IPBSupport News

It's an unfortunate fact that when you run a successful site, you attract unwanted users posting spam on your site. IP.Board has always been incredibly pro-active in preventing spam users from signing up by making use of built in tools such as the question and answer challenge, spam monitoring service and CAPTCHA systems. I'd like to take a moment to talk about some enhancements we've made in IP.Board 3.4.0 to help prevent unwanted posts and spam. Spam Monitoring Improvements We've further enhanced the spam monitoring service in IP.Board 3.4.0 by adding a new option: "Do not permit the user to register an account". This reduces the amount of clean up you need to do after a new wave of attempted spam user sign-ups. Furthermore, the "flag a member as a spammer" tool optionally deletes posted content rather than simply hiding them further reducing the amount of work needed to maintain your community. We have also totally reworked our spammer-detection logic behind the scenes to make the spam monitoring service detect spammers more quickly. In addition to internal changes, we are also looking at direct integration with services like Project Honey Pot and others. The great thing about the spam monitoring service is that we can make improvements on our side that are instantly beneficial to your community. keyCAPTCHA Integration IP.Board has made good use of the popular reCAPTCHA service to limit the number of "bots" that sign up to your forum with the intent of posting spam. The idea being that a slightly jumbled selection of letters is easy enough for a human to read but more difficult for a computer program. However, some do find that the CAPTCHA images are becoming increasingly complex to keep up with more intelligently written programs to defeat them. KeyCAPTCHA takes a novel approach to this problem by using images instead of letters and numbers. You simply arrange a few large pieces of a very simple puzzle to complete an image. You don't need to be completely accurate when building the image, either. This is now an option in the IP.Board Admin CP. Should you wish to enable it, you'll need to register an account with keyCAPTCHA. The link for this is contained in the setting form and is very straight forward. As always, we look for new ways to help make running your community a little easier and we look forward to helping you keep those spammers at bay! View the full article Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/373026-ipboard-34-dev-update-anti-spam-enhancements/

It's an unfortunate fact that when you run a successful site, you attract unwanted users posting spam on your site. IP.Board has always been incredibly pro-active in preventing spam users from signing up by making use of built in tools such as the question and answer challenge, spam monitoring service and CAPTCHA systems. I'd like to take a moment to talk about some enhancements we've made in IP.Board 3.4.0 to help prevent unwanted posts and spam. Spam Monitoring Improvements We've further enhanced the spam monitoring service in IP.Board 3.4.0 by adding a new option: "Do not permit the user to register an account". This reduces the amount of clean up you need to do after a new wave of attempted spam user sign-ups. Furthermore, the "flag a member as a spammer" tool optionally deletes posted content rather than simply hiding them further reducing the amount of work needed to maintain your community. We have also totally reworked our spammer-detection logic behind the scenes to make the spam monitoring service detect spammers more quickly. In addition to internal changes, we are also looking at direct integration with services like Project Honey Pot and others. The great thing about the spam monitoring service is that we can make improvements on our side that are instantly beneficial to your community. keyCAPTCHA Integration IP.Board has made good use of the popular reCAPTCHA service to limit the number of "bots" that sign up to your forum with the intent of posting spam. The idea being that a slightly jumbled selection of letters is easy enough for a human to read but more difficult for a computer program. However, some do find that the CAPTCHA images are becoming increasingly complex to keep up with more intelligently written programs to defeat them. KeyCAPTCHA takes a novel approach to this problem by using images instead of letters and numbers. You simply arrange a few large pieces of a very simple puzzle to complete an image. You don't need to be completely accurate when building the image, either. This is now an option in the IP.Board Admin CP. Should you wish to enable it, you'll need to register an account with keyCAPTCHA. The link for this is contained in the setting form and is very straight forward. As always, we look for new ways to help make running your community a little easier and we look forward to helping you keep those spammers at bay! Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

