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IP.Board 3.x supports "My Media", which enables you to share other content from within the community by using the "My Media" button on the editor. This results in: IPS GDK for IP.Board 3.2 & 3.3 1.1 Category: IPS Extras Last Updated Mar 28 2013 09:41 AM While this works, it has a few shortcomings: The styling of the block isn't really designed for each type of content it might show Users have to click the My Media button, then browse for the item, when they probably already know the URL they want to link to Not all content types are supported; e.g. you can't use My Media to link to a topic. For developers, implementing support for My Media in other applications was a process involving extension files and multiple methods We wanted to make sharing existing content much easier in IPS4, both for users and developers. "Embeddable content" is our solution. How to use it To embed content from elsewhere in the community, here's a step by step guide: Paste a link to it That's it! When you paste a link to almost any kind of content, whether it's a forum topic, calendar event, gallery album or more, IPS4 will automatically embed a small preview of the content, designed specifically for that content. In order to not disrupt an existing paragraph of text however, the embedded block won't be used if the link is surrounded by text. Embedded content only shows if the link is pasted on its own line, giving users more control over their post. Here's what a post looks like with a few embedded types shown: Embedded content can be used anywhere as you'd expect, including posts and comments, but also status updates, IP.Content articles, and so on. For developers Supporting embedded content in your apps is very easy; your content model simply has to implement IPSContentEmbeddable: class _Topic extends IPSContentItem implements ... IPSContentEmbeddable Your controller then simply looks for an embed request and returns HTML - that's it. Our default blocks also have their own template and CSS file, so theme designers can change the styling on a per-theme basis. Conclusion Our hope is that this easier method of embedding content encourages more cross-posting and highlighting of good content in IPS4. The process is almost wholly automatic, meaning users don't have to think in order to share great content with others. As always, screenshots are from pre-release software and are subject to change before release. Attached Thumbnails View the full article Читать дальше

One of the most distinctive uses for a forum is that of a 'knowledge community', where users visit in order to get help with a problem or question. Our own Pre-sales forum uses this model, but we also have many customers who run forums that are almost exclusively knowledge-based (such as Roxio and Evernote). IP.Board 3.x introduced the concept of a "Best Answer" flag, allowing topic creators and staff the ability to highlight the reply to a topic that they deem best answers the question. This shows a snippet of the post in green at the top of the topic. Many sites now use this feature, but for IPS4 we wanted to expand the functionality offered for these types of forums. Question & Answer Forums Forums in IPS4 will enable you to set a forum as a "Q&A Forum". This adjusts the forum to be specifically designed for knowledge sharing. Instead of topics and posts, it has questions and answers. On the forum index, the forum will be shown as a Q&A forum with its forum icon (unless you've set a custom forum icon for that forum): Forum View When you enter the forum, instead of the normal topic listing, you see a list of questions: You'll see here that questions that have a best answer are indicated with a green checkbox. You'll also notice that one of the stats on the right hand side is 'votes'. In Q&A forums, questions can be voted up or down by users, in order to give them more visibility. More popular questions will bubble to the top (depending on the age of the question). You can of course still order by more traditional methods, if you wish. Popular questions from the past 30 days are also highlighted at the top of the forum, providing an up-to-date 'knowledgebase' that other users can see. Using our own presales forum as an example, if someone asked a question about an important feature and it was voted highly, other users visiting the forum would see it right at the top, which is great for content visibility and helping users get the answers they're looking for with minimal fuss. Question View Clicking into a question shows an adjusted topic view: The question (i.e. the first post) is shown at the top of the page on all pages, with answers listed below. You'll see that replies can also be voted up and down - in fact, this determines the order in which answers are shown inside the question. Popular answers, as determined by the community, will appear at the top, with worse or incorrect answers being pushed down. This is great for quickly finding the best information for the question at hand; in IP.Board 3.x, all too often a high-quality answer will appear in the middle of a topic and unfortunately go unnoticed by the topic creator or others looking for an answer. You can still sort answers by date, if you prefer. In the screenshot above you can also see the first post is marked as the best answer. "Best Answer" always appears at the top, regardless of its vote count. Question/answer ratings are separate from reputation, so you can of course still "Like" posts even if you don't think they're a good answer to the question. Conclusion So that's the new Q&A feature for IP.Board. We think it'll a big step forward for knowledge-driven communities using IP.Board, or even individual forums in other communities (like our pre-sales forum), helping users find answers to their questions more efficiently, and ultimately making your communities more useful. As always, screenshots are from pre-release software and are subject to change before release. Attached Thumbnails " title="forum.png - Size: 336.06KB, Downloads: 0"> " title="question.png - Size: 351.04KB, Downloads: 0"> View the full article Читать дальше

We are releasing patches for IP.Board 3.3.x, IP.Board 3.4.x and IP.Nexus 1.5.x to address three potential file inclusion issues recently reported to us, as well as one cross site scripting issue reported to us. It has been brought to our attention that certain PHP configurations allow for a potential file inclusion security issue through some of our files intended to be run from the command line. We are releasing patches today to resolve this issue. Additionally, it has been brought to our attention that through social engineering it is possible to direct a user to a page which can trigger an XSS (cross site scripting) attach. We are also releasing a patch today to resolve this issue. Применение патча безопасности Скачайте прикреплённый патч для соответствующей версии и загрузите содержимое папки upload в корень вашего форума. IP.Board 3.3.x 3.3.x.zip IP.Board 3.4.x 3.4.x.zip If you are an IPS Community in the Cloud client running IP.Board 3.3 or above, no further action is necessary as we have already automatically patched your account. If you are using a version older than IP.Board 3.3, you should contact support to upgrade. If you install or upgrade to IP.Board 3.4.6 or IP.Nexus 1.5.9 after the date and time of this post, no further action is necessary as we have already updated the main download zips. We extend our thanks to sijad () for notifying us of the file inclusion issue privately and promptly. We extend our thanks to Christian Schneider (@cschneider4711) () for notifying us of the cross site scripting issue as well.

