IPS Resources back online

Posted by Alεx, Jun 19 2008, 04:11 PM in Other

Thank you for your patience while we made our improvements to the resource site! There are some exciting changes we would like to point out to help you navigate through the new features.

Homepage Updates

We've made a few improvements to the homepage, with more to come. Immediately, you will notice we have separated the left column to show 'Top' listings and the right column to show 'Latest' listings. We've also separated out modifications and skins to help you more quickly find the latest updates you are interested in.

Featured Resources

Once a month we will be posting a resource spotlight in the new 'Featured Resources' section. In each spotlight we will give you an overview of the resource with some basic statistics and a link to view or download it, a list of features or highlights for the resource, some screenshots, and a short interview with the author. The resources will include anything submitted to the Downloads or Articles areas. Please be sure to check out the featured resource for June!

Community Projects

IP.Tracker has been out for some time and has been a huge success. As a result, we will slowly be introducing more community projects to our customers. Next up will be IP.Shoutbox - a fully functional and comprehensive shoutbox system for your forum. The project is based on Dean's "D22-Shoutbox" and he is working closely with us on updating and preparing it for release. More information to follow soon...

In the mean time, please check out our new Community Projects page for more information on our community projects.

IP.Tracker 1.1.0

The first, stable release of the 1.1 series for one of our community projects, IP.Tracker, is now available to download. Over the past few months, this new version has been tested among many of you and we would like to thankyou for your help in finding all the bugs in this release. Huge thanks to krocheck and Jaggi for doing their work on IP.Tracker, you've done a great job!

Paid Resources

There are hundreds of resources available for sale from many authors who contribute to this site, and many of our users are interested in these resources. There are some drawbacks here

• The user may have a hard time vouching for the trustworthiness of a paid resource
• The user may not know a specific resource they are interested in exists
• Paid resources are often not welcome on sites that host free resources for download, so authors have a hard time getting the word out about their work
• A user may not be sure which paid resource they are interested in if more than one solution fits their needs

The resources site will now allow mod and skin authors to list paid resources in our download manager. The authors have to agree to certain guidelines, and if the guidelines are not met or maintained their work will be de-listed and not allowed back on the site. This helps users to verify that a solution is being properly maintained, fixed, updated and supported.

Paid resources will show up with a small symbol in our downloads database so you will more quickly know if a file is for sale or not. Filters have been added to the bottom of the download pages so you can easily filter out (or in!) paid resources in the event you don't want to see them (or only want to see paid solutions). Payment for a third-party solution is handled by the third party directly, and the download link will take you to their site to complete the transaction and download the work. Consider our database a helpful listing so you can better realize what kind of options are available to you. Authors can consider our database a useful tool to help them advertise the work they've put so much time and effort into.

Miscellaneous

Our company forums have undergone a slight re-organization in the resource sections to help you better identify where topics should be posted and found.

We've also added a "Most Recent Resources" feed at the top of the resource forums so you can stay up to date on new works submitted to the resource site.

Additionally, at long last, the resources site is now linked from the main company website at http://invisionpower.com - we hope this helps everyone discover all of the resources we have available to them that they may never even have known existed.

Finally, we would like to extend our sincerest thanks to our IPS Resources team for all of their hard work and dedication in expanding the resource site!


We look forward to your feedback and hope you enjoy the updates!

IP.Nexus

Posted by Lindy, Jun 19 2008, 04:00 PM

Recent advances in technology coupled with a tremendous increase in online awareness have had a profound effect on the growth of online communities. To better serve both present and future customers and in the interest of furthering our position as a leader in online community development, we are pleased to announce that we will immediately increase and refocus all development resources to the enhancement and expansion of our community offerings.

While we will evaluate the position of IP.Nexus in the marketplace at a later date, we recognize that the core of IPS is our community product and solution line and as such, our priority lies with the continued growth and enhancement of that very core. We will be allowing the current beta of IP.Nexus to expire on July 31 and will revisit our content management and business services plans after our upcoming releases of our community software products including IP.Board, IP.Gallery, IP.Blog, and IP.Downloads.

In coming weeks and months, please expect significant improvements to our existing community line as well as new components which compliment existing products. We're very excited about what the future holds and are confident that you will be equally pleased with the increased quality and speed at which we will be able to deliver new products and services.

