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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.

With the upcoming release of IP.Board 3.1 we are happy to announce a pre-release promotion so everyone can have the chance to become familiar with IP.Board on your community now and be ready for IP.Board 3.1 as soon as it's available.

Purchase an IP.Board license and any two applications or services and receive a $50 account credit!

Simply purchase your IP.Board license before May 1, 2010 along with at least two qualifying applications or services and receive a credit on your account of $50 good toward any future purchase. You can use this $50 to buy an additional application at a later date or simply save it and it will automatically be applied to future renewal fees.

To qualify be sure to enter coupon code: PRE31CREDIT


Qualifying Applications and Services

• IP.Blog
  
• IP.Gallery
  
• IP.Content
  
• IP.Downloads
  
• MS-SQL Database Driver
  
• Conversion Service

Recently Purchased?

If you recently purchased IP.Board along with at least two of those items in the list above between the date of this announcement and March 15, 2010: simply submit a ticket to account services to request an account credit.

Credit Applications

Anyone who makes a qualifying purchases after the date of this announcement and uses the special coupon code does not need to do anything to get the credit. Please note that credits will not be applied until after May 15, 2010.

Existing Customers

Existing customers can take part in this promotion. It's a great time to buy an additional license to convert that other community you have running or start that new community you always thought about giving a try. Volume discount licenses also qualify. If you have issues ordering or are not prompted for discount code please just submit a ticket to account assistance.

At this point, when completing registration, new board users are automatically placed in usergroup Members.
There is no setting to make variations in that like based on date of birth or location, where that could come in handy when you want to create a multi language board, but don't want to show the forums in other languages, or when you want specific rights to be given to people of specific ages like a teens area, an erotic area etc.

It would be great if such a feature was available in a future release (preferably 3.0.4, since 3.0.3 is allready released)

Something like this wouldn't be introduced in 3.0.4.  It would wait until a major update (like 3.1) if it were to be introduced.

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.

Hello,

I searched in my admin panel, but couldn't find this feature; I was wondering if you can add the option to disallow potential members to signup using the same password as their username (username=password)? This is a big security issue with forums at the moment as you could just extract the member names and bruteforce the forum. The current "login security system" does not block this even if you dont use proxy servers, due to the fact that you are targeting seperate member accounts instead of the same member account.

I know that it is plain stupid to use the same username as your password, but there are just many people out there who still prefer to do that to remember their password easily.

Looking forward to your reply.

Thank you.

Cem

I second both ideas.

+REP

It's probably easier to just have password enforcement options the admin can set than getting into user-level options. We can look into this for a future version.

Hi Guys,

Firstly, let me say that I am SERIOUSLY impressed with your software. I just moved from Vbulletin about 2 weeks ago.

However, there are a few things that's, to me at least, missing, or could be improved a bit.

• Report Center: Allow some moderation functions in this please. In fact, make it act like a hidden forum? Put up some sort of unread feature, so that I can see which reported items I have read, and which contains unread posts by another moderator. Perhaps allow Admins to delete posts in there, edit posts, etc? If it acts like a forum, then all of these can be possible. Allow +/- reps as well, as I often want to thank a mod for doing something, which isn't possibly at the moment. Also, the "1 Active Reports" thing in the header should also have "10 Active Reports (4 Unread)" there, so that you can quickly and easily see who did what. Lastly, a search feature, please. if you later want to find something in there, it's going to be nearly impossible. Also perhaps some prune function? Perhaps move reports to your trash can when deleting?
• Migration changes - soft deleted posts in Vbulletin must rather be moved to a trash can, in stead of unapproved. I currently have 1100 posts that's got to be deleted, since it was soft deleted on Vbulletin, and is now moderated posts in IPB. The problem is that there's no "select all" option, like with moderated topics, so you literally have to enter each thread with moderated posts in it, click on the check boxes of the individual posts, and then delete them. This is a HUGE schlepp. I've already cleared about 5000 posts this way, and can I say that I seriously have better things to do with the past 4 days than just deleting posts.
• Trash Can: Have some kind of link to the topic where this was deleted from, please? In my setup, I really need to be able to see this, as I like to be involved in every decision my mods make.

That's me for now, but thanks again for a great piece of software, and I hope some of these makes it into a future release

IPB Staff, i have had my ticket open for 20 hours.. and not a single reply , all i want is 2.3.X Converters with instructions...i need them asap , but been waiting for 20 hours..

Any quick response is greatly appreciated .
Thank you guys.

zomg they're just little numbers

Yes, we should start calling it  IP.Content

Also you can CTRL+Click or middle click

.Wolfie, on 24 July 2009 - 02:00 PM, said:

You can also just middle click!

Lindy, what about something where the user can check off a list of things that match their problem..

Please choose from the list what best matches the issue you are having.
( ) Is your board offline, inaccessible or giving errors?
( ) Are you having a problem getting into the AdminCP?
( ) Has your board been hacked, attacked or in some other way compromised?
( ) etc
( ) None of the above.
Picking the wrong item from the list can cause delays in your ticket.  If you are unsure of what to pick, then pick none of the above.

A few like there where the person can choose what best matches their problem (similar to the list you have but could be after they have submitted the ticket the first time and before the final submit.  "None of the above" could be pre-selected and would cover things like low priority items.  Obviously it's hard to cover all high priority items, but if there are 3 for high priority that are generic enough to cover a wide range (but specific enough to eliminate false positives) then that could potentially help prioritize some of the tickets.

Obviously the ones marked "None" might benefit from a fast review by a staff member to see if it's a high priority so it can be bumped up in importance, while leaving the rest of the tickets alone, but no system is perfect.

Hope something in this post is of some use, be nice if it helped to improve the ticket times, even if only a little bit.  I've generally never needed to submit a ticket for problems on my boards before, but I can imagine how the customer must feel when it is an important issue and every minute seems like forever.