

IP.Board 3.1.4
 patch-feb-3.1.zip   17.9K   1404 downloads

In addition to the security patch described above, the IP.Board 3.1.4 patch also includes an update to our mobile API designed to resolve some issues, provide better integration for our iPhone application and to provide IP.Gallery 4.0 support alongside IP.Gallery 3.2.x.

The main download zips have been updated at the time of this post so if you have downloaded after the date of this message you do not need to apply this patch.

Managing Spam Account Registrations

We are receiving reports that the number of spam bot registrations have been increasing in recent days. It is an unfortunate reality that spammers occasionally find new ways to get past even our best defenses. IPS will of course continue to work on improvements to stay ahead of them as they in turn try to stay ahead of us.

IP.Board has many built in functions and features to help to manage spam account registrations and either block or ban these accounts.


Spam Monitoring Service

Our Spam Monitoring Service is one of the best tools you can use to help protect your community from spam account registrations. The service collects anonymous data from the many thousands of IP.Board's using the service and detect trends to learn which accounts may be spammers. It then uses that data to automatically ban accounts that register on your community.

We also encourage you to report spam accounts that slip past the service by clicking the "Flag as Spammer" link on the profile popup, profile page, or in the AdminCP. When you flag an account, IP.Board reports that status back to the Spam Monitoring Service so it can learn from that information.

The Spam Monitoring Service is free to all active IP.Board license holders. To enable it just be sure your license key is setup in your AdminCP and then go to System Settings, Members, Spam Service.


reCAPTCHA

IP.Board includes support for Google's reCAPTCHA service. Enabling reCAPTCHA is another line of defense to determine if a registering account is a real human or a spam bot.

To enable reCAPTCHA visit your AdminCP and go to System Settings then Security and Privacy.


Question and Answer Challenge

Another very useful tool to stop spam bot registrations is the custom Question and Answer challenge built into IP.Board. Using this feature you can set a custom question unique to your community that only a real human could answer. For example, you might say "What color is the sky?" and, though a bot could answer that, it would have to be programmed specifically for your community which spammers would not do. Choose a unique question and you get an easy, extra layer of protection.

To enable simply go to your AdminCP and click the Question and Answer Challenge settings right on the System tab of the AdminCP home page.


Email Validation

While easily bypassed by an intelligent spam bot, make sure you also have new account email validation enabled (under Security and Privacy in AdminCP) as the email validation works alongside the Spam Monitoring Service's ability to learn spammer's email addresses.




As is also true for email spam, we will never have a 100% method to stop community spam account registrations but by utilizing the tools built into IP.Board you can certainly take real action to lessen the impact. IPS will continue to research methods to enhance spam protection.

I don't use it, so not seeing it for normal forum browsing is nice.

It is difficult to find if you don't know it's there, yes. But a mouse-over is out of the question for my part. It would just be annoying when you want to click to open the thread it will popup a preview as you mouse over the topic before you can click it.

Invision Power Services, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of IP.Board 3.1.0 and its Applications!

• IP.Board 3.1.0
  Fully featured community platform including forums, members profiles, calendar, status system, integration, and much, much more.
  
  
• IP.Gallery 3.2.0
  Categories and photo albums for your members to share their images and videos on your community.
  
  
• IP.Blog 2.2.0
  Allow you and your members to post blogs on your community or syndicate externally hosted blogs easily.
  
  
• IP.Downloads 2.2.0
  Complete file management application including file version control, commenting, and forum topic linking.
  
  
• IP.Content 2.0.0
  Content management for your community - run a full web site or a simply community portal. The possibilities are endless.
  
  
• IP.Chat 1.1.0
  Engage your members in real time chat or send them private chats while in the chat room.

In addition to the core software, the following products and services are also available:

• Microsoft SQL Server Database Drivers for alternate database solutions.
  
• IP.Board iPhone App for easy mobile access for you and your members!
  
• Converter Services to convert from other community software to IPS.
  
• Skin Generator service to easily create a custom skin for your community.
  
• Spam Monitoring Service to stop spam account registration at the source.

Downloading

You can download these releases in the client area and begin enjoying the new features.


Version 3.1.1 Coming Soon

IPS is dedicated to promptly fixing any reported issues and will do so with the release of version 3.1.1 soon after 3.1.0's release. You may also wish to keep an eye on our knowledge base where we will release patches for any critical issues that come up between the two version releases.

