[R]NuclearGeneral

Hey everyone, To many of you this should be no surprise, I'd like to formally re-introduce EA_2POC back to the Command & Conquer scene, this time however, he is now an official EA Los Angeles employee, and more specifically my official C&C Assistant Community Manager. After 4+ years of running this show as a solo Commander, I finally have a partner in crime I can call my official wingman. Some quick back story about EA_2POC, otherwise known as Jeff Suhr, and formerly known to the C&C community as Nukewave. Jeff started his presence in the C&C community by opening a fansite called www.cncvision.org (its currently closed due to as of yet unfounded circumstances), a site that focused on polling and collecting feedback from the C&C community at large. Jeff and I quickly established a community leader relationship and I soon discovered he had the fire and passion inside I've been looking centuries for in a Community Manager Assistant. I asked Jeff to intern with me last summer 08, and thus he became known to the community as EA_2POC. Upon a very successful and strong 3-month summer internship, Jeff was offered a full time opportunity upon graduation at Brockport University in New York where he graduated with a degree in Biology and a minor in Psychology. Hold up, how the heck does that fit this role? Maybe the Psychology aspect does =) The Command & Conquer team, the EALA studio, and especially myself are proud to welcome Jeff "EA_2POC" Suhr back to the official front lines of the Command & Conquer world to serve as your Assistant Community Manager, ah hell lets the drop the Assistant term and give 2POC the prop up he deserves, your 2nd in arms, your Lieutenant Community Manager, that sounds better. As the days, weeks, and months move forward, you will see 2POC making an increasingly active presence on the message boards. One of his primary responsibilities is ensuring you are being heard every day and further ensuring your voice screams through the hallways and cubes here at EALA and throughout our C&C Development Team. Please join me in welcoming back, EA_2POC. Do take his words and statements as an official voice of EA and C&C. Welcome back, Commander! -APOC http://i41.tinypic.com/ejaiwg.jpg View the full article on CnC.com

Hey everyone, To many of you this should be no surprise, I'd like to formally re-introduce EA_2POC back to the Command & Conquer scene, this time however, he is now an official EA Los Angeles employee, and more specifically my official C&C Assistant Community Manager. After 4+ years of running this show as a solo Commander, I finally have a partner in crime I can call my official wingman. Some quick back story about EA_2POC, otherwise known as Jeff Suhr, and formerly known to the C&C community as Nukewave. Jeff started his presence in the C&C community by opening a fansite called www.cncvision.org (its currently closed due to as of yet unfounded circumstances), a site that focused on polling and collecting feedback from the C&C community at large. Jeff and I quickly established a community leader relationship and I soon discovered he had the fire and passion inside I've been looking centuries for in a Community Manager Assistant. I asked Jeff to intern with me last summer 08, and thus he became known to the community as EA_2POC. Upon a very successful and strong 3-month summer internship, Jeff was offered a full time opportunity upon graduation at Brockport University in New York where he graduated with a degree in Biology and a minor in Psychology. Hold up, how the heck does that fit this role? Maybe the Psychology aspect does =) The Command & Conquer team, the EALA studio, and especially myself are proud to welcome Jeff "EA_2POC" Suhr back to the official front lines of the Command & Conquer world to serve as your Assistant Community Manager, ah hell lets the drop the Assistant term and give 2POC the prop up he deserves, your 2nd in arms, your Lieutenant Community Manager, that sounds better. As the days, weeks, and months move forward, you will see 2POC making an increasingly active presence on the message boards. One of his primary responsibilities is ensuring you are being heard every day and further ensuring your voice screams through the hallways and cubes here at EALA and throughout our C&C Development Team. Please join me in welcoming back, EA_2POC. Do take his words and statements as an official voice of EA and C&C. Welcome back, Commander! -APOC http://i41.tinypic.com/ejaiwg.jpg View the full article on CnC.com

The system we use to generate invoice notices, reminders, and charges experienced an error in processing accounts today. This error caused some clients to receive multiple invoice notices or reminders in their email. We sincerely apologize for the multiple emails in your inbox and will work to keep this issue from happening in the future. A few clients may have seen multiple charges to their credit cards. These charges have already been voided and will not post to your credit card statement as a charge. Please email billing@invisionpower.com if you have any questions. View the full article at IPS

I just wanted to update everyone on our convertor services. We recently updated the convertor information page on our web site to try to clarify some confusion. Note: There is a free conversion service sale going on right now so just keep in mind that the paid services I mention here do not apply until that sale ends. http://forums.invisionpower.com/public/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif We have two types of conversion services: free and paid. Our free conversion service is a pack of convertor scripts you can download and upload into your IPB directory. You simply run the convertor and it walks you through the process. As IPB3 is very new only a few free convertors have been made but we are adding more over the next few weeks. The vBulletin convertor was recently updated so administrators converting from that software will not lose their links from all of their existing topics. This means that search engines or other sites linking to your existing topics will be automatically redirected to the new topic IDs in IPB once converted. We are also now supporting conversion from vBulletin blog and gallery data where applicable. Finally, the SMF free convertor is nearly done and will be made available on the site as soon as it's ready. We also have a paid conversion service. You can have us convert many database types to IPB for a fee of $60 (including free ones if you prefer to have us do it). The list is on our convertor information page. Again, the $60 fee is waived until sale expires! If you do not see your software on the list, or you have a custom database that you would like converted, just contact us for a quote. Thanks everyone! View the full article at IPS

