Can’t see the Block Manager in Invision Community Forum (IPBoard)

Overview

For the last month several MemberFix customers faced the same problem: they were unable to access the Block Manager in their Invision Community forum (also known as IPBoard). So it appeared to be a common issue. In this tutorial we’ll define the reason and find a solution.

Though there’s a number of issues related to broken plugins/installations, custom themes and/or missing files, this article highlights the tricky peculiarity of IPBoard, especially for newbies.

Prerequisites:

– Fresh IPBoard installation;
– WordPress SSO plugin for IPBoard (or anything similar).

In all of the cases our client imported their users from WP to IPBoard using the WordPress SSO bridge plugin, which replaces the default IPS4 front-end login/registration system with WordPress. So all users must have a WP account to log in to your community.

The problem

The Invision Community installation allows you to be logged in to your Admin Control Panel (ACP) and IPBoard front end using different accounts. So the tricky thing begins after you install the bridge plugin and automatically log in to your community. The problem can be even less obvious if you’re using the same username in both ACP and WordPress (e.g. Admin).

As you can see, we have two users with the same nickname (Admin) but with the different emails. According to the plugin description Wordpress SSO cannot be used to log users into the AdminCP. So even if you have an Administrator account in WordPress you’ll be imported as a member/clubber.

So here are the possible issues:

Problem #1 – You can think that you’re logged in to ACP and Front End under the same account.

Problem #2 – You can believe your WP admin account have the same superpower in IPBoard.

The solution

If you can’t see the small arrow  that extends the Block Manager – most likely you don’t have an administrative permissions. To check it – simply click on your profile link at the top right corner. If it looks like this:

you are not an administrator of the community. The admin navigation should include the Admin CP link like this:

If you don’t have the administrator permissions you should do the following:

1. Log in to your ACP under the account you created while installing IPBoard.

2. Now go to Members > Members and select the user you want to edit:

3. Then click the “Edit” button in the “Groups” box:

4. And change the Group field to Administrators:

5. Click Save and voila – you should be able to use Blocks Manager now!

If you’re still experiencing problems – you should check your IPBoard installation, disable all custom plugins/applications, switch back to the default themes etc. But that’s the topic of another post 🙂