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Spam has always been an ongoing battle for community owners as spammers find new ways to circumvent existing anti-spam practices. We have seen an uptick in new ways spammers are breaking through existing defense. As such, we here at Invision Community continue to look at new ways for community managers to combat against spam. For our September release, we have added several new tools that can prevent spammers from registering in the first place and help combat them even if they register successfully. Let's take a look at these new tools and settings. Geolocation based registration filtering Oftentimes, spam attacks can originate using bots and servers from specific regions. Using our existing Geolocation service, we have now added filters that will allow administrators to hold registrations from specific regions for administrator review, or deny the registration entirely. Using this, administrators whose communities are under a spam attack from a specific region, can temporarily filter registrations from that region. Multiple regions can be defined at once, and each individual region can either be held for administrator review, or denied completely. Disposable Email Filtering We have added an extra option to our spam defense system to filter users registering with throwaway disposable emails, which are often used by spammers to bypass email validation. During Spam Defense checking, we now also check the domain in use for the registration against a frequently maintained list. If the user passes through the normal spam defense checking, but is found to have a disposable email address, then the administrator can define one of the following actions to be taken. Allow the registration to proceed Allow the registration, but moderate all posts (which an option to remove moderation after a certain amount) Flag the account for administrator review Register the account but immediately ban it Completely deny the registration For both Geolocation and disposable email filtering, the existing Spam Defense Whitelist is always honored ahead of these filters. Contact Us Email Verification A common pain point has been the Contact Us page. While the spam does not go to a user facing location, it does still land in the administrators inbox, or other area defined by the sites Contact Us settings. To help with this, if a visitor who is not logged in attempts to use the Contact Us page, then in addition to the existing CAPTCHA, the administrator can optionally require the person to verify their email address before the message is ever sent. This applies to all Contact Us behaviors, including any added by third party applications. Cloud Content Analysis For our Invision Community Cloud customers, we have also added an additional layer of spam prevention after registration. After a user registers, or if the account has been dormant, then the first few content submissions will be analyzed using a custom developed algorithm within our platform. The algorithm takes into factor many different elements of the content, and will rank the post between 1 (not spam) and 5 (definitely spam). The algorithm can be constantly adjusted and improved based on trends without any intervention from the administrator, and without the need to update to new releases of Invision Community. The administrator can then decide one of the following actions to take based on the score that was received. Allow the submission Hold the submission for moderator review Deny the submission completely Of course, specific groups can be made exempt from this and not have their content checked at all, which is useful for sites with subscription based registrations which may not want to have this applied to new subscribers, but do want to have new non-subscribers checked. Spam can quickly become a headache for most community managers, and these new tools will help further combat it at the source. For our enterprise and Invision Community Cloud customers, being able to check for spam when posting is a new tool which will further filter out more of those annoying topics and posts. We hope these new features give you additional tools in the fight against spam. The features and changes presented here are available in the following packages: Geolocation based registration filtering, Disposable Email Filtering, Contact Us Email Verification: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise, Invision Community Classic (Self Hosted). Content Analysis: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise. View full blog entry

We would like to take this opportunity to inform you of an important decision we've made with regard to the Invision Community Marketplace. After careful evaluation and consideration, we have decided to discontinue the Invision Community Marketplace, effective October 30, 2023. Over the past several years, we have noticed a decrease in usage of the Marketplace, with a staggering 75% decline in sales. In addition, we have observed a growing trend away from off the shelf customizations towards bespoke tailoring of a community by working more closely with developers. While it has been a platform for many dedicated and talented contributors to share their work, we believe it is time to re-focus our efforts and resources to better serve your present and future needs. We understand that change can be unsettling, but we are excited to share with you our new direction. We are putting our efforts into enhancing the newly introduced Providers Directory, a platform that will enable you to connect with third-party providers for a wide range of services, including custom development, community management/support, conversion services, and other valuable resources. Additionally, many providers will have independent websites you will be able to visit to explore and obtain existing and new premade resources. More details are to follow soon, but we would like to highlight a few key points: • Marketplace renewals will cease effective immediately • New purchases will end September 15, 2023 • The Marketplace will be removed in the October release and disabled on October 30, 2023 • You will continue to be able to install and manage existing and new resources via the methods provided by their respective authors • You will be able to obtain a key for each of your current Marketplace purchases and provide that key to authors to transfer your purchases directly to the author We invite you to visit the Providers Directory and start exploring the opportunities it offers. This will allow you to familiarize yourself with the database and the resources it will provide in greater depth. Many of the current Marketplace contributors have already created their profiles – please check them out! Of course, this does not mean the end of aftermarket development with Invision Community. We are currently building new development tools for Invision Community 5 which have easier ways to add new functionality. We want to express our sincere gratitude for your ongoing support and trust in Invision Community. We believe these changes will enable us to better position ourselves to continue moving forward in meeting the present and future needs of our customer base. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out. Thank you for being a part of the Invision Community family. Update We have posted our next blog covering the next steps for obtaining purchases from 3rd party developers. View full blog entry

We would like to take this opportunity to inform you of an important decision we've made with regard to the Invision Community Marketplace. After careful evaluation and consideration, we have decided to discontinue the Invision Community Marketplace, effective October 30, 2023. Over the past several years, we have noticed a decrease in usage of the Marketplace, with a staggering 75% decline in sales. In addition, we have observed a growing trend away from off the shelf customizations towards bespoke tailoring of a community by working more closely with developers. While it has been a platform for many dedicated and talented contributors to share their work, we believe it is time to re-focus our efforts and resources to better serve your present and future needs. We understand that change can be unsettling, but we are excited to share with you our new direction. We are putting our efforts into enhancing the newly introduced Providers Directory, a platform that will enable you to connect with third-party providers for a wide range of services, including custom development, community management/support, conversion services, and other valuable resources. Additionally, many providers will have independent websites you will be able to visit to explore and obtain existing and new premade resources. More details are to follow soon, but we would like to highlight a few key points: • Marketplace renewals will cease effective immediately • New purchases will end September 15, 2023 • The Marketplace will be removed in the October release and disabled on October 30, 2023 • You will continue to be able to install and manage existing and new resources via the methods provided by their respective authors • You will be able to obtain a key for each of your current Marketplace purchases and provide that key to authors to transfer your purchases directly to the author We invite you to visit the Providers Directory and start exploring the opportunities it offers. This will allow you to familiarize yourself with the database and the resources it will provide in greater depth. Many of the current Marketplace contributors have already created their profiles – please check them out! Of course, this does not mean the end of aftermarket development with Invision Community. We are currently building new development tools for Invision Community 5 which have easier ways to add new functionality. We want to express our sincere gratitude for your ongoing support and trust in Invision Community. We believe these changes will enable us to better position ourselves to continue moving forward in meeting the present and future needs of our customer base. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out. Thank you for being a part of the Invision Community family. Update We have posted our next blog covering the next steps for obtaining purchases from 3rd party developers.