There has been much confusion over the recent exploit reported to us and subsequently patched. I would like to personally apologize for any confusion and inconvenience caused. We have conducted a review and made appropriate changes to our policies to ensure a smoother release and notification schedule for any future incidents. With that said, it is very important to note that while an IP.Board vulnerability did exist, its impact would have been minimal, if not non-existent on servers that have their PHP installations properly secured. I would like to touch on a couple of basics to minimize the effects of future vulnerabilities not only in IP.Board, but any other PHP application you may be using on your website. open_basedir It's very important that you (if you manage your own web hosting server) or your web host enable open_basedir. In a shared hosting environment without open_basedir, an attacker has the ability to exploit a vulnerability, perhaps on another customer's account, then use that vulnerability to scan for other customers on the server. From there, they could gain access to config files containing database details, write malicious files to world-writeable directories and a host of other ill-willed activities. Enabling open_basedir "locks" all internal PHP functions such as readfile() to the specified path, which is generally a temporary directory and your home directory. disable_functions While open_basedir is a very positive step in securing your PHP scripts, there are unfortunately instances in which it can be bypassed and this is how the recent IP.Board vulnerability gained ground so quickly. For example, the exec(), system() and passthru() functions allow a command to be issued directly to the operating system to view key system files, navigate through other users' web root directories, install 'remote shell' scripts into other users' directories, etc. without any regard to other restrictions such as open_basedir. For this reason, disable_functions should be set to disable system level functions. For example, this is a recommended disable_functions: disable_functions = escapeshellarg,escapeshellcmd,exec,ini_alter,parse_ini_file,passthru,pcntl_exec,popen,proc_close,proc_get_status,proc_nice,proc_open,proc_terminate,show_source,shell_exec,symlink,system You or your host may need to tweak to suit, but at a minimum, execution commands should be disabled. Following the above, you will not necessarily create a fool-proof environment, but you will have additional reassurances that you or your host have taken appropriate measures to better secure your PHP applications. For those that run a cPanel/WHM server you may enable open_basedir by visiting WHM and clicking the "PHP open_basedir Tweak" link under "Security Center" then clicking enable. You may modify the disable_functions line by visiting WHM and clicking "PHP Configuration Editor" under "Service Configuration" then clicking "advanced" and searching for "disable_functions" If you are unsure or do not have the necessary permissions to carry out these tasks, please do contact your host. You are free to link them to this blog entry as well. I hope this helps better explain the recent security concern and what you can do to help protect yourself and your users in the future. As always, please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns you might have. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding. View the full article Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/372850-securing-your-community/

There has been much confusion over the recent exploit reported to us and subsequently patched. I would like to personally apologize for any confusion and inconvenience caused. We have conducted a review and made appropriate changes to our policies to ensure a smoother release and notification schedule for any future incidents. With that said, it is very important to note that while an IP.Board vulnerability did exist, its impact would have been minimal, if not non-existent on servers that have their PHP installations properly secured. I would like to touch on a couple of basics to minimize the effects of future vulnerabilities not only in IP.Board, but any other PHP application you may be using on your website. open_basedir It's very important that you (if you manage your own web hosting server) or your web host enable open_basedir. In a shared hosting environment without open_basedir, an attacker has the ability to exploit a vulnerability, perhaps on another customer's account, then use that vulnerability to scan for other customers on the server. From there, they could gain access to config files containing database details, write malicious files to world-writeable directories and a host of other ill-willed activities. Enabling open_basedir "locks" all internal PHP functions such as readfile() to the specified path, which is generally a temporary directory and your home directory. disable_functions While open_basedir is a very positive step in securing your PHP scripts, there are unfortunately instances in which it can be bypassed and this is how the recent IP.Board vulnerability gained ground so quickly. For example, the exec(), system() and passthru() functions allow a command to be issued directly to the operating system to view key system files, navigate through other users' web root directories, install 'remote shell' scripts into other users' directories, etc. without any regard to other restrictions such as open_basedir. For this reason, disable_functions should be set to disable system level functions. For example, this is a recommended disable_functions: disable_functions = escapeshellarg,escapeshellcmd,exec,ini_alter,parse_ini_file,passthru,pcntl_exec,popen,proc_close,proc_get_status,proc_nice,proc_open,proc_terminate,show_source,shell_exec,symlink,system You or your host may need to tweak to suit, but at a minimum, execution commands should be disabled. Following the above, you will not necessarily create a fool-proof environment, but you will have additional reassurances that you or your host have taken appropriate measures to better secure your PHP applications. For those that run a cPanel/WHM server you may enable open_basedir by visiting WHM and clicking the "PHP open_basedir Tweak" link under "Security Center" then clicking enable. You may modify the disable_functions line by visiting WHM and clicking "PHP Configuration Editor" under "Service Configuration" then clicking "advanced" and searching for "disable_functions" If you are unsure or do not have the necessary permissions to carry out these tasks, please do contact your host. You are free to link them to this blog entry as well. I hope this helps better explain the recent security concern and what you can do to help protect yourself and your users in the future. As always, please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns you might have. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding. Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