As defined in the release notes: because this is the first widely-distributed release there will be as yet undiscovered issues. You can expect a maintenance release, IP.Board 3.1.1 (and other application maintenance releases), in the next two to three weeks (around mid-June) to address issues reported in this first supported release. We appreciate your understanding and hope you can assist us in identifying any problems in this first supported release so we can quickly remedy them in our next update.




What's New

We hope you are as excited as IPS staff is about what's new in these product versions. Here are the highlights:

IP.Board 3.1.0

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. Including new Facebook Graph API

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. And Improvements

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.

Template Merge Tool
Merge skin changes between versions right in the AdminCP.

All new Mobile Skin
Mobile skin for many popular devices to enable easy access to your community.

Automatic Media Embedding
Automatic parsing of YouTube and other media into posts.


Plus many bugs fixed from the 3.0.5 version and performance improvements.


IP.Content 2.0.0

Feed Block Updates
Great updates to make these blocks even more useful.

Database Improvements: Part 1 and Part 2
Improvements to database usability.

Page Interface Enhancements
Makes working with Pages in the admin area easier.

Friendly URLs for Databases
Database URLs become human and search engine friendly.

Template Improvements
Easier to work with templates and updates.

Forum Integration
More tools to enhance content sharing between your forums and pages.

Articles
Support for a comprehensive articles system.


IP.Chat 1.1.0

Chat Count and Private Chats
Show number of people in the room at top of page and support for private member-to-member chats.

Local Chat Logs
View, search, and interact with your chat logs right in the admin area.

Note that, as of IP.Board 3.1's release, the old Parachat and Addonchat modules are no longer directly supported by IPS.


Skin Generator Service

Introducing Skin Generator
Our new, free service to active IP.Board license holders to easily generate a custom skin for their community.

Improvements to Skin Generator
New features and enhancements to the service.


Spam Monitoring Service

Many Enhancements
Many additions to the spam service both in IP.Board and behind the scenes to help combat spam on your community.


IP.Blog, IP.Gallery, and IP.Downloads

The new versions of these products are maintenance releases to fix known issues and to add compatibility for IP.Board 3.1.0. Also, IP.Blog received the new sharing tools from IP.Board. All of these products will receive full feature upgrades this summer.


CleanCut, MSSQL Database Driver, and Converter Services

CleanCut skin has been updated to support the new application versions.

The MSSQL database driver has been greatly enhanced and stabilized from previous versions, now only support MSSQL 2005+, and we are phasing out deprecated field types for greater efficiency.

Converter Services are now available for IP.Board 3.1.

IP.Board iPhone App

The new IP.Board iPhone App is available and APIs for its use are included in IP.Board 3.1.0.

Now that IPB3 is here, I think its really time to address the way emoticons are managed because times have changed and boards no longer have just 20 of them, many have accumulated 100's of them. Large, small, light, dark, seasonal etc.

Surely there has to be a better, less confusing way of managing them for Admins, and I seem to recall suggestions in the past have been confirmed as having to wait for IPB3 because of its improved programming structure.

Sorry I'm going back to basics here, because after several years I still don't understand or have forgotten how Emoticon Management is supposed to work in the AdminCP, and there is still no documentation for it.

I don't understand why it is that you can add numerous folders of smilies in addition to the default emotion group, if IPB doesn't automatically include them (the default folder and all additional folders or child folders) when you actually come to post? I also don't understand why you can't turn entire groups of emoticons on and off.

One possible solution...

Lets say for example you have 150 smilies on your board, consisting of:

• 50 general ones
• 50 Halloween theme
• 50 Christmas themed (a little OTT but will do as an example!).

It could just as well be large, small, adult, whatever...

You wouldn't need to have the 100 seasonal emoticons available to click all year round, and you wouldn't need to have access when posting to the Christmas ones when posting near to or at Halloween, and vice versa.

So why not have a folder for each group, and have a check box in the Emoticon Manager to instantly enable or disable each group of smilies as required, and a separate sub-screen to enable, disable or delete individual emoticons within each group, either one at a time or all?

This would make things much more manageable for this with lots of smilies, and all smilies would still show in older posts because they are still on the server, just not all in the clickable list all at once.

You could take it a step further, by adding tabs (suggested so many times before) to the Show All Emoticon box, so that clicking on default or general would show those, then a tab would be available for the Halloween, large, small etc as defined by the groups in the AdminCP Emoticon Management screen.

