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Joey_M

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  1. Like
    Joey_M reacted to Matt for a blog entry, Invision Community 4: Pages databases in Clubs   
    Finally, one of the most requested features for clubs in Invision Community is coming with our March 2024 release: Pages databases in Clubs.
    You may be surprised to see a new feature being introduced for Invision Community 4 during our flow of news for Invision Community 5, but as we're committed to Invision Community 4, we wanted to continue to bring optimizations and improvements to the platform.
    What is the benefit of this new feature?
    Clubs enable communities to host multiple micro-communities with many benefits. Clubs allow more specialized and focused discussions on specific topics. This can lead to higher-quality content and a deeper exploration of niche subjects that may get overlooked when posted on a busy forum. Clubs also offer the ability to tailor the community experience based on the needs of that community. That customization is what this feature focuses on.
    Pages is a powerful application that allows truly custom layouts for content areas. Simply by adjusting templates, you can create a news feed layout (it is what we use for this news blog area!) or something even more customized to your needs.
    The March 2024 release allows you to create Pages database categories directly inside clubs, including custom fields and templates.
    How does it work?
    Setting up your Pages database to allow clubs to use categories is simple. Simply allow categories to be created within clubs when creating or editing a database.

    Once that is done, club owners can add a Pages database category to their club in the same way they can add topics, galleries, etc.

    Once the Pages database category has been added, you can then add content as you would any other club area with the added features of Pages, including custom templates and custom fields.
    This example club uses a custom Pages database listing template to show the articles in a custom format along with custom field data.

    Likewise, viewing an article in this example club showcases the use of custom templates to present the content differently from the standard topic templates Invision Community uses elsewhere.

    Allowing Pages database categories inside clubs brings the opportunity for more complex custom areas making use of multiple custom fields along with truly custom layouts using templates. This is a great way to bring additional areas, such as news articles, into your club areas to compliment discussions.
    We hope you enjoy this feature, and if you have any comments, please leave them below!
  2. Thanks
    Joey_M reacted to Matt for a blog entry, Guest Blog: Joel's 5 Secret Interface Tips   
    Yet again, Joel hijacks our company blog for another generous slice of knowledge from the front-lines of administrating a successful community.
    Inspired by Invision Community client @Joey_M who discovered the emoji of serendipity and chief architect @Matt who literally knows everything about Invision Community in ACP Tips and Tricks, they both made me realize there’s always something to learn no matter your level of experience. 
    You know how to post.  You know how to react.  You sometimes spice it up and make a poll.  And for the most part, you and your users go about your forum lives with a secure sense of certainty and satisfaction that you know how to interact with your community.
    But what if I told you there’s a whole world of wonder at your fingertips, young grasshopper?  Your Invision Community includes stars to navigate by; magical pictures that appear and disappear; and little yellow men who giggle, laugh, and sometimes roll over in delight. 
    Here are 5 hidden tips to help you discover a little more of the IPS magic for you and your users.  

    How do you know what you don’t know?
    1. Click-and-hold
    Be sure to dazzle your users with this secret way of changing your content title.  Change titles of your content items such as topic titles, album titles, and download files by using the click-and-hold strategy. Go to your forums and click-and-hold down the mouse over any topic title until you see that you’re able to edit the title.  Surprise! Use this secret strategy as the perfect way to quickly mass edit titles.

    Click-and-impress your users with the click-and-hold strategy
    2. Stars and Dots
    Active forum users jump around dozens of boards every day to stay involved.  And within a loooong topic with many pages, you need a fast way to jump to the most recent unread topic.  Before each topic is an icon: either a dot or a star.  Clicking these icons will always jump you to the latest unread post, so you can quickly dive back into the conversation.  Dot means unread; Star means you participated in the topic.

    My forum icon constellation tells me that I’m most compatible with a Capricorn.
    3. Emoji Short-codes
    One of the newest features to be included in Invision Community is emojis.  While there are ways to insert emojis from both mobile keyboards and the editor, you can also start typing “:thumbs up:” to reveal the secret emoji menu.  Try it now in the comments of this article. Last person to give me an emoji thumbs up wins! 