One of IPS Community Suite 4's main goals was to overhaul the user interface. We wanted to go further than just a few cosmetic changes to the theme, we wanted to examine each part of the user interface and see what could be improved. The community suite has a lot of functionality and there's a lot of tools that we all use regularly so we felt that any improvements on these common areas would be very welcomed. I'd like to focus on such a change in IP.Downloads. IP.Downloads has always had version control. Essentially, this allows you to upload new versions and keep a historical record of the older versions. You can read change logs and even download older versions where allowed. Let's take a look at how IP.Board 3 does it currently: Although there's nothing particularly wrong with this form, we can see that it mixes up the ability to upload a new version with the general file settings such as title and description. The end result is a bit confusing and a little intimidating the first few times you use it. The section to add your change log is a little lost in the file information block. Now lets take a look at how IPS Community Suite 4 handles this: The first step is to enable download revisions for this category inside the Admin CP. Now that this has been enabled, lets navigate to the "File Actions" menu to upload a new version. This loads the "Upload a new version form". As you can see, it's very clean, very easy to follow and isn't cluttered with settings and text fields that you aren't interested in editing. Once you've uploaded your new version, you can see what's new on the file listing page. You can even view previous change logs and the download link without leaving the page. Conclusion As this blog entry shows, IPS Community Suite 4 is really focused on making real improvements to everyday interfaces. We believe that these changes are very important to modernise the suite and to make it as easy to use as possible. Attached Thumbnails " title="new-file-form-2.png - Size: 92.42KB, Downloads: 0"> " title="IPS_Extras.png - Size: 19.05KB, Downloads: 0"> View the full article Читать дальше

Effective moderation features are essential for online communities. Forums, blog entries and member-to-member messaging are particularly attractive for spam bots and nuisance users alike. IPS Social Suite has always been best in class when it comes to moderation features with features like the free IPS Spam Service that are completely unmatched by other web applications. Over this series of 5 blog entries I'm going to introduce you to some of the new moderation features in the IPS Community Suite 4.0. Part 1: Setting up moderators Part 2: Approval Queue Part 3: Reports Part 4: Effective Moderation Part 5: Warnings Introduction A lot of what I'm going to cover in this blog entry is similar to the warning system in 3.x which was recently overhauled. Since warnings and moderations are such an important aspect of running a community though, I wanted to reintroduce the system, showing off the new UI for 4.0 and highlighting some of the tweaks that have been made. The warnings system in the IPS Community Suite is point-based. When issuing a warning to a member, you select a reason, and each reason is tied to a number of points, and then when a member reaches a certain number of points, an action (such as to ban them from the site) is taken. This is the setup page for reasons - I've set up each one to give one point which is never removed. For each reason, I can choose if moderators can override that or not: This is the setup page for actions: I've set up a number of actions so that the following flow happens: On the first warning, nothing happens (it's a verbal warning only) On the second warning, all posts the user makes for the next day will need to be approved by a moderator. On the third warning, the user will be banned for one day and all posts the user makes for the next week will need to be approved by a moderator. On the fourth warning, the user will be banned for a week. On the fifth warning, the user will be permanently banned. You can control whether members can see their previous warnings or not. Moderator Permissions For each moderator you can control is they can see, issue and revoke warnings, and control how often they can give warnings: Viewing Warnings You will be able to see the current warning points for a member from their hover card (which shows whenever you hover your mouse over their name throughout the suite) and can see the details in their profile. Clicking on a warning brings up the details which show a link to the content the user posted which prompted the warning, the notes both for the member and for other moderators, and lists the actions taken (points given, if the member was suspended, etc.): In addition, when viewing content (posts, comments, etc.) if that post prompted a warning, this will be shown to moderators: Issuing Warnings When issuing a warning, selecting a reason will automatically fill in the number of points and actions to take based on the number of points the member already has (these can be changed if the administrator has allowed it). You can clearly see the pre-defined actions for each point level on the right. You can optionally add notes, both a note for the member and for other moderators. Acknowledging Warnings You can optionally set the system so that members have to acknowledge a warning before they can post again. When this is the case, the member will se a message on every page: Viewing the warning details will have a button allowing the member to acknowledge the warning: Even if you do not require warnings to be specifically acknowledged - members who have restrictions applied to their account (are on moderator queue, are restricted from posting or are banned) can clearly see this and the reason why. For example, this is what a member who is on moderator queue sees when making a comment: Revoking Warnings A new feature in 4.0 is that warnings can be revoked. You can reverse all the actions of the warning, or just delete the record of it: Attached Thumbnails " title="Reasons.png - Size: 145.74KB, Downloads: 0"> " title="Edit Reason.png - Size: 151.48KB, Downloads: 0"> " title="Actions.png - Size: 140.92KB, Downloads: 0"> " title="Moderator Warning Settings.png - Size: 173.01KB, Downloads: 0"> " title="Issuing Warning.png - Size: 399.05KB, Downloads: 0"> " title="Acknowledge 1.png - Size: 143.09KB, Downloads: 0"> View the full article Читать дальше

I can distinctly remember 5 years ago reading a blog entry on this site about the "personal conversations" feature in IP.Board 3.0, which we were working on at the time. Up until then, the messenger system in community software and other websites was much like email - you sent one message at a time, with little continuity between messages. We were one of the first, on the entire of the web, to introduce what we called "personal conversations" - a sort of "private topic" between invited members - it was a really exciting idea back then. For 4.0, we wanted to really focus on the experience of using the messenger - making it super fast and easy to compose, navigate and participate in conversations. Starting a conversation When browsing the site, you'll see a messenger icon at the top of every screen just like you do now. When hitting the "Compose Now" button inside though, the form to send your message will appear as a modal window, and when you send, it will disappear again with no page reload. This makes it incredibly fast and easy to send a message from wherever you are, without interrupting your flow. You can also send a message to a specific member by hovering over their name wherever you see it on the site and clicking the "Send Message" button in the hover card that shows. Browsing conversations We've completely redesigned the main messenger pages. You now see a (infinitely scrolling) list of all your messages on the left-side. Clicking on any message opens it up in the main pane. All the common actions are enhanced with AJAX so you can open a conversation, add a user and reply all really quickly. Mobile We've not forgotten about mobile devices! The new responsive design in IPS 4.0 means the whole messenger works and looks great whether you're on a desktop or on your phone. Summary We recognise that when members send a new message, it is often as a response to content read in all areas of the suite. You can now send messages in place without disrupting your flow. We have improved all aspects of sending, receiving and managing messages and are confident these changes will make communicating with other members in private simpler and faster. Attached Thumbnails " title="messenger_compose.png - Size: 376.8KB, Downloads: 0"> " title="messenger_browse.png - Size: 180.81KB, Downloads: 0"> View the full article Читать дальше

The site eGullet.org was literally the first client of Invision Power Services when our company was founded over 12 years ago. Steven Shaw, along with his partner, stepped up and supported IPS in its first days and stayed with us all these years. They were our first paying client, our first hosting client, and often the first to get early betas of our releases. It was with great sadness that I read today of the passing of Steven Shaw. Steven was a friend and mentor to me personally. He advised me as IPS grew, provided valuable feedback, was our first attorney, and was always on board to hear out ideas. My first trip to New York City, my first cruise, and many great dining ideas were all based around his friendly advice. He honored me with a copy of his book when it was released. And of course he introduced me to the joys of Julia Child by shipping me some old recordings of her show. Steven Shaw will be missed. I personally am in debt to his generosity and advice over the years as is IPS as a company. View the full article Читать дальше