We are nearly ready to release the supported version of IP.Board 3.4 and are very excited to get this great new release out to you. Beta Testing We are currently doing a public beta test of IP.Board 3.4. If you are comfortable testing pre-release software please consider testing and letting us know any bugs you might find. You can find the pre-release on our forums but you will need to login as an active IPS Client to access. The more people who test our beta releases the better for everyone! What's New Please read these blog entries for a full list and explanation of what's new in this release. IP.SEO Removed (we have removed IP.SEO and merged all its functionality right into IP.Board!) Editor Improvements IPS Connect (please note that with the release of Connect our old Converge product will no longer function) SEO Improvements VigLink Integration Best Answer Feature AdminCP Interface Enhancements Bulk Mail with Mandrill Miscellaneous Enhancements IPS CDN ServiceIn addition to the specifics in the blog entries we have fixed many issues and made many smaller improvements. New Backup Service Delayed We had announced a new Backup Service however this service will be not be available at release time. We want to be sure the service works reliably and would rather delay a bit than give you something that may not work properly. Obviously something as important as backups on your community is something we want to feel confident about offering. Depending on how our beta testing goes we hope to release IP.Board 3.4 by the end of November. If you are comfortable testing we encourage you to do so so we can be sure this release is as stable as possible. Thank you! View the full article Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/372382-ipboard-34-coming-soon/

We are nearly ready to release the supported version of IP.Board 3.4 and are very excited to get this great new release out to you. Beta Testing We are currently doing a public beta test of IP.Board 3.4. If you are comfortable testing pre-release software please consider testing and letting us know any bugs you might find. You can find the pre-release on our forums but you will need to login as an active IPS Client to access. The more people who test our beta releases the better for everyone! What's New Please read these blog entries for a full list and explanation of what's new in this release. IP.SEO Removed (we have removed IP.SEO and merged all its functionality right into IP.Board!) Editor Improvements IPS Connect (please note that with the release of Connect our old Converge product will no longer function) SEO Improvements VigLink Integration Best Answer Feature AdminCP Interface Enhancements Bulk Mail with Mandrill Miscellaneous Enhancements IPS CDN ServiceIn addition to the specifics in the blog entries we have fixed many issues and made many smaller improvements. New Backup Service Delayed We had announced a new Backup Service however this service will be not be available at release time. We want to be sure the service works reliably and would rather delay a bit than give you something that may not work properly. Obviously something as important as backups on your community is something we want to feel confident about offering. Depending on how our beta testing goes we hope to release IP.Board 3.4 by the end of November. If you are comfortable testing we encourage you to do so so we can be sure this release is as stable as possible. Thank you! Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

Invision Power Services, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of IP.Gallery 5.0.3 and IP.Blog 2.6.1. IP.Gallery 5.0.3 IP.Gallery is a fully-featured photo and multimedia sharing app for the IPS Community Suite. Create albums, upload photos, discuss the hottest shots and much more. This release resolves issues reported since the release of IP.Gallery 5.0.2. A list of bugs reported in 5.0.2 and fixed in 5.0.3 can be seen in our tracker. IP.Blog 2.6.0 IP.Blog enables users to create and maintain their own individual or group blogs right from within your community, to share ideas & thoughts. A list of bugs reported in 2.6.0 and fixed in 2.6.1 can be seen in our tracker. Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/372299-ipgallery-503-ipblog-261-released/

On 25 October 2012 we released a critical security patch for IP.Board to address an issue with PHP serialized data in the software. Today we are releasing an update that further enhances the security of the impacted areas. IPS Security Procedures When IPS identifies a security issue we always immediately release a patch to address the issue as we did on 25 October. Our second phase of security procedures involves taking time to audit the impacted area of the software and other areas that use similar functionality. This second phase of security auditing helps to ensure the safety of your community by allowing us to proactively harden the security features before an actual exploit is found. Security Update: 6 November 2012 While we have not been made aware of a specific exploit, our security audit has determined other areas of the software that can be hardened against intrusion or exploit. To proactively ensure the security of your community: today we are releasing a critical security update. Instructions We are providing a patch for IP.Board versions 3.3, 3.2, and 3.1. Version 3.1 is end of life for support but we are still providing the patch for the convenience of clients who have not yet upgraded. If you are running a version less than 3.1 you should upgrade to get this and other security enhancements. Patching is very easy: Identify the version of IP.Board you are running. Download and unzip the appropriate patch file below that matches your version. Upload the contents of the zip to your IP.Board home directory IP.Board 3.3.x ipb33_nov12.zip 49.69K 21 downloads IP.Board 3.2.x ipb32_nov12.zip 48.84K 5 downloads IP.Board 3.1.x ipb31_nov12.zip 70.43K 4 downloads Notes: This security update replaces the security patch on 25 October 2012. You do not need to apply the 25 October 2012 patch as the release today contains that update and more. When you apply the security update the bulletin in your AdminCP will still display. We keep the bulletin in place for at least a week after a security release. Our main software packages accessed via the client area have already been updated with this security update. If you are running version 3.2.x or 3.1.x and do not have database topic marking enabled then all content will be marked as unread on applying update. If you are an IPS Hosting client your community will be automatically patched. Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/372245-ipboard-33x-32x-and-31x-critical-security-update-6-november-2012/

