The Badgify Comments addon allows you to assign custom badges to specific discussions in your Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) community. These badges make it easy for you to reward users who comment in these discussions, thereby encouraging engagement.
The badges are created within, and are unique to, a discussion. Once this is done, you can then set whether the badges:
- are automatically awarded to the commenting user or
- require Admin review and approval (refer to the Award manually section, below).
Badge availability
Badges are unique to each discussion; in other words, only badges created within a discussion can be awarded for commenting in that discussion.
- You cannot assign an existing badge to a discussion.
- You cannot assign a badge that was created in a different discussion.
Prerequisites
The following are required before you can add badges to a discussion:
Addons
- The Badgify Comments addon must be enabled, but this can only be done by Vanilla staff. Contact Vanilla Support for assistance.
- The Badges addon must also be enabled. You can do so in the Dashboard, on the Settings > Addons > Addons page.
Permissions
- A user must have the
Reputation > Badges > Give permission in order to create a badge within a discussion, as well as manage badge requests (more on this in the Award Manually section of the article) . To edit a Role's permissions, access the Dashboard and navigate to Settings > Membership > Roles & Permissions. See Roles & Permissions for more information.
Create a Badgify Comment badge for a discussion
With the above prerequisites in place, let's learn how to create a badge for a specific discussion.
1. Navigate to the discussion.
2. Click the ellipsis (...) at the top right, followed by Add a Badge.
3. Configure the badge with the options below:
- Name - Give the badge a unique name.
- Slug - Do not modify the default text; this is needed to ensure the badge is added to user accounts.
- Description - Provide a description.
- Points - Specify the number of points this badge awards to users; the default is 2.
- Badge Class / Badge Class Level - Leave the Badge Class as Commenter and Badge Class Level as 1 to ensure that the badge is automatically awarded.
- Add Image - Add a custom image (either a square or circle) to the badge.
🛑 IMPORTANT: DO NOT modify the Slug, Badge Class, or Badge Class Level fields. Leave the default text in place or the badge will not automatically be awarded.
4. When finished, click Save. Now, each user who comments in the discussion will be automatically awarded the badge.
Manage your Badgify Comment badges
You can enable, disable, and delete your Badgify Comment badges on the Manage Badges page.
- Access the Dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings > Membership > Badges.
From here, you'll see a list of all of your community's badges, including the out-of-the-box badges, any custom badges, and any Badgify Comment badges you've created.
For your Badgify Comment badges, click the:
- pencil icon to edit the badge,
- trashcan icon to delete the badge,
- up arrow icon to give the badge to one or more users,
- toggle to enable/disable the badge.
Award manually
You might want to have Admins review users' comments before awarding badges to them for commenting. This is often done to first ensure that the comments add value to the discussion before a badge is awarded.
⭐️ EXAMPLE: A comment such as "I agree" doesn't demonstrate any real "engagement" with the discussion, so you might feel that it doesn't warrant a badge.
Turn on this feature for a Badgify Comment badge
If you prefer that your Admins review user comments before awarding badges, you can enable the Award Manually toggle for any of your Badgify Comment badges. Let's learn how.
1. Access the Dashboard.
2. Navigate to Settings > Membership > Badges.
3. Locate the badge and click the pencil icon to edit it.
4. In the dialog, click the Award Manually toggle to turn on this feature.
5. Click Save.
Manage badge requests
With this enabled, each time a user comments in the discussion, a Badge Request that includes the user's comment and the date will be sent to the Badge Request queue for Admin review and approval, instead of automatically being awarded.
To view your badge requests:
- Access the Dashboard.
- Navigate to Moderation > Requests > Badge Requests.
A few notes about badge requests:
- Only users with the
Reputation > Badges > Give permission can approve or decline badge requests. - Badge requests can be managed either individually or in bulk.
- Users have an option under their Notification Preferences to set whether they want to be notified (by pop up or email message) of new badge requests.
✔️ TIP: Typically, Admins and Moderators will handle the approving/denying of badge requests. However, if you’d like to grant this ability to a special user in your community to help manage these requests, you can do so.
- Make sure they belong to a Role with the
Reputation > Badges > Give permission. - Because these users cannot access the Admin Dashboard like Admins, they'll need to manage these requests a little differently. They can either:
