Aurora Community site structure hierarchy and terminology
This quick reference guide lays out the hierarchy and meaning of some of the site structure terminology in Khoros Community Aurora. Hierarchy Glossary Term Definition Blog Board that houses blog posts Blog post Individual post on a Blog board Board General term for lower-level Place that holds content; encompasses Blog, Event board, Forum, Knowledge Base, and Ideas board Category Highest-level Container in your community; can contain Groups and Boards Comment A top-level response to a post on a Board Container General term for higher-level Place that houses Boards; encompasses Category and Group Content Collective term for posts (for example, “Our community contains a lot of content about our products.”) Content Type General term for the style of content that coincides with the Board types: Blogs, Events, Forums, Knowledge Bases, Ideas Discussion Individual post on a Forum Event board Board that houses events Event Individual post on an Event board Forum Board that houses discussions Group Higher-level Container that enables community members to engage around a common theme or purpose; can contain Boards of one content type Ideas board Board that houses ideas Idea Individual post on an Ideas board Knowledge base Board that houses knowledge base articles Knowledge base article Individual post in a knowledge base Place General term that encompasses Containers and Boards Post General term for an individual piece of content if type is irrelevant; encompasses blog post, event, forum discussion, knowledge base article, idea (for example, “If you want to make a post in our community, sign in first.”) Reply A response to a comment Related topics: About Community site structure Community Structure Best PracticesAbout Aurora Analytics
To have a successful community, you need to know what’s working and what needs improvement. Aurora provides a robust set of analytics so you can get actionable insights to drive traffic and member engagement. You can determine what kinds of content needs improvement, what your members steer away from, and what they want more of from your community. These metrics help you learn where your members come from, what type of content they engage with, and where to focus on to reach new people. Having clear data enables you to plan towards community goals and make informed decisions to change course when things aren’t working. Aurora Analytics provides visual dashboards and interactive reports to provide you with high-level and detailed data on how your community is performing. Note: Currently, users can see the metrics up to the previous day in Aurora Analytics.. Data is reported in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Accessing Aurora Analytics To access Aurora Analytics, open your Account menu and click Analytics. Note: Members must have anAdmin or Analytics role to access Aurora Analytics From the Analytics page, you can access Dashboardand Reports. The Dashboardprovides you with an “at-a-glance” view of the activities that best indicate the overall health of your community and member engagement across your community. You can customize Dashboard settings to your requirements and get the most out of your data analysis. Reports present you with key metrics on content, boards, categories, and members in a tabular format. Related topics: Accessing Analytics Dashboard Dashboard Settings Aurora Analytics Metric Definitions Aurora Analytics Reports Refer to the Khoros Communities Analytics Essentials course for training on Communities Analytics.About Aurora Moderation
It is important for your community to be a positive space where members feel welcome, safe, and engaged. To foster this environment, moderators constantly monitor community activity by reviewing content for appropriateness, based on the guidelines you’ve put in place for your community. Using the Moderation tab in the Content Managementdashboard, moderators can quickly review and process large volumes of member-generated content. Depending on how you’ve set up your moderation process, content can be reviewed either before or after it is published to the community. From the Moderation tab, you can moderate forum discussion posts and their replies, ideas and their comments, as well as comments on blogs, knowledge bases, and events. Also, you can view the posts or private messages that are rejected as spam, abuse, or for other reasons and take further action on these posts or private messages. Moderation process You can set the moderation mode at the board level. Required: Moderators must moderate content to make it available in the community. (This was previously known as pre-moderation in Communities Classic.) Selective: The content is published, but moderators can moderate it after publication. (This was previously known as post-moderation in Communities Classic.) Auto-approved: Content does not require moderation and is approved automatically. Learn more about configuring moderation modes for various content types. When members post content on the community, the content is immediately routed to the Moderation, based on the moderation settings for that board. Note: When a board is set to Required moderation and members post content on this board, a confirmation message is displayed on the post indicating that post will be published as soon as it is approved from moderators: View Moderation tab Members with elevated permissions (Admins and Moderators) can access the Moderation tab in the Manage Content dashboard. Note that you must enable content moderation at the community level to view the Moderation tab. Members will see the Spam, Abuse, and Moderation tabs. The Moderation tab is where you can review content. By default, the Moderation tab is displayed with the list of unmoderated posts, where the Moderation status is set to unmoderated. The Moderation tab lists: Title: title of the post, reply, or comment Author: authors of the posts and replies Date: the date on which the post or reply is sent for moderation. Status: the publication status (Published or Unpublished) of the posts and replies. Number of views, likes, and comments for each post, reply, or comment. Note: You can sort this list based on the Date. From the Moderation tab, moderators evaluate the posts and replies. They can then approve or reject them, and also message authors about their content. When approved, posts are published in the community or remain in the community based on the moderation settings at board level. They are then removed from the Moderation tab. When rejected, the posts are removed from the community. The posts that are rejected as spam can also be viewed in the Spam tab. Learn more about approving or rejecting posts sent for moderation. To view the rejected posts or private messages, go to Filters and set Moderation Status as Rejected. From the Moderation tab, you can: Open any post to view the content Search and filter posts Approve or reject posts Message members on moderation actions about their posts Review the posts or private messages that have been rejected as Spam, Abuse, or other reasons Refer to the Khoros Communities Moderation Essentials course for training on this feature.About Aurora roles and permissions