I just wanted to update everyone on our convertor services. We recently updated the convertor information page on our web site to try to clarify some confusion. Note: There is a free conversion service sale going on right now so just keep in mind that the paid services I mention here do not apply until that sale ends. :) We have two types of conversion services: free and paid. Our free conversion service is a pack of convertor scripts you can download and upload into your IPB directory. You simply run the convertor and it walks you through the process. As IPB3 is very new only a few free convertors have been made but we are adding more over the next few weeks. The vBulletin convertor was recently updated so administrators converting from that software will not lose their links from all of their existing topics. This means that search engines or other sites linking to your existing topics will be automatically redirected to the new topic IDs in IPB once converted. We are also now supporting conversion from vBulletin blog and gallery data where applicable. Finally, the SMF free convertor is nearly done and will be made available on the site as soon as it's ready. We also have a paid conversion service. You can have us convert many database types to IPB for a fee of $60 (including free ones if you prefer to have us do it). The list is on our convertor information page. Again, the $60 fee is waived until sale expires! If you do not see your software on the list, or you have a custom database that you would like converted, just contact us for a quote. Thanks everyone! Update: The SMF free convertor is now available on the web site. Next on the free convertor list is Woltlab. View the full article at IPS

IP.Board 3.0.0 and Applications launch has been going great so far. We hope everyone who has already upgraded their installs to IPB3 is enjoying the new software. Welcome to all the recent new customers and converts to IPS software and hosting. Everyone here hopes you enjoy your experience! Join in the community, get help from other customers or jump in and offer help yourself. You never know what interesting tips or resources you might find. As I am sure most everyone has noticed, we also launched our new web site on invisionpower.com and the feedback there has been wonderful. We know there is some content missing and some broken links here and there but we are working on it. Also, the client area and order process is working but might not be very pretty in a few places http://forums.invisionpower.com/public/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif so bear with us there. If you find anything wrong with the site please use the Tracker here to report. There is a category for the new web site. A quick reminder to check IP.Board 3.0.0's requirements before attempting to install or upgrade. We will be maintaining the 2.3.x branch for those on outdated hosting providers who have not upgraded their server software. We know that many customers are waiting on the Subscriptions Manager to be released so they can upgrade to IPB3. We sincerely apologize for this delay. The Subscriptions Manager update to be compatible with IPB3 is currently our number one priority. It is very close now. There will be an announcement as soon as it's ready. Finally, we are working on 3.0.1 to fix any issues being reported. So far (knock on plastic wood-like composite) we have had no critical issues that impact huge numbers of installs but there are always issues here and there that impact installs on specific scenarios. Since 3.0.0 is brand new and a huge upgrade from 2.3.6 we do expect a few point releases to iron out any issue that come up from 3.0.0's first wide-spread usage. But don't worry, upgraded from 3.0.0 to 3.0.1 will be very easy. Thanks again to everyone! View the full article at IPS

IP.Board 3.0.0 and Applications launch has been going great so far. We hope everyone who has already upgraded their installs to IPB3 is enjoying the new software. Welcome to all the recent new customers and converts to IPS software and hosting. Everyone here hopes you enjoy your experience! Join in the community, get help from other customers or jump in and offer help yourself. You never know what interesting tips or resources you might find. As I am sure most everyone has noticed, we also launched our new web site on invisionpower.com and the feedback there has been wonderful. We know there is some content missing and some broken links here and there but we are working on it. Also, the client area and order process is working but might not be very pretty in a few places :) so bear with us there. If you find anything wrong with the site please use the Tracker here to report. There is a category for the new web site. A quick reminder to check IP.Board 3.0.0's requirements before attempting to install or upgrade. We will be maintaining the 2.3.x branch for those on outdated hosting providers who have not upgraded their server software. We know that many customers are waiting on the Subscriptions Manager to be released so they can upgrade to IPB3. We sincerely apologize for this delay. The Subscriptions Manager update to be compatible with IPB3 is currently our number one priority. It is very close now. There will be an announcement as soon as it's ready. Finally, we are working on 3.0.1 to fix any issues being reported. So far (knock on plastic wood-like composite) we have had no critical issues that impact huge numbers of installs but there are always issues here and there that impact installs on specific scenarios. Since 3.0.0 is brand new and a huge upgrade from 2.3.6 we do expect a few point releases to iron out any issue that come up from 3.0.0's first wide-spread usage. But don't worry, upgraded from 3.0.0 to 3.0.1 will be very easy. Thanks again to everyone! View the full article at IPS

