About Aurora Community site structure
One of the most important aspects of setting up your community is choosing which content types to include and how to organize them. Communities are structured hierarchically—they’re broken down into Places, which are divided into Containers and Boards. Containers consist of Categories and Groups, while Boards consist of Forums, Knowledge Bases, Blogs, Ideas, and Events. Typically, Categories and Groups are made up of Boards—these boards are the areas where community members can post and reply or comment on what they read. Categories can also be broken down into other Categories as necessary. Containers Boards Containers Containers are higher-level Places like Categories and Groups. Categories are areas that can house several types of Boards that are broken out into different types of content. Groups are similar to Categories, but they are designed for specific groups of Community members who want to collaborate on a particular subject or project. Create a Category Create a Group Create a Category Go to the Community Structurepage. Click Add(plus icon) at the level of the community where you want to add the category. On the window, enter a Name and ID. The ID displays in the URL for the category. Note: The ID must be a single word made of only letters, numbers, dashes, and underscores with no spaces. It cannot be changed later. Optionally, enter a Description and add an Avatar for the category. Click Create. For more information, see About Categories. Boards Create a Forum Create a Knowledge Base Create a Blog Create an Ideas board Create an Event board Boards are Places that are subsets of Containers. The types of boards available in your community are Forums, Knowledge Bases, Blogs, Ideas, and Events. Boards enable members to post content, write comments, and reply to other members’ comments. The process for creating a board is similar for all content types. To create a board: Go to the Community Structurepage. Click Add(plus icon) at the level of the community where you want to add the board. On the window, enter a Name and ID. The ID displays in the URL for the board. Note: The ID must be a single word made of only letters, numbers, dashes, and underscores with no spaces. It cannot be changed later. Optionally, enter a Description and add an Avatar for the board. In theTagsarea, specify the types of tags to use, add preset tags, and/or indicate whether you want to require tags for the board. Click Create. Related topics Community Structure Best Practices Community site structure hierarchy and terminology Manage Containers or Boards Container and Board permissionsAurora Community Structure Best Practices
When you first launch a community, you may think you need to create a structure sophisticated enough that it will accommodate all of your needs as the community grows. However, in this case, building in anticipation of growth might not be the best strategy. For instance, it might be tempting to create every possible category and board you might need, but this is counterproductive. The initial structure for the community should be appropriate for the expected volume of traffic. Essentially, this means you should start small and add containers and boards as needed over time. Ensure your structure includes topics and interests relevant to your members. As you begin building your community, focus on creating content that indexed by organic search (Google, Bing, etc.). Your goal is for the community to scale up and to build critical mass. You want between 5 and 10 new posts per day on each board to effectively attract members to keep coming back. When launching the community, most companies issue invitations via email to alert members to the community. About 10% of the people who see an invitation will visit the community. Within 6 months, you can expect between 30 and 40% of your target audience to visit the community at least once. Of those who visit, 10% will post at least once per month. Although the percentage remains steady at 10% per month, it’s not the same 10% each month. This means that you need 5,000 and 10,000 invitees within the first 6 months to support a single board. As a result, the fewer topics you have at launch, the easier it will be to achieve that essential feeling of activity. The way you organize your community depends to a large extent on its goals. A general purpose discussion community can be organized by whatever topics make sense. A support community is likely to be organized by products or product lines, depending on the products being supported. For example, if you’re supporting computer peripherals, you might have a category for each type of device, with forums or other boards for hardware, software, platforms, and connection. This community has a large number of categories but relatively few topics in each category. If you’re supporting cell phone users, you might have a category for features you offer, one for customer care issues, and a third for phones. This community has fewer categories but more boards per category. Related topics: About Community site structure Community site structure hierarchy and terminologyAurora: Move, reorder, or delete containers or boards
