Admins can create and publish a fully themed Community for their learners to ask questions, share best practices and interact with each other.

To learn about the Communities experience for Learners, see Communities for Learners

NOTE: This is available to Customer Learning Cloud customers to purchase as an add-on to Academies. Please contact your Customer Success or Account team to learn more.

Prerequisite: Create an academy in the Customer hub before starting set-up of the Community.

Within the Admin Console, navigate to your Customer hub. The Community can be found in the top line navigation.

This is only available to customers who have purchased the add-on.

Select “Create a Community” and confirm the name you would like for your Community.

Now the Community is created and you can start setup. There are a few core areas for setting up your Community.

FAQs

Can I have multiple communities associated with a hub?

No. A hub is limited to one academy and one community per hub.

The Settings tab in the Communities navigation bar is where you go to set up the settings for this Community.

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The General Settings Allow you to edit the name and description of your Community. This will be the name that appears in email notifications and in the browser tab.

The Access section allows you to control how contacts can access the Community. Contacts must be logged in to post and engage with the community, but if you would like to keep your community private to contacts only, toggle to “Require contact to be logged in to view.”

SEO & Indexing also allows you to control access to your community. If you would like to enable users to be able to discover your Community from search engines, toggle to “Allow Search Engine Indexing.” Add your meta title, description, and image to customize what appears in search engine results and in the preview when you share a link to the Community.

Emails allow you to customize the following email settings specific to your Community:

If you want these to be different from your Hub settings, turn the toggle on.

If you want to use the same value as your Hub settings, turn the toggle off.

All changes made in the Communities Settings will automatically save.

To customize the styling of a Community, click the “Theming” tab in the Community navigation header.

On the Theming page, you will see options for Site and Styles. The Styles section will allow you to set theming defaults across the Community app. In the Site section, open the Theming editor by clicking “edit” to override any of these settings on individual pages.

The Community's theming is fully customizable and separate from your Academies theming. If you have a fully themed Academy and want to import elements to the Community to get started, the Communities Theming Quick Start allows you to import several theming components from your Academy over to your Community.

When you go to Community Theming and scroll down to Styles, you will find the Quick Start option. This option will only show if you have not published any changes to your Community Theming AND if an admin of your CLC Hub has not dismissed the Quick Start option.

When you click Quick Start, you will see a pop up preview to show how your Academy styles will look in the Community. When you select “Apply this Theming,” the theming elements will be imported over to the Community as a draft, so you will still need to publish these changes.

If you have made any theming changes to the Community prior to clicking Quick Start, the Quick Start will only override elements that are impacted by the import and will not write over changes that are not related.

These are the Academy elements that will be imported into the Community Theming.

Once you have imported your Academy theme settings into the Community, you can make any changes you need to in order to make your Community custom to your brand.

Styles will set the branding, colors, and typography across the Community and serve as the default options . This is broken out into Logo & Branding, Colors, and Typography.

Note: These styles are unique to the Community app. They do not inherit the styles from the Academy (Academy Theming Settings) .

Here you can upload your logo to use across the Community.

Set the default colors that will be used across the Community. Once you have selected the colors you need for Text, Boarders, Background, Button Text, and Link & Button Background, select Publish to publish these changes to the Community

Set the Typography you would like for the Heading, Navigation and Body fonts and sizes that match your branding. Select Publish to publish these setting in the Community

Now that you have completed the Styles, you can use the Site Theming editor to adjust any theming in the different pages and sections of the Community. On the “Theming” page, click Edit under the preview of the Community to get started.

The Theming Editor allows you to customize the style of different pages within the Community.

The drop down allows you to pick which page or element you want to customize.

The left-side menu will then display which elements you can customize.

Select a component from the left-side menu, and customize the styling for that component.

Learn more about the pages and components you can customize below:

The first section to customize is the Forum Home page. Here you can adjust the theming in the Navigation bar, Cover, Topic Feed and Footer.