Some sites make use of multiple calendars to help differentiate what type of events are being contributed to the community. You might have a staff calendar that allows staff members to add events and a community calendar for the rest of your users. Or you may have a holidays calendar as well as a gaming "raids" calendar on your community. Individual calendars are a form of categorization in IP.Calendar, and we wanted to bring some enhancements to them in the 4.0 Community Suite. Colors You will now be able to specify colors for each calendar you create. The software will automatically suggest a new unique color each time you create a new calendar with several pre-determined colors to start with (and then falling over to randomly chosen colors if you happen to create enough calendars to use these defaults up), but you are able to specify any color you wish for any calendar you create. (As an aside for developers - you can easily implement similar "color" fields in your own forms using the form helper class запрещённый_сайтersFormColor) Merged view If you are familiar with the current iteration of IP.Calendar, you might be wondering what good implementing calendar colors actually does. After all, the software does not show events from different calendars mixed together right? As of 4.0, IP.Calendar does indeed support a merged-calendar view. In fact, it is the default in IP.Calendar. Your users will see all events from all calendars (that they have permission to view) merged into one view, but can click a menu at the top of the page to filter by calendar if they so desire. They will see events from all calendars merged together When viewing an event the calendar it has been saved to is of course indicated here as well. The merged calendars model is supported for all of the major views in IP.Calendar: the monthly view, the weekly view, the daily view...and the new "event stream" view which we will talk about in a future blog entry (shhh). Conclusion We feel these minor changes makes Calendar more intuitive, and especially makes handling multiple calendars within your IP.Calendar installation more practical and useful. We hope you find working with multiple calendars to be easier and clearer with these changes, and we hope you find new ways to make use of the multiple calendar support present in IP.Calendar as a result of the merged views and better calendar differentiation. Attached Thumbnails " title="2014-02-17_1526.png - Size: 298.73KB, Downloads: 0"> " title="2014-02-17_1527.png - Size: 71.33KB, Downloads: 0"> " title="2014-02-17_1529.png - Size: 251.51KB, Downloads: 0"> " title="2014-02-19_1021.png - Size: 25.8KB, Downloads: 0"> View the full article Читать дальше

Copying Settings Sometimes you need to change the same setting across multiple categories. For example, let's say up until now I've not allowed comments on files and now I want to enable it for most categories. In IP.Downloads for 3.x, I'd have to go into each category one by one and toggle the setting on. In 4.x, when editing a category, each setting has a "Copy" button next to it, when opens a window asking which categories to copy that setting value to, so I can make the change to one category and then copy it to others (or all) quickly. This feature is also available when editing things in other applications, such as forums in IP.Board or products in IP.Nexus. New Settings We've moved some settings which were previously global settings into per-category settings to give you even greater control over your community: "Require approval of comments" "Log all downloads" and "Prune download logs" - we also added a new per-category setting: "Allow file submitter to view log?" "Allowed file extensions" (this used to be managed using complicated "Mime Type Masks" - now you can just provide the extensions which are allowed in that category, or allow any file type). "Enable versioning control" and "Number of revisions to keep" Attached Thumbnails View the full article Читать дальше

Copying Settings Sometimes you need to change the same setting across multiple categories. For example, let's say up until now I've not allowed comments on files and now I want to enable it for most categories. In IP.Downloads for 3.x, I'd have to go into each category one by one and toggle the setting on. In 4.x, when editing a category, each setting has a "Copy" button next to it, when opens a window asking which categories to copy that setting value to, so I can make the change to one category and then copy it to others (or all) quickly. This feature is also available when editing things in other applications, such as forums in IP.Board or products in IP.Nexus. New Settings We've moved some settings which were previously global settings into per-category settings to give you even greater control over your community: "Require approval of comments" "Log all downloads" and "Prune download logs" - we also added a new per-category setting: "Allow file submitter to view log?" "Allowed file extensions" (this used to be managed using complicated "Mime Type Masks" - now you can just provide the extensions which are allowed in that category, or allow any file type). "Enable versioning control" and "Number of revisions to keep" Attached Thumbnails View the full article Читать дальше

Effective moderation features are essential for online communities. Forums, blog entries and member-to-member messaging are particularly attractive for spam bots and nuisance users alike. IPS Social Suite has always been best in class when it comes to moderation features with features like the free IPS Spam Service that are completely unmatched by other web applications. Over this series of 5 blog entries I'm going to introduce you to some of the new moderation features in the IPS Community Suite 4.0. Part 1: Setting up moderators Part 2: Approval Queue Part 3: Reports Part 4: Effective Moderation Part 5: Warnings Multi-moderation It's really important that moderators can quickly take action against undesirable content without spending too much time or effort. If your community is the victim of a spam attack, or perhaps even just an over-enthusiastic poster, you want to be able to hide, lock, move, merge and delete content quickly. Throughout the entire suite, whenever you content (be that topics in IP.Board, files in IP.Downloads or even comments on a particular file in IP.Downloads or anything else you can think of), as a moderator, when you move your mouse over it, you will see a checkbox, and at the top of the list, you have controls to quickly select particular items: As you can see, in addition to checking individual items or all items, quick options are available for me to select all hidden, unapproved, pinned, locked or featured items, or even the items that I personally have read or not read. After selecting one or more items, you will see a menu appear at the bottom: This menu is incredibly smart. It automatically shows you options available based on the type of item you're looking at and the specific items you've selected. For example, here in IP.Downloads I see the options (from left-to-right): feature, pin, hide, lock move and delete (if you hover over any of the buttons a tooltip will show you what it is). If, I'm in IP.Board instead, I see a slightly different bar: Here, I have two new options: merge and Saved Actions (the new name for the IP.Board "Multimod" feature which allows you to define specific actions to do multiple moderator actions quickly). Also, it takes into consideration the specific items I've selected - if I select items which are not currently hidden, there is the "hide" button - if I select items which are currently hidden, there is the "unhide" button - and if I select a mix of both, I see both buttons. After clicking a button, the action is performed on all items and I'm taken back to the screen. Here's a short video demonstration of this in action: Quick editing Editing posts and comments is something moderators do on a daily basis. We already have quick reply (where when making a post or comment, it appears using AJAX without a page reload) and now in 4.0, we have quick edit too. When you click edit, the post/comment immediately changes into an editor: And when you click save, the editor disappears and is replaced by the new content. Here's a short video demonstration of this in action: Attached Thumbnails " title="IP.Downloads Multimod 2.png - Size: 177.34KB, Downloads: 0"> View the full article Читать дальше