We are investigating the possibility of offering a chat service for IPB directly from IPS.

This chat service would run inside of your IPB install much like Gallery or Blog however the actual exchange of chat messages would be handled by IPS servers. The high volume of transactions needed for a chat room would probably get you banned from most web hosting providers and, even if you have high-end hosting, it requires a specially tuned server to perform well. You can forget that headache and let us handle the transactions. Chat room statistics and access to log archives will of course be available for owners.

Testing

For the time being, we will only have the chat room open here on our company forums when an IPS staff member opens it. We are looking to test both the interface you use for chatting and the back-end server performance so we need online staff to monitor both sides of the exchange. So keep an eye for the chat link to appear in the top navigation or a "who's chatting" area to show up on the home page under statistics. When you see this then you know the room is available for testing

Please post bugs in the bug tracker under the IP.Chat category. You can post feedback here in the feedback forum or just reply to this topic. Please keep in mind this would be a version 1.0.0 so, although we can add all sorts of cool stuff over time, we are focusing on a nice, stable chat room right now. Things like private conversations, multiple rooms, and more are on our list but we must perfect the base chat room before adding on all the extras.

Please note that this is the first test of many users in the chat room so there will probably be issues. We will also be doing server-level testing so you might get kicked out now and again or the service may abruptly close so don't take it personally . Your feedback on all areas of the chat from features through usability down to speed of chat responses is appreciated.

Pricing

The pricing of the chat service is yet to be announced and will be based on how many people you have in your chat room at one time. Details of the package levels and pricing will be made available at a later date. The good news is that the first chat package level will be free for active IPB license holders. We hope you enjoy that extra benefit to being a license holder.

We are pleased to announce Invision Power Board 3.0.0 and its Applications have been released.

This is the first supported release of Invision Power Board 3.0.0! We would like to thank everyone who has helped beta test the product so we can release as stable a product as possible today.

Products Released

• Invision Power Board 3.0.0
  
• Invision Power Gallery 3.0.0
  
• Invision Power Blog 2.0.0
  
• Invision Power Downloads 2.0.0
  
• Invision Power Converge 1.1.0

Please note that this is the very first supported release of these products. As with any large software product, it can take several maintenance releases to work out most of the remaining bugs or oddities left in the software which are only discovered when many thousands of installs are done. We had an extensive beta period and a staggered launch of IP.Board 3.0.0 to catch most issues. Initial feedback on 3.0.0's first supported release has been great but, even so, we do expect to have a 3.0.1 release in the next couple weeks.


Downloading and Installing

You can download all products you have a license for in the IPS client area. There are no upgrade packs as this update requires you upload all files in the download.

Be sure to follow the install upgrade instructions. Remember that any skins, modifications, graphics, etc. on your version 2.x IPB will not work on IP.Board 3.0. You will not lose any posts or member information in the upgrade.


Technical Support

Technical support is now available for IP.Board 3.0.0 and the Applications. Please be patient during this initial launch phase as response times may be longer than normal due to the increased volume of requests. Phone support will also be delayed.

Important: If you would like our staff to install or upgrade for you, please be aware that there can be delays of many days for install or upgrade services during this initial launch phase. Whenever possible, please consider performing the install or upgrade yourself to save time waiting.



Above all: enjoy the new products! We have worked hard on the updates and wish you continued success with your online communities!







Subscriptions Manager and MS-SQL Database

The subscriptions manager and MS-SQL database driver are not yet available. They will be released separately very soon. Our apologies for the delay. Rest assured we are making these releases a priority.

New IPS Web Site

We are also launching our new company web site on invisionpower.com today. Please forgive any navigation issues on the site while we apply the new content.

We are pleased to announce Invision Power Board 3.0.4 has been released.

This is a maintenance release for IP.Board 3 and addresses various bugs and adds in some enhancements to existing features along with performance improvements. Also, IP.Blog, IP.Gallery, and IP.Downloads have received a maintenance update.

Major Changes Since 3.0.3

Among many dozens of smaller bugs fixed, the following large changes and fixes have been made in the 3.0.4 release:

• IP.Board: RTE support in Safari and Chrome
  
• IP.Downloads: Option to not check filetype for linked files

Downloading

You can download IP.Board 3.0.4 and any applications you have an active license for in the client area. As always, make a backup of your community before proceeding.