In the Navigation section, you can adjust the settings to your Navigation bar. Here you can add menu items, adjust the menu position, switch your logo, adjust colors, or add custom CSS.

Pro Tip: You can add your Community link to your Academy Navigation to make it easy for contacts to discover your Community (link to article)

Customize your cover by updating the formatting, adding a cover photo, and adjusting colors & opacity.

The colors will be set to your Style Defaults. If you would like to override these and change the colors in the cover, you can click the lock icon and adjust the color settings. This will change colors for the cover only.

Finally, you can add Custom CSS for added customization of the cover.

Next you can customize the Topic Feed by adjusting the border settings and choose to show the avatars and dividers between posts.

Here you can again either use the Default Theme Settings or click the lock icon and select other colors to customize this section of the page.

You can also include custom CSS here for further customization.

The last step for the Forum Home is to customize the Footer. Here you can add additional links, text and color customization. Again, you can either use the Default Theme Settings or click the lock icon and select other colors to customize this section of the page

Next you can customize your Topic pages. You will find the same components as the Forum Home, but this allows you to make adjustments to the page when a user is viewing a topic.

In the Navigation section, you can adjust the settings to your Navigation bar. Here you can add menu items, adjust the menu position, switch your logo, adjust colors, or add custom CSS.

Customize your cover by updating the formatting, adding a cover photo, and adjusting colors & opacity.

The colors will be set to your Style Defaults. If you would like to override these and change the colors in the cover, you can click the lock icon and adjust the color settings. This will change colors for the cover only.

Finally, you can add Custom CSS for added customization of the cover.

Next you can customize the Topic Feed by adjusting the border settings and choose to show the avatars and dividers between posts.

Here you can again either use the Default Theme Settings or click the lock icon and select other colors to customize this section of the page.

You can also include custom CSS here for further customization.

The last step for the Forum Home is to customize the Footer. Here you can add additional links, text and color customization. Again, you can either use the Default Theme Settings or click the lock icon and select other colors to customize this section of the page.

Next you can customize your Post pages. You will find the same components as the Forum Home, but this allows you to make adjustments to the page when a user is viewing a post.

In the Navigation section, you can adjust the settings to your Navigation bar. Here you can add menu items, adjust the menu position, switch your logo, adjust colors, or add custom CSS.

Your Posts cover will be shared with the Topic theming.

Next you can customize the Posts Feed by adjusting the border settings and adjust colors.

Here you can again either use the Default Theme Settings or click the lock icon and select other colors to customize this section of the page.

You can also include custom CSS here for further customization.

The last step for the Forum Home is to customize the Footer. Here you can add additional links, text and color customization. Again, you can either use the Default Theme Settings or click the lock icon and select other colors to customize this section of the page.

In the Forum Tab, you can create and edit Topics and manage your community’s posts.

Every Community starts with a “General” Topic that can either be edited or deleted. You must have at least one topic, so if you would like to delete General, you must first create a new topic.

Click “Add Topic” to create new topics. You can give each topic a description to give users more context.

Once you have several topics created, you can click and drag the topic names to reorganize how your topics will appear in the Community.

Posts can be created in the Community view. If you would like to add posts to your Topic, click the “Go to Community” link in the upper right corner.

Note: You will have to login as a Learner to post in the Community. If you are not currently logged in to the Community, you will be prompted to do so in order to post.

Select the Topic you would like to add a post to and select “New Post” and add your content.

Now you are ready to invite your Learners to engage with your community. Make sure your Community is discoverable by adding a link to your Community in the Academy Navigation bar.

To make it easy for your Learners to find the Community, you will want to add your Community link in the Academy Navigation Bar. Go to Academy Theming and scroll down the Header section to the Header Links section.

Select “Add Link” and enter the text you want to appear in the Nav bar and the URL to your community and Save.

Now you will see the Community link in the Academy Navigation Bar, so Learners are able to easily find and engage with the Community.