Aurora: Enable read-only mode for community places

From time to time, you may need to lock down areas of your community for standard maintenance or updates. Or, you may want to temporarily restrict people from creating new content in specific categories, boards, or the entire community.

By putting community places in read-only mode, you can enable members access to still view community content but restrict them on making any changes to this content.

You can enable read-only mode at the community, category, or board level to restrict members from posting new content or editing existing content. Read-only mode does not apply to admins and moderators; they can perform their respective actions as normal.

Read-only mode is commonly used for these reasons:

• Community: Standard site maintenance where site activity could interfere with the site updates or when a community is under a security threat.
• Category: For categories dedicated to broadcasting information and does not require members to post any content. It can also be used to temporarily or permanently make a category read-only.
• Board: For boards that are dedicated to broadcasting information and does not require members to post any content. It can also be used to temporarily or permanently make a board read-only

In addition to the above scenarios, admins and moderators can enable read-only mode on a case-by-case basis based on their specific needs.

Note: We recommend this setting only for specific cases as it highly impacts the member site engagement. You should also let your members know why a community place has been temporarily placed in read-only mode.

What to expect in read-only mode

In read-only mode, members can:

• View, like, or report inappropriate content 
• Send private messages to other members 
• Tag their own content

In read-only mode, members cannot:

• Create new content
• Edit or delete existing content
• Add comments or replies to content
• Tag others’ content
• Move content to another location

Note: Members are blocked from performing the above actions even if they have appropriate permissions.

Enable read-only mode at the community level

1. Open the Account menu and go to Settings > Content Features.
2. In the General section, toggle on the Read-only mode option.
   
    
   

Configure read-only mode at the category, group, or board level

When read-only mode is enabled at community level, it is inherited at the category, group, and board levels. You can override the setting at lower levels as needed.

Let’s look at an example where read-only mode is turned off at the community level and you want to enable it in a specific category.

To enable read-only mode for a specific category:

1. Open the Account menu and go to Settings > Community Structure.
2. In the Community Structure, click the category where you want to enable read-only mode.
3. Below Content Features, toggle on the Read-only mode option.

Similarly, you can configure read-only mode at group and board levels.