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Whether you have hours to browse a community or are short on time, scrolling through a very long topic can be more than a little frustrating when you want to follow the topic's core journey. Recently, we discussed another feature designed to help support-based communities find helpful answers quickly, but what about social topics that do not have a simple question-and-answer format? We've all come to a lengthy topic for the first time and found it a little intimidating to find the most relevant content among hundreds of posts, which don't always further the topic. These off-topic posts are important because they help social cohesion and build relationships between members at the time of posting. Still, those visiting later often want the truth of the topic. Invision Community 5 brings a topic summary feature designed to make the most of your time. The topic summary is generated by an algorithm that uses many touch points such as average read times, reactions, number of shares, external linking and more to determine how useful a post is via a numeric ranking. The summary shows an estimated read time of the entire topic and an estimated read time using the summary, which gives your members a good idea of the time they'll save. A shorter read time will make longer topics more accessible to a greater audience. Adjusting the summary We believe that algorithms should be used to support human decisions but not override them. Those with permission can add posts from the summary if they feel they are more relevant. Likewise, posts can be removed if you think they are irrelevant. Interactions with Helpful Posts Invision Community supports a broad range of communities, including support-based and social communities. We are improving our toolset to help both. You can have helpful post-voting enabled as well as topic summaries enabled. When this is the case, the topic summary will show until the helpful post-voting meets a threshold. Once that threshold is met, the helpful post information will replace it. Of course, not all communities and not every forum will have the support features enabled, meaning the topic summary will be the only way to reduce the topic complexity. Less is more Browsing the summary gives you a concise view of the topic's journey with no distractions, a vital strategy for growth.  By allowing members to focus on the core journey, you reward the time they spend on your community and make it more accessible for those short on time. We hope you've enjoyed this feature introduction and would love to hear your thoughts! Wyświetl pełny artykuł

Just six short weeks ago, Ehren hit record on a video that changed everything for Invision Community. The blog was called "Introducing a fresh new vision for Invision Community 5," and it ripped up the rule book on what forums should look like and revealed a slick new look featuring a new forum home feed view and sidebar navigation. A lot has been discussed, but we're not even close to done! Before we bring you news of more features after Thanksgiving, I wanted to take a mid-season break to recap what we've seen so far. First up was the introduction video, which gave a broad overview of the new UI Invision Community 5 would be sporting. Ehren takes us through many new elements, including the sidebar navigation, forum feed view, simplified post view and more.     Up next was a focus on dark mode, accessibility and mobile views. Invision Community 5 features the ability to have native dark mode without additional themes or complex variables to set up. Our aim with Invision Community 5 is to hide the complexities and technology and just let you focus on creating a great community experience for your audience.     Bringing complex theming to everyone was the message in the blog talking about the new theme editor. Now, you can make wide-ranging changes to your theme without the need to edit CSS or manage HTML templates, all driven by a smart and simple interface.     Next, it was my turn to talk about a new feature. I introduced two new features designed to help those who run support-based communities. Finding the most helpful answers and identifying community experts help your members do more with less time and frustration.     Last week, Ehren demonstrated our new icon and badge builder, which is an amazingly powerful tool to produce slick and professional badges along with the ability to customize your community further with emojis and icons for menus, reactions and more. Building ways to reduce the barrier to customization has been a strong theme for Invision Community 5.     Phew! We can all agree that we've showcased a lot of impressive functionality coming with Invision Community 5 already. But what does the future hold? Lots! We have a lot of new functionality that we're putting the finishing touches on, and we can't wait to show you more. These new features further help to reduce noise in topics, make the community feel alive and bring long-needed updates to core components such as the editor. Not to mention, there is a significant update to Pages underway. We also have a lot of less flashy updates, such as the new consolidated Feature/Our Picks feature, which is now a single feature.   Feature-window.mp4   An improved Moderators Control Panel brings a more uniform experience across deleted, hidden, and content waiting to be approved.   We're still on course for a release of Invision Community in early 2024 and can't wait for you to experience the future of forums. What has been your favourite feature so far? I'd love to know; drop a comment below! Wyświetl pełny artykuł

