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Invision Power Services, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of IP.Board 3.3.4

We have worked hard to create a quality, modern community platform and the feedback from our clients has been tremendous.

This is a maintenance release designed to continue our goal of providing a stable platform for your community.

IP.Board 3.3.4
Fully featured community platform including forums, members profiles, calendar, status system, integration, and much, much more.

What's new in IP.Board 3.3.4
This maintenance release of IP.Board addresses most of the reported bugs.

Release Notes

• If you have IP.Nexus installed, you should also upgrade to IP.Nexus 1.5. Older versions of IP.Nexus are not compatible with IP.Board 3.3.4.

Security Update: IP.Board 3.3.0 - 3.3.3, 3.2.x
It has been brought to our attention that an XSS exploit has been discovered in the search results page. IP.Board 3.3.4 fixes this issue but we're releasing the manual patches for older versions of IP.Board.

Simply download the relevant zip file, expand and upload the file inside. The directory structure has been retained so you can quickly locate the file you need to update.

IP.Board 3.3.0 - 3.3.3:
. ipb-july-33x.zip 10.36K 10 downloads

IP.Board 3.2.x:
. ipb-july-32x.zip 9.97K 1 downloads

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One of our big <a href='http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-7800-gallery-50-goals/' class='bbc_url' title=''>goals with Gallery 5</a> is to restore a level of administrative control that allows different sites to dictate how their users and moderators will interact with the software. Some sites wish to allow their users to have control over their submissions. Some...

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We have taken the time with IP.Gallery 5.0 to implement some smaller changes that help to round off the functionality of the software and bring it more in-line with the rest of the suite. While these changes individually are all quite small, collectively they help to make Gallery easier to use and more intuitive for the average user.

pInterest...

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While we discussed some of the basic core navigational changes in IP.Gallery 5.0 already (and yes, we've heard your feedback on those changes!), we have implemented some other changes to enhance consistency and bring IP.Gallery into the modern world wide web. ...

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Hopefully most of you don't have the need to visit our bug tracker enough to have noticed, but we recently switched from a third party application for managing our bugs to IP.Content.

The history of the software we used to use...

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Development of IP.Gallery 5 continues, and today we wanted to blog about some additional changes you can expect to see in the next release. These changes are unrelated to one another, however they collectively will improve the functionality and capabilities of IP.Gallery 5.0. Note that these changes were derived as a direct result of client feedback, so...

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IP.SEO is a popular free add-on for IP.Board which provides many additional SEO features for your community.

IP.SEO has proved so popular since it's introduction that as of IP.Board 3.4, we're going to be moving it's features into the core of IP.Board meaning that a separate...

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Invision Power Services, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of IP.Nexus 1.5.2.

IP.Nexus 1.5.2

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 1.5.1

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With the recent IP.Board 3.3 update much emphasis was placed on search engine optimization. Many areas were found where a small change would make a big difference in preventing duplicate content, reducing crawl errors and ultimately resulting in better rankings. One of the goals for IP.Blog 2.6 was to continue this trend and identify potential...

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Another of the goals for IP.Blog 2.6 development was to increase the level of user engagement, both from existing on-site users and from elsewhere.

Auto Share on Content Creation
To complement the existing share links which appear alongside blog entries, it is now possible to automatically share Blog content with Facebook and Twitter at the time of...

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With a product history of over ten years, it's quite often a challenge keeping the product right on trend. Old technologies go and we make provisions to remove them and likewise, we make provisions to incorporate new technologies.

For example, IP.Board was the first bulletin board to incorporate Ajax functionality all the way back in IP.Board 2.1 back...

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The license changes that we blogged about back in May are now live!


License Structure Changes

The main change is that IP.Board is no longer be the "root" license item. You now have a license to the IPS Community Suite and will then have the various applications as additions under that root license. Anyone with a...

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Custom Sidebar Blocks and Profile Photos
Since the IP.Board 3.2 update, the look & feel of content blocks and sidebar widgets has been somewhat left behind in IP.Blog. Inconsistent avatar image sizes and design decisions that were made for IP.Board 3.1 have left some areas of IP.Blog looking dated and disconnected from the rest of the suite.

For...

