IPBSupport News

With the release of 3.1.1 scheduled for next week, I thought I'd take a moment and outline some of the bigger changes. We're very pleased with how well IP.Board 3.1.0 has been received and how stable it has been. We've been working hard to iron out some common issues and we've been reading a lot of your feedback. Based on that,... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

IP.Nexus is designed to give administrators the tools to monetize their community. Not only is this about selling products and services (or accepting donations) but promoting your site as well. Many customers have asked us about a referral system. Until IP.Nexus, there would have been little incentive for members to use such a system. With... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

The new IP.Board Community Directory... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

Not only can IP.Nexus be used to sell specific items on your community. IP.Nexus can accept open donations targetted to any number of goals. Please note that the interface shown in the screenshots is not finalised and subject to change.... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

As many of you will know, search engine optimisation is a process of ongoing improvement. We made some big steps towards making IP.Board more search-friendly when we released 3.0 and weve vastly improved on that with the release of 3.1. We've also started to pay attention to SEO details in our other applications... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

There are many areas of IP.Nexus which the user needs to be able to manage: past orders, active purchase, support requests, etc. We decided, rather than trying to shoe-horn these features into the User CP, which was not really designed for such functions, to create a new "Client Area", specific to IP.Nexus. This is what it looks like: ... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

In a previous blog entry we covered the ordering process for both the end user and administrator, but of course administrators can generate invoices manually. In this blog entry we're going to be demonstrating the how administrators can manage and generate invoices for users. ... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