We are pleased to announce Invision Power Board 3.0.0 and its Applications have been released. This is the first supported release of Invision Power Board 3.0.0! We would like to thank everyone who has helped beta test the product so we can release as stable a product as possible today. Products Released [*]Invision Power Board 3.0.0 [*]Invision Power Gallery 3.0.0 [*]Invision Power Blog 2.0.0 [*]Invision Power Downloads 2.0.0 [*]Invision Power Converge 1.1.0 Please note that this is the very first supported release of these products. As with any large software product, it can take several maintenance releases to work out most of the remaining bugs or oddities left in the software which are only discovered when many thousands of installs are done. We had an extensive beta period and a staggered launch of IP.Board 3.0.0 to catch most issues. Initial feedback on 3.0.0's first supported release has been great but, even so, we do expect to have a 3.0.1 release in the next couple weeks. Downloading and Installing You can download all products you have a license for in the IPS client area. There are no upgrade packs as this update requires you upload all files in the download. Be sure to follow the install upgrade instructions. Remember that any skins, modifications, graphics, etc. on your version 2.x IPB will not work on IP.Board 3.0. You will not lose any posts or member information in the upgrade. Technical Support Technical support is now available for IP.Board 3.0.0 and the Applications. Please be patient during this initial launch phase as response times may be longer than normal due to the increased volume of requests. Phone support will also be delayed. Important: If you would like our staff to install or upgrade for you, please be aware that there can be delays of many days for install or upgrade services during this initial launch phase. Whenever possible, please consider performing the install or upgrade yourself to save time waiting. Above all: enjoy the new products! We have worked hard on the updates and wish you continued success with your online communities! Subscriptions Manager and MS-SQL Database The subscriptions manager and MS-SQL database driver are not yet available. They will be released separately very soon. Our apologies for the delay. Rest assured we are making these releases a priority. New IPS Web Site We are also launching our new company web site on invisionpower.com today. Please forgive any navigation issues on the site while we apply the new content. View the full article at IPS

An important aspect to many webpages is the media embedded into the webpage. It's rare to come across a web page that has no images on it, after all. For this reason, we have included a media management tool in CCS to facilitate adding, organizing, and otherwise managing media for your pages. A word about security Security is a very important concern when working with files and folders on the filesystem. For this reason, CCS only allows image uploads to occur through the admin control panel and only allows file management operations within a directory defined by editing a file you must upload to your site through FTP. Through these restrictions, if an attacker were ever to gain access to your admin control panel they can only delete and upload within the directory you have previously defined (which can only be set through FTP). They would also only be able to upload image files, thereby limiting any damage that can be done. You can, however, upload whatever files you wish through FTP and (if you set permissions appropriately on the files) delete and move those files through the admin control panel. This is a compromise we have made to help ensure we protect your site (and server), however, as most administrators will be primarily managing images through the media manager we feel the compromise will not be much of an inconvenience. What the media manager can do The media manager allows administrators to manage files on the server (within a specified directory structure). The administrator can create, rename, move, and delete folders at will within this directory. The administrator can also upload image files to any of these folders, delete the files within these directories, and move the files around as needed. It is a really simple tool designed to help you accomplish a really simple task - uploading, previewing, moving and removing images you might need to embed within your web pages. The media manager manages real files on the file system, so it is presented in the admin control panel separately from the page manager (which handles virtual folders and pages that do not actually exist on the disk). Conclusion We realize many administrators are fine with uploading the images and other media they may need for their site through FTP: but for those occasional instances where you just need to quickly upload an image or two while building a web page - or you just need to grab the full URL to an image because you forgot it - you may find that using the media manager can save you a lot of time. It is a simple tool, with a simple and familiar approach, that can save you a lot of time in these very common instances. No video demo for this one... no one would be too excited seeing image files being moved around. http://forums.invisionpower.com/public/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif View the full article at IPS

An important aspect to many webpages is the media embedded into the webpage. It's rare to come across a web page that has no images on it, after all. For this reason, we have included a media management tool in CCS to facilitate adding, organizing, and otherwise managing media for your pages. A word about security Security is a very important concern when working with files and folders on the filesystem. For this reason, CCS only allows image uploads to occur through the admin control panel and only allows file management operations within a directory defined by editing a file you must upload to your site through FTP. Through these restrictions, if an attacker were ever to gain access to your admin control panel they can only delete and upload within the directory you have previously defined (which can only be set through FTP). They would also only be able to upload image files, thereby limiting any damage that can be done. You can, however, upload whatever files you wish through FTP and (if you set permissions appropriately on the files) delete and move those files through the admin control panel. This is a compromise we have made to help ensure we protect your site (and server), however, as most administrators will be primarily managing images through the media manager we feel the compromise will not be much of an inconvenience. What the media manager can do The media manager allows administrators to manage files on the server (within a specified directory structure). The administrator can create, rename, move, and delete folders at will within this directory. The administrator can also upload image files to any of these folders, delete the files within these directories, and move the files around as needed. It is a really simple tool designed to help you accomplish a really simple task - uploading, previewing, moving and removing images you might need to embed within your web pages. The media manager manages real files on the file system, so it is presented in the admin control panel separately from the page manager (which handles virtual folders and pages that do not actually exist on the disk). Conclusion We realize many administrators are fine with uploading the images and other media they may need for their site through FTP: but for those occasional instances where you just need to quickly upload an image or two while building a web page - or you just need to grab the full URL to an image because you forgot it - you may find that using the media manager can save you a lot of time. It is a simple tool, with a simple and familiar approach, that can save you a lot of time in these very common instances. No video demo for this one... no one would be too excited seeing image files being moved around. :) View the full article at IPS

