Hump Day: do you use the Clubs feature?

[Jordan Miller]

 

Happy Hump Day, team! Hope you had a great New Year. 

I've been thinking a lot about our Clubs feature (yeah, I'm cool like that 🤗). I get asked a lot of questions about Clubs when I'm chatting with prospective clients interested in starting a community with us. I feel like they're a seriously underutilized feature.

I was curious to see if any of you are currently using Clubs, and what you like about them / areas of improvement.

A Club...

• Creates new pathways for members to venture into and contribute.
• Offers new opportunities for a variety of content.
• Are self-managed by its Club leader, allowing for moderators to focus their attention elsewhere.
• Promotes togetherness or exclusivity based on Club conditions and permissions.
• Houses Club-specific content in its own ecosystem separate from the main community.
• Grants managed power to your superstar members.
• Builds and fosters unforeseen connections.

Just to refresh your memory, each club can contain its own forum, downloads, calendar, gallery and blog. Consider them communities within a community! 🤠 

Do any of you use Clubs? Or know of another Invision Community that is slaying the Club game? Would love to hear from you! You never know what we'll incorporate in the future based off of your feedback 😉🤫 

 

Here is a list of updates and fixes from our team since we last spoke way back in 2021. 

- Fixed the style tag on the offline page.
- Fixed an issue where some AdminCP text editor tags may not show descriptions.
- Fixed an issue sending bulk mail when selecting one of the 'validating' options.
- Fixed a broken language string on the re-authenticate login prompt.
- Fixed an issue on the ACP - Social Media Promotion Page which returned the Permissions Warning even when no promotion services were available.
- Fixed social media promotion throwing an error if the Facebook or Twitter login handler is disabled.
- Fixed an issue where downloading a file may have the wrong filename when it has a long extension.
- Improved the REST API self diagnostics test and returned errors.
- Fixed a missing language string in the related content widget.
- Fixed an issue where banned and spammer member filter options were showing for bulk mail.
- Added new webhooks which are fired when content is deleted.
- Fixed an issue where hidden or non-approved content was shown in the "Similar Content" Elastic Search widget (note: it was only shown to those with permission to see it).

 

Looking forward to a Club chat. And hey, if you haven't already, feel free to join our Health Club. See you in the comments!
 

 

[Feneroin]

No ...

[Davyc]

I want to use the clubs feature on my upcoming site, but the amount of work needed to get it looking like I want is seriously time consuming;  changing the layout via template changes and adding extra CSS to get the look I want is challenging, but not impossible.  For example - the name of the club should not be overlaid on the image, but below; that horrible transparent background is ugly to say the least.  The image itself is way too small. 

So, some extra thought into how the actual club card looks should be addressed, with some template changes and CSS added that can be applied via options.  The concept is excellent, the implementation is lacking.  Once I get the clubs up and running I will come back with both a link and what I had to do to get the look I wanted 🙂

 

[Davyc]

OK here's a first look - I can't provide a link as the site isn't fully ready yet.

I've removed all the fluff on the card itself and move the name down under the image; I've also made the image clickable to make entry into the Club easier.  On right side bar I've removed what I consider to be non-essential to my own needs and tidied up the positioning to give it a more aesthetic look.  Personally, I feel this will give the directory a more pleasing to the eye look as well as making it more functional and less cluttered.

I've pretty much done the same on the Club itself when entering it.

Removed all the unwanted fluff that overlaid the image retaining only the link to add an image.  I'm also using this add-in to improve functionality:

There is one template edit and the rest is done purely through CSS - the media queries were a bit tricky to ensure mobile and tablet continuity - there may be a few phones that are not covered by the media queries, but they are less commonplace than the mainstream phones; the queries can easily be adapted if needs require.

I must point out that you may need to make some slight adjustments to the CSS depending on the theme you are using; I'm using the Novus theme by @ehren.

Once I've made sure everything is as I expect it to be, I'll post the template edit and the CSS used.

[Jordan Miller]

16 hours ago, Feneroin said:

No ...

Why not? @Feneroin

[Ocean West]

I have not either. I think a few reasons is that if I migrate an existing set of forums over its a one way thing. If it doesn't go as planned moving forums back is a pain.

Also too i think the URLs change which would suck for the forums I am considering since these vendors would have to update everywhere they published links to target forums. 

If a conversion were to happen all posts & topics should auto add every member to club without user action they shouldn't have to rejoin the club because I migrated the forum and content. 

 

[Daniel F]

13 minutes ago, Ocean West said:

Also too i think the URLs change which would suck for the forums I am considering since these vendors would have to update everywhere they published links to target forums. 

The URL won't change when you move a node or it's content into a club or vice verse. 

[opentype]

21 hours ago, Jordan Miller said:

I was curious to see if any of you are currently using Clubs, and what you like about them / areas of improvement.

I keep trying but every (closed) club is like starting a new community from scratch and I never get clubs busy enough. I don’t use the open clubs. That doesn’t make much sense to me because it goes against the club concept of joining a club first. 

Paid clubs would be an interesting concept once we can have Pages databases in clubs. That would open up lots of options like paid online courses. 