Invision Power Services, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of IP.Board 3.1.0 and its Applications! [*]IP.Board 3.1.0 Fully featured community platform including forums, members profiles, calendar, status system, integration, and much, much more. [*]IP.Gallery 3.2.0 Categories and photo albums for your members to share their images and videos on your community. [*]IP.Blog 2.2.0 Allow you and your members to post blogs on your community or syndicate externally hosted blogs easily. [*]IP.Downloads 2.2.0 Complete file management application including file version control, commenting, and forum topic linking. [*]IP.Content 2.0.0 Content management for your community - run a full web site or a simply community portal. The possibilities are endless. [*]IP.Chat 1.1.0 Engage your members in real time chat or send them private chats while in the chat room. In addition to the core software, the following products and services are also available: [*]Microsoft SQL Server Database Drivers for alternate database solutions. [*]IP.Board iPhone App for easy mobile access for you and your members! [*]Converter Services to convert from other community software to IPS. [*]Skin Generator service to easily create a custom skin for your community. [*]Spam Monitoring Service to stop spam account registration at the source. Downloading You can download these releases in the client area and begin enjoying the new features. Release Notes [*]We have had three beta releases for testing and are confident any major issues have been addressed. However, as this is the first supported release that will be used by thousands of people, there could be as yet undiscovered issues. Please report issues in the bug tracker. [*]Important technical support note: During the launch of the new products, and the great interest they will create, support response times (especially for install or upgrade requests) may be delayed. We appreciate your understanding during the launch time. If your community is critical in nature and even the slightest delay in support services would impact you then you may wish to wait until version 3.1.1 to upgrade. [*]If you are upgrading from IP.Board 3.0.x then please note that, although this is not a destructive upgrade, you may need to manually update any skins you have using the new merge center to add the new functionality. You may also need to update any custom applications or hooks to use some new file locations. Technical support from IPS for skins is limited. When in doubt contact the author of the skin or use the default skin that ships with IP.Board. [*]If you are currently using Facebook Connect integration, you will now need to add your Facebook application ID into the system settings. Please see this article for more information. [*]Legacy chat services Addonchat and Parachat are no longer supported from version 3.1 onwards. If you are using these older services and wish to continue doing so: do not upgrade to version 3.1 at this time. You may wish to consider switching to our new IP.Chat service. Version 3.1.1 Coming Soon IPS is dedicated to promptly fixing any reported issues and will do so with the release of version 3.1.1 soon after 3.1.0's release. You may also wish to keep an eye on our knowledge base where we will release patches for any critical issues that come up between the two version releases. As defined in the release notes: because this is the first widely-distributed release there will be as yet undiscovered issues. You can expect a maintenance release, IP.Board 3.1.1 (and other application maintenance releases), in the next two to three weeks (around mid-June) to address issues reported in this first supported release. We appreciate your understanding and hope you can assist us in identifying any problems in this first supported release so we can quickly remedy them in our next update. What's New We hope you are as excited as IPS staff is about what's new in these product versions. Here are the highlights: IP.Board 3.1.0 Link Sharing Easily share links from your community to Facebook, Twitter, and more. Great way to drive traffic to your community! Status Updates Enhancements to the existing member status system in IP.Board to include the ability to reply and more. Topic Preview Preview the first few lines of a topic without loading the entire topic. View Reputation Optionally allow your members to see who gave reputation points on their posts. Twitter Integration Your members can now link their account with their Twitter account! Improved Facebook Integration Further enhance the link between your community and Facebook to drive traffic. Including new Facebook Graph API Advertising Code Integration: Part 1 and Part 2 Easily place advertising code throughout your community with simple settings in the admin area. Profile Customizations: Part 1 and Part 2 Allow your members to customize the look and feel of their profile page. Skin Upgrader Upgrading your skin between versions of IP.Board just became a lot easier. Soft Delete Posts and Topics Rather than actually deleting a post or topic you can now hide it from view to easily restore it later. Notification System An easier way to be notified of all the various events that happen in your community. And Improvements Modification Development Enhancements Great tools for those that create modifications for IP.Board Hook System Improvements Improvements to the IP.Board hook system to make it easier for modification developers to expand the functions in the software. Search Engine Optimization: Part 1 and Part 2 Allow search engines to better index and rank your community in results. Search Engine Overhaul Search engine rebuilt from the ground up introducing more flexibility and power. Template Merge Tool Merge skin changes between versions right in the AdminCP. All new Mobile Skin Mobile skin for many popular devices to enable easy access to your community. Automatic Media Embedding Automatic parsing of YouTube and other media into posts. Plus many bugs fixed from the 3.0.5 version and performance improvements. IP.Content 2.0.0 Feed Block Updates Great updates to make these blocks even more useful. Database Improvements: Part 1 and Part 2 Improvements to database usability. Page Interface Enhancements Makes working with Pages in the admin area easier. Friendly URLs for Databases Database URLs become human and search engine friendly. Template Improvements Easier to work with templates and updates. Forum Integration More tools to enhance content sharing between your forums and pages. Articles Support for a comprehensive articles system. IP.Chat 1.1.0 Chat Count and Private Chats Show number of people in the room at top of page and support for private member-to-member chats. Local Chat Logs View, search, and interact with your chat logs right in the admin area. Note that, as of IP.Board 3.1's release, the old Parachat and Addonchat modules are no longer directly supported by IPS. Skin Generator Service Introducing Skin Generator Our new, free service to active IP.Board license holders to easily generate a custom skin for their community. Improvements to Skin Generator New features and enhancements to the service. Spam Monitoring Service Many Enhancements Many additions to the spam service both in IP.Board and behind the scenes to help combat spam on your community. IP.Blog, IP.Gallery, and IP.Downloads The new versions of these products are maintenance releases to fix known issues and to add compatibility for IP.Board 3.1.0. Also, IP.Blog received the new sharing tools from IP.Board. All of these products will receive full feature upgrades this summer. CleanCut, MSSQL Database Driver, and Converter Services CleanCut skin has been updated to support the new application versions. The MSSQL database driver has been greatly enhanced and stabilized from previous versions, now only support MSSQL 2005+, and we are phasing out deprecated field types for greater efficiency. Converter Services are now available for IP.Board 3.1. IP.Board iPhone App The new IP.Board iPhone App is available and APIs for its use are included in IP.Board 3.1.0. Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/311959-ipboard-310-and-applications-released/