The final and supported version of IP.Board 3.0.0 along with its applications (Blog/Gallery/Downloads) is nearly here! We are happy to announce our last license and conversion sale before IP.Board 3.0.0 is released. IP.Board Standard License Sale Starting now and ending June 30, 2009 at 5:00 pm EDT the price of an IP.Board Standard License will be reduced from $149.99 to $129.99 for all new orders. The 6-month renewal price will remain the same. Free Conversion Service If you are currently using a different forum software, now is the time to switch to the web's most advanced community software without any work on your part! Our staff will convert your database to IP.Board at no cost to you. This is a savings off the normal $60.00 conversion fee! This applies to basic conversions from the software listed on the conversion information page. To take advantage of this offer, just email accounts@invisionpower.com by the end of the sale and our conversion team will take care of your database conversion for you. You will need to have an active IP.Board license to take advantage of this offer. If your software is not listed on the conversion information page, we can still convert your software as a custom conversion. Just contact sales for a quote or more information. Please email sales@invisionpower.com if you have any questions. Thank you! Scheduling Note Because of the tremendous increase in conversion requests over the last two weeks, our conversions staff may work with you to schedule a general time frame to perform the conversion service. You will have a single person to work with to arrange your conversion to make the process as easy as possible. Also, when contacting about a conversion, please specify if you want to convert to 2.3.6 or wait for 3.0.0 to be released before proceeding. Also, be sure to get your request in as soon as possible. Because IPB3 final is very close, we want to be sure all conversion requests under this sale are scheduled before the rush of requests come in after IPB3 is released. View the full article at IPS

The demo system for our software has been updated to include IP.Board 3.0.0 along with Gallery, Downloads, and Blog. This is a great way to try out IP.Board 3 if you have not yet wanted to try an RC release or if you are not currently an IPS client and are considering a purchase. There is a limit to the number of active demo accounts that can be online at one time so if you are unable to sign up now please do try again later. Thanks! View the full article at IPS

The demo system for our software has been updated to include IP.Board 3.0.0 along with Gallery, Downloads, and Blog. This is a great way to try out IP.Board 3 if you have not yet wanted to try an RC release or if you are not currently an IPS client and are considering a purchase. There is a limit to the number of active demo accounts that can be online at one time so if you are unable to sign up now please do try again later. Thanks! View the full article at IPS

The core of the CCS application centers around allowing you to create pages for your website. The way you create pages and the types of pages you create will be specific to your site, however the process is the same. One administrator may want to build the full front of their website using CCS, while another administrator may want to add some pages within the forums that are not there by default. Both scenarios can be covered by CCS. The page manager interface looks similar to a computer folder view: you are presented with folders and files in a directory-style listing. You can create folders and subfolders, rename them, delete them, empty them, and move them around as needed. You can edit, rename, delete and move files within these folders as well. There is no built in limit to the number of folders or the directory tree depth imposed by CCS. There are three page types that you can create: HTML, Javascript, and CSS. Javascript and CSS files are pretty straightforward - the main difference from HTML pages being that when you call to one of these files through a script, link, or import tag in an HTML document, CCS will output the correct HTTP header for the content type being served. Actual pages can be edited as raw HTML, bbcode, or PHP; allowing you to do practically anything with your pages. You could make your page entirely dynamic, making use of IP.Board's database abstraction layer to retrieve data from the database, using the PHP page type. Or you could make a quick Terms of Service page to display to users using only the bbcode WYSIWYG editor. You can enter the actual filename, and a friendly name to describe the page. The folder and filename are combined to create the URL to reach the page, described later in this blog entry. You can also define the meta keywords and description tags when editing the page. You can utilize page templates to make creating and editing pages simpler. We will be discussing page templates in a future blog entry, but in essence you would create a page template that defines the basic HTML structure, and then when adding a page you select the template you wish to use, select whether you want to import the template or just edit the page content itself, and the CCS will then be able to utilize pre-designed page templates to make page deployment much easier, faster, and more consistent. Pages can be cached, helping to reduce overhead for pages that should be relatively static for all viewers. If your pages are very dynamic (for instance, they use a lot of feed or plugin blocks where content will differ from user to user) you should be careful regarding page caching. You wouldn't want an administrator to trigger some piece of the page to be recached with elevated permissions, for instance, showing topics a guest user wouldn't normally be able to view. If your pages are mostly static, however, pages can be built once, cached, and then served from cache on subsequent views. Remember that blocks can also be independently cached, so you can have relatively static blocks cached while leaving the page itself uncached (it will still used the cached HTML for blocks that specify to do so, and use dynamic HTML for blocks that have disabled caching). When you enable page caching, the entire page output is cached. You can also define the permission masks needed to access a page, or allow all users to access the page. Using this, you can create moderator guidelines for your moderating team, or a contact information page for administrators, for example. Actually accessing the page is an important matter, and many users will want to utilize friendly urls for this. There are many options built into CCS to handle this for you, which we will likely go over in more detail in a future blog entry. If you are accessing CCS through IP.Board, then CCS uses the built in friendly url functionality in IP.Board to generate friendly URLs (if enabled). Most people, however, will likely take our included index.php file, edit the path to their forums within it, and place this index.php somewhere else on the server. Using this method, you could place the website pages in a root directory of your domain, and have the forums contained within a /forums folder. You would then be able to manage your entire website, create virtual directories and pages, and more right in your IP.Board admin control panel easily. If your server supports mod_rewrite, you can create a .htaccess file and place it in the same directory as the index.php file provided with CCS, eliminating the /index.php/ from the URL entirely. Ultimately, you can define the urls entirely through the admin control panel by creating folders, defining the page names, and placing the pages within folders as you see fit. As a traditional web server would do, if you visit a virtual folder but do not specify the file, an index.html will be looked for in that folder (you can change the file you wish to load by default in the settings). If the user requests a file that does not exist, a 404.html file will be looked for instead (again, the file is configurable in the settings). Nothing in the system requires you to use extensions, or requires extensions, when used, to be of a certain type. You could give your pages any extension you wish, or none at all (making pages appear to be "folders"). The system is extremely configurable to allow you to create pages for your site the way you want, and to appear in any way that you want. We've done our best to limit any restrictions in place so that you can define the website any way that you choose. Once you start creating pages, you'll be amazed at how simple and versatile the system really is to use. View the full article at IPS