    Be a 💯 with 🙂 
    4. Image Attachments
    Forum posts come alive with image attachments that add color and vibrancy. But adding thumbnails to the bottom of your posts is a missed opportunity to enrich your post at the appropriate spots within the post.  After you upload an image attachment to a forum post, double-click on the image attachment.  You’ll be presented with a secret menu with options to align and resize, so you can create stunning forum posts with images.

    Much color. Much alignment. So much wow.
    5. Profile Banners
    Banners play a prominent part in multiple parts of the community, such as the Calendar, Profile, Clubs, and Blogs.  But usually the page only displays a portion of the banner, and most of the banner is hidden.  If you ever want to see the full banner in all of its glory, click near the top of the banner to auto-magically reveal everything!  Now you see, now you don’t.  

    The iceberg is a metaphor
    How many of these five secret tips did you know?
    If you knew all five, give yourself a round of applause!  It’s rare for even the most seasoned Invision Community administrator to know all five, and you’ve mastered them all.
    Did you know four?  Congrats, you’ve done a great job of exploring your community suite and you should keep it up.
    Did you know three or less?  You should do some serious soul searching. Kidding. 
    But it’s a definite sign that your soul would benefit from reading Invision Community News for more useful tips.  
    Becoming a great community manager is a combination of community strategy and product knowledge.  By empowering yourself with more functional knowledge and tools, you’re giving yourself the ability to leverage a bigger toolkit.  Whether you’re typing emoji short-codes to laugh with your members or inserting attachments into a tutorial on hidden tips for your community, I hope you learned something new, something surprising, and something perhaps even a little wonderful. 
    Let us know in the comments below what hidden tip surprised you the most.     
  3. Like
    Joey_M reacted to Matt for a blog entry, Podcast: Online Communities in the Post-Facebook Era   
    Matt was recently invited onto the Community Signal Podcast, where he spoke with host Patrick O'Keefe.
    Everything from how Matt got started with online communities right up to the possibility of a post Facebook era was covered in their 45 minute chat. Matt also gives a little insight into how Invision Community works behind the scenes.
    From Community Signal:
    Check out the podcast now!
  4. Like
    Joey_M reacted to Charles for a blog entry, New: Leaderboard   
    We are excited to announce the Leaderboard as the latest all new feature of IPS Community Suite. The new Leaderboard is designed to better highlight your most active members and content based on reputation and other metrics. The Leaderboard will greatly enhance both member and content discovery on your community.

    Leaderboard Home
    First you will notice the new feature of member leaders based on a specific time frame. In the example above it is set to All Time showing those members with the most reputation overall on your community. It also shows the content with the most reputation for the same timeframe so you get a snapshot of both popular members and popular content in one view.

    Past Leaders
    The Past Leaders tab shows the "winners" of each day in a history. The system counts all reputation made each day and logs the members who had the top reputation counts that day. Using reputation rather than post count encourages your members to post quality of quantity which is really important to any site.

    Winner Profile Badge
    Those who win the day also get a badge on their profile page to highlight that they were the member with the most reputation for a particular day.

    Top Members
    Top Members shows you a list of all members sorted by various metrics. By default you will see members sorted by reputation but you can also easily sort by total post content Suite-wide or per-app. All of these views can be linked directly to so if you wanted a menu item to show members who post the most files in Downloads you can just directly link to that sort view.

    Leaderboard Settings
    There are various settings to control the default behavior of the Leaderboard. You can define the default view and how many members to show which is helpful to tailor it to your needs.
    We hope you enjoy this initial launch of the new Leaderboard feature. We are excited about the new content and member discovery abilities this offers and look forward to adding new options to the Leaderboard as we continue to develop!
     
    This change will be in version 4.1.17 which is scheduled to be released in early December 2016.
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