Your Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) community includes the Dashboard. This "back-end" Admin-only space:
- has four tabs that logically organize the administrative settings and
- provides access to everything you need to build and run your community.
✔️ TIP: Use this article as a resource while you're setting up your Vanilla community.
Access the Dashboard
1. In the upper right, click the MeBox.
- The click items that are listed in the Moderation section link directly to the respective page in the Dashboard.
- The click items that are listed in the Admin section link to directly to the respective tab in the Dashboard.
2. Click (or right-click to open in a new tab) Appearance, Analytics, Settings, or an option in the Moderation section to access the Dashboard.
📝 NOTE: The tab-specific sections in this article present high-level information about the purpose and use of each tab. These sections also have links to feature-specific and setting-specific articles in the Vanilla knowledge base.
The Dashboard has four high-level tabs:
- Moderation (in addition to the articles linked below, articles are available in the Categories & Organization section of the knowledge base)
- Analytics (in addition to the articles linked below, articles are available in the Analytics knowledge base)
- Appearance (articles are available throughout the knowledge base; use the links that are provided in this article)
- Settings (articles are available throughout the knowledge base; use the links that are provided in this article)
Each tab has a left-side navigation panel with expandable/collapsible sections that you use to access the various settings for your Vanilla community.
The navigation panel options are discussed on an "introductory" level in this article.
📝 NOTE: We encourage you to refer to (and "bookmark," as necessary) the feature- and setting-specific articles that are linked to in this article because they have:
- more granular information,
- set-up and configuration instructions,
- tips and best practices, and
- other helpful information.
Moderation tab
This tab is where you manage various aspects related to the content and the users in your Vanilla community.
Posts
Vanilla's Community Management Dashboard (CMD) is a moderation-management tool that your staff and community members can use to report inappropriate content that has been posted by community users.
All reported content is managed on the Triage, Reports, and Escalations pages.
✔️ TIP: Learn how to manage reported content in your community.
Activity & Registration
These pages make it easy for community Moderators to review user content.
- Spam Queue lists content that has been flagged as spam at least five times and temporarily removed from the community. A Moderator can review the content and either permanently delete it or approve it to be restored in its original location.
- Moderation Queue lists content that has to be reviewed before being posted in the community. Content can be sent to this queue for numerous reasons and ina a variety of ways, such as:
Users
These pages are where you manage:
Settings
This collection of pages touches a variety of aspects of community management.
- Messages is where you manage "public information"-type messages for the community.
- Content Settings is where you manage the community's "reported" content, including your custom list of reporting Reasons. Whereas, the Premoderation Settings page has tools that enable you to pre-emptively moderate community content, which minimizes the likelihood of it being reported.
- The other pages have standalone controls to manage community access and content posting.
- Use Escalation Rules to create an automated process for flagging community content to the Escalations Dashboard for review.
- Ban Rules let you deny community access to specified users and/or groups.
- Use Flood Control to minimize the possibility of spam by limiting the number of discussions and comments that users can post in a specified time period.
- Change Log is a comprehensive record of actions taken on Discussions, Comments, Users, Configurations, and Spoofs.
Analytics tab
This tab is where you configure and view a wide array of metrics for the various user activities in your Vanilla community. The metrics are presented right on the page in one of several Dashboard designs (e.g., tables, bar graphs) and the data can be downloaded in .CSV format.
- The Analytics section is where you access Vanilla's pre-built, Out-of-the-Box (OOTB) Dashboards. These are designed to provide the most common community-activity data while relieving you of having to do the configuration work.
- If you prefer to create and customize your own charts and tables for your community's metrics, use the Add Dashboard option under Dashboards.
- All custom Dashboards that you create are stored here.
✔️ TIP: Visit the Analytics Documentation knowledge base for an extensive collection of information about Vanilla Analytics.
Appearance tab
This is where you manage your organization's branding, as well as your default page layouts and the templates (the "style guides") upon which they are built.
✔️ TIP: When designing the page templates and pages of your Vanilla community, keep in mind the "accessibility" of colors, text, images, and other elements. To review some tips and best practices, see Accessibility in Your Vanilla Community.
Branding & Assets
- The Branding & SEO page is where you set the properties of your Vanilla community so that they represent your organization and its unique branding. You can set various titles, logos, colors, and search-engine optimization (SEO) metadata.
- Use the Style Guides page to customize your community's Theme using our Foundation style guide (template) as your base; it is preset with all of the latest features.
- The Theming Guide knowledge base has all the information that you need to customize the look of your community.
Layouts
This section houses the collection of:
- the Vanilla-built page layouts and
- your custom-built page layouts.
✔️ TIP: A checkmark/tick next to a Layout indicates that it has been applied to a page in your community.
Set the Layout to be applied to the following pages throughout your community.
Two types of Layouts
Two types of layouts are available for your page designs. These are described in Apply Legacy & Custom Layouts.
- Legacy - the out-of-the-box layouts that Vanilla provides.
- Custom - the latest (and recommended) set of Layout Editor-based layouts with which you can customize your pages to make the best possible design for your community.
Home Pages
Set which layout is applied to your Vanilla community Home page, as well as any Site Home pages and Subcommunity Home pages.
Discussions Pages
Set which layout is applied to your Vanilla community Discussions pages (e.g., https://mycommunity.com/discussions).