Thank you all for your continued support and stay tuned for further updates!

Introducing IP.Shoutbox

Posted by Alεx, Jun 18 2008, 07:41 PM in Other

In our efforts to improve the services offered to you through IPS Resources, we will soon be releasing another community-driven project, IP.Shoutbox. Much like IP.Tracker, this will be an IPS-sponsored project written by you, the community.

We have approached two people who we feel will do a great job on IP.Shoutbox, these two are currently working very hard to produce a beta of the modification. The developers we have chosen are vadim88, and Shawn Dean. These two will keep you up-to-date regarding the status of this project via the IP.Shoutbox forum. IP.Shoutbox is based on Deans modification 'D22-Shoutbox', and he will be working very closely with us on this component.

IP.Shoutbox has been written with IPB3 in mind, for example, the javascript uses the prototype library to allow the move to IPB3 be all that much easier, the code will be commented throughout so people looking to get involved will know what function is doing what, please remember, even though we have two developers who will start this project off, this is a community-driven project, if and when you find bugs, and you know how to fix them, please provide the fix as it makes it all that much easier for the developers! If you have code contributions, please feel free to submit them in the IP.Shoutbox forum, we welcome your input!

As with all community projects, IP.Shoutbox will be offered for free via IPS Resources for current license holders. We will be posting more updates about this project and the updates coming to IPS Resources shortly.

Resource Site Updates

Posted by Charles, Jun 16 2008, 01:05 PM

Our new resource site has been online for a few months now and the feedback has been great so we are going to enhance the offerings and further involve our community of resource authors. Some upcoming changes include:

Forum Organization

We will be reorganizing and adding new forums to the company forums resource section to make it easier to navigate and find information. You will also soon notice a feed from the resource site to the company forums featuring new activity, most popular resources, and more.
Resource Spotlight

Once a month, we will feature a resource and do a short interview with the author of that resource so you can get to know them and what they created. We hope that everyone enjoys these features and they help introduce our customer community to all the great resources that are available to them.

Community Projects

The IP.Tracker bug tracker community project has been very well received so we are looking at introducing more. If you are not aware, our community projects are projects that we sponsor but the community actually creates and are offered at no charge. IPS provides resources for programming, hosting, etc. and the customer community writes all the needed code for the project. We already have a new community project lined up and will be announcing that in the next week.

More to come

Also coming very soon is a ranking list of the most used resources, ability to list paid resources, better linking with our main site, and more. Keep an eye out for more updates.


Please expect some downtime on the resources site over the next several days as we implement these new services. Thanks everyone!

IPB3: Banned User Management

Posted by bfarber, Jun 12 2008, 02:12 PM in IP.Board

The term 'ban' in IP.Board has a relatively loose definition and can often mean many different things. IP.Board supports an array of useful features to control access to the board, or in this case to restrict access to the board. Some examples of what 'ban' may refer to are

• IP address ban filters
• Email address ban filters
• Username ban filters
• Placing a user in the 'Banned' group
• Suspending the user so that they cannot access the board temporarily

Additionally an administrator can prevent a user from posting for a set amount of time, or require preview of all of their posts for a set amount of time.

Many users have asked us to make it easier to ban users - frequently an administrator finds that they want to do more than just one of the above actions, and usually against a specific user account who has been causing problems.

IP.Board 3 will help administrators control who can (and cannot) access their board. While all of the above features are still in place and can be accessed individually just as in IP.Board 2.x, there is now a centralized "Ban User" panel that an administrator can use when they are taking action against a specific user account.

When viewing the user account, there is a button you can click labeled "Ban User" (if the user is already banned, the button will read "Unban User"). Upon clicking this button, an AJAX popup window will present you with many options.

Firstly, IP.Board now supports a true "banned member" status, separate from their actual user group. This means you can ban a member without moving them into another group (for instance, if you do not want to upset the user's friends on your board).

The ban management panel will also allow you to move the user to another group (e.g. the "Banned" group included by default with the IP.Board installation routine). You can also ban the user's email address and username right from the popup window.

Additionally, every IP address that IP.Board can find that the user has used will be listed, and you will be able to ban each IP address just by checking the box next to each one.

