About Aurora Blogs
A blog is basically an online journal or diary, often with references or links to other sites. Blog posts drive website traffic, promote your products and services, and also help you build trust with your customers and prospects. They also boost your social-media presence. Blog posts are usually written by a single author, and other community members add on with comments. Blog comments are associated with posts in the same way that replies are associated with messages in a forum. Each Blog has a front page that lists the most recent posts. From any Blog page, members with appropriate permissions can: Publish blog posts Edit drafts or edit previously published blog posts View the revision history of published blog posts Follow or unfollow a blog or content within the blog Those with admin permissions have additional tasks they can perform related to the following: Blogs Create a Blog board Edit Blog board settings Blog Posts Delete a post Move a post Block edits on a post Comments and Replies Comments and replies on posts About threaded replies and comments Block or allow comments and replies Move a comment or reply Content Management Content Management Dashboard Overview of Content Workflow Widgets Recent Content Top Content Places InfoAurora: Comments and replies to posts
Replies and comments spark excitement and lead to more engagement on content because they can transform a static piece of content into an interactive conversation with peers and other experts.. Threaded comments and replies help visualise the hierarchy of different conversations that can splinter off from the main topic. This article covers: An example of commenting on topics Managing Comments Receive notifications Conversation display formats Sorting the order of conversations Members can engage with published posts by giving Likes and commenting on them. Let's take an example of commenting on a knowledge base article. Comments on blogs, events and ideas, and replies on forums follow the same process. 8 STEPS 1. Scroll down on the article you want to comment on 2. Click Comment 3. Or scroll down and directly comment on the comment box available. 4. Type a comment 5. Click Reply 6. Your comment is posted. 7. You can also comment on another comment. 8. That's it. You're done. Here's an interactive tutorial ** Best experienced in Full Screen (click the icon in the top right corner before you begin) ** https://www.iorad.com/player/2051688/comment-on-articles-and-posts You can view all the comments based on its recency and likes received. You can also reply to comments in a threaded fashion and give Likes Managing Comments Community is a place where a lot of conversations pour in from different sources. It becomes necessary to keep the community clean, maintain relevance of topics being discussed, and have a healthy engagement. There are several options with which you can manage comments or replies to forum discussions, Blogs posts, and KB articles. The availability of these options are based on member permissions. Note: By default, members who comment or reply on a piece of content (Forum discussion, blog post, idea, or KB article) will automatically follow that piece of content. Members must have Manage comments on any post and Manage comments on own post permissions to edit and delete comments or replies to the post. As an Admin or moderator you can use these options to: Edit comments: Members who posted the reply or with elevated permissions (Admins and Moderators) can edit the reply or comment. Move comments: Members with elevated permissions can move a reply or comment to the new location or start a new discussion from the reply or comment. Copy Link: Any member can copy the link of the reply. When you open the link in new tab, the page focuses on the respective reply of the post: Click View Full Discussion to view all the replies to the post. Follow: Members can follow replies and comments to get notified of the updates. Learn more about following comment or reply. Delete: Members with elevated permissions (Admins and moderators) can delete a comment or reply to the post. When you delete a reply, all its threaded replies are deleted along with the main reply. Reject: Members with elevated permission can reject content. If you mark a post as spam and change your mind later, you can recover the message. Block or allow Replies and Comments: Authors of the post or members with elevated permissions (Admins and moderators) can block and unblock new replies or comments to the post. As a member, apart form copying link and following content you can also Report an inappropriate content. Notification Options for Message and Reply Actions To comply with DSA requirements, we've added a feature that notifies members when their replies or comments are edited, moved, or deleted by members with appropriate permissions. Additionally, all members who have replied to the post will receive these notifications. Below is an example of the confirmation message you receive when you try to delete a comment on an article. Conversation display format To tailor community conversation view to better suit your community’s needs, admins can opt to display replies and comments in either linear or threaded manner. To set this display format: Open the Account Menu. Go to Settings > Features > Content Features > Replies and Comments. From the Display format drop-down menu select the preferred display option. The Display format set by the admin order does not override a member's individual preferences. For example, if a member has chosen to view replies and comments in Threaded order but the admin has set the default to Linear, the member sees them displayed according to their personal preference of Threaded. If members choose the Community Default option, the admin's settings apply across all boards for those members. Replies and Comments sort order Admins can customize the sort order for replies and comments at both the community and board levels, offering additional control over how discussions are organized and displayed to members. To set the sort order: Open the Account Menu. Go to Settings > Features > Content Features > Replies and Comments. From the Default sort order drop-down menu, select your preferred sorting method to organize all replies and comments across your community. The default sort order does not override a member's individual preferences. For example, if a member has chosen to view replies and comments in Oldest to Newest order but the admin has set the default to Most Liked, the member sees them displayed according to their personal preference of oldest to newest. If members choose the Community Default option, the admin's settings apply across all boards for those members. Also, members can change the order from the community post page containing comments or replies. Changes to the sort order on the post page are saved in member’s preferences. Note: By default, the admin setting is set to order by Most Liked, and for members, it is set to Community Default.Aurora: Integrate Zoom with Community Events
Integrating Zoom with your Community Events enables you to offer real-time user engagement from within the community. With Events, you can host both Zoom Meetings and Zoom Webinars. Zoom Meetings: All participants can share their screen, turn on their video and audio, and see who else is in attendance. Zoom Webinars: Webinars enable view-only attendance. The host and any designated panelists can share their video, audio, and screen. Participants have the ability to interact via Q&A, Chat, and answer polling questions. The host can also unmute attendees. Attendees in webinars cannot rename themselves. Participants can join a meeting on your website without having the Zoom app. Authorize Zoom To host Zoom calls within the Events feature, we use the Zoom App SDK. To integrate Zoom with Community Events, you must manually specify your organization's Client ID and Client Secret values in the Community Admin panel. These values are encrypted and stored in Khoros’ database. Prerequisites We recommend that you create an admin account in Zoom. During authorizing Zoom in the community, you must sign in with the same account to grant access to the Zoom event. Note that the Zoom app can be unpublished. Generate the Client ID and Client Secret from the Zoom SDK App. Learn more about how to generate Client ID and Client Secret from the Zoom SDK App. In the Zoom SDK App, you must specify your community's redirect URL in Redirect URL for Oath and Oath Allow list fields. Sample redirect URL format: https://<community hostname>/<community name>/api/2.0/zoom/oauth2callback Admins can manually enter and delete the Zoom Client ID and secret key values in the community’s Admin Settings, which are encrypted and stored in Khoros’ database. To authorize Zoom: Sign in as an Admin of the community. Open the Account menu. Select Settings. The Settings page opens. Select Content Features. Select Events. Beside Zoom integration, select Integrate. A window to enter Zoom's Client ID and Client secret opens. Enter the Client ID and Client secret. Select Configure. You may be asked to sign in to the Zoom app. After you sign in, you are redirected to the settings page. If the integration is successful, a success message appears. The Zoom integration is successful when you see the Remove button. To remove the Zoom Integration: Sign in as an Admin of the community. Open the Account menu. Select Settings. The Settings page opens. Select Content Features. Select Events. Beside Zoom integration, select Remove. The Zoom integration is removed and the button changes back to Integrate. Related topics: Events permissions and settings Create an event Event types Events with Zoom Meetings Events with Zoom WebinarAbout Aurora Events
Events are a collection of community-hosted activities (seminars, meet-ups, conferences). This content type makes it easier for a community to publish and handle all aspects around events such as invitations, RSVP, and notifications. Events comes with the support for embedding Social Live Videos into an event page. Note: Events is a paid feature but is included by default in certain community packages. To learn whether Events is included in your package or costs extra as well as to request to have it enabled for your community, contact your Khoros Account Executive. Here's an example of an Event board: As an Admin, you can create Event boards move Event boards edit Event boards Event Boards can be created at multiple levels, providing flexibility to members at the Community level, within categories, and within a group. Learn more about the Events widget, the Event Board Information widget, and page design. Members with appropriate permissions can: create and publish events edit events delete events view events Community members can confirm if they will attend events or can express their interest in the event and decide later to attend. When members respond to an event, they’re automatically set up to follow the event. Note: In a future release, event organizers will be able to send specific communication to the members based on their responses. Additionally, Events offers seamless integration with Social Live Videos (Facebook, YouTube, and Vimeo), enabling the embedding of live video content directly into event pages. You can also integrate the Zoom application, which enables Event managers to host Zoom meetings and webinars within the community. Related topics: Creating an events node in community structure Create an event Events permissions and settings Event types Integrate Zoom with Community EventsAurora: Manage Content Dashboard
The Manage Content dashboard is a one-point stop for: Managing drafts & published content: authors can manage blogs & KB drafts as well as published posts/articles. Content management: moderators can maintain a healthy community. Read on to learn more. Managing drafts & published content As an author, you may want to save your content to share it with other members for review or come back and edit content later to add more info or make any corrections. After you have saved any drafts, you can access them from the Drafts tab in the Manage Content Dashboard. Depending on your permissions, you can view all your drafts and other members' drafts. You can also view the author and any co-authors as well as when the article was last updated. Learn more about draft blog content and draft knowledge base content. Learn more about Content Management and Approval. Content management Spam Community spam management tools run in the background and each new post is logged and tested for spam. The tools automatically test posts against a complex set of rules. Our system learns about your site content as it monitors all your boards and forums, enabling it to improve its content filtering over time. All posts classified as spam are moved to the Manage Content dashboard on the Spam tab. Admins and moderators can review and recover the spammed posts, if needed. Learn more about spam management. Abuse To combat abusive content, members with appropriate permissions can report any content or private messages they find inappropriate in the community. You can report any content or private messages that you find violent, harmful, misleading, or other specific reasons. When you report a content, the content is listed on the Abuse tab in the Manage Content dashboard. Admins and moderators can manage this reported content with various options available out of the box. Learn more about abuse management Moderation 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 Manage Content dashboard, moderators can quickly review and process large volumes of user-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 posts and replies, blog comments, and knowledge base comments. 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. Learn more about Moderation. Tags From time to time, you might want to review the tags used across the community to understand how the content is being categorized and organized. This can also be one of the factors to understand members' engagement and contribution to the community. Admins and members with the Manage Tags permission can access the Tags tab in the Manage Content dashboard, where they can review the complete list of tags. Learn more about reviewing tags added in the community.About Aurora Content Types
Khoros Communities excel at connecting people, building relationships with product experts, and driving brand engagement. Of course, at the heart of any community is the content, and Khoros Community provides several Content Types your members can participate in. But which content type should you use? Each content type is designed for different types of content and drives different types of community engagement: Forums: Connect product experts and brand enthusiasts through peer-to-peer discussions. Blogs: Attract customers by publishing content from top experts. Blogs are one of the best ways to build your audience and keep your community informed. Knowledge bases: Empower customers and employees to turn peer-generated conversations and knowledge from Aurora Communities into polished, searchable articles. Events: Events are a collection of community-hosted activities (seminars, meet-ups, conferences). You can notify community members of online or in-person events by publishing them in the Events calendar. Ideas: Crowd-source innovation by enabling customers to submit ideas, vote, and provide comments. Generate thousands of prioritized ideas that help you build better products and deepen customer loyalty. Groups: Groups deliver an enhanced experience for community members to engage around a common theme or purpose. Each group has its own configurable set of content types (the content types shown in this article) to organize content and communication. Forums Khoros Forums enable you to connect product experts and brand enthusiasts through peer-to-peer discussions. Both newbies and experienced members can read, post, and easily respond. You can create forums that are as broad or as focused as you need for your products or services. For example, you could have a forum dedicated to an entire product line of printers or forums focused on a specific printer. It’s up to you. Check out Atlas Community’s Discussion Forum Learn more about forums. Blogs Blogs drive traffic to your community. Unlike standalone blog products, Khoros Blogs is integrated with our community platform, ensuring a cohesive experience as users explore and learn. Blogs are a great way to publish content pertaining to your brand, be it product announcements, industry expertise, or news and events. Check out Atlas Community’s Developer Blog where experts share information and recommendations based on products and labels. Learn more about blogs. Knowledge Bases With Khoros knowledge bases (or KBs), members can create trusted content focused on specific topics or themes. For example, you might have KBs focused on product documentation, support FAQs, best practices, or use cases. You can enable specific members to write and maintain these articles as well as enable trusted community members to contribute to these articles. Check out Atlas Community’s Support Information Knowledge Base articles shared and curated by Khoros experts in an efficient and organized way. Learn more about knowledge bases. Events Events provide a platform to schedule, announce, inform, and discuss everything from the smallest group gathering to the largest user conference. These community-hosted activities harness the enthusiasm generated by interactions between your customers, company, and brand ambassadors and foster deeper connections with your customers. With Khoros Events you can: host live Stream Video outside your community (for example, from YouTube, Facebook, or Vimeo) by providing a URL of the live video. You can also provide the URL of a pre-recorded video. integrate Zoom meetings and webinars within your community. Learn more about Events. Ideas From time to time, your customers might have ideas about how to make your products better. These ideas could be minor enhancements or a completely new feature. Khoros Ideas enables you to capture these customer ideas, let other members vote on these ideas, and share these ideas with your internal product teams. By enabling members to submit their own ideas, you are encouraging them to be thought partners with your company and stand out among their community peers. Submitted ideas are reviewed by your internal teams and assigned statuses (for example, Under consideration, Accepted, or Declined) so everyone in the community can track the idea’s progress, vote on ideas they like, and even discuss the ideas by posting comments. Learn more about Ideas. Groups Within a community, smaller communities form organically or out of necessity. Groups help you to create, organise and scope these conversations to the right audience so that the conversation remains relevant and insightful, enabling customers to say what they want to say, how they want to say. With Khoros' Groups you can have Open, Closed and Hidden Groups. With Open Groups, you provide access to all community members to read and comment on the content in the Group although only owners of the Group can create content . Closed and Hidden Groups take privacy a step further. Non-members of Closed Group can see that a Group exits but only members can read, comment or reply. Hidden Groups are completely invisible to the community except for its members. Use Hidden Groups when you need confidentiality, security and privileged access to information is need, yet you need right members to easily access right content. Learn more about Groups Related topics: About Community site structure Set permissions at the board levelAurora: About the Content Editor
The Content Editor is the main tool you use to write your posts, articles, and replies/comments in the community. The Aurora editor is similar to editors you’ve used in other applications and should feel familiar. The Aurora Content Editor boasts several features, including: Consistent and optimized toolbars Robust, rich text editor, with emoji support Support for image and video uploads In-line image editing Visual display options for code samples Keyboard shortcuts Consistent and optimized toolbars The Content Editor toolbars have been optimized for specific use cases and displays. Aurora includes these toolbar variants: Desktop Mobile Reply/Comment Desktop Reply/Comment Mobile Desktop (for all content types) The Desktop toolbar provides the most robust toolbar. Note: The Insert template function (not shown) is off by default. You can enable this feature via Community Settings. Top row buttons Format Bold Italic Underline Strikethrough Text color Bullet list Numbered list Text alignment Insert link Insert media (image or video) Insert emoji Insert table Expand menu Bottom row buttons Quote Insert/Edit code Insert Spoiler (show/hide text block) Increase indent Decrease indent Table of Contents Clear formatting View/Edit source code Help (keyboard shortcuts) Mobile On mobile devices, where screen real estate is at a premium, the toolbar includes only the most common actions: Buttons Format Bold Italic Underline Strikethrough Text color Bullet list Numbered list Text alignment Insert link Insert media (image or video) Quote Insert/Edit code Insert spoiler (show/hide text block) Increase indent Decrease indent Clear formatting Reply/Comment toolbars Fewer editing options are available when replying in a discussion or commenting on a post or article. Options include: Bold Italic Bullet list Numbered list Quote Insert link Insert media (image or video) Insert emoji Attach file Insert / Edit code Help Enhanced emoji support The Content Editor provides community admins with a lot more flexibility over which emojis to make available as well as the ability to create a custom set of emojis. For example, you might want to create emojis specific to your brand or products. Other enhanced emoji features include: Emoji name displayed on hover: Hover over an emoji in the content editor or in the published message to see the name of the emoji. Emoji alias support: Manually type in the alias for an emoji (for example, “:smiley:”) without using the auto-suggest menu the emoji renders. Learn more about enabling emojis. Visual display for code samples The Content Editor provides color coding for code samples in your posts to improve overall readability. To enter code samples: Click Insert Code. Search for the code language you want to use. Start typing (or copy/paste) your code sample. Click Insert. The Content Editor displays the color-coded version of your code sample: Inline link editing Content Editor supports quick inline link editing so when you click on a link or use the arrow keys to move the cursor over a link in your post, the inline link pop-up menu displays: From the inline link pop-up menu, you can click: Edit Link: Opens the link editing window where you can change the existing link. Unlink: Removes the link associated with this text. Auto Title: Displays the title of the linked webpage for the link text. (If the Auto Title is active, this button is grayed out.) Show URL: Displays the full URL of the linked text. Open Link: Opens the linked URL in a new browser tab. In-line image editing When writing or editing content with embedded images, you perform several quick editing actions. While editing your content, you can click an image to access the size controls. Click the small, medium, or large options to choose the image size that best fits your space. You can align the image to the left, center, or right or choose not to align them. By default, all the inserted images and videos are center-aligned irrespective of their size or device. The alignment icons indicate image alignment and text wrapping around the images. You can also add a caption for your image, which displays below the image. Also, you can link a URL to the image. Finally, you can click the person icon to add Alternative text that describes the image for the visually-impaired. Upload video on mobile The Content Editor supports mobile video uploads (up to 9.5 GB; default is 50 MB) from your iOS or Android device. Click the Insert Media icon on your mobile device and choose to take a video or upload an existing video from your Photo library. Note: This feature applies only to communities that have video upload enabled. Image and video upload are initiated via the same Media icon on mobile. If video upload had not been enabled for the community, only the image upload option would be available. Drag and drop images, videos, and attachments You can drag and drop images, videos, and file attachments directly to the content editing pane for all content types (forums, blogs, KBs, etc.) or as attachments to the article/post. Note: Constraints for image, video, and file attachments (for example, supported file types and maximum file size) are all based on the admin settings configured by your community administrator. Learn more about setting up and configuring settings and permissions for image uploads, video uploads, and file attachments. Drag and drop directly into the message editor To drag and drop images or videos into the editing pane of an article, post, or comment, find the image or video you want to add and drag it into the writing area: Your image uploads and renders in the editor: Note: When using the Safari browser, any files dragged and dropped into the message editor that are not supported/cannot be displayed inline by the message editor are automatically attached to the message instead. Drag and drop attachments Authors can also quickly add attachments to posts/comments by dragging and dropping them here: Or, they can click browse to launch the file chooser and select the file to attach. Attached files are uploaded and displayed next to the post: Shortcuts If you’re a keyboard shortcuts person, you can find all the keyboard accelerators under the Content Editor Help.Aurora: About images and video
Most communities enable members to add images and videos to their content. Rich media makes content more visually striking and drives member interest and engagement. Note: Image and video moderation is done in conjunction with content moderation so that inappropriate content is not published to your live site. Learn more about content moderation. Copying content from a Google Doc to Khoros Communities is unaffected by the document's ownership since these are separate applications. However, for images in the content, the community first stores them in its storage, requiring access to the original resource. If the Google Doc is not publicly accessible (i.e., permissions are not set to "Anyone with the link"), the image links will be blocked for users in the community. While writing content, members can add images and videos by: Clicking the Insert Media button in the Content Editor toolbar Dragging and dropping images or videos directly into the Content Editor Copying and pasting images and videos via the clipboard Inline image editing When writing or editing content with embedded images, you perform several quick editing actions. While editing your content, you can click an image to access the sizing controls. Click the small, medium, or large options to choose the image size that best fits your space. Note: You can use the Content Editor toolbar to indent or align the image within the column. Tip: Center-align images in the column to prevent text from wrapping around the image. You can also add a caption for your image, which displays below the image. Finally, you can click the person icon to add Alternative text that describes the image for the visually impaired. Image Viewer When viewing content in a piece of content, you can click any image to view it in the image preview pane. Use the left and right arrows to scroll through any other images in the post. Click the Download option in the top-right corner of the viewer to download a local copy of the image. Banner images for blogs Aurora communities enable you to add banner images to blog posts. You can create and upload your own image or find an image in an online library, powered by Unsplash. Learn more about creating a blog post. Related topics: Manage image and video settings and permissions