Your community uses permissions to determine the actions that your community members can take and which community areas and features they can access. Instead of setting each of these permissions manually, permission settings are grouped into roles and then you can assign these roles to members. Khoros provides a set of default roles. You can modify these roles (although we don’t recommend it) and create your own roles. You can also create a relationship between your community ranks and roles so that members get new roles and receive additional permissions as they advance through the ranks. Each role has a setting for each permission. When you define a role, you can set some permissions directly and leave the default settings for the rest. After you define your roles, you can set up the ranks in your community to assign (and remove) roles when members change ranks. The higher the rank, the more access it’s likely to grant the member. In addition to controlling member access within a community, you can also use roles to gather metrics on community usage or to establish criteria for gaining a rank. Although it’s more common to use a rank to grant a role, you can also use a role to assign users a rank. Some communities use this technique, for example, to assign a special rank to community moderators by using a role as the criteria for granting a rank. Similarly, you may want to create a role specifically for your employees. They might have the same permission settings as other community members, but you can use a special employee role as the requirement for a corresponding rank to identify them as employees to the rest of the community. Note: Groups use the default community roles as well as a set of roles specific to groups. Learn more in Group roles and permissions. Related topics: Create a role Default Community roles Permission descriptions Add members to roles Best practices: roles and permissions You can also receive self-paced training on roles and permissions in our Build Khoros Communities course.About the Aurora Theme editor
The Theme editor in Aurora Designer enables you to customize the appearance of your community site to match the look and feel of your brand. With Theme, you can configure the page layout, set the size and style of your fonts, manage colors, manage icons, configure buttons and text links, manage avatars, and manage UI elements for your community site content (Blogs, Forums, Knowledge Bases, Ideas, Events, and Groups). After you have customized your community theme, click Publish to make them live on your site instantly. The Theme editor is separated into the following categories: Basics Fonts Colors Buttons and Text Links Avatars UI Elements Refer to the Build Khoros Communities course for training on site design.About Aurora Page Templates
Designer provides many page templates you can use and customize to fit the needs of your community. Many of these fall into similar categories and therefore have similar widgets and out-of-the-box designs. Some are a bit more complex and apply to the community globally. Below is an index and description of these categories and individual page templates. While there are many page templates and widgets to choose from, much of the functionality is repeated throughout Designer. For more information on this functionality, see the following articles: Using Page Templates Create and arrange sections in a Page Template Getting Started with Widgets Community Home template The Community Home page template applies only to the homepage of your community. On this template, you can add any widgets you want members to see on the very first page they land on in the community. Commonly added widgets are: Recent Content Places Top Contributors Top Content Header & Footer template The global Header & Footer template is unique in that it applies across your entire community. It contains the site header—composed of the navigation bar, the breadcrumb trail, and the banner—and the site footer. For more information, see Header & Footer Configuration. Container Dashboard templates Container dashboard templates define how higher-level place landing pages appear to members of the community. The following dashboard templates fall into this category: Category Dashboard Group Dashboard These templates enable you to provide a look into what’s available to members of that container to read, follow, and comment on. Commonly added widgets are: Recent Content Category Information or Group Information Members Top Contributors Top Content Content Type Dashboard templates Content type dashboard templates define how content type landing pages appear to members of the community. The following dashboard templates fall into this category: Forum Dashboard Blog Dashboard Knowledge Base Dashboard Ideas Dashboard Event Dashboard These templates enable you to provide a look at what’s going on in a board (forum, blog, knowledge base, events board, ideas board). Commonly added widgets are: Recent Discussions or Recent Content Forum Information, Blog Information, Knowledge Base Information, Event Board Information, or Ideas Board Information Top Content Top Contributors Content type-specific widgets are not available on a different content type’s dashboard template. For instance, you cannot add a Recent Discussions widget to a Knowledge Base Dashboard or an Ideas widget to a Blog Dashboard. Content post templates Content post templates define how a particular piece of content looks to members. The following templates fall into this category: Forum Discussion Blog Post Knowledge Base Article Idea Event These page templates come out of the box with widgets that cannot be deleted because they contain the body of a top-level discussion, post, article, or idea or because they