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The IPS Community Suite provides a fantastic community solution for all kinds of websites.
For many of our customers, the community is just one component of their site. Many of these customers utilise single sign-on systems for integrating the community with the other areas.

At IPS, we get requests for this on a regular basis, and over the years, I've...

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IPS is introducing a program whereby we nominate a charity to receive our attention and support. These nominated charities are chosen by IPS for the work they do and how they might impact us personally.

The first nominated charity is Autism Speaks. You can find out more information on our charity...

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As part of our regular SEO round-up when developing a major new release, I'm happy to run through the latest SEO changes we've made for IP.Board 3.4.

Friendly URL Changes
After much research and discussion with other SEO focused forum owners, I decided to revamp the FURL structure when handling additional page parameters.
The existing format uses the following structure:

board.com/topic/123-title/page__foo__bar


This is then parsed as foo=bar when converted to a normal query string.

The problem with this is that it confuses search engines because it looks like another page rather than just a variant of a single page. We have a canonical tag which helps to reduce confusion but it's still not perfect from an SEO perspective.

With that in mind, the new format is:

board.com/topic/123-title/?foo=bar


Now humans and search engines can quickly see that these are additional parameters of a single page. The canonical tag now backs this up and there is absolutely no confusion!

New page parameters
Another item that often came up when discussing URL structures and best practises was the current pagination method which is:

board.com/topic/123-title/page__st__30


This is then parsed as st=30 when converted to a normal query string. This tells IP.Board to start from the 30th post in that topic, which is page two if we have 30 posts per page.

This was less than optimal because some search engines had trouble understanding this was an additional page of the same topic.

I've made this more explicit by making use of a special page parameter:

board.com/topic/123-title/page-2
board.com/topic/123-title/page-2?foo=bar


The eagle eyed will notice that there no additional slash after page-2. This means that search engines (and humans!) will identify the root page, a page with parameters and a page of a topic:

board.com/topic/123-title/
board.com/topic/123-title/?foo=bar
board.com/topic/123-title/page-2
board.com/topic/123-title/page-2?foo=bar


In this case 'board.com/topic/123-title/' is the root page.

Of course, IP.Board will happily 301 redirect visitors using the old st=x method or the old page__x method.

Unread Topics
In IP.Board 3.3, there was a special 'unread' folder added to topic links on the board index. This was often confusing as it seemed like yet another page from the root topic. In 3.4 we're using:

board.com/topic/123-title/?view=getnewpost


This explicitly states that it is simply another way of viewing that single topic.

Statuses
In IP.Board 3.3, each status update from a member was given a new page, like so:

board.com/statuses/id/12345


During Google's Panda update, websites with 'thin' content could be penalised. It could be determined that these status update pages are very thin and a moderately busy board could generated thousands of them.

In IP.Board 3.4, we use the new FURL format:

board.com/status/user/1-matt/?status_id=12345


As you'd expect:

board.com/status/user/1-matt/

This URL shows all of the user's status updates.

Multiple SEO Titles
I've improved the SEO URL builder to allow for multiple 'seoTitles'. Right now, IP.Board 3.3 is limited to just one, so you can only create FURLs like so:

board.com/topic/123-#{title}/


Multiple titles will allow you to create complex titles like so:

board.com/#{title-1}/123-#{title-2}/


In addition to the bundled inclusion of the old IP.SEO, this wraps up most of the big SEO changes coming in 3.4. I'm confident that the new pagination and new FURL structures will clarify your site's structure to search engines making it easier to spider and associate content without being penalised for thin content.

Of course we're always open to well-constructed feedback on SEO improvements. Everything you see in this blog entry was implemented from feedback. Please start a topic in our feedback forums if you have SEO suggestions not directly related to the content of this blog entry.

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Invision Power Services, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of IP.Nexus 1.5.3.

IP.Nexus 1.5.3

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 1.5.2.

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VigLink is a service which works with a number of affiliates to provide you commission when a user visits the affiliate from your website.
So, as an example, let's say someone posts a link to an Amazon item on your community, with VigLink integration, you'll be provided with compensation every time a user purchases that item if they bought it after following the link from your site.