You can move, reorder, or delete containers or boards from the Settings > Community Structure page. Move or reorder a container or board On the container or board you want to move, click Settings(gear icon). Click Move. On the Select New Location window, click the new location of the container or board you’re moving. Note: If there are a lot of possible locations, you can search for the desired one in the search bar. Click Continue. Drag the container or board to the desired position within the location you chose. Delete a container or board On the container or board you want to delete, click the gear icon. Click Delete. On the window that opens, confirm the deletion. Permissions The following permissions are required for the above tasks. By default, these are set toDenyfor all community membersexcept for those with the Admin role. To move categories, a member must have theMove categoriespermission. To move boards, a member must have theMove boardspermission. To delete categories, a member must have theDelete categoriespermission. To delete boards, a member must have theDelete boardspermission. To move groups, a member must have theMove groupspermission. To delete groups, a member must have theDelete groupspermission.Aurora: About categories
Categories are the highest-level containers within your community. Depending on the business purpose for your community, your categories might reflect lines of business, product lines, or other high-level divisions. If necessary, you can nest categories within higher-level ones or add boards to the top level of the community. As a rule of thumb, it’s best to start with a few high-level categories so that new visitors (and all visitors are new at this point) can find the boards they want quickly. In addition to one or more categories for your initial boards, you might also want to create a Welcome board where you post the rules of the community. As your community gains traction, you can build out additional categories and boards as needed. Again, your goal should be to keep the structure simple so that community members and visitors can find the content they want. You can also move boards and categories to other parts of your community. You can nest categories under existing ones if you need further divisions within a category. You can also move categories to another location after their initial creation. Category Permission Defaults Setting category permission defaults enables you to grant the base permissions for all community members who can access the category. To manage category permissions: Go to Settings > Structure and hover your cursor over the row with the category whose permission defaults you want to set. Click the gear icon and then click Edit. On the Category Settings page, click Category Permissions. In the Category Permission Defaults section, click Edit. (Optional) To jump to a specific permission to manage, enter it in the Find a permission field. Set Deny or Grant access for the settings in each area. Note: Each permission entry displays a description and recommended deny/grant status, as shown in this example: Related topics: About Community site structure Create a new role at the category level Permission descriptionsAurora: Setting inheritance
Setting inheritance applies settings at higher level places to lower level places in the community. Settings at the community level are automatically applied to other (lower) places in the community. This applies to most settings in the admin panel that exist at both higher and lower level places and provides the benefit of setting a template for each new place that gets added, which saves you from having to adjust every setting every time. How does it work? The community level is considered the highest place in the community, and all other places in the community (categories, boards, blogs, etc.) are considered children of the community node. They follow this hierarchy: Community > Category/Group > Board (Knowledge Base/Forum/Blog/Ideas/Event) The community node itself sets the default values for the community as a whole. Provided you make no changes to the settings for any other places in the community, they will use the value set at the community level. Categories can also set the default for their child places. If you decide you want a child place to have a different value for some setting than its parent, then you can simply adjust the setting for that specific place. When you’ve adjusted a setting for a child place, a PARENT OVERRIDE indicator is displayed next to that setting for the child place to indicate that it overrides the settings of its parent. Related topics: Permission descriptionsAurora: Granting access to boards and containers
You can add roles to specific boards or containers so that members who have been assigned those roles can access the containers or boards you want them to. To add a role to a specific place: Go to Settings > Community Structure. ClickSettings(gear icon) in the row of the container or board whose roles you want to edit, and then click Edit. On the settings screen for that place, click [Place] Permissions. To add more roles for this place, click Add Role. On the Add Role window, add a role and its description as desired. To edit members of an existing role, on the [Place] Permissions page, click the options menu of the desired role, and then click Edit. You can then click Add Members to search for members to add to the role. Related topics Community Structure Best Practices Manage Containers or Boards Assign roles to membersAurora: Hide places and content from lists, menus, and search
