Do you have a community (or two or three) with content that non-members should not have access to, but you do want non-members or non-authenticated (not-logged-in) users to see snippets of it to help market your membership or community? If this is the case, did you know you can "tease" a community's discussion content without actually giving users full access to it?

You can achieve this by editing the Latest Discussions widget OR the Latest Q&A List widget, both of which include two Preview as User fields that allow a user to preview content as if they were members or authenticated (logged in).

NOTE: Only Super Admins can perform this process.

Default user account codes

We have three user accounts in the system that you can use for this purpose, and each user account has a code. You'll need to reference this table during Steps 1 and 2 of the process below.

How to tease discussion content

We're going to demonstrate this process with an example: how to tease member-only content to non-members.

NOTE: While the example below is specific to the Latest Discussions widget, you can apply this same process to the Latest Q&A List widget.

Step 1 - Configure the Latest Discussions widget

1. Navigate to a community containing a Latest Discussions widget.
2. In the Admin Toolbar, click (or right click for a new tab) Edit Page.

3. You're now editing the page in Page Designer. Click to select the Latest Discussions widget on the canvas, and then click the edit icon (it looks like a pencil and paper).

4. Scroll down until you locate the two Preview as User fields. Enter the appropriate user account code from the table above into the applicable field.
   
   Since we want to tease member-only content to non-authenticated (i.e., non-logged in) users, we need to enter HL1 in the Preview as User (for Non-authenticated users) field. 

5. Scroll down to the bottom of the pop-up and click Save to apply this change.

Step 2 - Subscribe associated account email address to community(ies)

Since we used the HL1 code, which is the Member account (see table above), we now need to subscribe the associated member@higherlogic.org account email address to the community(ies) that we would like those non-authenticated users to be able to see.

1. Back in the front-end, navigate to the community Home page.
2. Click Settings > Add or Invite Others.

3. Click the Invite Others tab.
4. Enter the account email address associated to the user code you applied during Step 1 (in our case, it's member@higherlogic.org).
5. Click Search.
6. In the Search Results area, check the box for the Test Member.
7. Click Add Selected To Invite List.

8. Check the box again.
9. Click Add Immediately.
10. Click Finished.

In this example, non-authenticated users can now view a preview of the latest discussions in the community via this widget as if there were the member@higherlogic.org account.

If we wanted to tease discussion content from additional communities, we'd have to go through the steps to subscribe the member@higherlogic.org account to them as well, following the same steps above.

NOTE: Remember, using this process only provides a preview of the latest discussions. If that non-authenticated user were to click on the community link, the post title, or the “More” button, they will see a message either prompting them to log in or informing them that they do not have the right credentials to access the content.