The core of the CCS application centers around allowing you to create pages for your website. The way you create pages and the types of pages you create will be specific to your site, however the process is the same. One administrator may want to build the full front of their website using CCS, while another administrator may want to add some pages within the forums that are not there by default. Both scenarios can be covered by CCS. The page manager interface looks similar to a computer folder view: you are presented with folders and files in a directory-style listing. You can create folders and subfolders, rename them, delete them, empty them, and move them around as needed. You can edit, rename, delete and move files within these folders as well. There is no built in limit to the number of folders or the directory tree depth imposed by CCS. There are three page types that you can create: HTML, Javascript, and CSS. Javascript and CSS files are pretty straightforward - the main difference from HTML pages being that when you call to one of these files through a script, link, or import tag in an HTML do******ent, CCS will output the correct HTTP header for the content type being served. Actual pages can be edited as raw HTML, bbcode, or PHP; allowing you to do practically anything with your pages. You could make your page entirely dynamic, making use of IP.Board's database abstraction layer to retrieve data from the database, using the PHP page type. Or you could make a quick Terms of Service page to display to users using only the bbcode WYSIWYG editor. You can enter the actual filename, and a friendly name to describe the page. The folder and filename are combined to create the URL to reach the page, described later in this blog entry. You can also define the meta keywords and description tags when editing the page. You can utilize page templates to make creating and editing pages simpler. We will be discussing page templates in a future blog entry, but in essence you would create a page template that defines the basic HTML structure, and then when adding a page you select the template you wish to use, select whether you want to import the template or just edit the page content itself, and the CCS will then be able to utilize pre-designed page templates to make page deployment much easier, faster, and more consistent. Pages can be cached, helping to reduce overhead for pages that should be relatively static for all viewers. If your pages are very dynamic (for instance, they use a lot of feed or plugin blocks where content will differ from user to user) you should be careful regarding page caching. You wouldn't want an administrator to trigger some piece of the page to be recached with elevated permissions, for instance, showing topics a guest user wouldn't normally be able to view. If your pages are mostly static, however, pages can be built once, cached, and then served from cache on subsequent views. Remember that blocks can also be independently cached, so you can have relatively static blocks cached while leaving the page itself uncached (it will still used the cached HTML for blocks that specify to do so, and use dynamic HTML for blocks that have disabled caching). When you enable page caching, the entire page output is cached. You can also define the permission masks needed to access a page, or allow all users to access the page. Using this, you can create moderator guidelines for your moderating team, or a contact information page for administrators, for example. Actually accessing the page is an important matter, and many users will want to utilize friendly urls for this. There are many options built into CCS to handle this for you, which we will likely go over in more detail in a future blog entry. If you are accessing CCS through IP.Board, then CCS uses the built in friendly url functionality in IP.Board to generate friendly URLs (if enabled). Most people, however, will likely take our included index.php file, edit the path to their forums within it, and place this index.php somewhere else on the server. Using this method, you could place the website pages in a root directory of your domain, and have the forums contained within a /forums folder. You would then be able to manage your entire website, create virtual directories and pages, and more right in your IP.Board admin control panel easily. If your server supports mod_rewrite, you can create a .htaccess file and place it in the same directory as the index.php file provided with CCS, eliminating the /index.php/ from the URL entirely. Ultimately, you can define the urls entirely through the admin control panel by creating folders, defining the page names, and placing the pages within folders as you see fit. As a traditional web server would do, if you visit a virtual folder but do not specify the file, an index.html will be looked for in that folder (you can change the file you wish to load by default in the settings). If the user requests a file that does not exist, a 404.html file will be looked for instead (again, the file is configurable in the settings). Nothing in the system requires you to use extensions, or requires extensions, when used, to be of a certain type. You could give your pages any extension you wish, or none at all (making pages appear to be "folders"). The system is extremely configurable to allow you to create pages for your site the way you want, and to appear in any way that you want. We've done our best to limit any restrictions in place so that you can define the website any way that you choose. Once you start creating pages, you'll be amazed at how simple and versatile the system really is to use. View the full article at IPS

