Platform Personalization
The CMS provides many flexible options for platform design & branding, which you will discover and utilise throughout the creation and management of your platform.
To begin with, there are a couple of settings you can adjust to get started:
- Basic site settings: The name & email address of your platform - make sure your email address matches the final domain you'll be using
(direct URL: /admin/config/system/site-information) - Platform Appearance: The colours, logos and top-level design settings for your platform. Match these to your brand to make the platform feel like home
(direct URL: /admin/appearance/settings/socialblue).
Member profile & account configuration
Each of your members will have their own account and profile. Their accounts have personal information including contact details and email preferences which are only visible to you and the account holder, while the profiles are visible to all of the logged-in members and include the personal description, interests and organization details. More about the user account here and user profile here.
As a Site Manager, you can control how members join your community, the content of the notification emails, and the profile fields and pages. For example, you can determine that any visitor of the community can freely register and become a member and determine the fields on their profiles.
Control this in the Site Manager Dashboard in the People section:
- Account settings: The user sign-up experience & security
(direct URL: /admin/config/people/accounts) - Profile fields: Which fields are available for users to fill in
(direct URL: /admin/config/opensocial/profile-fields)- Choose which of these should be mandatory and/or placed on the sign-up form via Registration Fields (/admin/config/people/social-registration-fields)
- Give users more power to show/hide this information in Profile settings (/admin/config/people/social-profile)
- Configure Email Settings: Choose the default notification settings for all users - they can adjust it themselves later (/admin/config/opensocial/mail)
Content tags and types (taxonomy)
Content tags, content types and profile tags are among the available tags, or taxonomy, you can preset for your community. The platform offers a variety of tag categories which allow your members to easily search for content or members related to their interests. It's recommended that before you publish any content, think about the possible interests and expertise your members can add to their profiles, what types of events and topics you'll share and what tags will help categorize all the content in your community (direct URL: /admin/structure/taxonomy)
Click here to learn where to find your tags and how to create new terms.
Data policy
As the owner of the data on the platform, including your members and your content, it’s your responsibility to ensure that your community complies with any necessary regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The platform offers the necessary features to ensure this. In the Site Manager Dashboard in the Data collection and usage section, you can determine:
- Data Policy ( /admin/config/people/data-policy)
- User consent overview ( /admin/reports/data-policy-agreements)
- Data usage explanation ( /admin/config/system/inform-consent)
Content & Group configuration
An engaging community relies on relevant content and dedicated groups so that your members can like, follow or join them. As a Site Manager, you’re able to control the experience of your members with content and group configuration, and therefore before you create content or groups on your platform, you’ll want to review the configuration options and determine some settings in the Configuration section of the Site Manager Dashboard.
Here is a list of some of the key configurations; not all of these will be relevant for you and your community, but it's a good overview of the possibilities:
Groups:
- Group settings ( /admin/config/opensocial/social-group)
- Group Quick Join Settings ( /admin/config/opensocial/group-quickjoin)
Events:
- Event enrollment Settings ( /admin/config/opensocial/event)
- Add to calendar settings ( /admin/config/opensocial/event-addtocal)
- Anonymous event enrollment settings ( /admin/config/opensocial/event-an-enroll)
- Maximum Event Enrollment settings ( /admin/config/opensocial/event-max-enroll)
- Event type settings ( /admin/config/opensocial/event-type)
- Event organizer settings ( /admin/config/opensocial/event-managers)
Content & Commenting:
- Public visibility settings ( /admin/config/opensocial/visibility)
- Discussion Settings ( /admin/config/system/discussion)
- Comment (file) upload settings (/admin/config/opensocial/comment-upload-settings)
- Social tag settings ( /admin/config/opensocial/tagging-settings)
- Social Sharing Settings ( /admin/config/opensocial/social-sharing)
- Content Reporting Settings ( /admin/config/opensocial/content-reporting)
Once you're comfortable with these configurations, you can start creating the actual content and spaces within your community.