This topic only applies to those on our cloud services. As we prepare to launch improved spam management, we are also making changes to traffic control. We have many tools in place to stop malicious traffic on our network. These tools stop day to day bad actors and can also handle situations where we get a huge flood of traffic in a denial of service attack. It is always a balancing act to stop bad traffic while allowing good traffic. There have been some situations where real users were getting blocked because they were getting caught up in a suspicious IP range, for example. When you were caught in a block, all you got was a permission denied page and that was it. This is what we want for bad bots or attacks, but for real people that is no help. So today we are launching a new system where you will be presented with a captcha (or similar) challenge to bypass a bot-focused block. This will allow you, and your visitors, to continue browsing your community if you are caught in a block you should not be in. It also lets our firewall and other systems learn and do a better job of blocking bad traffic while allowing people in. Please let us know if you experience any issues, inability to access a community, or you are prompted more than once for the challenge to access. In normal operations, you should really never get the challenge prompt so please also let us know if you see it more frequently.

Our June release includes enhancements to our various statistics and reporting features included within the community. Statistics are important for a community platform because they provide valuable insights about user engagement, preferences, and behaviors, which directly inform the platform's strategy and design. Furthermore, statistics enable the monitoring of the platform's growth and user retention, which are essential for maintaining a vibrant and active community. In our June release, we have made some enhancements to those features that will allow you to more quickly monitor those trends. Saved Charts In Invision Community 4.3, we introduced the ability to save charts to allow you to view them multiple times without needing to reset your filters each time. This works well, however there are three notable downsides. You could only save a chart if there were filters to apply, such as Warning Types, Device Types, Member Groups, etc. Any specified timescale was not retained in your saved chart. There was no centralized location to view every chart you have saved. In our June release, we have resolved both of those issues. Now, every chart can be saved regardless of if there are filters or not, and when saved, will now also retain your timescale as well. In addition to that, we have added an additional My Saved Charts page. This page will show you every chart you have saved, including all filters and timescales that have been selected. From this page you can quickly review all charts, temporarily adjust their timescales and filters to quickly see other information, as well as download each individual chart as a CSV directly from this page. Don't worry, though - your saved charts will also still show in their original locations just as they have in the past. Content Level Statistics Later on, in Invision Community 4.5, we introduced an improved Topic View that included various statistical information about the topic including the top comments, popular days, top commenters, and more. This, however, was only limited to topics in the forums, and not the rest of the community. In our June release, we have taken this and expanded it to content in every application. This includes Blog Entries, Gallery Albums, Gallery Images, and more. Each content item (such as a topic, blog entry or image) will show a new button for those with moderator permissions which opens a full statistics and analytics modal, providing expanded statistical information related to that particular piece of content specifically. Clicking this new button opens up the statistics and analytics modal. Our Classic customers will see the following view: Cloud Powered Historical View Tracking For our Invision Community cloud customers, we have expanded our infrastructure to allow for storing historical views for all content. On the previously mentioned Statistics and Analytics modal, a chart will be shown that outlines the amount of views that content has gotten every single day over a period of time, to allow you to see when specifically content was popular. This chart allows you to view trends for up to a year in the past. Additionally, we have expanded this to content containers Forums, Downloads Categories, Blogs, Blogs Categories, Gallery Categories, and more will all report their own historical view trends. Finally, these trends can be exported as a CSV file for your own personal processing if desired - and if needed, you can choose to only include certain types of content if you are focusing on one particular section. We hope these changes help you to identify trends from within your own community to help you promote and grow it further. The features and changes presented here are available in the following packages: Saved charts and content item level statistics: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise, Community Classic (Self Hosted). Saved charts, content item level statistics, analytic report generation, content level historical view tracking, container level historical view tracking: Beginner, Creator, Creator Pro, Team, Business, Enterprise. If you do not see your product or package listed, please contact us to talk about upgrading your Invision Community.

Our June release of Invision Community introduces several new improvements for your community to increase privacy controls and consent of personally identifiable information. In today's digital age, privacy and the protection of personally identifiable information (PII) have become increasingly important. By incorporating improved privacy and PII data features into Invision Community, we are creating a more secure and inclusive environment within your community. In this blog post, we will take a quick look at what PII is, and the new features Invision Community has to improve privacy within your community. What is PII? PII, or personally identifiable information, refers to any data that can be used to identify, contact, or locate an individual member. When users sign up and visit your community, they may provide various types of PII, either voluntarily or as required by the platform's registration process. For example, an email address is required to complete the registration, and in some cases and IP address may be logged to authenticate a session, or to provide some context to the person posting content. Invision Community introduced new data control tools in a previous release, so let's take a look at the improvements coming in our June release that improves cookie management, IP address management, PII data requests, and the right to be forgotten. PII Data Request and Right to be Forgotten Your members now have the ability to request their Personally Identifiable Information (PII) data directly from their account settings page. Upon submitting a request, administrators will receive a notification alerting them to the new inquiry, where they can choose to either approve or deny it. If approved, the member will be notified and provided information on how to download their requested data. Additionally, members now have the option to request account deletion. After submitting this request, they will receive a confirmation email to verify their intent. Once confirmed, the request is forwarded to administrators, who can then decide whether to approve or reject the account deletion. IP Address Management Invision Community has had tools to prune IP addresses within a timeframe for a while, but we have conducted a thorough evaluation of the data framework in Invision Community to ensure that all recorded IP addresses are systematically purged according to the designated timeframe. Cookie Management Empowering members to control which cookies are stored is an important aspect of fostering trust and security within an online community. By granting users the autonomy to manage cookie preferences, you demonstrate a commitment to respecting their privacy and protecting their personal data. This level of transparency not only helps build a strong sense of trust between the community and its members but also helps with compliance, ultimately contributing to a more engaging and responsible user experience. The Invision Community cookie consent page has been revamped and now displays a list of essential cookies. Visitors have the option to opt out of non-essential cookies for a more customized browsing experience. Additionally, we've introduced a new feature that allows for the inclusion of an optional third-party Cookie Description on the cookie consent page, further enhancing transparency and user control. We trust that these enhancements to privacy and data collection practices will simplify compliance with various regulations and, most importantly, ensure that your community members feel secure and well-protected while engaging with your platform. The features and changes presented here are available in the following packages: Beginner Creator Creator Pro Team Business Enterprise These features are also available in the Invision Community Classic (self-hosted) product. If you do not see your product or package listed, please contact us to talk about upgrading your Invision Community.