Lastly, there is a textarea box provided on the popup that will allow you to enter in a note (which saves to the typical user notes area) for future reference.

As a convenience, links to suspend the member temporarily, remove the user's posting rights, and require moderator preview of the user's posts appear in the window, in case you determine you would rather take one of those actions instead.


The unban panel provides exactly the same options, but in reverse, allowing you to move the user back to their normal member group, remove their email address, usernames and IP address from the ban filters, and to remove the banned flag on their account, reversing the changes you just made.


Account management is important to administrators, and IP.Board 3 is taking steps to make such management that much simpler.

IPB 3: Styling IPBoard 3

Posted by Rikki, May 30 2008, 06:30 PM in IP.Board

One of the first items we determined for IPBoard 3 was that it was going to ship with a brand new skin. Our current skin has been with us since the first release of IPB2, and the style goes back even further than that. The Pro skin was introduced more recently, but its main intention was to simplify, rather than bring a significant update.

And so, the responsibility for designing and implementing the new skin came to me. This is a huge undertaking, both in terms of scope and sheer scale. The skin is the most visible part of any product; it is what forms your first impression, it is the part you use every moment. In addition, since we have big upgrades to the template system coming (detailed here), every aspect of the skin must be redone, from scratch. IPBoard is a huge application, so this is no mean feat.

Objectives
Before even considering the visual appearance of the skin, I wanted to set down some objectives for it. These are:

- Ensure semantic markup as far as reasonably possible
- Ensure XHTML validation (1.0 Strict)
- Ensure Javascript is unobtrusive

These objectives have real benefits for the modern web. Semantic markup is not only good for screenreaders, but it provides a solid base for skinners. When all stylistic decision is removed from the XHTML, those decisions can now be made in the CSS alone. My goal with the new skin is to minimize the need to edit templates, and semantic markup forms a part of this. The hope is the majority of skins will be achieved simply by editing CSS - I'm sure admins will appreciate how much easier upgrading will be when templates remain largely identical across skins!

Another great benefit of semantic code is that we will now be able to serve a printer-specific stylesheet, and do away with the 'print-view' code in IPB itself.

Javascript
IPBoard 3 is going to ship with the PrototypeJS library. I've always believed that the new generation of Javascript libraries are a big step forward for Javascript usability, so I'm looking forward to making use of them (Nexus beta testers will know we already use it heavily in that product). PrototypeJS allows developers to focus on writing features, rather than fixing cross-browser compatibility issues or poor support for a particular part of the language. We'll be making use of the excellent event-handling capabilities to get as much Javascript as possible out of the IPBoard templates.

Skins shipping with IPBoard 3
Our plan right now is to ship at least 3 skins with IPBoard 3. These will be: the default 'fancy' skin; a simplified skin intended to be used as a base for skinners; and a mobile skin, a lightweight version designed for use on mobile devices. This last skin will do away with the present lo-fi version, and become a full-fledged 'light' alternative, complete with posting, searching and so forth.

Style Guide
To ensure all developers within IPS are on the same track when writing XHTML and CSS, I developed a style guide that we will be using internally. This formalizes the practices we will be using and should help to ensure consistent output. I want to make the guide available to the public partly for review, but primarily so that our modding and skinning community can ensure their code follows our standards too, if they wish. Your feedback and thoughts on the guide are welcome.

 IPS_style_guide.doc ( 73K ) Number of downloads: 853


Feedback
I'm deliberately avoiding showing the progress on the new skins, but they are underway. Once they are nearer to completion we will begin previewing the design itself. For now, I just wanted to introduce you to our line of thinking and aims for the interface side of IPBoard 3 development. If you have any feedback on things I've mentioned here, or more general feedback about improvements you'd like to see in the IPB3 skin, I encourage you to leave a comment.

Advancing the Login Manager

Posted by bfarber, May 23 2008, 09:10 PM in IP.Board

IP.Board 2 included a login manager utility in the admin control panel. Using this tool, you could tell IP.Board to authenticate login requests against third party databases, LDAP installations, or against IP.Converge, for example. You could even write up your own login methods and authenticate against any external data source of your choosing (i.e. the IP.Board 2.3 OpenID module). We used the login manager for conversions too - if you converted from another forum software, our login manager can understand the old password hashing schemes so that you do not need to reset all of your users' passwords (in most cases).

