As you prepare to launch your Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) community, there are a few settings that you should review and adjust (as necessary).
This checklist details these settings, and guides you through the steps to configure them to ensure that your community launches smoothly.
Custom Domain
Update this setting so that you can use your own domain name for your Vanilla community.
NOTE: If you're using Cloudflare, turn off the proxy on your end because Vanilla also uses Cloudflare.
- Navigate to Settings > Appearance > Custom Domain.
- Follow the instructions to add your custom domain name.
- Click Apply.
Private vs. Public community
If your community is intended to be public, you might have to disable the setting that makes it private.
NOTE: Communities are often set to "private" during the implementation process in order to limit access to the community while it's being set up.
1. Navigate to Settings > Membership > Roles & Permissions.
2. Click the settings icon at the top right.
3. In the resulting dialog, slide the toggle to the left (OFF) to disable the "private community" setting.
4. Click Save.
Sign-in Permissions
It's possible that some Roles had been restricted from signing in to your community while it was being set up. If so, be sure to re-enable the sign-in permission for those Roles.
NOTE: This is done per Role so you might have to do it multiple times.
- Navigate to Settings > Membership > Roles & Permissions.
- Click the pencil icon for the Role that you want to edit.
- Scroll down to the Check all permissions... > Garden section and check the Allow box for Sign In.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save.
Unhide your community
Your community might have been "hidden" during set up. You should disable the associated addon to "unhide" your community and allow search engines to crawl your community pages.
- Navigate to Settings > Addons > Addons.
- On the Vanilla Addons page, scroll down to the Invisibility Cloak addon and slide the toggle to the left (OFF) to disable it.
Delete test content
Your community is likely populated with "test" and "demo" content as part of set up and implementation. Prior to community launch, you should clear out this content.
To make clearing this content easier, you can enable the ability to perform bulk actions on posts and comments.
1. Navigate to Settings > Posts > Posting.
2. At the top of the page, slide the toggle to the right (ON) to enable checkboxes on posts and comments (i.e., bulk actions).
3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save to apply this setting.
4. In your community, access the Posts page.
5. Check the boxes for the posts and comments that you want to delete.
6. In the action popup that displays in the lower left of the page, click Delete.
7. At the confirmation prompt, click Delete and then click Close.
User registration method
You can choose how new members register for your community.
- Navigate to Settings > Membership > Registration.
- Choose the preferred method for your community.
- Click Save.
NOTE: If you're using SSO, be sure to make it the default login option in the SSO type configuration.
Default Sign-in
Set a default sign-in method (either OAuth2 or SAML) for your community.
OAuth2 as default sign-in method
1. Navigate to Settings > Connections > OAuth2.
2. Click a pencil icon to edit the oauth2 connection.
3. In the resulting dialog, click the General SSO Settings tab.
4. Scroll down to the Other Settings section, slide the Default toggle to the right (ON), and click Save to set this as the default sign-in method.
SAML as default sign-in method
1. Navigate to Settings > Addons > Addons.
2. On the Vanilla Addons page, locate the SAML SSO addon and click its settings icon.
3. On the SAML SSO Settings page, click Add Connection in the upper right.
4. Configure the connection settings on the SAML Connection page.
5. Under the Identifier Format field, check the box to set this as the default sign-in method; then click Save.
