LauraV
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Aurora: Set community to offline mode
If you are performing maintenance on your community, you may want to prevent activity from taking place as you resolve issues. With offline mode, you can present a notice to visitors so they know maintenance is underway and that they cannot participate until the community comes back online. When the community is in offline mode, members cannot: sign in read content create new posts or reply to any content like posts, mark posts as solutions, tag posts, or edit posts reply to messages in their inbox or create new private messages follow or manage existing follows update their member settings Members can still receive email notifications if content is posted by admins during the time the community is offline. When the community is in offline mode, admins are still able to: sign in to the community post content modify site settings update the theme use back-end functionality such as APIs Enable offline mode Open the Account menu and go to Settings > System. Below General, toggle on Enable community offline mode. Confirm this action by selecting Take Community Offline. Customize your maintenance page You can customize the title and message on your maintenance page so that your visitors know what to expect when they reach your community while it is offline. To customize the message: On Settings > System > General, below Enable community offline mode, select Edit beside Title and Description. In the Edit Offline Text window, edit the Title and Description as desired. Select Save.Aurora: Community email options
Khoros Communities offers several email configuration options to ensure the deliverability and security of emails sent from your community. This article goes over the common email configurations that Khoros provides in a standard community launch. Note: Additional email configuration options might be feasible but aren't included in your community launch. Consult with your Khoros representative for more information. Modify sender name and address You can modify the sender name and address of community emails in the admin settings. For example, emails are sent from “Community Mailer” and "mailer@us.khoros-mail.com" by default in US-based communities. You can change this to something better tailored to your brand, such as “Acme Community” and "notifications@mailer.acme.com." Refer to Edit the Aurora community email sender name and address for steps. SendGrid SendGrid is Khoros’ current default relay used by most of our customers. SendGrid features higher mail delivery rates and is capable of handling much more traffic. However, due to our infrastructure, SendGrid does not support strict DMARC policies (“none” is supported). SendGrid is required for the Community Analytics (CA) metrics reporting feature. We do not support Community Analytics email reporting for any other relay type. Sender Policy Framework (SPF) Khoros strongly recommends that all customers update their SPF records to include the region-appropriate Khoros domain. This helps provide a good balance of deliverability of mail from Communities, reduce setup time, and increase security. Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records enable domain owners to publish a list of IP addresses or subnets that are authorized to send emails on their behalf. The goal is to reduce the amount of spam and fraud by making it more difficult for malicious senders to disguise their identity. SPF records can be set only on the A DNS record, not a CNAME DNS record such as (community.customer.com). We strongly recommend that the sender address is a subdomain of your primary domain and that the SPF record is set on that subdomain. For example, if your primary domain is [customer.com], we recommend the sender address to be a subdomain such as [anything@mail.customer.com] and to set the SPF record there. Refer to Configure SPF records for community emails for more information. DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) is an email authorization technique that leverages unique keys to digitally sign mail. This is done by adding an encrypted DKIM signature to the message header. DKIM helps combat certain techniques often used in phishing and email spam, such as emails with forged sender addresses that appear to come from legitimate organizations. This configuration requires coordination with Khoros in order to exchange key information and configure the Khoros mail relay properly. Note: Strict DMARC policies are not supported and require a Custom Relay instead. Refer to Configure DKIM for community emails for more information. Custom Relay In the rare case that none of the above options are acceptable, you can use your own mail servers for delivery. Essentially, all email outbound from Community are sent to your mail server first and then out to complete the delivery. This solution involves additional engagement with the Khoros Professional Services team.Aurora: Configure DKIM for community emails
DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) is an email authorization technique that leverages unique keys to digitally sign mail. This is done by adding an encrypted DKIM signature to the message header. It helps combat certain techniques often used in phishing and email spam, such as emails with forged sender addresses that appear to come from legitimate organizations. Our customers commonly implement DKIM records together with SPF to meet DMARC policies. This can provide better protection for your domain against malicious emails sent on behalf of your domains. Learn more about SPF setup. Note: Khoros cannot support a custom DKIM implementation in conjunction with SendGrid custom relays. Custom DKIM implementations also prevent the use of Communities Email Analytics. To perform this implementation with Khoros: Provide Khoros the mailer address to be used. Refer to Edit the Aurora community email sender name and address for best practices regarding the address choice. Khoros will provide the DKIM selector and key, which your teams will then install on the target mailer subdomain. Validate the DKIM configuration using tools such as mxtoolbox. The domain to check is the part following the @ symbol in your mailer address. For example, if your address is notifications@mailer.customer.com, then the domain to check is mailer.customer.com. Ensure all checks pass with the domain and selector. Once the DKIM configuration on your DNS entry is validated, Khoros completes the final Community configuration. Best Practices Refer to Edit the Aurora community email sender name and address for best practices regarding the choice of mailer address. You must use DKIM if you have restrictive DMARC records in place, even if you do not want to DKIM sign emails. The strictness is indicated below: Strict - Reject Strict - Quarantine (with a 25%+ apply percentage) policy Relaxed - Quarantine (with a < 25% apply percentage) policy Relaxed - None policy DKIM deliverability is not as high as with SPF only due to the IP addresses of the Khoros DKIM mail relays being newer (~2020) and part of AWS’s IP space. These relay servers may never be considered trusted by some email vendors for this reason, thus being more susceptible to emails being blocked. You must ensure there is no SP (Subdomain Policy) attribute present on the same subdomain. This can result in your top level DMARC policy being applied to your subdomain, and as a result, email not being delivered. To do this: Go to https://mxtoolbox.com/DMARC.aspx. Add your domain in the field (for example, khoros.com or everything after the @). Select DMARC Lookup and see if an SP message is displayed, which should look like this: “Organization Domain of this sub-domain is: example.com Inbox Receivers will apply example.com DMARC record to mail sent from mail.example.com”Aurora: Configure SPF records for community emails
Khoros strongly recommends that all customers update their SPF records to include the region-appropriate Khoros domain. This provides a good balance of deliverability of mail from Communities, reduces setup time, increases security, and allows the use of email metrics. Find the region-appropriate line below, replacing “customer.com” with your own subdomain to add to your SPF record on the subdomain used to send emails: For APAC Communities: customer.com 86400 IN TXT "v=spf1 include:ap.khoros-mail.com --all" For NA Communities: customer.com. 86400 IN TXT "v=spf1 include:us.khoros-mail.com -all" For EMEA Communities: customer.com. 86400 IN TXT "v=spf1 include:eu.khoros-mail.com -all" This step enables Communities to securely send emails on your behalf from that subdomain. Verify that the SPF record is publicly accessible and correctly configured. You can use a SPF Check and Lookup tool to accomplish this task. Configure the email address as described in Edit the Aurora community email sender name and address. Validate your configuration by taking any action in your community that will trigger an email. Verify that the emails do not go into your spam/junk folder and have the intended sender address. Note: This process applies only for email configurations involving relaxed or no DMARC policies. If you require a stricter DMARC policy or any alternative configuration, contact Khoros or refer to Community email options for additional details.Pull different Aurora community content into an RSS feed using URLs
You can pull different community content from different levels in the community in an RSS feed using URLs. To pull the most recent RSS results for the entire community, use: https://yourdomain.com/t5/s/[CommunityID]/rss/Community For example, for Lithosphere, you'd use: https://community.khoros.com/t5/s/lithosphere/rss/Community To pull content over the RSS for a category, use: https://yourdomain.com/t5/s/[CommunityID]/rss/Category?category.id=[CategoryID] For example, if Lithosphere had a category with the ID of "Social," you'd use: https://community.khoros.com/t5/s/lithosphere/rss/Category?category.id=Social Note: Category IDs are case sensitive. To pull content over the RSS for a KB, use: https://yourdomain.com/t5/s/[CommunityID]/rss/Community?interaction.style=tkb For example, for Lithosphere you'd use: https://community.khoros.com/t5/s/lithosphere/rss/Community?interaction.style=tkbKhoros Communities: Aurora 25.03 Release Notes
The Khoros Communities: Aurora v25.03 Release introduces performance improvements, several new permissions, the ability to download your case list, moderation enhancements, post activity limit updates, improvements to the developer experience, and many bug fixes to improve the member experience.Aurora: Enable languages in your community
From Designer, you can define which languages are used in your community. You can also set which language to use by default. English is set as the default language for all new communities. To enable additional languages in your community: Open the Account menu and go to Designer > Community Text. In the row of Enabled languages, select Edit. Use the Add language drop-down menu to select languages you want to be available in your community. Enabled languages list above the Add language menu. Select Remove beside a language in that list to remove languages you no longer need. (Optional) If you want to set a language other than English as the default, in the row of that language in the Enabled languages list, select Set as Default. Select Save. Related topics: About Aurora community languages