This is the first blog entry going over specific features in the new Community Content System. See the full announcement for more information: http://forums.invisionpower.com/topic/2856...content-system/ Our Community Content System allows administrators to create blocks that can be used anywhere within the CCS framework and anywhere within the forums, blogs, galleries, or any other IPB applications. Blocks are small content includes that can contain practically anything. CCS allows you to create 3 main types of blocks. Custom Blocks You can create custom blocks which can contain anything you want. CCS allows you to edit custom blocks in raw HTML mode, bbcode mode (using the RTE from the forums), and raw PHP mode. The first two methods are pretty self explanatory - what you enter is what is displayed. The raw PHP block mode allows you to enter PHP code (you simply print or echo the output) and the result will be displayed where the block is set on the page. Using raw PHP mode, you can extend the system quite a bit to accomplish whatever you want. Plugin Blocks Plugin blocks allow the administrator to select an available plugin to include. Examples that are included with CCS by default include: [*]Mini-calendar [*]Poll [*]Welcome block [*]Online friends [*]Online users [*]Watched content We should note that these plugins are completely abstracted from the system, so adding new plugins does not require any file modifications. You simply upload a new folder to the appropriate location, import an XML file in the admin control panel, and the block is ready for use! We expect modification authors will create some interesting plugins once they get their hands on the framework. Feed Blocks Feed blocks allow administrators to create "feeds" of data from their forums (or from an external RSS feed) to display. Feed blocks, like plugin blocks, work through a plug-n-play setup whereby you upload a file that defines certain methods and CCS will automatically detect the new feed type and allow administrators to create feeds from other sources. Default feed source options include: [*]RSS [*]Forums [*]Members [*]Calendar [*]Blogs [*]Downloads [*]Gallery Each feed type can have multiple sources - for instance, the forum feed type allows you to pull forums (e.g. to create a forum "tree"), topics (e.g. for a "most viewed topics" block), and replies (e.g. a latest replies block). Feed types can define filtering, sorting and limiting options. A few examples you can easily implement with no coding knowledge required: [*]Featured blog entry block [*]Latest topics block [*]Top posters block [*]Random gallery images block [*]Upcoming calendar events block [*]Latest news from CNN Most feed types allow ordering by a date field (e.g. "latest"-style blocks), ordering by "random", and ordering by other fields specific to the feed type and source. It would be difficult to detail each possible configuration in a single blog entry, so we encourage you to simply look for yourself when CCS is available. There are several other block-specific options you might be interested in. For instance, each block can be cached (or not) independently, and you can elect to hide blocks entirely if there is no content to show (rather than seeing an empty block). Each block creates a skin template unique to it, so you can edit each block's skin template independently of any other block for full customization. Blocks are created through a wizard interface, allowing us to step you through the process entirely. Once created, however, you can quickly edit the template without relaunching the entire wizard process, allowing for faster customization of your site. The wizard interface allows the block process to step you through creation and present you with options specific to the block you are defining. Additionally, blocks are not restricted to the CCS framework. Blocks are parsed through a template plugin tag, which means that you can add a block to any skin template in IPB. If you created an RSS feed block from your website, for example, you could easily display this block right on your forum index. Or you could create a block with advertisements in it, and use the IPB skin system to display this block anywhere within IPB. Blocks use the full power of the skin system, so you can embed blocks within blocks, use template conditionals, and do anything else that you can do within any other skin template. This means you can even add hook points in your blocks, and use the new IP.Board 3.0's hook features to extend blocks even further! With all of this in mind, we believe you will find there is no end to the amount of customization that can be acheived through the blocks functionality provided by CCS. View the full article at IPS

Introducing Community Content System Many clients have expressed interest in tools that would allow them to extend IP.Board's traditional forum community functionality by providing methods of creating new pages within the IP.Board framework. Uses for such a system span from a simple custom portal all the way through to a complete website built utilizing IP.Board's powerful backend codebase. When your community and site systems are truly integrated, single sign on and a matching website/forum theme become much easier. Our new Community Content System lets you do all of this and more. CCS is a new application that allows you to create content for your site. Blog entries over the next several days will discuss some of its powerful features in more detail along with examples showing you just how easy it is to create website pages and other content just by clicking through the admin control panel. For now in this introduction, here is a brief overview of its main features: [*]Page Templates If you are creating many pages for your website you will find that they generally follow a similar structure each time. By utilizing page templates, you can create templates complete with the full functionality of our skin system, including use of template conditionals and plugins. You can create the HTML structure once, and reuse it for some or all of your pages. Novice users can type in normal HTML code or power users can choose to use the powerful skin tags. [*]Page Manager The core of CCS: this tool allows you to create pages, plain and simple. No fancy terminology or new methods to learn. A wizard will guide you through creating your pages, and allow you to configure things like permissions for who can view the page, which page template to use, and more. Pages can be edited as raw HTML, raw PHP, or through our traditional WYSIWYG editor using BBCode. You can also set page-types as JavaScript or CSS and the system will automatically detect those special types. [*]Media Manager A tool to allow you to manage images and other media for your site. You can define the root path to your file storage directory, and then create folders and upload image files within that directory via the ACP. You can move and delete files and folders from the ACP as well. [*]Block Manager An extremely powerful tool that allows you to create "blocks" for your pages. Blocks are inserted utilizing template plugins so you can insert blocks anywhere in the CCS content or even anywhere in your forum community using the skin manager in the admin control panel. This means that content blocks you create in CCS are not just limited to that application! There are three types of blocks you will work with: [*]Custom - create blocks by editing BBCode (using our WYSIWYG editor), raw HTML, or raw PHP. Input any information you like. [*]Plugins - some blocks require code to execute in order to determine what should be shown. For instance, you may wish to show a mini-calendar on one of your pages or a login box so users can login right from your home page. Plugin blocks allow developers to create blocks that can easily plugin to the system without having to create code modifications. [*]Feeds - not just limited to RSS. You can create "feeds" of almost any type of data - forums, topics, replies, calendar events, blog entries, gallery images, download manager files, and of course traditional RSS imports. A wizard will guide you through creating these feeds, allowing you to specify how the feed should be pulled (do you want to show the last 5 gallery images? what about a random sampling of forum topics? how about all topics from the visitor's friends list since their last visit?) to make it simpler for you to define the block. The system is very flexible, allowing you to do nearly anything you want, while at the same time providing a simple user interface and wizard-based approach for creating content to keep things easy for newer users. Power users can ignore all the special features and just type in raw-PHP if they prefer. The choice is up to the administrator. The CCS supports friendly urls (you define the folders and page names while creating pages), and does not require the page output to be accessed through your forum directory. This means you can have your community at example.com/forums but your main web site can show under just example.com easily. You can use IP.Board's skin system (inheriting the forum skin) or you can elect to create raw pages without inheriting any CSS, wrapper, or JavaScript from IP.Board. Pricing and Availability The CCS was developed completely separately from the IPB3 and applications process allowing us to develop CCS without any delay in IPB3's development time. As such, we are happy to say we will be able to release CCS about two weeks after IPB3's first supported release! Pricing will be announced at that time. We are sure there will be many questions about the CCS and we welcome them. Over the next several days there will be blog entries on our company blog going into greater detail on each of the core features of CCS. Hopefully all of your detailed questions will be answered then. Please accept our apologies if we may sometimes ask you to wait for the next blog update before answering your questions. Thank you! View the full article at IPS