[Michael R]

I moved several of my specific forums to clubs. Folks loved it at first but I rarely see anyone participating in clubs anymore. I am not sure why.

[Kjell Iver Johansen]

Actually I wish Clubs came 10 years ago - because then we had a lot of activity, and two or three specific topics (Stoves and Hiking with Lightpacking and hikinggroups for specific towns) could have been really succesful with Clubs. Then I had a few active users that could have been leaders in such Clubs, but now a days they have all gone to fb, and people does not see any need of clubs.

It is kind of sad. It's like kicking a dead horse. 

BTW: It is symptomatic that if there is less activity in a topic, members advice other members to fb groups - a turn-off for most of us, but thats reality of todays social media.

Edited January 6, 2022 by Kjell Iver Johansen
added BTW

[Ocean West]

I think too there are no categories, or Grid View, and the menus navigation under the club are not the same as forums.

its like renting out a room (yet no way to monetize it) yea your renter and you use the same front door. I'd like to see more of a cottage or attached granny flat. where the 'club' behaves like a sister site with its own entrance. Members could come and go not have to join I guess unless paid, or private.

Heck if the 'club' became successful some magic button that moved the club to it's own IPS suite instance and the two site could share logins. 

 

[IveLeft...]

In reply to to the op: do you use the Clubs feature?

Nope - not found clubs to be of any benefit whatsoever

[AlexWebsites]

They never really caught on in any of my forums. I never really liked how club forums show up in main forums either if you turn that feature on. Really should be a way to condense them. I think most people who want that feature move to facebook groups or other.

Edited January 7, 2022 by AlexWebsites

[SUBRTX]

paid club is where it is at! 

If you just open up a regular club, it is no difference from a sub-forum IMO.

 

Edited January 7, 2022 by SUBRTX

[Daniel F]

14 hours ago, opentype said:

I keep trying but every (closed) club is like starting a new community from scratch and I never get clubs busy enough.

Yea, I've experienced this too, but I think that there's a lot of potential for a brand new community, and that's also what I'm going to do with my new project.

Instead of creating separate forums, downloads, courses and classified categories for each topic( handled via self coded separate applications) , I'm going to create clubs  acting as containers, which contain the specific discussion forums, but also the related downloads, courses and classified categories. So there won't be a stand alone landing page for all downloads categories or courses at all, instead literally everything is going to be part of a club.

 

This should be a funny experiment.

 

[opentype]

27 minutes ago, Daniel F said:

… everything is going to be part of a club.

I’ve seen that before. I just wanted to post the URLs but the sites are closed now. So much for that experiment. 😜

 

[Sonya*]

52 minutes ago, Daniel F said:

everything is going to be part of a club

This is an example of how community can be made from clubs: https://creatura.club. This community is dead but not due to the clubs. Adobe Muse is dead, that's why.

[Jordan Miller]

On 1/5/2022 at 11:52 PM, Davyc said:

I want to use the clubs feature on my upcoming site, but the amount of work needed to get it looking like I want is seriously time consuming;  changing the layout via template changes and adding extra CSS to get the look I want is challenging, but not impossible.  For example - the name of the club should not be overlaid on the image, but below; that horrible transparent background is ugly to say the least.  The image itself is way too small. 

So, some extra thought into how the actual club card looks should be addressed, with some template changes and CSS added that can be applied via options.  The concept is excellent, the implementation is lacking.  Once I get the clubs up and running I will come back with both a link and what I had to do to get the look I wanted 🙂

 

I like where your head is at in terms of how to present Clubs. 

I'm excited to see what you come up with when it's all said and done! Please share here when you're ready 😃 

[Colombia Humana]

Actually I do, and is a fundamental pillar of our community. I use it so heavily that I made it look like Google Maps.

I'm using this app to improve on features:

There was an app for IPB 4 called Group Collab. It had a lot of features that may inspire IPB dev team on what could come next for Clubs.

 

[Davyc]

I've now finished the modifications to the clubs feature and have added two clubs to view.  I've taken my time over adding content to this site and hope that everyone who loves Irish music, whatever its form, will enjoy the site.

https://irishceol.com

[Craig Gingell]

The ability to pre-populate a new club with members would be great.

I'd also like the ability to send bulk email to members of a club, but I can't see how to do that?

Please let me know if I've got that wrong?

Cheers

Craig

[stu_m]

Nope I don't use clubs 

I would rather see it substituted for the pages application and have clubs as an optional add on 

I would get more use out of pages 

[IveLeft...]

Rather than clubs - would be better if the developers put more time into updating pages and commerce

[StuartSafe]

We're just testing them out, but wonder if there's a way to remove the ability for members to create a club themselves - we want to create it for them and then hand over ownership. Any pointers for a newbie on achieving either of these?

[opentype]

14 minutes ago, StuartSafe said:

We're just testing them out, but wonder if there's a way to remove the ability for members to create a club themselves - we want to create it for them and then hand over ownership. Any pointers for a newbie on achieving either of these?

It’s a setting for each member group.