Courses is a new, lightweight learning platform designed to help you provide a new learning experience for your members. Courses are perfect for requiring your community to read and understand documentation and to deliver training and lessons to your community. Let's take a look at how it works! Instructor led courses are comprised of separate modules, each containing lessons. New courses are created and managed through the AdminCP under Community. Each course has the option to be assigned one or more instructors. Instructors play a crucial role in developing the course content via the frontend, and they are available to assist members throughout their learning journey in the course. Courses can be set to be optional, or required meaning members must complete this course before progressing to others. Furthermore, courses tie into Achievement Rules, so you have the ability to grant points and/or badges to a member once they finish a course. Courses can be free or paid, and comprise of one or more modules, each of which contain multiple sessions and an optional quiz. Modules and Lessons Courses wouldn't be much without some lessons! Lessons are grouped into modules, that can have an optional quiz. Quizzes are a great way to verify members' learning progression and understanding. You have the option to configure modules to be completed sequentially. This pairs nicely with quizzes as you would need to complete the current module before moving on to the next one, ensuring a structured and progressive learning experience! The lessons themselves are the main content of Courses. Lessons are comprised of the material that students will engage with during their learning journey. Lessons can be designated as optional, so they can be skipped. This is handy when you want to provide organised supplemental information that is not essential. Managing Enrollments As an administrator or instructor, you may need to manage course enrolments from time to time. This can involve enrolling a member on their behalf, withdrawing a member from a course, or deleting an enrollment altogether. There are two ways for managing those enrolled in courses, either through the administrative control panel or the course roster on the frontend. To access the course roster via the frontend - just click on 'View All Members' when on the course homepage. Course Manager Managing a course is handled via the frontend. Individuals such as instructors, admins, and other authorized members can create and edit modules, lessons and quizzes for a course. You manage quizzes and lessons from within the module view. I hope that you have enjoyed this overview of Courses. This is just the beginning, we're already considering various possibilities such as integrating with Live Topics, incorporating discussion sections within a lesson, and enhancing the required courses feature so stay tuned! The features discussed in this announcement are not available for Invision Community Classic. Click here to learn more about switching to our platform to get this and other benefits.

Courses is a new, lightweight learning platform designed to help you provide a new learning experience for your members. Courses are perfect for requiring your community to read and understand documentation and to deliver training and lessons to your community. Let's take a look at how it works! Instructor led courses are comprised of separate modules, each containing lessons. New courses are created and managed through the AdminCP under Community. Each course has the option to be assigned one or more instructors. Instructors play a crucial role in developing the course content via the frontend, and they are available to assist members throughout their learning journey in the course. Courses can be set to be optional, or required meaning members must complete this course before progressing to others. Furthermore, courses tie into Achievement Rules, so you have the ability to grant points and/or badges to a member once they finish a course. Courses can be free or paid, and comprise of one or more modules, each of which contain multiple sessions and an optional quiz. Modules and Lessons Courses wouldn't be much without some lessons! Lessons are grouped into modules, that can have an optional quiz. Quizzes are a great way to verify members' learning progression and understanding. You have the option to configure modules to be completed sequentially. This pairs nicely with quizzes as you would need to complete the current module before moving on to the next one, ensuring a structured and progressive learning experience! The lessons themselves are the main content of Courses. Lessons are comprised of the material that students will engage with during their learning journey. Lessons can be designated as optional, so they can be skipped. This is handy when you want to provide organised supplemental information that is not essential. Managing Enrollments As an administrator or instructor, you may need to manage course enrolments from time to time. This can involve enrolling a member on their behalf, withdrawing a member from a course, or deleting an enrollment altogether. There are two ways for managing those enrolled in courses, either through the administrative control panel or the course roster on the frontend. To access the course roster via the frontend - just click on 'View All Members' when on the course homepage. Course Manager Managing a course is handled via the frontend. Individuals such as instructors, admins, and other authorized members can create and edit modules, lessons and quizzes for a course. You manage quizzes and lessons from within the module view. I hope that you have enjoyed this overview of Courses. This is just the beginning, we're already considering various possibilities such as integrating with Live Topics, incorporating discussion sections within a lesson, and enhancing the required courses feature so stay tuned! The features discussed in this announcement are not available for Invision Community Classic. Click here to learn more about switching to our platform to get this and other benefits. View full blog entry