It has come to our attention that a security issue is present in IP.Board. We strongly recommend that you follow the instructions below to patch your community. Instructions This security update is a simple one file patch. Simply download the relevant zip file for your version. Expand the zip file and upload /admin/sources/base/core.php to your /admin/sources/base directory on your server ensuring that the file is overwritten. Please contact technical support if you're unsure how to update your community. The main download zips have been updated at the time of this announcement. IP.Board 3.3.x ipb33_oct12.zip 38.93K 55 downloads IP.Board 3.2.x ipb32_oct12.zip 37.28K 8 downloads IP.Board 3.1.x ipb31_oct12.zip 57.78K 5 downloads Thank you to Egidio Romano (aka EgiX) for reporting the issue and lending his assistance with the fix. Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/371625-ipboard-31x-32x-and-33x-security-update/

It has come to our attention that a security issue is present in IP.Board. We strongly recommend that you follow the instructions below to patch your community. Instructions This security update is a simple one file patch. Simply download the relevant zip file for your version. Expand the zip file and upload /admin/sources/base/core.php to your /admin/sources/base directory on your server ensuring that the file is overwritten. Please contact technical support if you're unsure how to update your community. The main download zips have been updated at the time of this announcement. IP.Board 3.3.x ipb33_oct12.zip 38.93K 4576 downloads IP.Board 3.2.x ipb32_oct12.zip 37.28K 765 downloads IP.Board 3.1.x ipb31_oct12.zip 57.78K 637 downloads Thank you to Egidio Romano (aka EgiX) for reporting the issue and lending his assistance with the fix. Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/371625-ipboard-31x-32x-and-33x-critical-security-update/

Invision Power Services, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of IP.Content 2.3.3! IP.Content is our community content management platform for IP.Board allowing you to create content for your site ranging from a simple portal to a full website with custom databases and more - the possibilities are endless! This release resolves issues reported since the release of IP.Content 2.3.2. This release also incorporates a handful of new features and functionality improvements: Significant improvements to item markers in databases Ability to allow users to filter by fields, which adds a filter bar on the left side of the screen (as seen in our Tracker) Reports you have posted in now show a "star" icon, like topics within a forum The page navigation is duplicated to the bottom of the listing screen in a database You can now lock/hide/pin database records during submission if you have permission Searching now uses MySQL fulltext search methods, and an order by 'relevancy' (which is the new default) method has been introduced Ability for moderators to be notified of records submitted to databases that require moderator approval We welcome feedback on this or any other release in the relevant feedback forum including suggestions for future releases. Demo You can try our free demo to see IP.Content in action for yourself. Purchasing You can purchase IP.Content in your client area by clicking the 'New Purchase' button in the upper right corner. New clients can purchase IP.Content along with IP.Board. If you are an IPS Community Hosting client, IP.Content comes with all packages! If you have already purchased IP.Content, you can download this update in your client area. Requirements / Notes IP.Content 2.3.3 requires IP.Board version 3.3.x or 3.4.x Installing / Upgrading For further assistance on installing IP.Content please refer to this document and for upgrading please refer to this document Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/371514-ipcontent-233-released/

At IPS, we pride ourselves on providing industry leading products and services, unsurpassed in quality, features and support. Much like any other company, we indeed have our strengths and weaknesses. One admitted weakness is clearly developing an independent mobile app platform that can meet your and our expectations. We have struggled over the past several years in securing a proficient mobile app development team and ultimately, the platform has not met our expectations. Our mantra has become: if we can't do it right, we simply will not do it. That is where we are at with the mobile app platform. Unfortunately, this means the Android app will not make its debut as we originally hoped. We do not wish to release something that we cannot provide proper support for. Instead, we would recommend Android users with an immediate need for a mobile app, visit a third party such as Tapatalk.com Please trust that we are just as disappointed as you in our failure to deliver this particular product as promised and I offer my sincerest apologies. With that, we will do our best to continue polishing the iOS mobile app (which will now be made available for free in the app store) in the short term. For the long-term, we will be incorporating a new mobile integration directly into the product beginning with 4.0. An integrated web app uses the latest standard web technologies such as CSS, Javascript and HTML combined with mobile extensions which will make the site render and feel like a native mobile application. This will allow far more flexibility and tighter integration across the IPS Community Suite (imagine approving orders, responding to support requests or publishing an article with IP.Content from the comfort of your mobile device) than an independent mobile app while being cross-platform compatible with all mobile operating systems. This is also something we have the existing internal expertise to carry out to our standards, alleviating the need to rely on third parties. As always, we welcome any constructive feedback and appreciate your continued business and support. Once again, I apologize for any inconvenience and rest assured - we will continue to do what we do best. http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-8363-mobile-apps-status/]View the full article Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/371496-mobile-apps-status/

