The Subcommunities feature is a way to divide your Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) community into multiple "mini communities" (often by language or product).
In this article, you'll learn how to set up Subcommunities for your Vanilla community.
Step 1 - Create Categories
Subcommunities are built on Categories, and require a specific Category structure in order to function.
1. Access the Dashboard.
2. Navigate to Settings > Posts > Categories.
3. Create top-level (should have no subcategories), Nested-type Categories for each Subcommunity you would like to have.
- With few exceptions, every other Category should be inside one of these Nested Categories.
- Each Subcommunity must have at least one subcategory (child Category).
- Categories that are outside of these Categories will likely not be accessible to your users.
- With Subcommunities and an established default subcommunity, there will be no way for users to reach top-level Categories outside of their current Subcommunity with navigation. See our instructions for navigating between subcommunities.
- Exceptions to this rule are the Social Groups Category created by the Groups addon and the Reported Posts Category from the Reporting addon.
Step 2 - Create a Subcommunity
1. Access the Dashboard.
2. Navigate to Settings > Posts > Subcommunities.
✔️ TIP: Alternatively, append /subcommunities to your community URL.
3. Click Add Subcommunity.
4. Fill out the fields as appropriate for the Subcommunity you're creating:
- Name - The name of the Subcommunity. This will display in the Subcommunity selector.
- Description - Optionally provide a description or purpose for the Subcommunity.
- Folder - The text added to the URL that differentiates your Subcommunities from one another. For example, if your Vanilla Community URL is
vanilla.higherlogic.com, and you set the Subcommunity's Folder as product-updates, the Subcommunity's URL would be: vanilla.higherlogic.com/product-updates. - Themes - Select which Theme to apply to the Subcommunity. See Theme Editor Overview to learn more about Themes.
- Category - Select one of the Nested Categories that you created in Step 1.
- Locale - Select the language to use for the Subcommunity. Subcommunities are often used to separate a community into different sections based on language, but different languages are not a requirement for Subcommunities (see our main article on locales).
- Icon URL - If you want to upload an icon image to represent the Subcommunity, you can do so here. Click the Browse button, locate and select the image.
- Banner Image - If you want to upload a banner image to represent the Subcommunity, you can do so here.
- Default Subcommunity - When toggled ON, users will be directed to this Subcommunity when logging into your Vanilla Community. Essentially, the Subcommunity becomes your Community's main "landing page." There can be only one default at a time. Users can still navigate to other Subcommunities via the Subcommunity selector. See Set a default subcommunity to learn more.
- Home Page - Indicates whether the Subcommunity is using a Legacy or Custom layout, and provides a link to our Layouts section of the Dashboard to manage it.
- Home Page Type - Controls whether the selected Home Page uses a Legacy layout or a Custom layout (Layout Editor). You’ll see “Custom” or “Legacy” indicated next to each option when custom layouts are enabled in Appearance > Layouts.
5. Click Save to create the Subcommunity. If you configured this Subcommunity as the Default, you may notice your URL in the Dashboard adjusting to reflect this change.
Subcommunity list
After creating your Subcommunities, verify that your Subcommunities align with your top-level Categories. The image below depicts a proper Subcommunity setup.