IP.Board 3 takes the login manager even further.

The login forms on the front end are all being consolidated into one template. This will make it easier to ensure that every time a login form is displayed, the same login form is displayed. You won't have to add options to multiple templates, as you did in IP.Board 2, if you want to customize the login form in any way. The login form has also been made "smart". Because you could potentially have a login method that requires a username and a login method that requires an email address, we decided to dumb down the form a little bit. You will be asked for your "sign in name" now (just one field) and IP.Board will figure out if you submitted an email address or a username.

We've removed the option of "passthrough" or "onfail" from the login manager. It is no longer needed, as you can now chain login methods together. For instance, you may want to try to authenticate a user against the local database first (if the account exists), but if that fails, load the member from a remote database. Or you may want to allow a user to login using one of a number of data sources you maintain. This functionality is now possible. The login methods in the admin control panel are reordered using drag-n-drop to make it easy to control which order they are checked in.

Some login methods need extra information from you. For instance, if you use LDAP, IP.Board would need to know the LDAP server host name, your username and password to login to LDAP to check the user, and so on. In IP.Board 2, this information is entered into a configuration PHP file. IP.Board 3 presents this information in the admin control panel to make it easier for you to check and update whenever you may need to.

In IP.Board 2 when a member is added to the local database after authenticating through a remote data source, the member would be required to fill in a display name, and potentially their email address, even if that information already existed in the remote source. In IP.Board 3, there is much more control over this at the login method level - you can pull ANY data you want from a remote source and use it in IP.Board. At the very least, this means if there is an email address and a username available in your remote data source, the user most likely will not be required to visit an intermediary screen before being allowed access to your forums. The name and email will be stored automatically, making for a very seamless login experience.

IP.Converge has received a slight update too - if you have IP.Converge enabled on your board, your users (who have already logged into the forum and configured their account) will now be able to use their username to login (if you enable username logins in the ACP). Behind the scenes IP.Board will find their email address and authenticate through IP.Converge using their email address, but your users won't have to know that.

Additionally, OpenID has being added to IP.Board 3 as a supported login method. If you are not familiar with OpenID, it is basically an emerging protocol allowing you to control your own login authentication. You submit a url to sites that support OpenID (such as Yahoo, Wordpress, Flickr, and AOL) and then you are taken to that URL to verify the request really is from you. You may be required to login to your OpenID provider to confirm what information you are allowing to be sent back to the requester (in this case, your forums). After you confirm this information, you will be automatically logged into your forum. Additionally, as long as the user allows their name and email address to be sent back to the forums, their account will be fully created and functional. IP.Board will support OpenID 1 and OpenID 2 with the Simple Registration, Attribute Exchange, and PAPE extension modules (meaning email, username, date of birth and gender will all be supported and remembered by IP.Board, and that you can supply a policy url to the OpenID provider). Please note that we will be using the PHP OpenID libraries from JanRain for the OpenID backend support.


If you don't need any of this functionality, it won't impact you at all! For those of you who have been requesting it, however, IP.Board 3 should cover all your bases.

IPB 3: Making Templating Easier

Posted by Matt, May 15 2008, 02:18 PM in IP.Board

HTML logic has been a feature of Invision Power Board for quite some time now. Although we didn't make much use of the '<foreach>' tag so that skins could be backwards compatible, we did make good use of the <if> <else /> logic. Now that we have a clean slate with v3.0, we can really make some positive changes.

Invision Power Board 3.0 makes full use of the existing HTML logic and adds some more functionality. This allows for some dramatic customization without touching any of the PHP code. Where possible, each 'view' (board index, topic listing, viewing a topic) has a single template. Previous versions 'stitched' together several templates (as many as 30!) to create a single page view. This meant that some items were fixed and unable to be moved. For example, on the board index, it was not possible to move the board stats above the list of forums. Likewise it was not possible to move the active users below the board statistics.

Now you can. You can move any item to any place for that view without having to edit the PHP files themselves. This will really open up designer's creativity and allow some really unique looking templates.