At IPS, we pride ourselves on providing industry leading products and services, unsurpassed in quality, features and support. Much like any other company, we indeed have our strengths and weaknesses. One admitted weakness is clearly developing an independent mobile app platform that can meet your and our expectations. We have struggled over the past several years in securing a proficient mobile app development team and ultimately, the platform has not met our expectations. Our mantra has become: if we can't do it right, we simply will not do it. That is where we are at with the mobile app platform. Unfortunately, this means the Android app will not make its debut as we originally hoped. We do not wish to release something that we cannot provide proper support for. Instead, we would recommend Android users with an immediate need for a mobile app, visit a third party such as Tapatalk.com Please trust that we are just as disappointed as you in our failure to deliver this particular product as promised and I offer my sincerest apologies. With that, we will do our best to continue polishing the iOS mobile app (which will now be made available for free in the app store) in the short term. For the long-term, we will be incorporating a new mobile integration directly into the product beginning with 4.0. An integrated web app uses the latest standard web technologies such as CSS, Javascript and HTML combined with mobile extensions which will make the site render and feel like a native mobile application. This will allow far more flexibility and tighter integration across the IPS Community Suite (imagine approving orders, responding to support requests or publishing an article with IP.Content from the comfort of your mobile device) than an independent mobile app while being cross-platform compatible with all mobile operating systems. This is also something we have the existing internal expertise to carry out to our standards, alleviating the need to rely on third parties. As always, we welcome any constructive feedback and appreciate your continued business and support. Once again, I apologize for any inconvenience and rest assured - we will continue to do what we do best. Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

Invision Power Services, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of IP.Nexus 1.5.4. IP.Nexus 1.5.4 Fully featured commerce system to sell products, membership access, advertising, digital downloads, and more. Includes tools like a support desk to help manage your clients. This release resolves issues reported since the release of IP.Nexus 1.5.3. Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/371209-ipnexus-154-released/

As we wrap up principle development of new features for IP.Board 3.4, I wanted to go through some of the other changes we've implemented for the new release. System Templates Some "system templates" such as the wrapper used for HTML emails were previously only editable by manually changing the files which contained those templates. This is inconvenient, especially as it means one has to remember not to upload those files when upgrading IP.Board. In IP.Board 3.4, these templates will be editable from the Admin CP making it much easier to maintain edited versions of these templates. Mobile Moderation Our mobile theme is suitable for all mobile devices. Even though we have our mobile application available for the iPhone and iPad, we want to ensure that other devices are able to interact with IP.Board. A very common request has been to enable basic moderation actions from within the mobile theme. To that end, we've added buttons for common topic moderation into the mobile skin. Editor Pasting A lot of the time you find that you just want to paste plain text into the editor so you don't have to then remove formatting such as background and font colors. We've made this an option from within the IP.Board 3.4 editor via the new Options icon (far right on the screen shot). You can still paste as rich text by clicking on the relevant paste button on the top right section of the toolbar. We hoped that you've enjoyed reading this series of blogs on IP.Board 3.4. We're currently putting the finishing touches to this major new release and can't wait make it available for release! Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

As we wrap up principle development of new features for IP.Board 3.4, I wanted to go through some of the other changes we've implemented for the new release. System Templates Some "system templates" such as the wrapper used for HTML emails were previously only editable by manually changing the files which contained those templates. This is inconvenient, especially as it means one has to remember not to upload those files when upgrading IP.Board. In IP.Board 3.4, these templates will be editable from the Admin CP making it much easier to maintain edited versions of these templates. Mobile Moderation Our mobile theme is suitable for all mobile devices. Even though we have our mobile application available for the iPhone and iPad, we want to ensure that other devices are able to interact with IP.Board. A very common request has been to enable basic moderation actions from within the mobile theme. To that end, we've added buttons for common topic moderation into the mobile skin. Editor Pasting A lot of the time you find that you just want to paste plain text into the editor so you don't have to then remove formatting such as background and font colors. We've made this an option from within the IP.Board 3.4 editor via the new Options icon (far right on the screen shot). You can still paste as rich text by clicking on the relevant paste button on the top right section of the toolbar. We hoped that you've enjoyed reading this series of blogs on IP.Board 3.4. We're currently putting the finishing touches to this major new release and can't wait make it available for release! http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-8144-ipboard-34-dev-update-miscellaneous-enhancements/'>View the full article Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/370841-ipboard-34-dev-update-miscellaneous-enhancements/