Different staff members typically have different roles within a community - especially larger communities, where you may have staff responsible for the theme, others handling tickets and different staff maintaining the system. In 3.x, we had a 'Bookmarks' system in the AdminCP that allowed you to create a menu of frequently-used sections in an effort to make them easier to get to, rather than navigating the main menus. As with every feature in IPS4, we took some time to think about what this Bookmark feature aimed to achieve, and whether it was the best way to achieve it (seriously - we have considered everything you'll see in IPS4 very carefully; nothing gets a free pass). We determined through speaking to administrators that the primary use of this feature was actually to get to one place quickly - whatever place that might be. It appeared to be rarely used as an actual bookmarks menu, and besides, duplicating browser functionality should always send up a red flag. We decided to rethink the idea. What we decided to do instead is allow AdminCP menus, both primary and secondary, to be reordered on a per-admin basis. This means each admin can set the AdminCP menu up however works best for themselves. If you use the theme system a lot, you can make that your first menu item. Or, if you use the ticket system in Nexus, you can put that first. Here's how it works: Attached Thumbnails View the full article Читать дальше

We are releasing patches for IP.Board 3.3.x and IP.Board 3.4.x to address three cross site scripting issues recently reported to us. IP.Board takes precaution against cross site scripting issues by ensuring sensitive forms and buttons have a unique key in them and also by ensuring that sensitive cookie data is not readable by JavaScript. However, we feel that it is in our clients' best interest to have these issues resolved. Установка патча Скачайте патч соответствующий вашей версии форума и разархивируйте папку upload в корень форума. IP.Board 3.3.x ipb_33_patch.zip IP.Board 3.4.x ipb_34_patch.zip We extend our thanks to Piotr Smaza for notifying us of these issues.

Effective moderation features are essential for online communities. Forums, blog entries and member-to-member messaging are particularly attractive for spam bots and nuisance users alike. IPS Social Suite has always been best in class when it comes to moderation features with features like the free IPS Spam Service that are completely unmatched by other web applications. Over this series of 5 blog entries I'm going to introduce you to some of the new moderation features in the IPS Community Suite 4.0. Part 1: Setting up moderators Part 2: Approval Queue Part 3: Reports Part 4: Effective Moderation Part 5: Warnings Sometimes content needs to be approved before it can be viewed. This can happen when: Approval is enabled for a particular member (perhaps for a particular time after giving a warning) Approval is enabled for a group (perhaps for new members until they have been registered for a certain number of days) Approval is enabled for a forum/category/etc. Currently, if there is content requiring approval, badges display next to the forum/topic to alert moderators. While this works well it has some drawbacks: it means clicking around the community to find content, and if there's an area of your community you don't visit very often (personally I don't often check the gallery here) sometimes you might not notice something needs to be approved. For 4.0, we wanted to improve this. There were two main goals we set: Content from across the suite should be pulled into a single area for moderators so moderators can locate content pending approval manually. Moderators should be able to act on content pending approval (usually by approving or deleting) quickly. What we've created is a new area of the moderator control panel which we call the Approval Queue. When you visit the approval queue, you see the first topic/post/comment/whatever which is pending approval: As you can see, the page shows you clearly who posted it, what it is and the content. You can click on the badge on the right (in the screenshot above where it says "File Comment") to be taken directly to it if you want to see it in context. At the top, you can see 3 really clear actions: approve, skip and delete. Clicking any of these will do that action, and then immediately show you the next thing pending approval. This allows moderators to move through the queue really quickly and effortlessly. By clicking on the author's name, you can also issue a warning, flag the user as a spammer and send the user a message - all this is done without leaving the page: And when all content has been approved, you can enjoy the satisfaction of an empty queue: Here's a video of it in action: As an incidental feature - previously if a member made a post and it needed to be approved, they would get a confirmation message telling them so but wouldn't be able to see the post. This sometimes led to confusion when members missed the confirmation message and thought their post hadn't been submitted. In 4.0, users can now see their own posts which are pending approval: Attached Thumbnails " title="Approval Queue.png - Size: 164.71KB, Downloads: 0"> " title="Approve Queue Empty.png - Size: 127.64KB, Downloads: 0"> View the full article Читать дальше

Day to day administration of your site and particularly managing member permissions has been greatly improved in IPS Community Suite 4.0. It is now easier than ever to see who has access to what but there are still times when being able to see exactly what a member sees can be useful. Perhaps a member is reporting that they can't view a section of the site or they need assistance altering settings on their account? For this reason administrators can log in to other users accounts automatically via the admin control panel where allowed. Security When dealing with access to other people's accounts security is of critical importance and we take this very seriously. Permissions for this are of course controlled by the ACP restrictions system so the ability can be toggled easily on a per user or group basis only to trusted administrators. The member also does not need to reveal their password to the administrator and all login actions are recorded in the logs so security and an audit trail is maintained. Logging In The process of logging in as a user starts in much the same way as in previous versions of the suite. When viewing a member in the ACP you simply click sign in and a new window with your user session is created. For IPS Community Suite 4.0 we have improved several areas of this implementation. Firstly, when logging in as a user you do not lose your existing admin session. You still show logged in as yourself but acting on behalf of somebody else. The user menu updates to show this and serve as a reminder so you do not forget to log out and continue posting using another account. All actions you now perform are as if you were logged in as the user themselves. Viewing and posting permissions reflect the user you are logged in as and any content created will show as if posted by that user. In previous versions not having this workflow was frustrating as you would log in as another user and then when you were finished need to log back out and then log back in with your administrator account. We have now made this seamless. When logging out from another user account in IPS Community Suite 4.0 you are simply returned back to your original admin session with no need to log back in. Summary We hope that these small but powerful changes make for a much more productive workflow. Helping members with access issues and making sure your user permissions are set up correctly should now be much more practical and intuitive. Attached Thumbnails View the full article Читать дальше

