Communities Sites Console communities-sites-console

The Communities Sites console provides access to:

See Getting Started with AEM Communities to experience how quickly a community site can be created in the author environment, as well as how to create community groups from the author and publish environments.

Prerequisites prerequisites

Before creating a community site, it is required to:

Best practice, to ensure the site is prepared to support many features, is to take the following steps:

Accessing Communities Sites Console accessing-communities-sites-console

In the author environment, to reach the Communities Sites console:

The Communities Sites console displays any existing community sites. From this console, community sites may be created, edited, managed and deleted.

To create a new community site, select the Create icon.

To access an existing community site, for the purpose of authoring, modifying, publishing, exporting, or adding a nested group, select the sites’ folder icon.

For example, the following image shows the main Communities Sites console displaying the folders for two community sites: enable and engage:

Site Creation site-creation

The site creation console provides a step-by-step approach to assemble features of the site based on a selected community site template and settings.

Every site created includes a login feature as site visitors are required to sign in before being able to post content, send messages, or participate in a group. Other included features are user profiles, messaging, notifications, site menu, search, theming, and branding.

The process is launched by selecting the Create button located at the top of the Communities Sites console.

The creation process is a series of steps presented as panels containing a set of features to be configured (presented as sub-panels). It is possible to move forward to the Next step or Back to the previous step before committing the site in the final step.

Step 1: Site Template step-site-template

On the Site Template panel, the Title, Description, Site Root, Base Language, Name and Site Template are specified:

Select Next

Step 2: Design step-design

The Design panel contains 2 sub-panels for selecing the theme and branding banner:

COMMUNITY SITE THEME community-site-theme

The framework uses Twitter Bootstrap to bring a responsive, flexible design to the site. One of the many preloaded Bootstrap themes may be selected to style the selected community site template, or a Bootstrap theme may be uploaded.

When selected, the theme will be overlayed with an opaque blue checkmark.

After the community site is published, it is possible to edit the properties and select a different theme.

COMMUNITY SITE BRANDING community-site-branding

Community site branding is an image displayed as a header across the top of each page.

The image should be sized to be as wide as the expected display of the page in the browser and 120 pixels in height.

When creating or selecting an image, keep in mind:

Select Next.

Step 3: Settings step-settings

The Settings panel contains several sub-panels presenting features to configure before moving to the last step to create the site.

USER MANAGEMENT user-management

TAGGING tagging

The tags which may be applied to community content are controlled by selecting Tag Namespaces previously defined through the Tagging Console.

In addition, selecting tag namespaces for the community site limits the selection presented when defining catalogs and resources. See Tagging Enablement Resources for important information.

ROLES roles

The roles of community members are assigned with these settings.

Finding community members is easy using type-ahead search.

MODERATION moderation

The global setting for moderating user generated content (UGC) is controlled by these settings. Individual components have additional settings to control moderation.

ANALYTICS analytics

TRANSLATION translation

ENABLEMENT enablement

The ENABLEMENTsettings are applicable when the chosen community site template includes the assignments function, which is available when the enablement features are licensed and configured. The reference site template that includes the assignments function is Reference Structured Learning Site Template.

Select Next.

Step 4: Create Communities Site step-create-communities-site

If any adjustments are needed, use the Back button to make them.

Once Create is selected and started, the process of creating the site cannot be interrupted.

Once the site is created:

When the process completes, the folder for the new site is displayed in the Communities Sites console, from where authors may add page content or administrators may modify the properties of the site.

In order to modify a community site, select its project folder to open it:

When hovering over a site with a mouse, or touching a site card, icons appear which allow for editing the site in author mode, opening the site properties for modification, publishing the site, exporting the site, and deleting the site.

Authoring Site Content authoring-site-content

The content of a site may be authored with the same tools as any other AEM website. To open the site for authoring, select the Open Site iconm that appears on hovering the site with mouse. The site will open in a new tab such that the Communities Sites console remains accessible.

Modifying Site Properties modifying-site-properties

The properties of an exisitng site, specified during the site creation process, can be modified by selecting the Edit Siteicon that appears on hovering the site with mouse.

Details of the following properties match the descriptions provided in the Site Creation section.

Modify Basic modify-basic

The BASIC panel allows the modification of

The Community Site Name may not be modified.

Choosing a different community site template would have no affect on an existing community site as no connection remains between templates and sites.

Instead, the STRUCTURE of the community site may be modified.

Modify Structure modify-structure

The STRUCTURE panel allows the modification of the structure initially created from the selected community site template. From the panel, it is possible to

Example: Adding a Catalog Function to a Community Site Structure example-adding-a-catalog-function-to-a-community-site-structure

Modify Design modify-design

The DESIGN panel allows a new theme to be applied:

Modify Settings modify-settings

The SETTINGS panel allows access to most of the settings under the sub-panels of for Step 3 of community site creation:

Modify Thumbnail modify-thumbnail

The THUMBNAIL panel allows for an image to be uploaded to represent the site in the Communities Sites console.

Modify Enablement modify-enablement

The ENABLEMENT panel allows access to the settings provided during community site creation.

See the ENABLEMENT description.

Publishing the Site publishing-the-site

After a community site has been newly created or modified, it is possible to publish (activate) the site by selecting the Publish Site icon, that appears on mouse hover over the site.

There will be an indication after site is successfully published.

Publishing with Nested Groups publishing-with-nested-groups

After publishing a community site, it is necessary to individually publish each sub-community (nested group) created using the Groups console.

Exporting the Site exporting-the-site

Select the export icon, on mouse hover over the site, to create a package of the community site that is both stored in package manager and downloaded.
Note that UGC is not included in the site package.

Deleting the Site deleting-the-site

To delete the community site, select the Delete Site icon that appears on hovering the mouse over the site in Communities Site Console. This action removes all the items associated with the site, such as UGC, user groups, assets and database records.

Created Community User Groups created-community-user-groups

Once the new community site is published, new member groups (user groups are created in the publish environment) which have the appropriate permissions set for various administrative and member roles.

The name created for the member groups includes the site-name given the site in Step 1 (the name which appears in the URL) as well as an unique ID to avoid conflicts with community sites and groups having the same site-name for different community site roots.

For example, if the name were “engage” for a site titled “Getting Started Tutorial”, then the user group for moderators would be:

Notice that any members assigned roles as moderators or group administrators while creating the site, will be assigned to the appropriate group as well as assigned to the members group. These groups and member assignments are created on publish when the new site is published.

For details, see Managing Users and User Groups.

Configure for Authentication Error configure-for-authentication-error

By default, a community site will redirect to a sample login page when the user enters the wrong credentials and fails to login. This sample login will not be present on a production server.

To correctly redirect, once a site has been configured and pushed to publish, complete these steps to get authentication failure to redirect to the community site:

Test Authentication Redirection test-authentication-redirection

On the same AEM publish instance configured with a login page mapping for the community site:

Accessing Community Sites from Main Sites Console accessing-community-sites-from-main-sites-console

From the global navigation Sites console, community sites are located in the Community Sites folder.

While it is possible to access a community site in this manner, for administrative tasks, the community site should be accessed from the Communities Sites console.