A week ago we launched the first version of our IP.Board Communities iPhone App and the response has been great so far with thousands of downloads! It's been really exciting for us to see the great feedback and start incorporating it into the newer versions of the app. We have a new version of the app awaiting approval that addresses... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

A week ago we launched the first version of our IP.Board Communities iPhone App and the response has been great so far with thousands of downloads! It's been really exciting for us to see the great feedback and start incorporating it into the newer versions of the app. We have a new version of the app awaiting approval that addresses... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

In our last IP.Nexus Dev Update, we demonstrated the storefront and checkout process for the end user. In this blog entry, we're going to show you some of the Admin features for processing orders. Please note that the interface shown in the screenshots is not finalised and subject to change. There are two stages to processing an order: [*]... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

With the release of IP.Board 3.1 and our new iPhone application, we decided to make some further improvements to our mobile skin to expand on the great start introduced earlier this year. We wanted to give the skin a more modern, touch-friendly feel, and improve usability for those devices to suit. So here's some of what we've done: ... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

In our previous blog entry, we covered how to create packages in IP.Nexus. This blog entry will cover the storefront and ordering process for the products that you sell. The Store The front page of the store looks like this: main-store.jpg ... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

In addition to the great software that IPS offers in its Community Suite line, we offer many great benefits that go along with the products to enhance your community, make it easier to manage, and allow you to focus on your members rather than software management. As the first supported release of IP.Board 3.1.0 and its applications is nearly here, we thought we would take this time to review all the great benefits you get along with the software suite itself. Spam Monitoring Service [more info] The Spam Monitoring Service is a great, free service for all active IP.Board license and IPS Community Hosting clients. The Spam Monitoring Service leverages the many thousands of IP.Board community installs all over the web to help track and catch those spammers attempting to register on your community. It works like this: [*]Someone attempts to register on your community. [*]Your local IP.Board install contacts IPS Spam Monitoring servers to see if that user registering is a known spammmer. [*]If so, the service gives the account a score of the likelihood it is a spammer and your IP.Board can ban them or put them up for manual approval depending on your preferences. The Spam Monitoring Service can "learn" from the thousands of communities reporting registration statistics to it and spot trends. For example, a real human would never be able to register on 50 communities in a matter of one minute but a spam bot could so the service learns from this and bans accounts it sees doing that sort of behavior. For the privacy of you and your members registering, the service does not store any member information permanently. Skin Generator [more info] The free Skin Generator is a great tool to get you on your way to customizing the look and feel of your community to make it your own. For both novice and advanced skinners, the Skin Generator speeds up the process of creating a skin with custom colors, header, and other options. From there you can continue to edit it to further create your own, unique look for your community! Community Projects [more info] There are many great products that IPS itself doesn't have time to make. To fill those gaps, some of our great community of customers have come together to volunteer their time to create free products that work right with IP.Board as any other application. All are offered for free to active license holders and done for the fun of it by the volunteers. Be sure to thank them for their time and expertise! Resources Section [more info] We have some amazingly talented people in our customer community and many of them create great articles, tutorials, graphics, skins, and modifications to the IPS community suite. Many are free, some have a small fee, all can be useful enhancements to your community. Take a look through the directory of articles for interesting tutorials and tips for your community. The Downloads section is full of graphics, skins, modifications, and more for your community. Finally, be sure to subscribe to receive updates (or the RSS feed) on the Resources Blog where our community of contributors can post updates on their latest creations! iPhone App [more info] Our new iPhone App for IP.Board has already been a great success and is free for both you and your members! Now your members can visit your community quickly and easily while on their mobile device. They can upload Gallery images and even update the status on your community and, if enabled, Facebook and Twitter all at once. The iPhone App is brand new and we will continue to enhance it with your feedback. An Android platform app is on the way too! Technical Support Included with every IP.Board license and IPS Community Hosting account is great support. You can feel free to ask us a basic question, request we install or upgrade the community suite software for you, or query us on an advanced question. We are here to help your community grow and let you focus on your members rather than technical issues. IP.Chat [more info] Having Live Chat on your community adds a unique way for your members to interact. The IP.Chat service includes 5 online users for free with your suite and you can upgrade to higher levels for a very low yearly fee. Your chat logs are available right in your AdminCP (with IP.Board 3.1) and you can easily kick, ban, or even privately chat with members by simply clicking their name right in the chat room. Community Directory [more info] The new Community Directory allows any IP.Board community to be listed right on your site. Show off your community and get more traffic! The Directory is brand new so be one of the first to list your community. Also, for even greater exposure, a future version of our iPhone App will include mobile access to the Directory. We hope you enjoy all these benefits to using the IPS Community Suite! We will continue to innovate and add more benefits all the time. Everyone at IPS is looking forward to the release of the first supported version of IP.Board 3.1.0 on the afternoon of June 1 (Eastern time). Thank you for your support! Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/311415-ips-community-suite-benefits/