Another leap forward for Invision Power Board 3 is the ability to use display logic in the templates themselves. Naturally, we were always able to use <if> and <else /> but you can now use the following standard tags:

The Date Tag:
Examples:

For the first time, you can now explicitly specify a date format on a per-use basis. The tag accepts either a unix 'timestamp' or a human string like 'now', '-1 day', 'tomorrow', etc. The format parameter can either be a standard IPB date format (long, short, joined, etc) or a manual PHP Date format.

The Parse Tag:
Examples:


This parse tag allows you to make on-the-spot parsing using PHP code. This tag is replaced with the value returned from PHP.

The URL Tag:
Examples:


The first example will actually create the entire <a href='' ... >...</a> HTML chunk whereas the second example will only return a formatted URL. The main reason for this tag is to prevent hardcoded entire URLs or even fixing part of the URL to a setting. In IPB 2.3 it wasn't unusual to see this:



The new method would be like so:



The 'base' value being 'public' tells the template engine to use the public URL and not the ACP url. The real power of this feature lies in the return value being automatically fed via formatURL() which can return a friendly URL if friendly URLs are enabled.

The Variable Tag:
Example:


In this example, depending on $foo having a value of green:


This tag allows you to decide in the template itself how part of the template should display without having to edit PHP code. This is a handy tag for use in foreach blocks to alternate between colours when showing posts, topics, etc.

Custom Tags
The tags URL and date tags shown above use the {%tag="foo"|param="bar"%} format. These are actually custom plug-ins. You can write your own custom plug ins and they are available immediately within the templates. You could even modify the default plug-ins to change their behaviour.

We're looking forward to how these new tools are used in your own templates!

IPB 3: Creating a new framework using PHP 5

Posted by Matt, May 8 2008, 01:41 PM in IP.Board

One of the biggest discussions we had during Invision Power Board 3.0's planning was whether or not to drop support for PHP 4 and require a minimum of PHP 5. The advantages of using only PHP 5 were numerous and we really felt like we could increase security and efficiency by taking advantage of the new PHP 5 features. This decision became much easier when we learned that PHP 4 was no longer being developed.

To really see the benefit of using PHP 5, one must first consider how Invision Power Board's new framework is made possible by PHP 5.

Although Invision Power Board 1 and 2 were loosely based on the 'front controller' design pattern, it had no real framework to hang the code on. The closest it had to one was the 'ipsclass' super-class.

'ipsclass' was a convenient method of transporting various classes and functions around Invision Power Board. Convenient, but not ideal. One had to pass this 'super-class' from class to class forcing PHP 4 to use a reference (and being severely punished when forgetting!). This super-class contained almost all the 'core' functionality of Invision Power Board. Member, input and database objects were attached along with numerous other classes and functions. None of which was ordered in any logical format.

We have recoded Invision Power Board 3.0's framework from the ground up. We have done away with the 'ipsclass' super-class and employed the 'Controller -> Command -> View' pattern. This allows us to quickly add new code and to allow fast refactoring of our existing code. This pattern is built upon the 'IPS Registry'. This is a singleton class which maintains interfaces to several other registry objects (database, request, settings and member). Each of these objects maintains a clear place within the registry. This allows us to pass core data through the different levels of our pattern. Other functions from 'ipsclass' are moved into singtons: "IPSLib"; disparate functions that do not belong elsewhere, "IPSText"; functions for parsing and cleaning text, "IPSCookie"; functions to handle cookie management and "IPSMember"; functions that deal with loading, saving and parsing members. This offers a clear structure with clear boundries for each singleton class. Being singletons, you do not need to pass or reference the class in other files.

Here's an example:

IPB 2.3 Code

IPB 3.0 Code


It's worth noting that we have also applied the ArrayAccess interface to the registry, so you may access them like so:


Although the code examples use $this->request, $this->member, etc, these are set up in a constructor. You would pass the IPS Registry singleton into the class. Here's a typical constructor:


You could also access the ipsRegistry class directly, although this is strongly discouraged:

PHP 5 offers a much better OOP (object orientated programming) environment where references are assigned automatically. You can also chain along functions, which we make great use of. This allows us to do some neat trickery, like so:

IPB 2.3 Code


IPB 3.0 Code


You'll note that you no longer have to implicitly load the template anymore. This is handled within the 'getTemplate' function if it's not already loaded. This object is then returned for use to chain onto 'board_index()'. This simple adjustment of code makes for less manual code and less room for error.

