Understanding Groups

The website builders invented the concept of “groups” specially for this website.

Groups are, at their core, sub-sections of the website that contain their own unique content and content editors. Groups can be used for a purpose as simple as giving selected users authorship capabilities over certain pages, or they can be used to create full sub-sites, complete with their own navigation menu.

Every page on this website is part of a group, and your ability to edit and in some cases even view a page depends on a combination of the page’s visibility settings, which groups you are part of, and what level of access you have within those groups.

Grouping Content

Each group has full ownership over its content. Site users cannot modify group content unless they are a Group Editor within that group.

Creating Content

If you are a Group Editor, you can create new pages by clicking Create Page from the Group Administration menu. You can create other types of content by navigating to the Content tab of the Group Administration menu and clicking one of the links beneath “Add Content”. Several content types include a sections field which allows for various elements to be added.

The following types of content will appear in major listing pages on the website:

Articles will appear on the News page.
Events will appear on the Events calendar.
Ideas will appear on the Ideas page.
Video Lectures will appear on the Video Lectures page.

Content Drafts and Publishing

Content will not be visible by most users unless it has the “Published” status. Any content that has the “Draft”, “Needs Review”, or “Unpublished” state is only visible to Group Editors or Group Managers.

Tagging Content

Each piece of content can be tagged using Group Tags. Use these tags in conjunction with dynamic block sections to create your own dynamically updating lists of content on your group’s pages.

Content Privacy

You can use the Privacy options on group content to restrict access to that content. There are three options:

Public: This content is visible to anyone, including anonymous website visitors.
IAS.edu Accounts: This content is only visible to users who are logged in to the website.
Group Members: This content is only visible to users who are logged in to the website and are members of the group to which the content belongs.

Grouping Media

All types of files you can upload to the website are referred to as “media”. The currently supported types of media are:

Images
Videos
Documents (for example, PDF files)
Audio

Media Library

Any time a Group Editor uploads a new media item to a piece of content, that media item is added to the group’s media library. You can see this media library in the Media tab of the Group Administration menu.

Once a piece of media is added to the media library, it can be reused on other pages within your group. Better yet, if you replace the file on the media item, the file will be replaced anywhere that media item has been used.

For example, let’s say our group has a logo, and we use that logo on lots of pages within the group. If we ever needed to replace the logo everywhere it appears in our group content, we can simply find it in our media library, edit it, and replace the image file.

Adding New Media

As mentioned above, any media uploaded to a piece of content is automatically added to your group’s media library. You can also directly upload media from the media library by clicking any of the links beneath “Add Media”.

Editing Media

To update the metadata for a piece of media (for example, an image credit or caption), find the media item in your group’s media library and click the “edit” button.

Tagging Group Content

Each group has its own set of tags it can use to arbitrarily categorize content. Group Editors can add and remove tags in the Tags tab of the group administration menu. Editors can tag content by editing the page and selecting the appropriate tags from the “Tags” field in the “Group” field set.

Lists of tagged content can be placed on pages by using the “Related Content by Tag” Dynamic Block section. Clicking the name of a tag at the bottom of a tagged page brings users to a list of all content with that tag.

When viewing any content within a group or any group admin pages, a user who is a member of that group will have a group link added to the toolbar at the top of the page. This allows the user to easily get to group admin pages and create new content depending on their group role.

Creating a Group

Create groups from Structure > Groups > IAS Group List.

You are automatically assigned the Group Manager role for any group you create. See the Group Settings page for more information about options available when you create a group.

Configuring Groups

Group Managers can change their group’s settings by clicking “Settings” in the group management menu, or by going to the “Edit” tab when viewing a group administration page.

Basic Info

This is where you can set the group name and landing page as well as the privacy defaults for group content.

Privacy Defaults

These settings will apply to new content added to the group. Group managers can still override the content visibility settings for individual pages.

Public: For a public group anyone on the internet can view, choose Public.
IAS.edu Accounts: For content which should not be public, but available to any ias.edu account, such as intranet-style content, choose IAS.edu Accounts.
Group Members: For a private group, choose Group Members to only allow members of this group to view content.

The color selected here sets the color scheme for the main navigation.

Parent Group

When set, the selected group’s main navigation menu will appear on each of this group’s pages, and this group’s menu will appear beneath it as a submenu. The menu color is inherited from the parent group.

Note that this field will be disabled if another group has marked your group as their parent.

Details

Default Event Image

An image uploaded here will be displayed on Event pages if they do not have their own event image uploaded.

Disable Path Prefixes

By default, the path for each page within a group is prefixed with the group landing page’s path. For example, the School of Historical Studies landing page’s path is "/hs", and each page within in it exists at a path like "/hs/page-path".

There are some cases where this behavior is undesirable, and the “Disable group path prefix on group content” option prevents pages from receiving such prefixes.

Users can filter by group on the website-wide search page. Over time, the list of options on this page may become excessively long, especially if many temporarily relevant groups, such as a group for an annually occurring event, are created.

The “Disable search filter” option prevents the group from appearing in this list of filter options.

Conference

Selecting the “Conference Microsite” checkbox reveals a series of additional fields that are used to add content to a persistent microsite header. This persistent header will appear at the top of each page within the group.

The color scheme of the microsite header is inherited from the “Menu Color” setting in the “Basic Info” tab.

Depending on the group’s settings, The Group Menu either replaces the main website navigation or appears as a submenu to the main navigation. If a Parent Group is selected, the menu from the parent group will be used as the main navigation and the group’s menu will shown as a submenu.

Group Managers can manage and rearrange the menu links in the Menu tab of the group administration menu.

Any page that is in the menu and has child menu links will by default show those child links as a “subnav teaser card” display.

Managing Group Members

Group Managers can add website users to groups and assign them a Group Membership Role. These roles define what capabilities the user will have within the group, such as the ability to view private group content, add or publish content, or manage group settings. All member management functions are available on the group’s Members page, accessible via the Group Management menu.

Group Managers cannot add new users to the website. Contact IAS Computing if you need a new user account added to the website.

Group Membership Roles

Group User

Group Users can access any group content that has been marked private to the group.

Group Editor

Group Editors can add and edit any content in the group and publish content drafts. They can also manage the group’s menu, tags, and media.

Group Manager

Group Managers can manage the group’s members and settings. They can also add a new group to the website, becoming its first Group Manager.

Adding a New Group Member

From your group’s Members page, press the “+ Add Member” button.
Begin typing the user’s username in the “User” field, and select their username when it appears.
If you are the manager of multiple groups, you can select which group the user should be added to with the “Group” field.
Use the “Role” field to assign a Group Membership Role to the user. This role is only set for the Group selected in the “Group” field and will not change the user’s access in other groups.

Updating a Group Member’s Role

From your group’s Members page, find the user in the table and press “edit” in their row.
Select a Group Membership Role from the “Role” field.
Press the “Save” button.

Removing a Group Member

From your group’s Members page, find the user in the table and press “edit” in their row.
Press the “Delete” link next to the “Save” button.
Confirm the deletion by pressing the “Delete” button.