Courses is a new, lightweight learning platform designed to help you provide a new learning experience for your members. Courses are perfect for requiring your community to read and understand documentation and to deliver training and lessons to your community. Let's take a look at how it works! Instructor led courses are comprised of separate modules, each containing lessons. New courses are created and managed through the AdminCP under Community. Each course has the option to be assigned one or more instructors. Instructors play a crucial role in developing the course content via the frontend, and they are available to assist members throughout their learning journey in the course. Courses can be set to be optional, or required meaning members must complete this course before progressing to others. Furthermore, courses tie into Achievement Rules, so you have the ability to grant points and/or badges to a member once they finish a course. Courses can be free or paid, and comprise of one or more modules, each of which contain multiple sessions and an optional quiz. Modules and Lessons Courses wouldn't be much without some lessons! Lessons are grouped into modules, that can have an optional quiz. Quizzes are a great way to verify members' learning progression and understanding. You have the option to configure modules to be completed sequentially. This pairs nicely with quizzes as you would need to complete the current module before moving on to the next one, ensuring a structured and progressive learning experience! The lessons themselves are the main content of Courses. Lessons are comprised of the material that students will engage with during their learning journey. Lessons can be designated as optional, so they can be skipped. This is handy when you want to provide organised supplemental information that is not essential. Managing Enrollments As an administrator or instructor, you may need to manage course enrolments from time to time. This can involve enrolling a member on their behalf, withdrawing a member from a course, or deleting an enrollment altogether. There are two ways for managing those enrolled in courses, either through the administrative control panel or the course roster on the frontend. To access the course roster via the frontend - just click on 'View All Members' when on the course homepage. Course Manager Managing a course is handled via the frontend. Individuals such as instructors, admins, and other authorized members can create and edit modules, lessons and quizzes for a course. You manage quizzes and lessons from within the module view. I hope that you have enjoyed this overview of Courses. This is just the beginning, we're already considering various possibilities such as integrating with Live Topics, incorporating discussion sections within a lesson, and enhancing the required courses feature so stay tuned! The features discussed in this announcement are not available for Invision Community Classic. Click here to learn more about switching to our platform to get this and other benefits. View full blog entry

Our May update brings Email Bounce Management to our Invision Community cloud platform. In this blog entry, I'll go over what it is, why it's important, and how you can use it when needed. What is it? For those who may not know, an email bounce occurs when an email message is sent and the recipient either doesn't exist (hard bounce) or they have blocked the sender (you!) in a spam complaint (soft bounce). When an email message bounces we block that address at the cloud level so it cannot receive new messages from any community. This is considered good practice for email service providers, and ensures that we maintain a low bounce rate when sending emails on behalf of all the communities on our platform. Please note this pertains to the Invision Community Cloud platform email service. If you use SMTP or SendGrid, email bounces are managed externally and may enforce different policies. What Bounce Management Tools are we providing? We're giving you the ability to see which members have blocked email addresses, and to unblock emails known to be safe. Seeing which emails are blocked In the AdminCP Members table (AdminCP > Members > Members), on cloud you will see a new filter: "Email Undeliverable". These are any member accounts that have emails blocked due to soft or hard bounces. Additionally, on the front end, if a Member's email is blocked, they will see a warning indicator in the Nav/User Bar prompting them to change their email in their account settings. Lifting Email Blocks As stated earlier, when an email is blocked, it is blocked on the cloud platform level. If the block is not locked (which can happen if it's unblocked too many times), you will see a warning the Member's AdminCP Profile page. Clicking into it you will see an option to unblock. One final note on the Email Block Policy If a situation occurs when an email is unblocked and gets blocked again a certain number of times, the block becomes permanent. In these cases, you will be able to see that the email is blocked but there won't be an option to unblock, and the member will have to change their email to resume receiving your Community's messages through us. This ensures that the Invision Community cloud platform retains a good email sending reputation. Thanks for reading and as always stay tuned to for the latest and greatest upcoming features and insights! The features discussed in this announcement are not available for Invision Community Classic. Click here to learn more about switching to our platform to get this and other benefits. View full blog entry

Our May update brings Email Bounce Management to our Invision Community cloud platform. In this blog entry, I'll go over what it is, why it's important, and how you can use it when needed. What is it? For those who may not know, an email bounce occurs when an email message is sent and the recipient either doesn't exist (hard bounce) or they have blocked the sender (you!) in a spam complaint (soft bounce). When an email message bounces we block that address at the cloud level so it cannot receive new messages from any community. This is considered good practice for email service providers, and ensures that we maintain a low bounce rate when sending emails on behalf of all the communities on our platform. Please note this pertains to the Invision Community Cloud platform email service. If you use SMTP or SendGrid, email bounces are managed externally and may enforce different policies. What Bounce Management Tools are we providing? We're giving you the ability to see which members have blocked email addresses, and to unblock emails known to be safe. Seeing which emails are blocked In the AdminCP Members table (AdminCP > Members > Members), on cloud you will see a new filter: "Email Undeliverable". These are any member accounts that have emails blocked due to soft or hard bounces. Additionally, on the front end, if a Member's email is blocked, they will see a warning indicator in the Nav/User Bar prompting them to change their email in their account settings. Lifting Email Blocks As stated earlier, when an email is blocked, it is blocked on the cloud platform level. If the block is not locked (which can happen if it's unblocked too many times), you will see a warning the Member's AdminCP Profile page. Clicking into it you will see an option to unblock. One final note on the Email Block Policy If a situation occurs when an email is unblocked and gets blocked again a certain number of times, the block becomes permanent. In these cases, you will be able to see that the email is blocked but there won't be an option to unblock, and the member will have to change their email to resume receiving your Community's messages through us. This ensures that the Invision Community cloud platform retains a good email sending reputation. Thanks for reading and as always stay tuned to for the latest and greatest upcoming features and insights! The features discussed in this announcement are not available for Invision Community Classic. Click here to learn more about switching to our platform to get this and other benefits.

The longest awaited iPhone feature is almost here, native iOS notifications, and we couldn't wait to ensure it is enabled for your Invision Community. Invision Community 4.7.9 is iPhone push notification ready for when Apple release their latest iOS update later this month. This means you'll finally get notifications on your phone, even when you do not have your browser open, to alert you of new content on followed items and more. A feature Android owners have enjoyed for a while. With notifications, you can have an authentic native app experience with built-in Invision Community features such as the manifest editor. The manifest editor allows you to edit your theme icons, colours and URL for when your members add your community to their phone's homepage. This manifest file helps mobile devices understand how to display your community site when launched from the home screen. Your members can add your community to their home screen with the share button. Once it has been added, it looks and feels like a native app downloaded from the App Store. With Apple finally allowing native notifications and Invision Community's mobile-ready UI coupled with the manifest editor, you can have a real app experience without needing a mobile app. iPhone PWA.mp4 We intend to bring more functionality and ease of use to mobile devices over the coming releases. We hope you're looking forward to iOS native push notifications as much as we are! The features discussed in this announcement are available in both Invision Community and Invision Community Classic.