contain a space for commenting on a discussion, post, article, or idea. However, you can add other widgets to these templates. Commonly added widgets are: Featured Content Related Content Recent Discussions Content type-specific widgets are not available on a different content type’s post template. For instance, you cannot add a Recent Discussions widget to a Knowledge Base Article template. Member Profile template The Member Profile page template applies only to the Member Profile, which is what members see when they click another member’s username in the community. On this template, you can add any widgets you want that give information about the member being highlighted. This template comes out of the box with a member information widget that cannot be deleted. This widget contains the member’s username, rank, email address, join date, number of contributions, and number of likes. You can add other widgets to this template. Commonly added widgets are: Contributions Top Contributions Groups Featured Content Related topics: About Community site structure About Categories About Groups About Blogs About Forums About Knowledge Bases About Ideas About Events Refer to the Build Khoros Communities course for training on site design.Aurora: Bypass moderation
Members generally want to post content without moderation review. Admins can grant the Bypass moderationor Bypass comment moderation permissions to enable certain members to post or comment without moderation review. This option applies when the Moderation type is Selective or Required. Note: At this time, moderation cannot be set up by role, but this feature may be available in a future release. Instead, you can use theBypass moderationpermission to ensure that members with certain roles do not require moderation. See the screenshot below for the Discussion (forums) permission. This setting can be applied to all discussion styles. Learn more about configuring moderation modes for various content types.About Aurora content filters
Communities are meant to be a safe space where members should feel welcomed and engaged. Sometimes, members post objectionable content that may offend other members and negatively impact the community’s overall health. Objectionable content can include inappropriate language or any other terms you might not want to see in the community. Aurora offers content filters as part of its moderation tools to prevent objectionable content from appearing in posts, replies, tags, private messages, profile information, and member registration. When members use inappropriate words across the community, content filters identify them and prevent the content from being published or replacing the words with pre-defined replacement terms. In other cases, content filters just record the objectionable content posted across the community without taking any action. Content filters can also be used to ensure that the correct words are used across the community to improve content consistency. For example, you could create a content filter to replace old product names with the correct product name. Aurora includes several default filters that can be triggered when someone registers, posts, adds a tag, sends private messages, or updates their profile information. Default Filter Applies to Filter action Smut Posts and replies Prevents objectionable language from appearing in posts. Replaces offensive terms with neutral or slightly humorous ones, if configured to do so. Remember, you don’t want to prevent members from posting messages; you just want to keep the language clean. You may want to have your moderators keep an eye out for members who repeatedly use filtered language. Keyword Posts and replies Manages specific words or phrases. Content for this filter may include product and company names—both your own and those of competitors. When filtered keywords are used in content, moderators are notified. Optionally, the terms are replaced with more appropriate or the correct term. Login User signups (Registration page) Prevents people from registering to the community with an inappropriate username or profile info (system default action). Note: The Login filter is not applied if you are using an SSO implementation that passes the person’s username to the community. You must have a system on your side to deal with this situation. Tag Tags added in posts and replies Prevents members from tagging posts with objectionable words. Replaces with an alternate tag if configured to do so. You can add terms to these default filters or edit default filters as needed. You can also add new filters to perform these actions when the filter terms are identified in the community: Do not allow: Prevents members from posting content or replies, registering to the community, adding tags, updating profile information, and sending private messages till the filter term is removed. This more heavy-handed approach runs the risk of either challenging members to find a way to defeat it or alienating them. When filter term is identified, the following error message is displayed: Replace term: Replaces the offensive term with another term. This is the most common way of handling smut filter infractions. You can configure what term to replace words that match this filter in the Replacement term field. When the filter term is identified, it is replaced with the configured term after you post the content. Check inline HTML and do not allow: Prevents the members from posting anything that contains a filtered term after ignoring inline HTML. For example, the term “crap” written in inline html format, “c<b>r</b>a<br>p” in any new post is identified as the filter term after ignoring the inline html. Take no action: Does not take any action on the filtered terms that appear across the community, but records in Content Filters dashboard to notify moderators about these terms used across the community. Tip: Replacement terms are often a better management strategy versus preventing members from posting, as some people might take it as a personal challenge and invest tremendous effort in attempting to circumvent your filters. Another way these members may try to circumvent your filters is by using variations of banned words. For that reason, you may want to plan ahead for possible misspellings or other variations when creating your content filters. Note: Content filters are not case sensitive. For example, to filter for “Test,” “test,” and “TEST,” you need to enter only the term “test” while creating the filter.
