Groups

The Groups plugin lets members build communities around a shared interest: a cycling club, a neighbourhood, a class, a buy-and-sell market. Members post inside the group, and the group's posts reach every member's home feed.

What members get

• Discover at /groups (also in the side menu): invitations waiting for an answer, the groups they are in, suggestions and the largest groups, with a search box and a category filter. Your groups lists every group they belong to.
• Create → Group, or /groups/create: a name, an address (/groups/<address>, made from the name when left empty), a category, a description, the privacy, who can join, and whether admins approve posts. The creator becomes the group's first admin and lands on its settings to add a cover and invite people.
• The group itself, with the tabs Discussion, About, Members, Photos, and Pending for the people who run it:
  • a cover and a picture, the privacy, the number of members and a few of their faces;
  • Join group, Ask to join, Accept invitation or Leave group, depending on where the member stands;
  • Invite to bring friends in, Copy link and Report group in the ⋯ menu;
  • a box Write something to the group… for members, and the group's posts with pinned posts on top;
  • the About tab with the description, the group rules, the category, the creation date, and the admins and moderators.

Groups appear in the site search under a Groups tab and in the search suggestions. Public groups are also listed in the sitemap.

Privacy and joining

Who can join is either Anyone, with one click or Admins approve every request. Private and secret groups always need approval. An invitation lets a person straight in, even into a group that needs approval; a secret group can only be joined by invitation.

A secret group never shows in search, suggestions or the sitemap, and search engines are told not to index it.

Roles

Only an admin can change or remove another admin. Site admins can manage every group as if they owned it.

Running a group

Settings on the group page (admins only) has four sections:

• General: name, address, category, About, Group rules, privacy, who can join, and Admins approve posts.
• Picture and cover: a square picture, a wide cover and its position. Both can also be changed with the camera buttons on the group page.
• Members: everyone in the group with a role list beside them, the Requests to join with Approve and Decline, the open invitations (Cancel the invitation), the banned people (Unban), and Invite by username.
• Delete group (owner only): removes the group with all its posts and members. This cannot be undone.

Admins approve posts: new posts by members wait on the Pending tab until an admin or moderator approves them; the writer is told when that happens. Reject deletes the post. Posts by admins and moderators go up at once. The same tab lists the requests to join.

Pin in the group, in the ⋯ menu of a post, keeps it at the top of the group's Discussion. A pinned post carries a Pinned mark; Unpin from the group takes it down again.

Ban removes a member and keeps them out: they cannot ask to join again or be invited by ordinary members. Unban lifts it.

A member who asks to join tells every admin of the group with a notification. Moderators can answer the request too.

Settings for the whole site

Admin → Plugin pages → Group settings.

• Who can create a group: Every member, Verified members only, Pro members only or Admins only.
• Groups a member may own (0 = no limit): 20 by default.
• New groups need approval: a new group waits, visible only to its owner and admins, until you approve it.
• Categories: 16 ready-made (General, Friends, Buy and sell, Hobbies, Study, Jobs, Sports, Technology, Travel, Health, Food, Music, Gaming, Faith, Neighbourhood, Support). Rename them, change their icon and order, or add your own. Deleting a category moves its groups into the first one.

A member can create at most five groups an hour, and send at most 60 invitations an hour.

Looking after groups

Admin → Plugin pages → Groups lists every group with the tabs All, Pending and Hidden and a search box.

• Approve opens a pending group; the owner is told.
• Hide takes a group off the site: only its owner and admins can still open it, and its posts leave every feed. The owner is told. Unhide brings it back.
• Delete removes the group with all its posts.

Members report a group from its ⋯ menu; reports arrive on Admin → Reports.

Coming from WoWonder

When the WoWonder Migration plugin runs, the Groups step brings over every WoWonder group with its picture, cover, category, privacy, joining rule, members, open join requests and admins, and gives the old group posts back to their group. See Moving from WoWonder.

Tips

• Write the Group rules before the group grows. Moderators can point to them when they remove a post.
• For a buy-and-sell group, switch on Admins approve posts: one look before a post goes up stops most scams.