The longest awaited iPhone feature is almost here, native iOS notifications, and we couldn't wait to ensure it is enabled for your Invision Community. Invision Community 4.7.9 is iPhone push notification ready for when Apple release their latest iOS update later this month. This means you'll finally get notifications on your phone, even when you do not have your browser open, to alert you of new content on followed items and more. A feature Android owners have enjoyed for a while. With notifications, you can have an authentic native app experience with built-in Invision Community features such as the manifest editor. The manifest editor allows you to edit your theme icons, colours and URL for when your members add your community to their phone's homepage. This manifest file helps mobile devices understand how to display your community site when launched from the home screen. Your members can add your community to their home screen with the share button. Once it has been added, it looks and feels like a native app downloaded from the App Store. With Apple finally allowing native notifications and Invision Community's mobile-ready UI coupled with the manifest editor, you can have a real app experience without needing a mobile app. iPhone PWA.mp4 We intend to bring more functionality and ease of use to mobile devices over the coming releases. We hope you're looking forward to iOS native push notifications as much as we are! The features discussed in this announcement are available in both Invision Community and Invision Community Classic. View full blog entry

The longest awaited iPhone feature is almost here, native iOS notifications, and we couldn't wait to ensure it is enabled for your Invision Community. Invision Community 4.7.9 is iPhone push notification ready for when Apple release their latest iOS update later this month. This means you'll finally get notifications on your phone, even when you do not have your browser open, to alert you of new content on followed items and more. A feature Android owners have enjoyed for a while. With notifications, you can have an authentic native app experience with built-in Invision Community features such as the manifest editor. The manifest editor allows you to edit your theme icons, colours and URL for when your members add your community to their phone's homepage. This manifest file helps mobile devices understand how to display your community site when launched from the home screen. Your members can add your community to their home screen with the share button. Once it has been added, it looks and feels like a native app downloaded from the App Store. With Apple finally allowing native notifications and Invision Community's mobile-ready UI coupled with the manifest editor, you can have a real app experience without needing a mobile app. iPhone PWA.mp4 We intend to bring more functionality and ease of use to mobile devices over the coming releases. We hope you're looking forward to iOS native push notifications as much as we are! The features discussed in this announcement are available in both Invision Community and Invision Community Classic. View full blog entry

I am excited to officially announce the first release of Live Topics coming in our April release of Invision Community for selected cloud plans! Live Topics is a hosted live chat and question-and-answer event that is converted into a forum topic upon completion. It combines the fun and togetherness of a live event with the permanence of a forum topic allowing you to continue the conversation long after the event has ended. Recap: The first look at Live Topics including a video showing the main features. I know many of you on our community have already had sneak peeks and have been patiently waiting, so without further ado, let's get into it. Who is Live Topics for? Live Topics is a great way to bring people together for a live chat event. We have been using Live Topics for our monthly release chat webinars. In the past we have used Zoom to host the live stream and take some questions. This approach is fine, however once the Zoom finishes, the chat history isn't available on our community. We upload a video for those who missed the event, but it doesn't feel interactive. Live Topics automatically converts the questions and answers to a regular forum topic which allows the discussion to continue. Furthermore, the questions are separated from the general chat during the event making it easier for hosts to find and answer questions raised during the event. Live Topics is perfect for anything from product release events to monthly bookclub discussions and everything in between. How does it work? Live Topics are live virtual events within a community. The process to creating a live topic is simple: Schedule your Live Topic from the ModeratorCP. When it's time to start, a host starts the live session. This is the bread and butter of the system; attendees can answer your questions and post chat messages all in realtime. All done? End the topic. It will be converted to a regular forum topic for further discussion and reference. Scheduling and Managing Live Topics Live topics are managed from the ModeratorCP. When scheduling a live topic, you can configure the following options: Duration - This is the scheduled duration that attendees will see before the event. This sets expectations of time for your community. Add To Events - This option creates a new Calendar Event in your Community. This allows the live topic to be searched, viewed, and promoted like other event within your community. Live Video URL - This is the url of a YouTube embed. You can also add this after starting the live session. (Support for platforms other than YouTube coming soon 🙂). We stream Zoom straight to a live Youtube video currently. Attendees - This option specifies who can attend the live topic. Leaving as "Recommended" allows any registered member to join. Staff - The staff are responsible for moderating user generated content as it comes in. The default setting will add all groups that are allowed to moderate live topics. You can adjust this default in the AdminCP. Additional Hosts - The hosts have the highest level of permission in the live topic. They create questions, update the video url, and guide the discussion. By scheduling the Live Topic, you are automatically a host but you can add more hands to help. All hosts get a reminder notification close to when the event is due to start. Require Approval for question replies/chat messages - During the live session, you will likely want to control the rate of incoming content (especially questions). Chat Message creation can be locked during the live session. Hosting the Live Topic To start a live topic, you need to click into it from the ModeratorCP. Alternatively, if it was added to an Event you can click into it from there. Then just click start, it's as simple as that. Your attendees will see a waiting page with a count down. It is worth mentioning that the live topic cannot Run without any hosts in attendance. When hosts abandon a live session, it will automatically end within a few minutes Run longer than 6 hours. The aim of Live Topics is to accompany a live event and to be short term compared to regular forum topics. The live session will also end automatically in this case Once it's started, the UI is divided into have 2 main areas: One for Main Questions and another for Chat. Any video streams you embed are show in the top right and automatically started. Main Questions (and Replies) Main Questions and their replies are what will be preserved when the topic is converted into a forum topic. Only staff can create main questions in order to ensure smooth topic flow. For each question, you can also configure if the replies are "locked". A main question can be unlocked, locked to all members, or locked to non-staff. When a question is locked, new replies cannot be created. Chat Channels For each Live Topic, there is a General Chat and a Staff Chat Channel. If a member is non-staff, instead of the Channel selector tabs, they will see only "Chat". When a non-staff attendee creates a chat message, it can be marked as a "question". This lets the host know that the question was intended for others to respond to. Optionally, the host can even convert the message into a question so it's integrated into the standard topic post-conversion Live Stream Tools Hosts can select a time in the live feed a main question was answered. The video embed can also optionally be changed mid session. This is useful if you don't know the live stream URL before hand. Moderation Tools Staff can hide or delete questions, chat messages and replies. The reply and chat feeds can also be set to automatically hide new items on creation. Non-staff attendees can report content. Reports show in the staff chat channel. Last but not least, staff members can silence attendees. This takes away their privileges to reply and create chat messages. The Converted Topic When the live session completes, our Cloud platform gets to work converting all that data into a regular forum topic. Converted Live Topics feature a questions box which allows you to drill down to specific questions within the topic. The questions can be browsed individually, or even split into separate topics! Lastly, new replies come with the option to select an originating question. That's a wrap (for now) We look forward to seeing all of you use live topics on your communities. As we've hinted elsewhere there are many more features coming soon, so keep your eyes peeled! The features discussed in this announcement are not available for Invision Community Classic. Click here to learn more about switching to our platform to get this and other benefits. View full blog entry