VigLink, and services like it, have been a popular addition for many of our clients and we have received requests for built in integration. Monetizing your community is something IPS has been working to enhance support for over the recent years. From ad code integration spots to our full commerce system IP.Nexus our clients who are interested in monetizing their community have benefited greatly. The addition of VigLink enhances those offerings.

This video provides more information on how VigLink works:



We've been working closely with VigLink to provide direct integration with this service in IP.Board 3.4.

Setting it up couldn't be easier - we've built a new page in the Admin CP called "Community Enhancements" which lists all of the services we integrate with. You simply click on "VigLink" in this page and you'll be taken to the VigLink site where you can either sign up, or log in with your existing VigLink account, if you have one:




Once that's done - you're all setup. You don't need to copy and paste any code - the integration will be enabled for you, and you can now track your usage through your VigLink account.

There's a number of settings you can configure for finer control over how the system works. You can set which users VigLink applies to (both in terms of who gets redirected through them and whose posts get VigLink enabled) and you can disable the system on a per-forum basis:


We'll also be releasing an update to our iOS app around the 3.4 release to support this integration too. IPS benefits financially through a reciprocal marketing agreement when someone uses VigLink through our software however we do not take any cut of the commission offered from VigLink to you. Anyone familiar with IPS knows that taking a cut is not how we would operate .


Community Enhancements Section

Mentioned earlier in this entry, the AdminCP has a new section called Community Enhancements. This area contains all the various external services that your IPS Community Suite can use to enhance your community. It's not all new though: we have moved services like our Spam Monitoring Service to this section as that too is an external enhancement to your community.

We are also introducing some new services that will integrate with your community in this section! Certain services are from external partners, like VigLink, that clients may opt to use and some are new IPS-created services. Some services are free and some carry a small cost depending on the nature of what's being offered. They are all of course optional and if you do not enable them they do not execute or engage any resources in the Suite.

Keep an eye out for future blog entries introducing these new Community Enhancements!

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Invision Power Services, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of IP.Gallery 5.0.0 and IP.Blog 2.6.0!

This newest version of IP.Gallery adds many features and fixes reported issues to enhance your community gallery. We have reviewed all of the feedback provided for IP.Gallery 4 and have improved the gallery software to better meet our clients' needs.

The latest release of IP.Blog adds many consistency updates and minor functionality improvements to enhance your community blog experience.

IP.Gallery 5.0.0

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.

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.


Release Notes

IP.Gallery 5.0.0 requires IP.Board 3.3.x.
IP.Blog 2.6.0 requires IP.Board 3.3.x.
IP.Gallery 5.0.0 requires IP.Blog 2.6.0 (if IP.Blog is installed)


What's New for IP.Gallery

In addition to many fixes for reported issues, the following changes have been made:

• Redesigned Navigation
  We have redesigned the navigation and structure of Gallery to provide a more traditional navigational approach, while retaining a more social approach for those who desire it. Global albums have been changed to "categories".
  
• More Administrator Control
  Administrators now have better and more fine-grained control over moderators, albums and images.
  
• Miscellaneous Features and Enhancements
  pInterest integration; improved shared media image presentation; set as profile photo expanded Gallery-wide; hidden and unapproved ambiguity improvement; SEO improvements
  
• Navigational Changes
  Changes to albums and ability to list members, albums or images in the special member albums category
  
• More Miscellaneous Improvements
  RSS feed enhancements; notification improvements; homepage enhancements based on client feedback

We would also like to extend a special thank you to certain members who agreed to help provide feedback during the initial planning and alpha stages, helping us shape the direction of IP.Gallery 5 and ensuring that client feedback would not be missed. While we obviously cannot make every suggested change in any given release, our Gallery 5 Focus Group helped ensure that useful common feedback was discussed, reviewed and considered in this release.


What's New for IP.Blog

• SEO and Microformat Improvements
  Improvements have been made to better optimize IP.Blog for search engines, and implement relevant microformat meta data.
  
• Promotion
  Ability to auto-share to Facebook/Twitter on entry creation; better image handling for sharing to Facebook; ability to auto-follow entry on creation; reputation integration in user profiles; integration with quick navigation panel
  
• Moderation and Miscellaneous Improvements
  Consistency improvements; custom block improvements; inline moderation enhancements; better category management

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