In the community, you can hide any place (board or category) or posts related to a board (Forum, Blog, Knowledge Base, Event, and Ideas) from lists, menus, and search. Doing so hides the places and content from appearing in your community structure but still keeps them available to members via direct link to the content. To prevent search results from boards being directly accessible, you’d need to make the board private. Hide a place from appearing in lists, menus, and search Let’s take an example where you want to hide a category from appearing in the community place widgets, place picker menus, and search results. To hide a category: Open the Account menu and go to Settings > Community Structure. In Community Structure, click the category you want to hide. Go to Display Settings and toggle on Hide category in place widgets, place picker menus, and search. Similarly, to hide a board, you can go to the specific board and toggle on this setting: Hide content from appearing in a category, community content widgets, and search results Let’s take an example where you want to hide discussions in a specific forum from appearing in a category, community content widgets, and search results. To hide forum content: Open the Account menu and go to Settings > Community Structure. In Community Structure, click the forum you want to hide. Go to Display Settings and toggle on the Hide forum posts in content widgets and search. Similarly, you can hide Blog posts, Knowledge Base articles, individual events, and individual ideas of the respective boards from appearing in the category, community content widgets, and search results.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 PracticesAurora: Make a category or board private
In addition to public categories and boards, you can create categories or boards that restrict access to selected community members. You might set up a private category or board to be used exclusively by administrators and moderators or to test changes to your community behind the scenes. You might also use a private category to archive unused boards or create a private board for VIP members. Restricted access is what makes a category or board private, as opposed to the Hide [place] posts in content widgets and search and Hide [place] in place widgets, place picker menus, and search settings, which make the category or board invisible to everyone except administrators. You control access to a private category or board by creating and assigning roles with selected permissions. To make a category or board private: Open the Account menu and go to Settings > Community Structure. For the place you want to hide, open the Settings menu and click Edit. Under Display Settings, turn on Hide [place] posts in content widgets and search (for boards only) and Hide [place] in place widgets, place picker menus, and search (for boards and categories). Go to the [Place] Permissions page. Beside [Place] Permission Defaults, click Edit. (For boards) Under Boards, set See [content type board] to Deny. (For categories) Under Boards, set See boards to Deny and under Categories, set See categories to Deny. At this point, administrators are the only ones able to access this private board or category. As necessary, create and assign roles to members that permit them to see the board or category. Their roles must have permissions with See boards and/or See categories set to Grant at the appropriate level of the community. If at any point you want to make the place public: (For boards) Turn off Hide [place] posts in content widgets and search. (For boards and categories) Turn off Hide [place] in place widgets, place picker menus, and search. Change the [Place] Permission Defaults to Grant for the following permissions: (For boards) See [content type board]. (For categories) See boards and See categories. Related topics: Create a role Add members to roles Permission descriptions Hide places and content from lists, menus, and searchAurora: Configure category settings
Most settings that you can configure at the community level can also be adjusted at the category level. Settings at the category level apply to any nested places, such as boards or other categories, unless you change settings at a lower-level place. If you configure a setting at the category level to be different from the community level, a PARENT OVERRIDE marker is displayed beside the setting to indicate that you’ve overridden its inherited default. The Category Settings page contains sections for Category Information, Content Features, Display Settings, Inbox,Moderation, andEscalations. Many settings are toggles to turn on or off a feature, but other settings may require additional selections. When available, links to more information regarding a feature or setting have been provided. Note: To edit category settings, you must have theEdit category settingspermission. To configure settings for a category: Note: Not all sections may be available depending on which features have been turned on in your community. Go to Settings > Community Structure. For the category whose settings you want to configure, open the Optionsmenu and click Edit. Alternatively, you can use the place picker on any settings page to access the category’s settings. Adjust settings in the Content Features section: General Content Workflow Read-only mode Time limit to edit posts:Click Edit to set the time limit that members have to edit their posts. Accepted Solutions File Attachments Forums Media Image uploads Embed external videos Video uploads Tags Adjust settings in the Display Settings section: Hide category in place widgets, place picker menus, and search Under Inbox, adjust theSend invitations viaoption that allows members to send group invitations either via the community Inbox (Members Only) or Email (Members and Non-members). Adjust settings in the Moderation section: Spam management Content moderation defaults Adjust settings for Escalations. Related topics: About categories