IP.Board has for a long time allowed administrators to send bulk mails to members, including the ability to filter recipients and use variables to customise the message sent to each member. This is an important tool for communicating with the members of your community and in 3.4 we've made it even better. The problem with bulk mail Sending vast amounts of email through your own server is troublesome. Firstly, it takes a long time (you can't just send out thousands of emails in one go) and due to the way PHP works, you need to have activity on your community to initiate the sending of each batch of emails (you could set up a cron, but you'd probably only want it running when you actually have a bulk mail sending, and they're fiddly to set up). Secondly, if you're on shared hosting, other sites on the same server may have given your server a bad reputation and caused it to be placed on blacklists, this causes the emails you send to be more likely to be marked as junk. Thirdly, sending vast amounts of email through your own server is an expensive task - most communities we see use the same server for sending emails as hosting the community itself, meaning resources are being used for the sending of those emails and not serving your users. Fortunately, these problems are well-known throughout the internet and a number of companies offer services to send mail for you, through their servers to alleviate these problems. In addition, these services provide web applications where you can view statistics, and track how many of your emails have been opened, rejected, etc. We're really pleased to announce that in IP.Board 3.4 we've built in integration with Mandrill, a service of well-known and respected MailChimp. How it works Setting up integration with Mandrill is really easy. In the new "Community Enhancements" section of the Admin CP (which we've mentioned in earlier blog entries), there will be an option for Mandrill: After creating an account on their site, all you do is enter your account details: IP.Board will from then on send all bulk mails through the Mandrill service. And it's not just bulk mails. You can even configure IP.Board's normal email settings to send all outgoing emails via Mandrill's SMTP server. Sending bulk mails As part of our improvements, we've also: Tidied up the interface for sending bulk mails Improved the unsubscribe link sent in emails to be a one-click link (rather than requiring users sign in and uncheck the box) Built extension capabilities the filter options available when composing a bulk mail, meaning 3rd party applications can add their own filter options (we'll use this for example, in a future version of IP.Nexus to allow you to send bulk mails to anyone who's purchased a particular item). Added a tab on the confirmation screen to allow you to view the list of recipients before actually sending the bulk mail. All these improvements are present even if you choose not to use the new Mandrill integration. Statistics and Tracking You can view statistics via the Mandrill web application. Emails sent from IP.Board's bulk mail system automatically enable tracking for opens and clicks. They even have iPhone and Android apps available. Pricing Full pricing details are available from Mandrill - for up to 12,000 emails per month though, the service is completely free. View the full article. Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/370812-ipboard-34-dev-update-bulk-mail-with-mandrill/

IP.Board has for a long time allowed administrators to send bulk mails to members, including the ability to filter recipients and use variables to customise the message sent to each member. This is an important tool for communicating with the members of your community and in 3.4 we've made it even better. The problem with bulk mail Sending vast amounts of email through your own server is troublesome. Firstly, it takes a long time (you can't just send out thousands of emails in one go) and due to the way PHP works, you need to have activity on your community to initiate the sending of each batch of emails (you could set up a cron, but you'd probably only want it running when you actually have a bulk mail sending, and they're fiddly to set up). Secondly, if you're on shared hosting, other sites on the same server may have given your server a bad reputation and caused it to be placed on blacklists, this causes the emails you send to be more likely to be marked as junk. Thirdly, sending vast amounts of email through your own server is an expensive task - most communities we see use the same server for sending emails as hosting the community itself, meaning resources are being used for the sending of those emails and not serving your users. Fortunately, these problems are well-known throughout the internet and a number of companies offer services to send mail for you, through their servers to alleviate these problems. In addition, these services provide web applications where you can view statistics, and track how many of your emails have been opened, rejected, etc. We're really pleased to announce that in IP.Board 3.4 we've built in integration with Mandrill, a service of well-known and respected MailChimp. How it works Setting up integration with Mandrill is really easy. In the new "Community Enhancements" section of the Admin CP (which we've mentioned in earlier blog entries), there will be an option for Mandrill: After creating an account on their site, all you do is enter your account details: IP.Board will from then on send all bulk mails through the Mandrill service. And it's not just bulk mails. You can even configure IP.Board's normal email settings to send all outgoing emails via Mandrill's SMTP server. Sending bulk mails As part of our improvements, we've also: Tidied up the interface for sending bulk mails Improved the unsubscribe link sent in emails to be a one-click link (rather than requiring users sign in and uncheck the box) Built extension capabilities the filter options available when composing a bulk mail, meaning 3rd party applications can add their own filter options (we'll use this for example, in a future version of IP.Nexus to allow you to send bulk mails to anyone who's purchased a particular item). Added a tab on the confirmation screen to allow you to view the list of recipients before actually sending the bulk mail.All these improvements are present even if you choose not to use the new Mandrill integration. Statistics and Tracking You can view statistics via the Mandrill web application. Emails sent from IP.Board's bulk mail system automatically enable tracking for opens and clicks. They even have iPhone and Android apps available. Pricing Full pricing details are available from Mandrill - for up to 12,000 emails per month though, the service is completely free. Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