We are pleased to announce the second release candidate of Invision Power Board 3.0.0 is now available. This is the second release candidate release so please take a moment and read this entire announcement before downloading. The second release candidates for IP.Blog, IP.Gallery, and IP.Downloads are also now available. What is a Release Candidate? A release candidate is a version of the software between the beta phase and a final release. With the second release candidate of IP.Board 3.0.0 you can safely assume that we consider the software stable enough to use on your live community. There will be bugs and issues but it is our belief that any issues that come up should not impact your overall ability to manage your community. Keep this in mind as you make your decision to upgrade to IP.Board 3.0.0 RC 2 and only upgrade if you are comfortable working around any possible issues that are present. Technical Support and Service IP.Board 3.0.0 RC 2 can be considered safe to use on a live site but it is not quite the final version of the software just yet. We want to give those comfortable upgrading to an RC release the chance to do so and report issues before we encourage everyone to upgrade. Technical support and service is not offered during the RC stage but of course will be available when the final version is announced. Download IP.Board 3.0.0 RC 2 along with IP.Blog, IP.Gallery, and IP.Downloads To download, log in to your client area. You will see the RC download information by clicking into your downloads then development releases. As stated above, technical support is not available so please only download if you are comfortable testing software. Please keep an eye on our announcements forum and company blog over the next couple weeks for updates. Thanks! View the full article at IPS

The second release candidate of IP.Board 3.0.0 is nearly ready for release. We are just going through the final stages of internal testing and then it will be made available. Just to remind everyone of the previous blog entry which contains various FAQs and information on release candidates. This release is a huge improvement from RC1 just a few short weeks ago. Since RC1 was the first release we declared "safe" to use many more people installed the software. As we expected, many bugs were reported which we were able to address. The larger install base for RC1 means a more stable RC2 and, of course, an even more stable final release. Thank you again to everyone who has been reporting bugs and issues! You will be able to upgrade from RC1 to RC2 if you need to. When reporting any issues in RC2 please be sure to indicate if it's a fresh install or upgrade (and what version upgraded from). Looking forward to RC2 and final release. Keep an eye on our blog and announcements forum for lots of activity over the next couple weeks. Thanks! View the full article at IPS

By popular request, we have extended the due date for submissions for the Skin Design Contest to June 15, 2009. Take this extra time to make your submissions even better. We all look forward to seeing them! View the full article at IPS

We are pleased to announce the first release candidates of IP.Blog, IP.Gallery, and IP.Downloads for IP.Board 3.0.0 are now available. What is a Release Candidate? A release candidate is a version of the software between the beta phase and a final release. With the release candidate of these applications, you can safely assume that we consider the software stable enough to use on your live community. There will be bugs and issues but it is our belief that any issues that come up should not impact your overall ability to manage your community. Keep this in mind as you make your decision to upgrade and only upgrade if you are comfortable working around any possible issues that are present. We will of course fix any issues that come up in the final release. Technical Support and Service These release candidates can be considered safe to use on a live site but it is not quite the final version of the software just yet. We want to give those comfortable upgrading to an RC release the chance to do so and report issues before we encourage everyone to upgrade. Technical support and service is not offered during the RC stage but of course will be available when the final version is announced. Downloading To download, log in to your client area. You will see the RC download information by clicking into your downloads. As stated above, technical support is not available so please only download if you are comfortable testing software. View the full article at IPS

Hey everyone, We just pushed some technical changes to the forums. Lets cross our fingers that our few changes didn't inhibit any other functionality yet again, lol. You gotta laugh it off sometimes. Here are the changes that have just been pushed: Signature Images are now limited to 440 x 100 Yes, we turned images back on recently, but it also came with an unfortunate price where many people created signature images at extreme heights. To avert this and make the system more unified, we've standardized all signature images to a resolution of 440 x 100. You can make your sig image smaller than that if you'd like, but you cannot make it larger. If you make a signature image that is larger, it will CROP any part of the image that is larger than 440 x 100. Just keep your sig to 440x100 and you'll be good to go! This resolution is in line with many other forum signature image limits. Doubled field character limits for location and web address In our previous update we constrained the character limit a little too much. The amount allowed now should be plenty for your website addresses, etc. Search and Sent Messages pages fixed You should be able to search and check your sent private messages just fine now. Apologies for the inconvenience on these features from our last push. They are no longer busted! Now you guys can finally see my Nod Twitter Bird, he is lethal, watch out! -APOC View the full article on CnC.com