IP.Nexus allows to you to create packages with a variety of options and even create custom packages for your users. In this blog entry we wanted to go through some of the options available to you. Please note that the interface shown in the screenshots is not finalised subject to change. Package Groups... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

The mobile market for communities has exploded and we have responded by offering a great, new mobile skin for IP.Board and its applications. There are inherent limitations in a mobile skin that are difficult to work around such as image uploading, logging in, and more that are either impossible or just tedious on a mobile device. IPS is happy to introduce a new iPhone app to solve these issues and add new options! Easy Login to all your IP.Board Communities You can add a list of all the IP.Board-powered communities you visit and save your username/password to those communities in the app. You now have one-tap access to all the communities you visit. No need to tap out your login each time you wish to visit the community of your choice and easily switch between all the communities you visit! Uses Standard Mobile Skin When you visit the community, you will see that it uses the standard IP.Board mobile skin available standard in the platform. We considered creating a native interface within the iPhone app but there are several advantages to using the built-in mobile skin: [*]Common user experience - regardless of a user visiting through the iPhone app, normal browser, or any other mobile device they will have a similar browsing experience on your community [*]Design control - As the owner of your community, you want complete control of the look, feel, and branding of your community. If we were to create a native, standardized interface then IPS would be in control of that look: not you. We obviously never wish to get between you and your visitors so using the mobile skin allows for you to have complete control of the look of your community. [*]Advertising Control - Much as above with the look and feel: IPS does not want to get between you and your advertising revenue. By using the standard mobile skin, you are free to place your own advertising and sponsorships. Tap into the mobile market without worry about a third-party getting in the way! [*]Native Interface Option - If you did want a native iPhone interface, there are great skins available from third-party skinners in our community that will make your community look like it's running right on the iPhone while still maintaining the three advantages above. Member Status Updates Your members can update their IP.Board profile status right within the app without having to navigate to any other page. Even better, if you use IP.Board's built-in Twitter and Facebook integrations, your members can even update the status on your community, their Facebook, and their Twitter all in one click! This allows your community to become the center of their online social experience. IP.Gallery Integration If your community has our IP.Gallery image gallery software installed: your members will be able to upload images, videos, and camera shots directly from their iPhone to your community! Members can select their source, write a caption, description, and even choose from the albums they have created on your community to upload their media. Sharing Two simple but easy sharing functions are available: open in Safari and email. Found a great topic on a community you visit and want to share it? Just click email and send it to a friend. You can also open the community in Safari to bookmark a page or perform other functions available in the OS browser. Pricing and Availability It's already done! Please note that the app will require IP.Board 3.1 is installed to communicate with your community. We are happy to say that the IP.Board iPhone app will be available totally free to all! There are no ads from IPS in the app or anything intrusive that will distract from your community. Future Ideas This is the very first version of the iPhone app and we have tons of great ideas to improve it and will continue to do so over time. Yes: we will be creating an Android platform app as well. We will also be creating an option, for a small fee, to create a private-label version of the app for anyone who wants one that can only be used on your community. Information on the private-label service will come after the app has gone through a few maintenance updates. Other fun features like mobile access to the Community Directory and Push Notifications for new activity on your community are already in progress! Stay tuned! Important Notes Because of Apple's approval process, the version of the app available in the App Store is now a couple weeks out of date. It therefore has a few known issues that have already been addressed. We have submitted an update to the app for approval to Apple that will fix these issues and are waiting for its approval. The update will show in iTunes like any other app. As of this moment, you can use the app here on the IPS Community. We will be releasing an update to IP.Board 3.1 Beta 3 (and included in final version, of course) to support the app. If you find issues, please post in our bug tracker and if you have suggestions we would love to hear them in our feedback forum. Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/311218-ips-introduces-iphone-app-for-ipboard-communities/