I am excited to officially announce the first release of Live Topics coming in our April release of Invision Community for selected cloud plans! Live Topics is a hosted live chat and question-and-answer event that is converted into a forum topic upon completion. It combines the fun and togetherness of a live event with the permanence of a forum topic allowing you to continue the conversation long after the event has ended. Recap: The first look at Live Topics including a video showing the main features. I know many of you on our community have already had sneak peeks and have been patiently waiting, so without further ado, let's get into it. Who is Live Topics for? Live Topics is a great way to bring people together for a live chat event. We have been using Live Topics for our monthly release chat webinars. In the past we have used Zoom to host the live stream and take some questions. This approach is fine, however once the Zoom finishes, the chat history isn't available on our community. We upload a video for those who missed the event, but it doesn't feel interactive. Live Topics automatically converts the questions and answers to a regular forum topic which allows the discussion to continue. Furthermore, the questions are separated from the general chat during the event making it easier for hosts to find and answer questions raised during the event. Live Topics is perfect for anything from product release events to monthly bookclub discussions and everything in between. How does it work? Live Topics are live virtual events within a community. The process to creating a live topic is simple: Schedule your Live Topic from the ModeratorCP. When it's time to start, a host starts the live session. This is the bread and butter of the system; attendees can answer your questions and post chat messages all in realtime. All done? End the topic. It will be converted to a regular forum topic for further discussion and reference. Scheduling and Managing Live Topics Live topics are managed from the ModeratorCP. When scheduling a live topic, you can configure the following options: Duration - This is the scheduled duration that attendees will see before the event. This sets expectations of time for your community. Add To Events - This option creates a new Calendar Event in your Community. This allows the live topic to be searched, viewed, and promoted like other event within your community. Live Video URL - This is the url of a YouTube embed. You can also add this after starting the live session. (Support for platforms other than YouTube coming soon 🙂). We stream Zoom straight to a live Youtube video currently. Attendees - This option specifies who can attend the live topic. Leaving as "Recommended" allows any registered member to join. Staff - The staff are responsible for moderating user generated content as it comes in. The default setting will add all groups that are allowed to moderate live topics. You can adjust this default in the AdminCP. Additional Hosts - The hosts have the highest level of permission in the live topic. They create questions, update the video url, and guide the discussion. By scheduling the Live Topic, you are automatically a host but you can add more hands to help. All hosts get a reminder notification close to when the event is due to start. Require Approval for question replies/chat messages - During the live session, you will likely want to control the rate of incoming content (especially questions). Chat Message creation can be locked during the live session. Hosting the Live Topic To start a live topic, you need to click into it from the ModeratorCP. Alternatively, if it was added to an Event you can click into it from there. Then just click start, it's as simple as that. Your attendees will see a waiting page with a count down. It is worth mentioning that the live topic cannot Run without any hosts in attendance. When hosts abandon a live session, it will automatically end within a few minutes Run longer than 6 hours. The aim of Live Topics is to accompany a live event and to be short term compared to regular forum topics. The live session will also end automatically in this case Once it's started, the UI is divided into have 2 main areas: One for Main Questions and another for Chat. Any video streams you embed are show in the top right and automatically started. Main Questions (and Replies) Main Questions and their replies are what will be preserved when the topic is converted into a forum topic. Only staff can create main questions in order to ensure smooth topic flow. For each question, you can also configure if the replies are "locked". A main question can be unlocked, locked to all members, or locked to non-staff. When a question is locked, new replies cannot be created. Chat Channels For each Live Topic, there is a General Chat and a Staff Chat Channel. If a member is non-staff, instead of the Channel selector tabs, they will see only "Chat". When a non-staff attendee creates a chat message, it can be marked as a "question". This lets the host know that the question was intended for others to respond to. Optionally, the host can even convert the message into a question so it's integrated into the standard topic post-conversion Live Stream Tools Hosts can select a time in the live feed a main question was answered. The video embed can also optionally be changed mid session. This is useful if you don't know the live stream URL before hand. Moderation Tools Staff can hide or delete questions, chat messages and replies. The reply and chat feeds can also be set to automatically hide new items on creation. Non-staff attendees can report content. Reports show in the staff chat channel. Last but not least, staff members can silence attendees. This takes away their privileges to reply and create chat messages. The Converted Topic When the live session completes, our Cloud platform gets to work converting all that data into a regular forum topic. Converted Live Topics feature a questions box which allows you to drill down to specific questions within the topic. The questions can be browsed individually, or even split into separate topics! Lastly, new replies come with the option to select an originating question. That's a wrap (for now) We look forward to seeing all of you use live topics on your communities. As we've hinted elsewhere there are many more features coming soon, so keep your eyes peeled! The features discussed in this announcement are not available for Invision Community Classic. Click here to learn more about switching to our platform to get this and other benefits. View full blog entry

