Knowledge Base

Create and Manage Your Communities

  • Updated

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NOTE: All communities are based on a Community Type. Before you start to create a community, make sure that a type has been configured for the community that you want to create. See Community Types to learn how to create and manage your Community Types.

The Communities List makes it easy to quickly access and manage your Higher Logic site's communities. With it, you can:

  • view community details, like their view/join permissions, Community Type, moderation status, and associated features (i.e., does it have a discussion, library, workspace, etc.),
  • create communities,
  • edit a community's settings,
  • and more.

To access the Communities List:

  1. In the Admin Toolbar, click Admin.

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  1. Navigate to Community > Communities > List.

Create a Community

IMPORTANT: The information in this section is applicable to Super Admins only.

NOTE: Do not add communities on this list page if your account is integrated with an AMS/CRM database. Manage your communities in your AMS/CRM system only.

  1. Click the plus sign to the right of the page title.

  1. In the resulting dialog, configure the community's settings.

View descriptions

Field Description
Name The community's name' displays on the community's Home page and All Communities page.
Type

Select the Community Type to create the community under, which determines a few default settings and the features you'll be able to enable in the Features area below.

NOTE: See Community Types to learn more about Community Types.
Description

The community's description, purpose, or mission statement. This information displays on the All Communities page, and is generally used to describe a community's purpose to prospective users.
Topic Community Check this box to make this a Topic Community. See Topic Communities to learn more about Topic Communities and Higher Logic's Personalization features.
Join Permissions Sets the community's join permissions:
  • Invitation Only - Users can only join this community by invitation from an Admin (or other member if community members are allowed to invite).
  • [site] Members - Only users belonging to Security Groups with Member rights can join this community. Those with Member permissions can also join communities set to Authenticated.
  • Authenticated - Any logged in user can join this community. An authenticated user may or may not have Member status.
  • Request to Join - To join this type of community, users must manually submit a request. A Community Admin or Super Admin can then either approve or reject these requests. Requests are managed per community, and placed in a queue for easy management.

    See Request to Join Communities to learn more.
View Permissions

Sets the community's view permissions on the All Communities page, allowing you to hide specific communities from specific groups of users:

NOTE: This setting does NOT control who can view a community's content, just its visibility on the All Communities page.

  • Invitation Only - Users can only view this community by invitation from an Admin (or other member if community members are allowed to invite).
  • [site] Members - Only users belonging to Security Groups with Member rights can view this community. Those with Member permissions can also join communities set to Authenticated.
  • Authenticated - Any logged in user can view this community. An authenticated user may or may not have Member status.
  • Public - Both users with a login AND without a login to your site can view this community.
Moderation Setting

These three options enable you to control the community's discussion (and associated library's) moderation setting:

  • No Moderation - Posts/files don't require admin approval and are added to the discussion/library immediately.
  • Self Moderation - All new posts and files do not require admin approval and are added to the discussion or library immediately; however, all users who have access to the discussion and library for this community can moderate a post or file using the Mark As Inappropriate option on the post or file page. The user will then be prompted to give a reason for marking the content as inappropriate. At this point, the content is removed and a Community or Super Admin can then approve the moderation request to keep it in moderation or reject it to add it back to the community.
  • Full Moderation - All new posts and files are queued in moderation and require admin approval before posting to the discussion or library.

NOTE: A community discussion's Moderation setting is also applied to its associated library. For example, if set to Full Moderation, all files uploaded must be approved before they're available).

NOTE: See Manage a Community's Moderation Queue to learn more.
Member Invitations Check the box to allow members of this community to invite other qualified people to join.
Features

Check the boxes to control the features the community has available:

  • Website - Controls whether this community has its own Microsite. If enabled, the community has its own standalone website apart from your main site, giving admins more flexibility in its layout and design.
  • Discussion - Controls whether this community has a Discussion.
  • Question & Answers - Controls whether this community has the Q&A thread type.
  • Library - Controls whether this community has a Resource Library.
  • Who can create events? - Controls whether only admins or admins AND community members can create events for this community.

NOTE: The features available here are determined by the Community Type selected above (in the Type field). See Community Types to learn more).
Event Creation Permissions Determines whether only admins can create events for this community OR admins and community members.
Formal Tags You can only add tags to a community after it's created. Refer to Add Tags to a Community below to learn how.
  1. When finished, click Save. The community is displayed in the list.

Edit Community settings

IMPORTANT: Only Super Admins can edit a community's settings from the Communities List page. Community Admins can edit their community's settings from the community's Home page (i.e., not here in the Admin interface but on the "front end").

Select a community in the list and click Edit to update any of its settings. Refer to the View Descriptions table in the Create a Community section above for descriptions of each field.

You'll be able to edit any of the settings configured during creation, as well as add or invite members and add tags.

TIP: You can also edit a community's settings directly from the community: Click Settings > Settings.

Add tags to a Community

You can only add tags to existing communities. Select the community in the list and click Edit. On the resulting page, add any tags you want in the Formal Tags area at the bottom. To remove a tag, click its X button.

Any tags applied appear on the All Communities page, giving users more insight into the community's purpose and intended audience. Users can also click these tags to view any content in the community tagged with it, making them an excellent way of organizing community content and making it easy to find.

Search and filter Communities

IMPORTANT: The information in this section is applicable to Super Admins only.

Here at the top right, you can:

  • Click the magnifying glass icon to expand a search field, allowing you to find communities by their name.
  • Click the filter icon to access filters that you can apply to make it easier to find communities by Community Type, Join Permission, View Permission, and Moderation. If there are any active filters, the filter icon will be solid orange. Click the icon and click Clear Filter and Apply to restore the original list.

Export the Community list

IMPORTANT: The information in this section is applicable to Super Admins only.

Click the export icon at the top right to export your list of communities to a .csv file, providing each community's:

  • Community name
  • Integration key
  • View permissions
  • Join permissions
  • Community Type
  • IntegrationTypeKey
  • Moderation status

TIP: Apply filters before exporting to extract a refined list of communities.

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