Invision Community offers fantastic ways of customizing the user experience for your members, and today, we’re excited to introduce some new and really simple ways of customizing Invision Community 5 even further using our new icon tools.   Icon Picker Lets begin with our brand new icon picker. Containing both Font Awesome icons and emojis, the new picker allows you to easily search and assign icons to specific areas throughout your site. Lets take a look at some examples! icon-picker.mov   Navigation icons Adding icons to the navigation list has been a highly requested feature, so we're happy to announce that you can now use this new picker to do exactly that, for both the horizontal and vertical navigation panels, without needing to modify your theme.   Forum icons Uploading forum icons is a great way to personalize individual areas of your community. In the past, these icons have typically been images, uploaded via the admin panel. In addition to the upload form, the icon picker now makes it a breeze to assign icons to forums - and if a Font Awesome icon is chosen, it'll even inherit the featured forum color.   Forum Feature Color We have brought the existing forum feature color to feed view allowing for a flash of color and personalization that helps associate a color with a specific forum. The feature color pairs really well with the card image to lift the forum display.   Icon creator for badges, ranks and reactions Creating unique badges, ranks and reactions is a great way to boost activity within your community by encouraging members to share more engaging and frequent content - but designing these icons from scratch using a graphics program often comes with hurdles of its own. With our new icon creator, you can now design your own custom icons for badges, ranks and reactions straight from your Admin panel, using a combination of colors, icons and shapes. icon-creator.mov We think this new icon creator will make the rank, badges and reactions features even more accessible for everyone, allowing you to create a user experience that is uniquely yours. With Invision Community 5, bringing in customization and personalization moves beyond adding new themes. We're excited to see how you can take advantage of these new tools, and we look forward hearing your feedback in the comments below!   Wyświetl pełny artykuł

Long ago, back in the dark ages, forums used the number of posts a member made and how long ago they joined to demonstrate trust and experience. Is simply posting a lot and being a member for a long time the best way to know which community members are experts? And is there a better way? We think so.     What makes an expert, and why are they important? Community experts are the keystones to any thriving community. You probably recognise a handful in your community. They tend to be active regularly, are often the first to try and help others with their questions and help set a positive example within the community. Wouldn't it be great if newer community members could discover who these super users were a little easier? These members trying to find their feet in a new community could follow trustworthy individuals, absorb the positive tone of the community, and even get help a little quicker. In the past, forums have shown trust and experience through basic metrics like post count and the years since they joined. However, these metrics only show that the individual has been around a long time and posts a lot. It doesn't show that they are potential role models or helpful and trustworthy. Community Experts with Invision Community 5 Invision Community 5 identifies these experts through metrics such as the number of solutions they have, the volume of 'helpful' votes on their replies, the speed of answers and more. Each forum will have its own experts, so if you have a very broad community, someone who is very helpful in a particular area will show as an expert in that area only. When a member has been picked as an expert, they'll receive an email thanking them, and they can then opt-in to be shown as an expert along with a regular notification or email with any unanswered questions in forums they are experts in. I'm absolutely killing it in the Test Forum Every few months, the experts are recalculated to reflect the organic way communities grow and change. After all, there's little point in showing that a non-active member is an expert. It might even encourage new community experts to keep up the great work and remain active longer. Community experts have a badge shown with their posts, along with the option to follow them. Encouraging new members to follow trusted community members should be a core part of any community strategy. Settings and control Of course, not everyone should be labelled as a community expert, and perhaps, in very rare circumstances, an existing community expert could have a bad day and not represent the community well. Invision Community 5 gives you the ability to set which groups experts can be picked from and offers you the opportunity to block existing experts, ensuring they won't be selected again in the future. Over to you All communities have to be purposeful and provide value. That value may be in close friendships, or it may be in getting answers for problems you have. Either way, locating the most helpful members will help develop trust, provide guidance and increase knowledge within your community. For transactional communities such as support-based communities, experts are vital in providing timely answers and demonstrating credibility and expertise to others. As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Please let us know in the comments.   Wyświetl pełny artykuł