I am excited to officially announce the first release of Live Topics coming in our April release of Invision Community for selected cloud plans! Live Topics is a hosted live chat and question-and-answer event that is converted into a forum topic upon completion. It combines the fun and togetherness of a live event with the permanence of a forum topic allowing you to continue the conversation long after the event has ended. Recap: The first look at Live Topics including a video showing the main features. I know many of you on our community have already had sneak peeks and have been patiently waiting, so without further ado, let's get into it. Who is Live Topics for? Live Topics is a great way to bring people together for a live chat event. We have been using Live Topics for our monthly release chat webinars. In the past we have used Zoom to host the live stream and take some questions. This approach is fine, however once the Zoom finishes, the chat history isn't available on our community. We upload a video for those who missed the event, but it doesn't feel interactive. Live Topics automatically converts the questions and answers to a regular forum topic which allows the discussion to continue. Furthermore, the questions are separated from the general chat during the event making it easier for hosts to find and answer questions raised during the event. Live Topics is perfect for anything from product release events to monthly bookclub discussions and everything in between. How does it work? Live Topics are live virtual events within a community. The process to creating a live topic is simple: Schedule your Live Topic from the ModeratorCP. When it's time to start, a host starts the live session. This is the bread and butter of the system; attendees can answer your questions and post chat messages all in realtime. All done? End the topic. It will be converted to a regular forum topic for further discussion and reference. Scheduling and Managing Live Topics Live topics are managed from the ModeratorCP. When scheduling a live topic, you can configure the following options: Duration - This is the scheduled duration that attendees will see before the event. This sets expectations of time for your community. Add To Events - This option creates a new Calendar Event in your Community. This allows the live topic to be searched, viewed, and promoted like other event within your community. Live Video URL - This is the url of a YouTube embed. You can also add this after starting the live session. (Support for platforms other than YouTube coming soon 🙂). We stream Zoom straight to a live Youtube video currently. Attendees - This option specifies who can attend the live topic. Leaving as "Recommended" allows any registered member to join. Staff - The staff are responsible for moderating user generated content as it comes in. The default setting will add all groups that are allowed to moderate live topics. You can adjust this default in the AdminCP. Additional Hosts - The hosts have the highest level of permission in the live topic. They create questions, update the video url, and guide the discussion. By scheduling the Live Topic, you are automatically a host but you can add more hands to help. All hosts get a reminder notification close to when the event is due to start. Require Approval for question replies/chat messages - During the live session, you will likely want to control the rate of incoming content (especially questions). Chat Message creation can be locked during the live session. Hosting the Live Topic To start a live topic, you need to click into it from the ModeratorCP. Alternatively, if it was added to an Event you can click into it from there. Then just click start, it's as simple as that. Your attendees will see a waiting page with a count down. It is worth mentioning that the live topic cannot Run without any hosts in attendance. When hosts abandon a live session, it will automatically end within a few minutes Run longer than 6 hours. The aim of Live Topics is to accompany a live event and to be short term compared to regular forum topics. The live session will also end automatically in this case Once it's started, the UI is divided into have 2 main areas: One for Main Questions and another for Chat. Any video streams you embed are show in the top right and automatically started. Main Questions (and Replies) Main Questions and their replies are what will be preserved when the topic is converted into a forum topic. Only staff can create main questions in order to ensure smooth topic flow. For each question, you can also configure if the replies are "locked". A main question can be unlocked, locked to all members, or locked to non-staff. When a question is locked, new replies cannot be created. Chat Channels For each Live Topic, there is a General Chat and a Staff Chat Channel. If a member is non-staff, instead of the Channel selector tabs, they will see only "Chat". When a non-staff attendee creates a chat message, it can be marked as a "question". This lets the host know that the question was intended for others to respond to. Optionally, the host can even convert the message into a question so it's integrated into the standard topic post-conversion Live Stream Tools Hosts can select a time in the live feed a main question was answered. The video embed can also optionally be changed mid session. This is useful if you don't know the live stream URL before hand. Moderation Tools Staff can hide or delete questions, chat messages and replies. The reply and chat feeds can also be set to automatically hide new items on creation. Non-staff attendees can report content. Reports show in the staff chat channel. Last but not least, staff members can silence attendees. This takes away their privileges to reply and create chat messages. The Converted Topic When the live session completes, our Cloud platform gets to work converting all that data into a regular forum topic. Converted Live Topics feature a questions box which allows you to drill down to specific questions within the topic. The questions can be browsed individually, or even split into separate topics! Lastly, new replies come with the option to select an originating question. That's a wrap (for now) We look forward to seeing all of you use live topics on your communities. As we've hinted elsewhere there are many more features coming soon, so keep your eyes peeled! The features discussed in this announcement are not available for Invision Community Classic. Click here to learn more about switching to our platform to get this and other benefits. View full blog entry

On our cloud platform, we handle email for you. To ensure email deliverability we have to keep our "score" high which means we are very strict about managing email sending. Right now, our systems monitor when an email bounces or is reported as spam. For spam reports we immediately stop sending to that email to ensure a good sending score. For bounces, it depends on the type of bounce but they will eventually be blocked as well. This is great for sending scores but sometimes emails get blocked when they should not. People might accidentally click mark as spam. Their email provider might be having technical problems one day causing bounces that then get resolve. The list goes on. Bounce Management We are adding the ability for you to view reports on bounced/complaint emails, take action on member accounts (purge them or mark them as no notifications), and unblock emails that our platform may be refusing to email. A few notes on unblocking: we have to impose some limits of course. Spam complaint blocks can only be unblocked one time. If a second spam complaint for same email address comes in then no further sending will happen (ever). Bounce emails can be unblocked five times. A further note on spam complaint emails: depending on the nature of the complaint, they may not be able to be unblocked. Sometimes a spam complaint comes in and is targeted to the source (your community) and other times is targeted to the platform (our entire infrastructure). If it's targeted at our systems globally, then you would not be able to unblock it. But then, who wants to keep emailing someone who marks you as spam anyway! This new feature will be available on all of our packages except Beginner.