Effective moderation features are essential for online communities. Forums, blog entries and member-to-member messaging are particularly attractive for spam bots and nuisance users alike. IPS Social Suite has always been best in class when it comes to moderation features with features like the free IPS Spam Service that are completely unmatched by other web applications. Over this series of 5 blog entries I'm going to introduce you to some of the new moderation features in the IPS Community Suite 4.0. Part 1: Setting up moderators Part 2: Approval Queue (New Feature) Part 3: Reports Part 4: Effective Moderation Part 5: Warnings Up until now, each application has been responsible for managing it's own moderator permissions (for example, you go and set up a moderator in the forums app, then in the gallery app, etc.) and there's been a concept of "global" or "super" moderators who can perform all moderator actions in all applications. In IPS Community Suite 4.0, we're centralising the creation and assigning of moderator permissions, and are doing this separate from groups (so you can now make just a member a moderator without putting them in a special "moderator" group). It works very similar to Admin Restrictions in 3.x. Here is the Moderators page: (In this screenshot I've given moderator controls to everyone in the groups Administrators or Moderators, and to the user "Brandon") When editing a moderator you see all of the permissions available across all applications. This screenshot shows global moderator permissions which apply across all applications: If you do not want to allow any of these globally, you can make them available only to certain areas - when any option is toggled off, the equivalent option will show under each application tab, along with an option to select which areas of that application it can be done in. For example, if I disable the "Can edit all content?" option, a "Downloads" tab appears with the following options: This allows me to choose what the moderator can edit, and in which categories they can do it. A similar tab appears for each application I have installed, or additional options appear on the tabs. Also when editing a moderator I can control permissions not related to content, for example, how they can use the warning system: Member management permissions: And more. When editing a moderator, I also have the option to "Give All Permissions" which makes them akin to "global" or "super" moderators in 3.x. When editing a member which has been given all permissions, I will see a message reminding me that if I remove any permissions they will no longer be a global moderator: Attached Thumbnails " title="Moderators.png - Size: 138.15KB, Downloads: 0"> " title="Edit Moderator 1.png - Size: 160.7KB, Downloads: 0"> View the full article Читать дальше

For many years, IP.Board has featured a "Moderating Team" page where the community moderators are listed so that users can quickly and easily identify who to contact in the event they need assistance. This page has typically been a somewhat generic table-style view of users who are a moderator of some level. The page is not configurable and has limited usefulness and relevance when you consider the entirety of the suite. It is a relic of an older age and it really stood out as needing an overhaul, so that is exactly what we have done in 4.0. Configurable As mentioned above, the moderating team page has never been configurable in IP.Board. If a user is a moderator (either a super moderator, or a forum-level moderator) then they are displayed on this page. The users are displayed in basic alphabetical order in a table-style view and you cannot easily see which user is responsible for which roles on the site. Furthermore, if you add a moderator to another application (for instance, IP.Downloads or IP.Gallery) then they may not be displayed on this page if they aren't also a moderator in the forums. We have completely done away with the way this page used to work and rethought it from the ground up. Its purpose is simple: show the viewing user which users on the site are "important" and their relevance to the site. To implement our goal, we have decided to make the entire page configurable. In the admin area you can now create groupings for this page. This means that you can put some users in one group, some users in another group, and so on in order to better reflect the hierarchy of your organization. For instance, here at IPS we would list Management staff at the top, followed by Developers, followed by Support Agents, and possibly followed by community moderators. You can reorder the groups however you see fit to ensure that the most important users are listed first. You can also now associate a template with each group. When you view the staff page, you will probably want to show a little more information for the most important users, but you may want to just show simple links to a profile for the regular community moderators. By default we will ship with 3 or 4 basic templates that we feel will allow you to display staff groups in different ways to better reflect your organization, however any administrator can add new templates by simply creating a template with the appropriate prefix in the appropriate template group. When you add users to a group, you can specify a custom name to show (which will fall back to the member's username), you can specify a custom title to show (which will fall back to the member's title) and you can specify a bio to show. Users who are displayed on this page can edit their details right from the staff page directly. Viewing the page We wanted to allow this page to be set up to better reflect the staff on a community. A simple listing of moderators is no longer relevant for many users of the Community Suite - you may want one moderator to not be displayed because they only manage pre-sales questions, or you may want an administrator who is not a moderator to be displayed, or perhaps you want to create a game roster instead of displaying staff but you don't want to give those users moderator privileges on the site. Now you can do that, and you can better present the page to your users. As you can see here, the first grouping (labeled "Management") is displayed in full width. The second grouping called "Developers" are blocks that take up half of the available width. The last grouping called "Support Agents" are rows of 4 blocks each. It is important to note that the interface is subject to change and we are still putting some finishing touches on this screen, however hopefully the screenshot will give you a good idea of how the page can be laid out to improve communication between your staff and your visitors. Attached Thumbnails " title="blog1.png - Size: 223.53KB, Downloads: 0"> " title="Staff Directory 2014-02-16 20-54-27.png - Size: 1.08MB, Downloads: 0"> View the full article Читать дальше

Almost all of our applications support commenting or reviewing to some degree. You can comment on events in IP.Calendar, images in IP.Gallery and blog entries in IP.Blog, and you can review products in IP.Nexus, for instance. The differences between reviewing and commenting are subtle, yet important. Commenting allows you to say something about a content item that has been contributed, while reviewing is intended to allow you to give feedback about the item based on your experience. You should not be able to review something you have not seen or used, for instance, and you should only be able to review it once. We have worked on developing these concepts further for 4.0, and bringing both capabilities easily to all applications in the suite. Comments Any application in the 4.0 suite can support commenting easily. From a development perspective, you need only create a content comment class that extends IPSContentComment (and define a few methods in this class, such as how to generate the URL to the comment), and then in your main content item class you specify this new content comment class in a specific property. For example, with IP.Downloads we have the following in the content item class /** * @brief Comment Class */ public static $commentClass = 'IPSdownloadsFileComment';And then there is, as you would expect, a commenting class found at IPSdownloadsFileComment which extends IPSContentComment. This comment class defines a few properties, and then defines a single url() method (which must return the URL to the comment). Almost everything else is handled automatically by the suite. Otherwise, comments work largely similar to the way they work in 3.x. Moderators can edit, hide, approve and delete comments. You can allow certain users to reply to locked content (e.g. to leave a comment on something that is locked), but otherwise locked content cannot be commented on. You can use multi-moderation on comments and you can quote and multi-quote comments. All of the functionality you would expect to see is still present. Reviews There are only a few primary differences between reviews and comments. You may only leave a single review on a content item. Once you have left a review, you will not be able to leave another. When leaving a review, you are presented with a 5-star panel from which you should select your star rating. Some applications may further restrict your ability to leave a review. For instance, there is an option in IP.Downloads to only allow users who have downloaded a file to leave a review. As of the 4.0 Community Suite, any application can now support reviews just as easy as commenting. Further, as a developer you can support both simultaneously (and, typically, the administrator can disable one or both systems if they choose). Reviews work almost the same as comments from an implementation perspective. You create a review content comment class, and you define a specific property in the content item class. For IP.Downloads you will see this in the content item class /** * @brief Review Class */ public static $reviewClass = 'IPSdownloadsFileReview';And then you will find a review class at IPSdownloadsFileReview, which extends IPSContentReview (which in turn actually extends IPSContentComment). The review class for IP.Downloads, just like the commenting class, only contains a single method to define how to generate the URL, as well as a few required properties. When reviews are left and a star rating is applied, this rating is averaged and applied to the content item. A content item could in theory support both the traditional star rating system (like you might see in IP.Downloads or even in IP.Board in the 3.x product line) and reviews at a technical level, however it is recommended to prevent confusion that you either use the traditional rating system OR reviews, but not both simultaneously. Most applications in 4.0 that support reviews will not support the traditional rating system as a result. You will note in this screenshot that because I have not yet downloaded the file (which is an optional reviews-related restriction in IP.Downloads) that I am unable to review the file at present. When a user does not have permission to do something, the 4.0 community suite makes every effort to clearly indicate why the user is unable to accomplish a given task. Other users reading a review can determine if they found the review helpful or not (although you are unable to specify this on your own reviews of course), and these yes/no votes are subsequently tallied in order to allow users to sort reviews by "most helpful" per the sorting buttons at the top right of the above screenshot. Wrapping up Applications are capable of displaying either reviews or comments (or both) in any manner they wish, however you will find that most applications in the 4.0 suite that support reviews and/or comments will display them in a fashion similar to the above screenshots (noting all the typical "these are early screenshots and the final product may appear different" disclaimers). By supporting both of these similar yet slightly different functionalities out of the box, we believe our first party applications as well as third party applications by our talented development community can really shine and allow end users to interact with the community in logical and focused ways. We hope these changes allow you to set up your own community to cater to your users in the manner best suited to your community. Attached Thumbnails " title="2014-02-17_1449.png - Size: 27.76KB, Downloads: 0"> " title="2014-02-17_1449_001.png - Size: 25.23KB, Downloads: 0"> " title="2014-02-17_1455.png - Size: 61.75KB, Downloads: 0"> View the full article Читать дальше