Invision Power Services, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of IP.Downloads 2.5.2. IP.Downloads 2.5.2 Integrated download management for IP.Board allowing you and your members to upload files for sharing in an organized category listing with permissions, version control, and more This release resolves issues reported since the release of IP.Downloads 2.5.1. A list of bugs reported in 2.5.1 and fixed in 2.5.2 can be seen in our tracker. In addition to the bug fixes included in this release, 2.5.2 includes the following notable changes: New setting: "Members must download to rate". Allows the administrator to restrict ratings to only files that users have downloaded. New setting: "Allow submitter to view who downloaded". Allows submitters to see who has downloaded their files (but no one else, unless the per-group option is enabled). The last downloaded date has been added to the "who downloaded" popup You can now purchase additional licenses for a file (if using the IP.Nexus integration). If you have purchased a file in the past the button would change to "download" with no way to purchase another copy. Now, a "buy another" button is available to purchase additional copies. On the IP.Downloads portal index, you can now filter top free files, top paid files and top authors by all time, weekly, monthly and yearly. The scrollable div for the download confirmation has been changed to show the entire download disclaimer on the page. A new search ordering option is available "Order by relevancy". This uses the MySQL fulltext relevancy options for searching. Requirements / Notes IP.Downloads 2.5.2 requires IP.Board version 3.3.x. Installing / Upgrading For further assistance on installing these updates please refer to this document and for upgrading please refer to this document Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/370708-ipdownloads-252-released/

Invision Power Services, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of IP.Gallery 5.0.2. IP.Gallery 5.0.2 IP.Gallery is a fully-featured photo and multimedia sharing app for the IPS Community Suite. Create albums, upload photos, discuss the hottest shots and much more. This release resolves issues reported since the release of IP.Gallery 5.0.1. A list of bugs reported in 5.0.1 and fixed in 5.0.2 can be seen in our tracker. Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/369879-ipgallery-502-released/

The Admin Control Panel (ACP) is a very comprehensive section of your IP.Board. The ACP is used for everything from managing members, creating forums to dealing with support tickets from within our IP.Nexus application. Indeed, the ACP has grown so large that it can be a little bewildering remembering where pages are and you may find that there are areas of the ACP you rarely use and would like to tuck out of the way. Happily, we've made significant improvements in these areas for IP.Board 3.4. Bookmarks You probably use a handful of ACP pages numerous times a day and navigating to those pages may be a little cumbersome or you may find a really useful settings page but struggle a few days later to remember where it was. The brand new bookmarks feature solves these problems. The new bookmark system is available by the bookmark icon to the left of the tab bar. Clicking this will allow you to add a new bookmark for the page you're on while hovering over the icon opens the menu. You can make the current bookmark your 'home' page. This means that after you log in, it'll take you to this page directly instead of showing the dashboard. You can also drag and drop items to move them if you prefer more useful links at the top of the list. Tab Preferences Another common feature request has been the ability to re-order the tabs within the Admin CP. This functionality is now available. You may wish to give greater priority to a specific application or just clean up your tab bar by removing some of the pre-set tabs such as "Look & Feel". Clicking the "Edit Tabs" link at the far right of the tab bar opens the preferences page. You simply drag and drop the tabs from the Main Tab Bar onto the 'Other Apps' menu or vice-versa. Here you can see that I've moved everything except the Nexus tab to the 'Other Apps' menu. This is ideal if you spend most of your time within IP.Nexus and want quick access to it. We hope you enjoy these additional features to the Admin CP and we really believe they'll speed up your day to day tasks! View the full article Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/369567-ipboard-34-dev-update-acp-user-interface-enhancements/

