Clubs are a way of supporting sub-communities within your site. Many people have requested social group functionality in the past and Clubs are our implementation of this concept.
The first thing you will need to do in order to use the clubs functionality on your site, would be to switch these on. You can do this by visiting Community>Clubs>Clubs, where you will see an 'Enable' button.
Click enable to switch the clubs system on
The club application contains various global settings, which apply to every club. These range from whether or not clubs must be approved by staff, to how clubs themselves are displayed on the site. An area in which should be paid special attention to here are the permissions in which you wish to allow club moderators to have access to.
Club Settings
If you have purchased the commerce application, you can set up the ability to charge for access to a club. You can do this from Community>Clubs>Settings within your ACP.
When this is enabled, users who have permission will beable to create clubs for which a membership fee must be paid to join. You can control which groups can create paid groups, by allowing this on the clubs page of any member group.
Below shows the settings for this, including the ability to give the site a commision for paid clubs, taxes, and payment types that can be used.
Paid Club Settings
This will give an additional option to users who have permissions when creating a club. All proceeds would be added to the users account as account credit, which can be withdrawn based on your withdrawal settings in Commerce>Payments>Withdrawals.
If you do not currently have the commerce application, and would like to add this to your community, you can see more information on how to do this in the following location.
Purchasing and adding a new IPS product
You can control what members can create and participate in, all from within their group settings. These are found in members>groups>social by editing any group. These options include:
- What types clubs members can create
- How many clubs they can create
- If they can create paid clubs (You will see this only if paid clubs is switched on)
- What content can be created within clubs
You can read more about group settings in the following area
There are 5 different types of clubs that a member can create, if they have permission to do so. These are as follows:
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Public - Everyone can see these clubs and their posts. Members can participate within that club without the need to join.
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Open - Everyone can see these clubs and their posts, however you have to join the club in order to participate. Anyone can join.
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Closed - Everyone can see the club, and can see who is in that club, but only members of that club can participate. Users need to ask a leader of that club in order to join.
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Private - Thee clubs can only be seen by member of that club. Users would need to be invited by a leader of that club.
- Read Only - These are read only clubs that can only be added to by the leader of that club. Members cannot add content.
Members can create new clubs on the front end (permission dependant), from the clubs page, using the "Start a Club" button provided. They would simply fill in the detail required on that page, and save to initially create the club itself.
Here I have created a public club, given it an icon which will show on the club itself, and also chosen a location. Locations are optional, and will show a map of where that club is located, if added.
Club Creation Screen
You will see a forums section has already been added.
Once created, click the club to enter. Initially, you will be presented with just the home tab, which shows a stream of all activity within that club. You now need to select "Manage Club" to add more tabs to the club, such as forums, an images section etc.
You will note at the bottom there is an additional "Add Page" setting. This will allow you to add a page fully created by yourself to the club. This may be because you want to add an extra information page or any number of additional uses.
Added on version 4.4 is the ability to re-order club menus. To do this, select the "Manage Club' option within the club itself, then select Reorder Menu. Once selected you will be able to drag and drop menu items into the order you would like them to show. This can be seen in the image below.
Reordering Menu
You can add and amend terms from the initial club settings when you set up the club, or later by selecting "Edit Club Settings" from the Manage Club menu.
On selection this will give you the opportunity to add some rules, or amend any in which you already have, along with the ability to force people who join the club to acknowledge them.
Rules Setup
Note, if you change your rules, you can use the selection at the bottom to force people to re-acknowledge.
Within clubs, the creator change members of that club to be moderators or leaders. The difference in these is as follows.
Leaders - A leader can moderate content and manage members in the club, including making other members leaders. The creator of the club initially, is a leader
Moderators - A moderator can moderate content only. They cannot make any structural changes to the group, nor make any other members leader or moderator.
You can change a member to a leader or moderator, from the members tab within any club, as shown in the image below.
Making a member a moderator/leader
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