IP.Calendar has supported basic recurring calendar events for many versions now. You can create events that recur weekly, monthly or yearly in IP.Calendar, and they will automatically show up on their specified schedule. While this capability is certainly useful, we felt it was time to enhance event recurrence capabilities in the next version of IP.Calendar. New options Recurring every week, month or year is useful, but there are many other ways events can recur and IP.Calendar has no provisions to accommodate those recurrence types in the 3.x IP.Calendar release. For 4.0 we have added several new recurrence-based options to the calendar. Recur daily, weekly, monthly or yearly In addition to the three options available in previous versions, you can now configure events to recur daily. Recurrence frequency You are no longer restricted to recurring every week (or month or other time period). You can now configure events to recur every 2 weeks, or every 3 months, or every 10 days, or whatever period of time you need to. Weekly recurrence: days of the week If your event recurs weekly, you can now specify the days of the week the event should recur on. This means you can configure an event that recurs weekly on every Tuesday and Thursday, for instance. Recurrence timeframe In previous versions of IP.Calendar, the end date specified when the event should stop recurring. In 4.0, the end date/time specifies when the original recurrence end date/time are. This means you can have an event that lasts 2 days and recurs annually, for instance (in other words, recurring ranged events). When configuring the event, you now have three options for specifying the recurrence information: Never end End after a certain number of occurrences End on a certain date You can now configure events like Christmas which never end, you can configure meetings which have a certain number of occurrences before they are finished, and you can configure recurring events that end on a certain date. As you can see, the options have been greatly expanded to accommodate many more types of recurring events. Some technical details At a technical level, event recurrence data is stored as an "RRULE", just like the iCalendar specification will specify. In fact, the data should be a 1:1 equivalent. If you import iCalendar events which have recurrence capabilities not supported by calendar, those events will be skipped during the import routine (as they are presently), however there are now far fewer recurrence capabilities that are wholly unsupported. By storing the exact RRULE value we have a few benefits over previous versions of Calendar: Event importing is simpler, as we can copy the rule directly into the database unmodified (after verifying we support all parameters) Event exporting is simpler for the same reason We can expand recurring event support in the future if necessary with few database changes necessary Using PHP you can easily find future event recurrence details using the nextOccurrence() method. /** * Find the next occurrence of an event starting from a specified start point * * @param IPScalendarDate $date Date to start from * @param string $type Type of date to check against (startDate or endDate) * @return IPScalendarDate|NULL */ public function nextOccurrence( $date, $type='startDate' )This instance method is run against a calendar event, passing in a date to find the next occurrence from. You can look for either start date or end date. Attached Thumbnails " title="2014-02-19_1023.png - Size: 48.93KB, Downloads: 0"> View the full article Читать дальше

The submissions process in IP.Downloads has a certain complexity that may not be apparent at first. As well as simple file uploads, we also support adding files from URLs and from the local file system, and screenshots can also be added in these ways. Which category you choose to submit to affects which of these options are available. In addition, via the AdminCP you can bulk-upload files - but not via the front-end. For IP.Downloads 4, we wanted to improve this process with interface and functionality changes. Submitting Files Here's a video demonstration of how creating a single file record in IP.Downloads works in v4: We've worked hard to improve the flow for users here - while they are uploading files (which may be large and take some time), they can continue adding the other file information such as screenshots and meta data. While that's happening, the upload progress is always shown at the top of the screen. In the video you'll also see how image uploading is handled, as well as prefixes in the tag system, which are now supported throughout the IPS Community Suite. Bulk Uploading Instead of going to the AdminCP to bulk-submit files, single- and bulk-uploads are now handled through exactly the same process on the front end. This means users can be granted bulk-upload permissions without requiring AdminCP access, a big improvement on the current implementation. To bulk upload, a user clicks the "Submit a file" button as normal, and chooses "I want to submit multiple files at once". They see the same upload area, but this time, the file information step is handled separately after the page is submitted. Each uploaded file has a separate block for file information and its own set of screenshots. We'll of course be showing more of the IP.Downloads homepage and file view later, but we hope that gives you a taste of what to expect in IP.Downloads in IPS4. Attached Thumbnails " title="skitched-20140217-145504.png - Size: 436.15KB, Downloads: 0"> " title="skitched-20140217-145912.png - Size: 549.74KB, Downloads: 0"> View the full article Читать дальше

