Forum Upgrade

EDIT: The forum upgrade is complete and we are back online. Be sure to check out this thread for more information on the JetNation Upgrade. Thank You!

We are taking the forums offline in a few minutes for an upgrade.  We anticipate that the forums will be back online within the hour.

Please use this time to make sure you are following JetNation on social media, or get some sleep whichever you prefer!  Here are some notes on what the new upgrade offers, and if you aren’t a member of our forums, please click the Forum link and register.  When we are back online of course.

Thank you!

There is a new release of IPB. The look and feel will be the same but there are a bunch of new features that they added. Not sure what we will implement out of this just yet but here are some of the new user-facing options:

Achievements
Achievements, badges, ranks, rules, gamification, whatever you want to call it, this is the most significant feature for Invision Community 4.6.0. This brings a whole new level of earning and showing trust to other members while gently nudging more quality contributions to your community.

Zapier Integration

This is more behind the scenes but it opens up a world of automation for us. The mod team can now get custom alerts based on things that happen on the site. We can take hot topics that get a certain # of posts and tweet them out or post them on Facebook automatically.

Web app and push notifications

There is a new mobile app through IPB. Which is good news because Tapatalk is charging us every month, and their mobile app is terrible. And it looks like only 20 people are actively using it at this point.  For this new app and push notifications there is some technical info in this link. Anyone that wants to share thoughts and feedback I am all ears:  https://invisioncommunity.com/news/invision-community/web-push-notifications-native-sharing-offline-support-r1222/

Anonymous posting

Um, this one is going to be a no for us. We could have some fun with it and maybe there would be a need for it in the Mafia Forum or something like that. Otherwise I don’t see us using this.

Quote

 

When enabled, members will see the option to post anonymously when creating or replying to content.

Author details for anonymously posted content is hidden throughout the community and instead a default profile picture and name is shown.

Total anonymity is not always desirable however and in some cases it may be necessary for trusted staff members to know who posted the content. Where allowed, these staff members will be shown an option to reveal the content author.

Anonymous posting can be enabled on a per group basis and also limited to specific forums, albums and categories etc. The ability for staff members to reveal who really posted the content is a moderator permission.

We hope this new feature is a useful addition and where appropriate makes your members feel safe or comfortable to share info they might not have otherwise.

 

Solved content
In Invision Community 4.6.0, we have rounded out our “solved” feature by allowing the feature to be enabled on a regular forum, along with notifications, statistics and more.

Show when a team member has replied
When you’re scanning a list of topics, it’s helpful to know when a community team member has replied, as these replies tend to have more authority and are more likely to resolve an issue. 4.6.0 adds a feature to show when a member of the team has replied.

There are other new features on the back end like a health dashboard and improved spam checking which will hopefully make moderating easier.

I think I should have some time this weekend to run the upgrade. It will require a little downtime but shouldn’t be too long.

Thanks!