On our cloud platform, we handle email for you. To ensure email deliverability we have to keep our "score" high which means we are very strict about managing email sending. Right now, our systems monitor when an email bounces or is reported as spam. For spam reports we immediately stop sending to that email to ensure a good sending score. For bounces, it depends on the type of bounce but they will eventually be blocked as well. This is great for sending scores but sometimes emails get blocked when they should not. People might accidentally click mark as spam. Their email provider might be having technical problems one day causing bounces that then get resolve. The list goes on. Bounce Management We are adding the ability for you to view reports on bounced/complaint emails, take action on member accounts (purge them or mark them as no notifications), and unblock emails that our platform may be refusing to email. A few notes on unblocking: we have to impose some limits of course. Spam complaint blocks can only be unblocked one time. If a second spam complaint for same email address comes in then no further sending will happen (ever). Bounce emails can be unblocked five times. A further note on spam complaint emails: depending on the nature of the complaint, they may not be able to be unblocked. Sometimes a spam complaint comes in and is targeted to the source (your community) and other times is targeted to the platform (our entire infrastructure). If it's targeted at our systems globally, then you would not be able to unblock it. But then, who wants to keep emailing someone who marks you as spam anyway! This new feature will be available on all of our packages except Beginner.

We're at SMX West this week, just in time to announce a couple of new tools/features for webmasters around the world. Remember all those Birds-of-a-feather lunch chats last year? Those tweets you sent me? The surveys we sent out? Well, we've been busy with that feedback working on tools to help you. Today we're announcing our organic keyword research tool and access to your webmaster tools data via an API. Webmasters have a new choice to perform keyword research Keyword research tool this tool allows you to perform keyword research on any phrase you enter. It resides within your WMT account and offers the ability to see query volume data on the phrase you enter, and related phrases, across many different countries and languages. You can easily explore query volumes on keywords by simply clicking on any related keyword. All data within the tool is exportable, and we hold a history of up to 6 months for all phrases. This means you can select a date range covering up to the previous six months to see query volume data for the time period you select. Query data shown in the results within this tool are based on organic query data from Bing and is raw data, not rounded in any way. This tool is found when you login, on the Keyword tab. Upon login, you see a simple interface with a few options to help you target country and langauge. You can also select "strict" to ensure results are restricted to the exact phrase to word you entered. [broken External Image]:http://www.bing.com/community/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer-Blogs-Components-WeblogFiles/00-00-00-93-90/2275.keyword_2D00_tool_2D00_blank.JPG Entering a phrase or keyword and clicking the Search button will bring back organic keyword query data for the phrase entered, as well as for related phrases. Here we have selected one filter for the United States, but left the language open, and strict unchecked to see what the keyword ecosystem looks like around our topic, in the US. Not surprisingly, our example of fly fishing, during these winter months, nets us lower query volumes. The graph clearly shows a run-up on query volume coming into the holiday season, and trending lower afterwards. [broken External Image]:http://www.bing.com/community/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer-Blogs-Components-WeblogFiles/00-00-00-93-90/8666.keyword_2D00_tool_2D00_populated.JPG adCenter CPC data is shown to help you understand associated costs if you choose to buy paid ads on the phrase. Hover over any phrase to see more data appear in a box to the left of the list. We also provide a small graph which details the query trend for the previous 6 months. This graph gives you an idea, at a glance, of query volume fluctuations. [broken External Image]:http://www.bing.com/community/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer-Blogs-Components-WeblogFiles/00-00-00-93-90/4263.keyword_2D00_tool_2D00_adcenter_2D00_data.JPG Clicking on any phrase in the list pivots the data around that phrase, and keywords related to that phrase. Clicking on Impressions above the suggested phrases re-sorts the list on impression count, from lowest to highest, or highest to lowest. You also have the ability to select a date range (top, right corner near the country/language filters). We keep a 6 months running history in this current version of the tool, so select any range within the past 6 months, hit search and see the data you wanted. One final feature is the History function. This keeps track of your last 25 queries. Clicking the History link gets you a popup window. Simply click on any of the past phrases shown in the list to have the system rerun the report on that phrase, saving you re-entering the data again and making it easy to flip between queries to double check data. [broken External Image]:http://www.bing.com/community/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer-Blogs-Components-WeblogFiles/00-00-00-93-90/5270.keyword_2D00_tool_2D00_history_2D00_1.JPG [broken External Image]:http://www.bing.com/community/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer-Blogs-Components-WeblogFiles/00-00-00-93-90/8032.keyword_2D00_tool_2D00_history_2D00_2.JPG The data we're showing has a planned maximum latency of two weeks. This means that you may see data not appearing if you narrow the window to anything up to the past two current weeks. This latency depends on when you perform the search in relation to when we update the data store. Worst case, we'll be able to show you data that's as recent as 2 weeks ago. Best case, if the timing is right, you'll see data current to within just a few days if your work aligns with our data updates. Sorry gang, but we won't be able to communicate exactly when each data update with happen, and that 2 week window is not carved in stone. While we refresh the data each two weeks, depending on how much data we need to crunch, it could take a day or two for the fresh data to hit the tool for you to see. An alternate path into the keyword tool can be found here. No matter the path you take to the tool, you'll need to login to your webmaster account aong the way, so have your login handy. Can I get that data to go, please? Bing Webmaster Tools API this feature allows you to easily use your Bing WMT data in other locations. If data is available inside the Bing Webmaster Tools, its currently available via the API as well. The main exceptions to this is our messaging and the keyword research data. You will need to either login to your account to use the keyword research tool presently, or set up email alerts to see any messages we post to your account. To access your Bing Webmaster Tools API, head to the main page when you login. Immediately below the Preferences option in the left hand navigation, you'll see the option to access the API. [broken External Image]:http://www.bing.com/community/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer-Blogs-Components-WeblogFiles/00-00-00-93-90/6840.api_2D00_feature_2D00_location.JPG The page you land on explains the process for getting the data authorized and flowing. Now you can interact with your data in our tools whever you choose. As noted, if its available to you in the tools today, its accessable via the API, the exceptions being access to the keyword research tool data and messaging. Need a fix of geek-speak to understand exactly what the API is able to provide? Head here to read the support documentation for the webmaster API. [broken External Image]:http://www.bing.com/community/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer-Blogs-Components-WeblogFiles/00-00-00-93-90/3113.api_2D00_feature_2D00_page.JPG These features are available now, to anyone with a webmaster tools account.[broken External Image]:http://www.bing.com/community/aggbug.aspx?PostID=9672756 Source: Bing Webmaster Blog