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We are pleased to announce Subscriptions Manager and MSSQL Database Drivers are now available.

The first supported versions of the the Subscriptions Manager application and MSSQL database drivers for IP.Board 3 are now available to license holders in the client area.

IP.Subscriptions 1.0.0

IP.Subscriptions is an application that allows you to set up purchasable subscriptions for your community.

If you are upgrading from IP.Board 2.3.6 then you will enjoy the new features:

• Numerous bug fixes
  
• Ability to set 'Protected Groups' for member groups that are protected from the change of primary member group when promoting and demoting
  
• Ability to set a secondary group instead of updating the primary group
  
• Ability for members to cancel a recurring payment without losing their current subscription
  
• Enhanced interface for members
  
• Sidebar hook to show current subscription and when the next payment is due
  
• And much more...

IP.Subscriptions is available to all IP.Board active license holders and IPS community hosting customers at no charge.


MS-SQL Database Driver

The MSSQL driver will enable you to install a fresh copy of IP.Board 3 or perform an upgrade from 2.3.x on Microsoft SQL Server 2005+ or SQL Express. Full text searching is also available. Unlike previous releases, all the files for all applications are contained in the one ZIP file for ease of use.

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!

We are (extremely) pleased to announce the first release candidate of Invision Power Board 3.0.0 is now available.

This is the first release candidate release so please take a moment and read this entire announcement before downloading. Everyone here at IPS is very excited to reach this milestone of development and we look forward to working with everyone to sort out any remaining issues that crop up during the RC stage so we can quickly move to the final release.

The release candidates for IP.Blog, IP.Gallery, and IP.Downloads will be available in about a week.


What is a Release Candidate?

A release candidate is a version of the software between the beta phase and a final release. With the first release candidate of IP.Board 3.0.0 you can safely assume that we consider the software stable enough to use on your live community. There will be bugs and issues but it is our belief that any issues that come up should not impact your overall ability to manage your community. Keep this in mind as you make your decision to upgrade to IP.Board 3.0.0 RC1 and only upgrade if you are comfortable working around any possible issues that are present. We will of course fix any issues that come up in IP.Board 3.0.0's final release.


Technical Support and Service

IP.Board 3.0.0 RC 1 can be considered safe to use on a live site but it is not quite the final version of the software just yet. We want to give those comfortable upgrading to an RC release the chance to do so and report issues before we encourage everyone to upgrade. Technical support and service is not offered during the RC stage but of course will be available when the final version is announced.




Download IP.Board 3.0.0 RC 1

To download, log in to your client area. You will see the RC download information by clicking into your downloads. As stated above, technical support is not available so please only download if you are comfortable testing software.

IPS Hosting clients: a build of RC 1 for your use will appear in the client area soon. Sorry about the delay there.

We are pleased to announce Invision Power Converge 1.1 Beta 1 is now available for testing.

The first beta release of IP.Converge 1.1.0 is now available for download to those with current, active licenses to IP.Board. This beta is only available to active license holders.

For more information about the new features in IP.Converge 1.1, please read the original announcement.

This is a beta release so please take a moment and read this entire announcement before downloading.

• As this is a beta release there will be bugs and issues with the software. Please report any issues using our bug tracker. Before reporting please first quickly check to see if anyone has already reported your issue.
  
• IP.Converge is encoded using IonCube. Please ensure you are familiar with how to install IonCube encoded PHP software.
  
• Technical support is not available for this beta software.
  
• Do not use this software on a public install. Wait for the final series for your public installs.
  
• In general, only download and participate in the beta test if you are comfortable working with beta software.

System Requirements

This beta version of IP.Converge 1.1.0 requires PHP 4.3.0 or greater and MySQL 4.1.22 (5.0 or greater preferred) to operate. We have included the Ioncube loaders with the download for 32 bit servers. If your server is running a 64 bit operating system, you will need to visit Ioncube directly to download the loaders.

Testing Help

We are particularly interested in testers setting up IP.Converge with both a 2.3.6 version of IP.Board and the latest beta of IP.Board 3.0.

We would also like testers to try both fresh installs and upgrades from previous versions of IP.Converge.


Developers

Any developers who wish to create modules for making any third-party applications IP.Converge ready should E-Mail mwade@invisionpower.com
Developer documentation and an example application can be downloaded here: http://resources.inv...s&showfile=2101

Download IP.Converge 1.1.0 Beta 1

If you have an IP.Board License:

To download, log in to your client area. You will see the beta download information by clicking into your license purchase. As stated above, technical support is not available so please only download if you are comfortable beta-testing software.

If you have IPS Hosting:

Shared hosting customers can download by clicking into their hosting package. Forum hosting customers can also download but will not be able to install in their hosting account, but feel free to use another hosting account for this.