Following content is an important aspect of interacting with your community. It allows you to be notified when there are updates to the content or when other users comment on the content, and it allows you to find content you are interested in at a later date. We have taken the opportunity with 4.0 to enhance the system where-by users can follow content in the IPS Community Suite to simplify and clarify certain processes, make it easier to follow content you submit, and to be sure you are receiving the notifications you wish to receive. Following your own content One area of improvement that was identified during planning meetings for 4.0 was the process of following your own content. While the forums have a method in place already to follow new topics you create (or to automatically follow topics you reply to), the rest of the suite has no such similar capability in place. We wanted to make it easier for users to follow the content they are submitting to make it more likely they will be aware of comments posted to their submissions, in turn making it more likely they will return and continue to interact with the community. In all applications in 4.0, when submitting new content you will have the ability to follow that content right away. When replying, similarly there is an option to automatically follow the content you are replying to. In your Notification preferences panel, you can choose to automatically follow new content submissions by default and you can choose to automatically follow content you reply to by default (in which case the appropriate checkboxes would be checked by default during submissions and commenting). These options affect your content submissions and comments across the entire suite in 4.0. Following other content You can follow other content submitted to the community by clicking on the "Follow" button available in the appropriate area. As with 3.x, you can follow containers (e.g. follow a forum or an IP.Downloads category), and you can follow content items (e.g. a topic or an IP.Downloads file). You can follow content items and containers both publicly, which means others will be able to tell you are following that item, and anonymously, where you will receive notifications of updates to the item but others will not be able to see you are following it. You can choose to receive an email notification immediately when there is a reply to the content, or you can choose to receive a daily or weekly digest. Digest notifications have been expanded suite-wide and are now supported in all applications automatically. As with 3.x, you can choose to receive an email notification or an inline notification on the site (or you can choose to receive neither or both if you prefer). One common issue encountered in IP.Board 3.x was that users would follow something, however their notification preferences were configured in a manner which meant they would never subsequently be notified of updates to the item they are following (because they have chosen not to receive neither email nor inline notifications for that follow method). The 4.0 suite recognizes this scenario and warns the user in this event. Summary We have worked to improve and clarify the follow system where possible in the 4.0 suite, while still retaining the same level of functionality and flexibility you have available in 3.x. The ability to automatically follow new submissions should help users remain engaged on your site when other users comment on their contributions, bringing them back and enticing them to continue contributing to your site. The improved clarification when users will not receive notifications due to their preference configuration will help reduce staff overhead in answering questions, as well as visitor confusion and frustration. We will talk about notifications themselves in a future blog entry, however we hope these changes help improve usability and interaction with your site by your visitors. Attached Thumbnails " title="2014-02-16_2132.png - Size: 25.44KB, Downloads: 0"> View the full article Читать дальше

We are releasing security patches for IP.Gallery 4.2.1 and IP.Gallery 5.0.5 to address a potential cross-site scripting issue related to the acceptance of SWF uploads. SWF (Shockwave Flash) is a file format used to embed flash movies in HTML documents, and when media files are accepted in IP.Gallery, SWF uploads are allowed. Because SWF files allow arbitrary script to execute within the context of the site they are hosted on, we are releasing a patch today which disables SWF files from being accepted by IP.Gallery by default. You may still allow SWF files after installing this patch by following the instructions in this knowledge base article, however we strongly recommend that you do not allow SWF submissions unless only trusted users are able to submit movies in your IP.Gallery installation. Чтобы применить патч, выполните следующие действия: Определите, какая версия IP.Gallery у вас установлена. Скачайте соответствующий патч в этой теме Извлеките содержимое архива на ваш компьютер Загрузите содержимое папки 'uploads' в корневой каталог форума (где расположен файл conf_global.php) с перезаписью файлов при запросе. Для IP.Gallery 4.2.1, установите следующий архив: gallery_4.2-patch-Jan_3_2013.zip Для IP.Gallery 5.0.5, установите следующий архив: gallery_5.0-patch-Jan_3_2013.zip As of the time of this post, the full IP.Gallery package in our client center has been updated. If you are running any version of IP.Gallery that is not listed above, we recommend that you upgrade to the latest version to obtain these security fixes, as well as several other security and bug fixes. We would like to thank Vasil A (Bulgaria) for bringing the vulnerability to our attention. Читать дальше

A few years ago we revolutionised theme editing in IP.Board with the addition of the "Visual Skin Editor". This tool quickly became a popular way of making broad color changes to new themes to match in with an existing site or existing branding. For the first time, you could instantly view the changes you were making. Goodbye Visual Skin Editor, hello Easy Mode Editor. We have rewritten this tool from the ground up in IPS Suite 4.0 and renamed it the Easy Mode Editor now that it's a fully integrated part of the suite and not just a license add-on. It retains all the features you love and has a much better interface, more control and fully supports gradients. Let's take a look! When you create a new theme, you have the option of creating an "Easy Mode" theme or a "Manual Mode" theme. As you would expect, the manual mode allows full editing of CSS and HTML. Easy mode allows you to edit the theme with an instant preview. Once the new theme has been added you can launch it from the Theme list inside the administrator's control panel by clicking the wand button. You can still edit the HTML templates and custom CSS as normal should you need to. The easy mode editor launches in a new browser tab or window (depending on your browser's settings). The floating palette overlay in IP.Board 3 was a little cumbersome as it took up a fair amount of room and you had to move it out of the way to view your changes. In IPS 4, we've made this a fixed sidebar which means that it doesn't have to reload when you navigate through the suite. I've cropped out most of the public display as we're not quite ready to reveal that yet! You can quickly colorise your new theme with the Colorize option. This chromatically changes the main colors of the suite quickly and easily. A limitation of the Visual Skin Editor in IP.Board 3 was that it couldn't manage gradients so themes had those gradients removed and flat color applied. We now support gradients in IPS 4.0 from the Easy Mode Editor's color editing panel. We previously blogged about the fantastic new theme settings feature in IPS 4.0. Some of these settings are now available to editing in the settings panel. This is a really quick and convenient way to change these settings. Although the new Easy Mode Editor allows you to change most of the colors within the suite, there may be times when you want to write a few lines of custom CSS to tweak the theme a little more to your liking. We've got that covered too. You can leave the theme as an Easy Mode theme for as long as you want. However, you may decide that you want a little more control and need to edit some of the framework CSS that underpins the suite. That's easy to do. Just choose the option to convert it to a Manual Mode theme and you are all set. Never before has theming been so simple! This re-invented tool allows you to quickly edit your theme without fuss and you can instantly see the changes as you make them. We can't wait to see what you do with it! Attached Thumbnails " title="eme-add-theme.png - Size: 39.28KB, Downloads: 0"> " title="eme-custom-css.png - Size: 96.6KB, Downloads: 0"> " title="eme-acp-list-2.png - Size: 347.34KB, Downloads: 0"> View the full article Читать дальше