IPS is changing the name of our new IP.Commerce (as yet unreleased) application to IP.Nexus. We have received an exceptional amount of interest in this product to date and many have been a bit confused with the name. The major confusion lies in the fact that this application is not just an ecommerce application but also used for advertising,... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

We're very pleased to announce that beta 3 of IP.Board 3.1.0 and its applications are now available! Please read through this announcement for information on where to download and what is available. What's Available? The following releases are available: [*]IP.Board 3.1.0 Beta 3 [*]IP.Gallery 3.2.0 Beta 3 [*]IP.Blog 2.2.0 Beta 3 [*]... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

I had previously blogged about the API in IP.Commerce allowing other applications to process payments using IP.Commerce. We have implemented this in IP.Downloads to bring paid file support. You can specify which groups can add paid files, and which groups (for example the admin group) can download paid files without paying. ... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

I had previously blogged about the API in IP.Nexus allowing other applications to process payments using IP.Nexus. We have implemented this in IP.Downloads to bring paid file support. You can specify which groups can add paid files, and which groups (for example the admin group) can download paid files without paying. ... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

We're very pleased to announce that IP.Board 3.1.0 and its applications are now available for beta testing! Please read through this announcement for information on where to download and what is available. What's Available? The following releases are available: [*]IP.Board 3.1.0 Beta 2 [*]IP.Gallery 3.2.0 Beta 2 [*]... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

A security issue has been discovered in IP.Board 3.0.x that could potentially allow a malicious user to insert Javascript or other code into your community. The damage this sort of attack can do is mitigated by IP.Board's use of HTTP-only cookies and other security measures. As part of our continued dedication to security enhancement, we are releasing a simple patch for IP.Board 3.0.5 to address this issue. If you are running IP.Board versions less than 3.0.5 simply upgrade your software version. Note that this issue does not exist in IP.Board 3.1.0 Beta 2 and beyond. Download Patch Simply upload the attached file to: admin/sources/classes/bbcode/custom/defaults.php defaults.zip (9.67K) : 39 The main 3.0.5 download zip has been updated as of this date. Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/310713-ipboard-30x-security-patch-released/

One of the first things I wanted to talk about with IP.Commerce is how easy it is for third-party developers to integrate with IP.Commerce. You could for example, have an area of your application that you only want available to users who pay a fee. IP.Commerce makes this possible. There is a special class in IP.Commerce called commerceApi that... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

One of the first things I wanted to talk about with IP.Nexus is how easy it is for third-party developers to integrate with IP.Nexus. You could for example, have an area of your application that you only want available to users who pay a fee. IP.Nexus makes this possible. There is a special class in IP.Nexus called commerceApi that allows you to... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

Our IP.Board 3.1 beta testing stage is well underway, and so far things are looking pretty good. We want to take a moment to thank everyone for their time and effort helping us to test IP.Board 3.1. Your contributions are appreciated and only help to ensure the quality of the software is nothing less than you would expect from us upon final... Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen