Groups

From KickApps Documentation

Contents 1 Overview 2 Enabling and Disabling the Groups Application 3 Configuring the Groups Application 4 Adding and Editing Groups 5 Finding Groups 6 Viewing and Interacting with Groups 7 Managing Groups as the Site Administrator 8 Syndicating Groups and Group Activity 9 Reporting on Groups 10 Groups on Profile Pages 11 Groups on Your Site’s Homepage 12 Groups in Your Site’s Activity Feeds 13 Groups and Points 14 Groups and Other Media Sharing Apps 15 Advertising on Groups 16 System-Generated Emails 17 API Support for the Groups Application (For Developers) 17.1 Create a group 17.2 Rename a group 17.3 Disable a group 18 Related Tutorials and How-to Articles

Overview

The KIT Cloud Social Groups application enables site owners to create and manage an unlimited number of “micro communities” where members can share and interact with each other in a more specific context than the whole site. For instance the New York Rangers created different groups within their KIT Cloud Social-powered “Blueshirts United” community for each player on the team. This way, fans can pay tribute to each Ranger in their own “shrine.”

New groups can only be created by site administrators, and members can submit requests for new groups. Groups can be organized by categories or tags, and the content of each group page is indexed by your site’s global search engine (which makes all of your site’s content findable by keyword).

Each group has a unique URL (“permalink”), retains your site’s global styling and navigation (including your header, main navigation, background and footer), and can be customized to achieve an independent look and feel for each group page. The core component of each group is the comment wall, which can only be contributed to by members of the group.

Enabling and Disabling the Groups Application

The KIT Cloud Social Groups application can be enabled or disabled in Affiliate Center on the Configure > Settings > Add/Remove Apps page. (You can get to the Affiliate Center by clicking the “manage your site” link near the top of all your site’s pages.) When you enable this application, your site’s members will be able to join the groups that you create, and view and interact with other group members’ contributions.

Note: If you disable this application after members have joined and participated in some groups, all of those groups will become unavailable on your site and people who try to view those groups will see a message that the group has been removed. Re-enabling the Groups application will make those groups and the contributions therein viewable again.

Configuring the Groups Application

When the Groups application is enabled, you can specify a default icon to represent groups throughout your site (on search results pages, for instance). This icon is used in situations where you have not uploaded a custom logo image for a specific group. You set the default icon for groups in the Affiliate Center on the Configure > Settings > Default Icons page.

The Groups application has a few default text strings that you can modify in the Affiliate Center in the Configure > Language section. The “Language Editor” allows you to localize the Groups application to another language (Italian, French, Spanish, etc.), or just change a couple of labels to better match your site’s tone.

Adding and Editing Groups

Site administrators can create and edit groups in the Affiliate Center on the Manage > Groups page. When adding or editing a group you must specify a group name, and can optionally upload a logo image to represent the group throughout the site (on search results pages, for instance). You can also include a rich description for each group, which is displayed at the top of the group page. Finally, you can categorize each group, tag them and/or admin tag them. Click here to learn more about Admin Tags

Finding Groups

Each group that gets added to your site is immediately indexed by your site-wide search engine and is made available on the site within a few minutes after it is created. When you enable the Groups application for your KIT Cloud Social-powered site, a “Groups” tab is added to your site’s global navigation strip. Clicking the “Groups” tab will display the most recent groups that have been added to your site, with options to sort the list by most members, most media and most comments. In addition to the “Groups” tab in your site’s global navigation strip, a “Group” checkbox is added to the Advanced Search form on your site, so that users can perform keyword searches against only your site’s groups. Click here for more information on the Search application

Viewing and Interacting with Groups

Each group in your site has a dedicated page at a URL that is automatically created by the KIT Cloud Social system, based on the name of the group. Each group page contains the name of the group, a logo image and a description. There is also an activity feed which features the most recent actions that have been performed within the group, and various “most recent” modules featuring most recent photos, videos, blog posts, etc that have been added to the group.

The key feature of the group page is the comment wall, where only group members can leave messages for others to view and respond.

Managing Groups as the Site Administrator

As a site administrator (Webmaster, Admin or Editor), you can view and manage all of your site’s groups in the Affiliate Center in the Manage > Groups section. This page allows you to create a new group, or manage any of your existing groups.

In the list of your existing groups, you can click the column headings to sort the groups by the most members, or most media contributions.

Clicking the “disable” link next to any group will remove the group from your site. When you disable a group, you break the connection between that group and any members or media contributions associated with that group. You can re-enable any disabled group by clicking the “enable” link associated with the group; doing so will re-establish the connections that existed between group and the members/contributions. Note: when you disable or enable groups on your site, any members who belong to those groups will automatically receive an email notification that the group has been disabled or enabled. Click here to learn more about System Generated Emails.

Clicking the “details” link next to any group will allow you to view and edit the group details, including the members who belong to the group and all contributions that have been added to the group (photos, videos, blog posts, comments, etc.)

To edit the details related to the group (group name, group logo, description, etc) simply enter new values in the provided fields and click “Save Settings.”

To edit the members of a group, or the media that has been contributed to a group, click the appropriate “Manage” buttons on the right side of the group details page to expose the items you can manage. Removing a member or contribution from a group will permanently remove it from the group, but will not remove it from your site. If you want to permanently remove the member or contribution from your site you should navigate to Manage > Members or Manage > Media in the Affiliate Center.

Click the “Manage Group Comments” button on the right side of the group details page in the Affiliate Center to edit or delete comments that have been left on a Group.

Syndicating Groups and Group Activity

Your site’s groups can be syndicated via the RSS Feed links that appear at the bottom of each Groups list page. You can order the groups in the feed by most recent, most members, most media or most comments.

You can also create “activity feeds” for each of your groups inside the Affiliate Center’s App Studio > Feed Builder. To create a group activity feed, select “Activity” as the Media Type, then select “Group Activity” as the Activity Feed Type, then select the specific group that you want an activity feed for. Click here for more information about the KIT Cloud Social Feed Builder

Advanced users can also manually construct URLs to produce RSS Feeds containing even more information about your site’s groups and the members and media associated with the groups. For instance you could create an RSS feed of videos that have been added to a specific group, or members that have joined a specific group. Click here for more information on the KIT Cloud Social RSS API

Reporting on Groups

Usage of the Groups application is tracked along with the rest of your site’s content in the Reporting section of the Affiliate Center. You can see how many groups were created and disabled, and how many members have joined your site’s groups (in aggregate) for any date range. Click here for more information on KIT Cloud Social Reporting.

Groups on Profile Pages

There is a section on the left side of each member’s profile page where names of the groups that they belong to are hyperlinked (if they belong to any). When members join groups on your site, this section of their profile page is automatically updated with links to the groups they joined.

Groups on Your Site’s Homepage

You can configure your site to include a pre-configured “community home page” which contains a bunch of modules that primarily feature the most recent content that members have contributed to your site. There is also a section that displays the “most popular groups” (groups with the most members) on your site. This list automatically gets updated as members join the various groups on your site. Click here to learn more about configuring your site to include a pre-configured “community home page.”

Groups in Your Site’s Activity Feeds

Your KIT Cloud Social-powered site comes with a number of “activity feeds” that are constantly updated as members interact with each other and with the content of your site.

• There is a “community activity feed” on your site’s login page which contains a running feed of all member activity across your site.
• There is a “member activity feed” on the profile page for each of your site’s members which contains a running feed of each particular member’s activities.
• There is a “my friends and my news” feed on your members’ myHome page which contains a feed of their friends’ activities and the also the activities of the people they are following.
• Lastly, there is a “group activity feed” on each group page which contains a feed of activities that have happened inside that particular group.

Each time something happens in a group (a member joins, a new contribution is made, a contribution is rated or commented on, etc.), the activity feed associated with the group is automatically updated with a link to the member who performed the action, as well as a link to the item that was acted upon. Click here to learn more about the KIT Cloud Social RSS API

Below is an illustration of a group activity feed on someone’s profile page:

Groups and Points

The KIT Cloud Social Points & Levels application allows you to automatically award points to your site’s members when they perform certain activities on your site. If you have enabled the Points & Levels application for your site, you can configure the application to award points when your members join groups. Click here to learn more about Points and Levels

Groups and Other Media Sharing Apps

If you have the KIT Cloud Social Blogs or other media sharing applications enabled for your site (Video Sharing, Photo Sharing, Audio Sharing), members will see a list of groups that they belong to (if any) on the upload pages associated with those apps. Member contributions that get approved will be added to all of the groups that the member checks (if any) during the upload process.

If a media contribution (blog post, photo, video or audio track) is associated with a group in your site, the “play page” for the media item will include a link to the group or groups that it associated with.

Advertising on Groups

There are two different types of pages on your site associated with the KIT Cloud Social Groups application. Clicking the “Groups” tab in your site’s global navigation strip reveals a “list page” containing your site’s most popular groups. From here, you can click on an individual group, which is rendered on a “groups page.”

Each of the two types of pages mentioned above have “ad slots” in them that you can populate with whichever content you want. You can configure these ad slots in the Affiliate Center on the Configure > Advertising page. Click here to learn more about configuring the ad slots on your site.

System-Generated Emails

The Groups application sends email notifications to site administrators and members when certain events occur. The contents of these notifications can be modified by editing your site’s Language settings, as described above (see, “Configuring the Groups Application”). Below is a list of the email notifications that get sent from the Groups application, including the “trigger events” which cause the notifications. Click the notification title to view the contents of the email that gets sent when the trigger event occurs.

• Group Requested (administrator)
• Group Enabled (member) Group Enabled
• Group Disabled (member) Group Disabled
• Another member comments on a group after you (member) Comments After You

More info: System Generated Emails

How to edit your Community Emails

API Support for the Groups Application (For Developers)

This document is intended to provide an in-depth look at the Groups application on the KIT Cloud Social hosted platform, to help you understand how the application can be enabled, configured and managed on a day-to-day basis.

If you prefer to host all of the groups on your own web servers, or if you’d just like to use bits and pieces of the Groups application, we offer a complete set of REST API calls which allow you to construct whatever kind of user interface you can dream up.

Regardless of which front-end deployment option you choose, the functionality of the Groups application (and the content created by it) is managed in the Affiliate Center as described above. Click here to learn more about configuring the KIT Cloud Social REST API

Create a group

When you create a group, a special homepage for that group is added to your community's Groups page. Your members will be able to join the group on that page.

To create a group,

1. Log into the Affiliate Center.
2. Navigate to Manage > Groups.
3. Type a name for your group.
4. (Optional) To upload a logo for your group from your hard drive, click the "Browse..." button.
5. (Optional) To assign your group to a category, select a category from the dropdown menu. Assigning your group to a category will make it easier for your members to find media and other groups that belong to that category.
6. Click the "Add Group" button.

Rename a group

To rename a group,

1. Log into the Affiliate Center.
2. Navigate to Manage > Groups.
3. Find your group in the list.
4. Click the "Edit name" link next to your current group name.
5. Type in a new name.
6. Click Save.

Disable a group

Disabling a group will remove it from your community. You can re-enable disabled groups.

To disable a group:

1. Log into the Affiliate Center.
2. Navigate to Manage > Groups.
3. Find your group in the list.
4. Click the "Disable" link on the far right.

Related Tutorials and How-to Articles

Add Classes to the buttons on the Groups page

Add Join Group button to Groups list page

Add Admin Tags To Media Members and Groups

Add Tags To Media Members and Groups

Remove Admin Tags From Media Members and Groups

Retrieve Member Groups