A little history For many years, IP.Board functioned under a relatively normal model of managing a content's status. A topic, for example, was either unapproved or approved. If a moderator did not like the topic, that moderator could delete the topic. This worked well for many years, but improvements in technology and processes necessitated changes. As IPS software evolved we recognized the need to handle all content throughout the entire suite in a uniform manner, so old concepts like the "trash can" forum were no longer relevant when considering how you work with Gallery images or Download Manager files. Additionally, many sites today employ moderators that they do not wish to entrust with the complete ability to irrevocably delete content, yet they still need the moderator to be able to clean up a mess should it occur. A few years ago, we introduced the concept of "soft delete". In practice what this meant was that when a user soft deleted a topic, the topic would be removed from general view for most users, but the topic would not actually be deleted. Administrators could choose who can view soft deleted topics, and who could "un-delete" the soft deleted topic. Some time after this, the way topics were deleted changed as well (which was now referred to as "hard delete" in contrast to "soft delete"). If a topic was truly deleted, it would not actually be immediately removed from the database. Instead, a flag was set and the topic would be deleted from the database at some future point in time by a task. The idea was that you may need to restore something that was deleted by a moderator...but then, the software already supports a soft-delete concept to account for this, right? When clients proved to be confused with all of the terminology (we can't blame you!), "hard delete" was renamed back to "delete", and "soft delete" was renamed to hidden. Nevertheless, behind the scenes we still had all of the various statuses to account for Content is awaiting approval (unapproved) Content is approved and viewable (approved) Content has been hidden or soft deleted (hidden) Content has been deleted but not removed from the database yet by the task (pending deletion) Content has been deleted and is gone permanently (deleted) And how about 4.0? In reviewing the needs of most admins and how the process of managing the content and your moderator roles works in the real world, we decided to simplify and improve this experience. The 4.0 Suite now has just 4 of the above statuses, and they behave in a manner you would expect. If you require moderator approval of new content, when something is submitted it will be in an unapproved status. If you do not require moderator approval of new content, that content will be approved automatically and immediately viewable. If a moderator has permission to hide content, the moderator will be able to hide any content that has been submitted. The moderator may or may not be able to see content that is hidden, and may or may not be able to restore hidden content to viewable status. (All that depends on Admin settings.) If a moderator has permission to delete content, the moderator will be able to delete content that has been submitted. Upon doing so, the content is immediately and permanently deleted. You can configure your moderators such that they are able to hide content, delete content, or both. As with 3.x, moderators who can see hidden content will be able to review all hidden content in the Moderator Control Panel, and those with permission to restore hidden content will be able to do so from here as well. You will not have to worry about the content you are viewing in the Moderator Control Panel is deleted or hidden, as there is only one status now. This is an example of a very minor change that was made after careful consideration of how the software functions and should "flow" when being used in a real-world situation. It is often the case that the smallest changes can make the biggest impact in the eyes of the users. View the full article Читать дальше

IPS Connect is our in-house cross-site authentication framework utilized by IP.Board in order to facilitate sharing of login credentials on one or more of your websites. While IP.Board supports Connect out of the box (meaning administrators of two or more IP.Board installations can allow users to use the same login credentials on any site in the network with just a few clicks in the ACP), the design of the system allows for third party software to tie in to the network as well. Indeed, one of the more popular addons in our Marketplace is the Wordpress IPS Connect plugin. We have made several changes to IPS Connect in 4.0 that we believe will help you better manage a network of sites designed to share login credentials amongst them. These changes stemmed both from our own internal use of IPS Connect and from direct user feedback in our feedback forums. Fundamental Improvements In IP.Board 3.4, a "master" installation has no knowledge of any "slave" installations that may call to it. Any IP.Board can be set up to call to the master installation and this mater installation will never remember that the slave has called to it in the future. While this is fine for basic login credential checking, the original design of IPS Connect introduces many limitations. For instance, updating your email address on any given site cannot cause the email address to be updated on all sites because there is no central installation that knows about any of the sites in the network. Similarly, logging in to one site cannot log you in to all sites because all of the sites on the network are not actually known at any one location (we do, however, work around this if all sites are on the same domain). Beginning with 4.0, the master installation will "register" any site that connects to it using IPS Connect. This introduces many benefits: If you make a change on any individual site (master or slave), that change can now be propagated to all other sites in the network. Logging in or out of any given site can log you in to all other sites (because all other sites are now "known") Requests can be queued if there are problems You can create a listing of all sites in the network from the master installation Further, we have thought through potential issues and have implemented a queue system where-by if requests to an individual site in the network begin failing then those requests will be queued and reattempted at a later date in the order they were originally received. If failed requests start queuing on the master installation, an ACP dashboard block will show you this and let you attempt to process them manually. If the issue causing the requests to fail has been resolved, the queue can quickly clear out in this manner (vs waiting for the task to clear them out). If the issue is still occurring, however, you will be given some additional information which will be helpful in determining why the requests are failing. Finally, if the site in question has been taken offline and future requests should not be sent to it, you are given the opportunity to unregister the "slave" installation so that the master will no longer communicate with it. More changes propagated We found while using IPS Connect internally that we wanted certain actions to propagate across all sites on the network but IPS Connect did not handle this, and we subsequently had to develop custom hooks in-house to account for the missing functionality. As a result, with 4.0 IPS Connect will now manage a few additional capabilities. Banning As of 4.0, if you permanently ban a user from the admin control panel, the ban will be copied to the rest of the sites in the IPS Connect network. Bans are only propagated to other sites if initiated via the admin control panel as a security precaution. It is probable in many cases that you do not want moderator actions on one site affecting accounts on another site, so front-end bans will not be copied to other sites. Deleting As of 4.0, deleting users from one site in an IPS Connect network will now cause the user to be deleted on all sites in the network. Merging Similarly, as of 4.0 when you merge two users on a site in an IPS Connect network, the users will be merged on all sites in the network. Password Changes As of 4.0, password changes are fully propagated to all sites in an IPS Connect network. The net effect will be no different than IP.Board 3.4 in this regard, unless you later disable IPS Connect on a site in the network - in this case, the last used password will still be valid on that site, rather than some random password potentially stored on a "slave" installation 5 years ago that the user cannot remember. Cross Domain Logins (and Logouts) Beginning with 4.0, IPS Connect will now support logging in and out across different domains. Cookie restrictions (and the fact that the master installation did not register and/or remember any of the slave installations) prevented this capability with 3.4.x, so while the login credentials could be shared across domains, signing in to one installation did not sign you in to any other installation automatically (unless they were on the same domain). Similarly if you logged out of an installation you were not automatically logged out of any other installation in 3.4.x. As of 4.0, if you sign in to an installation (whether it is the master or an individual slave application), you will be redirected to the master installation, then redirected to each slave application in turn, and finally redirected back to your original destination. This is all very seamless to the end-user and largely unnoticeable. Logging out will, similarly, redirect you to each application to log you out of that application, bypassing security restrictions applied to cookies in a multi-domain environment. Wrapping Up Just as with IP.Board 3.4, other applications can tie in to the IPS Connect network, either as a master installation or as a slave installation. IPS Connect support has otherwise been greatly improved and now offers a much wider range of functionality, a more robust built-in SSO system, and more reliability when problems do occur via the new request queuing system. It should be noted that IPS Connect with 4.0 is NOT compatible with IP.Board 3.4.x, and sites will need to "re-register" with the master so that it can know about them. That minor limitation aside, we believe you will enjoy the great improvements coming in the next release! View the full article Читать дальше