Hey everyone, We just pushed some technical changes to the forums. Lets cross our fingers that our few changes didn't inhibit any other functionality yet again, lol. You gotta laugh it off sometimes. Here are the changes that have just been pushed: Signature Images are now limited to 440 x 100 Yes, we turned images back on recently, but it also came with an unfortunate price where many people created signature images at extreme heights. To avert this and make the system more unified, we've standardized all signature images to a resolution of 440 x 100. You can make your sig image smaller than that if you'd like, but you cannot make it larger. If you make a signature image that is larger, it will CROP any part of the image that is larger than 440 x 100. Just keep your sig to 440x100 and you'll be good to go! This resolution is in line with many other forum signature image limits. Doubled field character limits for location and web address In our previous update we constrained the character limit a little too much. The amount allowed now should be plenty for your website addresses, etc. Search and Sent Messages pages fixed You should be able to search and check your sent private messages just fine now. Apologies for the inconvenience on these features from our last push. They are no longer busted! Now you guys can finally see my Nod Twitter Bird, he is lethal, watch out! -APOC View the full article on CnC.com

Hey everyone, We just pushed some technical changes to the forums. Lets cross our fingers that our few changes didn't inhibit any other functionality yet again, lol. You gotta laugh it off sometimes. Here are the changes that have just been pushed: Signature Images are now limited to 440 x 100 Yes, we turned images back on recently, but it also came with an unfortunate price where many people created signature images at extreme heights. To avert this and make the system more unified, we've standardized all signature images to a resolution of 440 x 100. You can make your sig image smaller than that if you'd like, but you cannot make it larger. If you make a signature image that is larger, it will CROP any part of the image that is larger than 440 x 100. Just keep your sig to 440x100 and you'll be good to go! This resolution is in line with many other forum signature image limits. Doubled field character limits for location and web address In our previous update we constrained the character limit a little too much. The amount allowed now should be plenty for your website addresses, etc. Search and Sent Messages pages fixed You should be able to search and check your sent private messages just fine now. Apologies for the inconvenience on these features from our last push. They are no longer busted! Now you guys can finally see my Nod Twitter Bird, he is lethal, watch out! -APOC View the full article on CnC.com

File Name: Custom Pages v4.2 File Submitter: NuclearGeneral File Submitted: 18 May 2009 File Updated: 26 Jul 2009 File Category: IPB Mods Resource Type: IPB2 Application Module Version: 4.2 Original Mod Name: Custom Pages 4.2 By Pantalaimon Mod Name: Custom Pages 4.2 Fresh Install By NuclearGeneral Mod Description: This is an updated version of the original mod "Custom Pages v4.2 by Pantalaimon. I have included every file needed to install and Run Custom Pages 4.2 on your IP.Board 2.1.x, 2.2.x, & 2.3.x. ****Available Download Locations: THIS MOD IS ONLY TO BE FOUND AT INVISIONIZE.COM, INVISIONMODDING.COM, AND TIBERIUMSTUDIOS.NET ONLY!!!!!!!!**** Uploading Instructions: Please upload "modules" and "mod_install" to your forums root directory. ***NOTE: When uploading the mod_install folder, it will contain three(3) install files for this mod. Only one(1) will show up for your appropriate board version. EX: The 2.1 install file will only show up on a 2.1.x IP.Board, and not a 2.2.x IP.Board. (The ipb22 version installer will show up on a 2.3 version board, please DO NOT install using that file, please install using the 2.3 version installer!)*** Universal Mod Installer v1.3.2 Download: http://www.invisionmodding.com/index.php?a...mp;showfile=183 Universal Mod Installer v2.6.4 Download: http://www.invisionmodding.com/index.php?a...mp;showfile=494 Installation Instructions (IPB 2.1): To install this mod, you must have FuSoYa's Universal Mod Installer for this to work properly. First, go to: http://www.your-website.com/forums/mod_install/index.php and click "Install" next to "(NG21) Custom Pages 4.2 Fresh Install", and follow the on screen instructions. Secondly, go to: http://www.your-website.com/forums/index.p...mp;module=pages, and start creating your pages! Installation Instructions (IPB 2.2): To install this mod, you must have FuSoYa's Universal Mod Installer for this to work properly. First, go to your AdminCP -> Components -> UMI and click "Install" next to "(NG22) Custom Pages 4.2 Fresh Install", and follow the on screen instructions. Secondly, go to: http://www.your-website.com/forums/index.p...mp;module=pages, and start creating your pages! Installation Instructions (IPB 2.3): To install this mod, you must have FuSoYa's Universal Mod Installer for this to work properly. First, go to your AdminCP -> Components -> UMI and click "Install" next to "(NG23) Custom Pages 4.2 Fresh Install", and follow the on screen instructions. Secondly, go to: http://www.your-website.com/forums/index.p...mp;module=pages, and start creating your pages! Other Information: I would like to say that I am "NOT" taking credit for this modification "WHAT-SO-EVER"!! All I have done is created three(3) installation files for IP.Board 2.1, 2.2, & 2.3. The install files will create all the necessary Database Tables, Database Rows, Skin Templates, and rebuild all skin caches. Legal: This custom modification installation is Copyright© 2009 of NuclearGeneral. The original Modification is Copyright© of Pantalaimon. The "Universal Mod Installer is copyright© of Michael (FuSoYa) of InvisionModding.com. Click here to download this file