Category Pages
Set which layout is applied to your Vanilla community Category pages (e.g., https://mycommunity.com/categories).
You can set distinct page layouts for your:
- Category List pages,
- Discussion Category pages, and
- Nested Category pages.
Discussion Thread Pages
Set which layout is applied to your Vanilla community Discussion Thread pages (e.g., https://mycommunity.com/discussion/23/welcome-to-our-community).
These are the Discussion-specific pages that contain the entire thread of a single discussion.
You can set distinct page layouts for your:
- Discussion Thread pages,
- Idea Thread pages, and
- Question Thread pages.
Settings tab
This is where you manage most of the settings for your Vanilla community.
Appearance
Use these pages to:
- Set your own existing domain as the name of your community, as described in Set up your Custom Domain.
- Enable and add Pockets so that you can add free-form HTML to various places in your community.
Membership
This set of pages is where you manage numerous aspects of the user/member experience, from site registration for all to more individual considerations, such as permissions, badges, and notification preferences.
- Roles & Permissions - This page lists all of the out-of-the-box and custom Roles in your community. You can set the Roles' permissions to manage what users can do.
- Registration
- Use this page to set email-address confirmation requirements and to select a method for how new users register for your community. - User Profile - This page has two user-redirect settings (which apply only if the used tag values exist for the destination user) and the full set of custom profile fields that capture additional user information.
- User Preferences - Use the Edit buttons on this page to establish basic default actions (notifications and Category following) for all users, which users can then self-manage. You can also choose to "anonymize" user details in your Analytics data.
- Interests & Suggested Content - Use the single toggle to enable both of these features: content suggestions and interests mapping. Then, create interests and associate them to relevant profile fields, categories, and tags.
- Avatars - Configure default settings for avatars and set whether select users can change their avatars.
- Ranks - Use this page to see and manage the Ranks that users can achieve on your site. You can add, edit, and delete Ranks as your community grows and evolves.
- Badges - On this page, you can see and manage your community's gamification Badges. You can add, edit, assign, and delete Badges to reward — and ensure continuing — engagement in your community.
Automation
Use these pages to:
Emails
Use these pages to:
- Set email default:
- properties (logo and various colors) that will be applied to every community email message;
- values for "from name" and "from email address"; and
- notifications preferences.
- Enable the weekly email digest and set its send schedule, content options, and properties.
Discussions
Use these pages to manage various aspects of posts and their pages in your community.
- Categories - View the Categories in your community. You can manage (add, edit, delete) Categories, re-arrange their order, and manage their display types and individual sub-structures.
- Posting - Configure several global settings for your community's Discussions and Categories.
- Reactions - Manage the pre-loaded set of Reactions so that your users can "rate" discussion posts and comments. You can enable, disable, and edit individual Reactions, and configure settings that apply to all Reactions.
- AI Suggested Answers - Manage the persona, "voice," and sources of this "content-contributing assistant" which is unique to Question posts.
- Subcommunities - Add, edit, and delete subcommunities, which are a great way to create multiple "mini communities" (often by language or product) in Vanilla.
- Idea Statuses - Use the pre-loaded Statuses (or create your own) to indicate the activity of individual ideas. You can also assign a "state" to each status to enable/disable voting on the idea.
- Rules - Add, edit, and delete the Rules that display to users when they violate community guidelines for posts.
- Tagging - Use this page to enable tagging and to manage the tags — which Admins and Moderators create — that users can add to their content.
Technical
Use this section to access several standalone pages on which you can manage some of the more technical aspects of your Vanilla community.
- Embedding - Embed your Vanilla community by inserting a snippet of code to your website page.
- Language Settings - Enable which languages are available in your Vanilla community so that users experience your community in their native language. If you're want to have content separated by language, we recommend using subcommunities.
- Security - Set a variety of Vanilla security settings to ensure the safest possible online experience for your users and to maintain your reputation.
- Audit Log - View a log of the user- and Admin-related actions that occur in your community. You can filter by Member and specify a date range.
- Search - Streamline your search results by creating Synonym Sets. You can also review the index count and the database count for the various types of records in your site's database.
- AI Settings - Enable the AI Bot Shield to protect your community from known third-party "AI bots" that crawl your site's public content to train Artificial Intelligence models.
API Integrations
This section has several pages on which you can set up and manage your API integrations.
- API (v1 and v2) - Use these pages to set up Vanilla's API.
- Version 2 is the more recent and is the recommended option.
- Webhooks - Add webhooks to maximize real-time communications about community activity. You can edit and delete your webhooks on this page.
- Zapier - Automate workflows between your Vanilla community and your favorite software tools with Vanilla's Zapier integration.
Import
This page houses the bulk-import tool that you can use to upload a .CSV file of user records. After the file is uploaded, you can use it to:
- Invite new users to join your Vanilla community;
- Insert new user records; or
- Update existing user records.
Connections
These pages have a variety of "connection" types and serve vastly different purposes in your Vanilla community.
Addons
These pages are your gateway to features that enhance the functionality of the community and simplify its management.
Knowledge
Use these pages to:
- Create and manage (add, edit, delete) your custom Knowledge Bases.
- Specify a title and description for your Knowledge page, and set a background image and content image for the page banner.