The Admin Control Panel (ACP) is a very comprehensive section of your IP.Board. The ACP is used for everything from managing members, creating forums to dealing with support tickets from within our IP.Nexus application. Indeed, the ACP has grown so large that it can be a little bewildering remembering where pages are and you may find that there are areas of the ACP you rarely use and would like to tuck out of the way. Happily, we've made significant improvements in these areas for IP.Board 3.4. Bookmarks You probably use a handful of ACP pages numerous times a day and navigating to those pages may be a little cumbersome or you may find a really useful settings page but struggle a few days later to remember where it was. The brand new bookmarks feature solves these problems. The new bookmark system is available by the bookmark icon to the left of the tab bar. Clicking this will allow you to add a new bookmark for the page you're on while hovering over the icon opens the menu. You can make the current bookmark your 'home' page. This means that after you log in, it'll take you to this page directly instead of showing the dashboard. You can also drag and drop items to move them if you prefer more useful links at the top of the list. Tab Preferences Another common feature request has been the ability to re-order the tabs within the Admin CP. This functionality is now available. You may wish to give greater priority to a specific application or just clean up your tab bar by removing some of the pre-set tabs such as "Look & Feel". Clicking the "Edit Tabs" link at the far right of the tab bar opens the preferences page. You simply drag and drop the tabs from the Main Tab Bar onto the 'Other Apps' menu or vice-versa. Here you can see that I've moved everything except the Nexus tab to the 'Other Apps' menu. This is ideal if you spend most of your time within IP.Nexus and want quick access to it. We hope you enjoy these additional features to the Admin CP and we really believe they'll speed up your day to day tasks! Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

We're always amazed at how diverse our customer base is and how many different uses customers find for their IP.Board. Many customers, ourselves included often have a forum that invites questions such as pre-sales or support forums. These forums often generate a lot of topics with many replies and it can often be confusing for other readers to know which reply definitively answered the original question. The Best Answer Feature IP.Board comes with a brand new 'best answer' feature. This enables the topic starter (when allowed), moderators (where allowed) and super moderators/admins to mark a post as the best answer. This screen shot shows a typical question topic and the best answer has been flagged. You'll also notice that at the top, a small excerpt of the post is shown with a button to go and read the full post. This is useful for when the best answer may be on a different page to the one you're viewing. Looking at the forum view, you'll see that the answered topic has a badge that when clicked takes you to the flagged post. You can also quickly filter the forum list to remove answered or unanswered topics. This will be handy for forums that have staff answering questions! As you'd expect, this can be enabled on a per-forum basis and you can choose whether the topic starter can flag a topic or not on a per-forum basis. There is also a moderator toggle to empower moderators to flag a topic as the best answer. This enables you to retain as much control over this feature as you need. We hope you enjoy this feature new to IP.Board 3.4. We know that it's been requested many times and we're very pleased at being able to include it! View the full article Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/369447-ipboard-34-dev-update-best-answer-feature/

We're always amazed at how diverse our customer base is and how many different uses customers find for their IP.Board. Many customers, ourselves included often have a forum that invites questions such as pre-sales or support forums. These forums often generate a lot of topics with many replies and it can often be confusing for other readers to know which reply definitively answered the original question. The Best Answer Feature IP.Board comes with a brand new 'best answer' feature. This enables the topic starter (when allowed), moderators (where allowed) and super moderators/admins to mark a post as the best answer. This screen shot shows a typical question topic and the best answer has been flagged. You'll also notice that at the top, a small excerpt of the post is shown with a button to go and read the full post. This is useful for when the best answer may be on a different page to the one you're viewing. Looking at the forum view, you'll see that the answered topic has a badge that when clicked takes you to the flagged post. You can also quickly filter the forum list to remove answered or unanswered topics. This will be handy for forums that have staff answering questions! As you'd expect, this can be enabled on a per-forum basis and you can choose whether the topic starter can flag a topic or not on a per-forum basis. There is also a moderator toggle to empower moderators to flag a topic as the best answer. This enables you to retain as much control over this feature as you need. We hope you enjoy this feature new to IP.Board 3.4. We know that it's been requested many times and we're very pleased at being able to include it! Kompletten Blogeintrag lesen

Invision Power Services, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of IP.Gallery 5.0.1. IP.Gallery 5.0.1 IP.Gallery is a fully-featured photo and multimedia sharing app for the IPS Community Suite. Create albums, upload photos, discuss the hottest shots and much more. This release resolves issues reported since the release of IP.Gallery 5.0.0. A list of bugs reported in 5.0.0 and fixed in 5.0.1 can be seen in our tracker. Quelle: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/368346-ipgallery-501-released/