We are also making great use of PHP 5 abstract classes and interfaces to define extensible classes. This will make it much easier and clearer for others writing their own additions to Invision Power Board. Having a clear interface to work with will reduce errors in development and formalize how you may access Invision Power Boards class structures.

The 'controller -> command' structure is built so that you may add new modules and sections dynamically without the need to change a single line of code elsewhere in the script. Modification authors can just drop in new folders and Invision Power Board will run them when called correctly via a URL. The controller makes use of variables in a URL and safely loads a command file if a matching command file is located. For example: "appcomponent=core&module=global&section=login" is mapped to "applications/core/modules_public/global/login.php". We make use of the Reflection class functions to ensure that any potential command file is a sub-class of the controller to prevent the risk of tampering.

We've barely scratched the surface, but it's clear that Invision Power Board 3's framework is very powerful and code-efficient. This is only made possible by the advancements in PHP 5 that we've taken full advantage of.

IP.Board 3.0 Development Introduction

Posted by Charles, Apr 30 2008, 05:04 PM in IP.Board

We are moving rapidly on IP.Board 3.0 development along with its related IP.Blog, IP.Gallery, and IP.Downloads updates. As we approach being able to post these updates for a preview and an eventual release we think we are getting close enough that we can start talking about some of the new features we have planned.

I will be purposely vague in this first blog entry about IP.Board 3.0's development and let our development staff get into detail in future blog entries. While not promising a set schedule, you can expect an update from a developer almost weekly going into detail about a specific change or new feature.

Our full new feature list is very long but here is a sampling for everyone. Our development team will go into detail about each one in the coming weeks and also introduce all the other additions not mentioned in this introduction.

Interface
There will be a great focus on usability and streamlining functions. The introduction of a new template engine which allows for multiple default template sets, easier skin editing, and a brand new default skin is something we are very excited about. Search engine friendly URLs will not only make your community more interesting to search engine spiders but allow for more human-friendly linking.

Control
The overhauled BB Code manager along with moving all default BB Codes to the system so you can edit them will allow forum administrators greater control over how their users interact with the community. We are implementing greater configuration options including being able to turn off features you do not use and finer controls on current features. Finer tuning your user signatures, turning specific options off, or even removing entire sections such as the calendar will allow you to gain finer control of how you want your community to be presented.

Features
There will be quite a few new features but, for now, we will save those for our upcoming blog posts to reveal what's new. A quick sampling: user reputation system, more permission configuration options, moderator enhancements, and ... lots more.

Integration
We want you to integrate your community with the rest of your web site with minimal effort. To make this easier for you, we will be putting great focus on creating a new hooks system for developers, more advanced APIs, content syndication, login methods, and more. Our applications (IP.Blog, IP.Gallery, and IP.Downloads) more tightly integrated with each other and with IP.Board itself.

Coding
There will be a lot of low-level code improvements which will make working with our codebase much easier for our community of developers. Everything we do will be with an eye toward resource usage improvements to make our software lighter on servers.

Server Requirements
To take advantage of many new capabilities, we will be officially dropping support for PHP 4.x series and requiring a minimum of PHP 5.x for our software. The software will work on the MySQL 4.x database series but we will highly suggest using the MySQL 5.x version.

Oracle Database
Due to slowing demand over the past few years, we have decided to discontinue supporting Oracle database system. We will continue to support MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server.

Subscriptions Manager
Again, due to slowing demand, we have decided to stop updating the subscriptions manager in IP.Board. We will be fixing all current known bugs to make the system compatible with IP.Board 3.0 so those currently using the subscriptions manager will still be able to upgrade. Anyone currently using the subscriptions manager will still be able to upgrade and everything will work normally for you. From there, we will be looking for community developers to keep it up to date. We will be posting a blog entry when ready to ask for assistance in keeping the subscriptions manager up to date. Anyone wishing to use our new IP.Nexus commerce system when it's available will be able to migrate as well.



Of course this is just the short version. Keep an eye on our blog for more detailed updates and new feature reveals in the coming weeks. And finally, when will it be released? Right now we are thinking the fourth quarter of 2008 (IP.Board, IP.Blog, IP.Gallery, and IP.Downloads will all receive a new version at the same time) but of course that's subject to change... it could very well be sooner...