As you prepare to launch your Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) community, there are a few settings that you should review and adjust (as necessary) for your community.
This checklist details these settings, and guides you through the steps to configure them to ensure that your community launch goes smoothly.
📝 NOTE: These settings are more technical than the more high-level steps that are described in Community Launch Checklist.
📝 NOTE: All of these settings are managed in your community Dashboard.
✔️ TIP: The Manage Roles & Permissions page is the access point for the Private vs. Public Community, Sign-in Permissions, and User Registration Method steps; consider doing these successively (as applicable) to prevent back-&-forth navigation.
Custom Domain
Update this setting so that you can use your own domain name for your Vanilla community.
✔️ TIP: To learn more, see Setting up your Custom Domain.
📝 NOTE: If you are using Cloudflare, turn off the proxy on your end because Vanilla also uses Cloudflare.
1. Navigate to Settings > Appearance > Custom Domain.
2. On the Custom Domain Name page, follow the instructions to add your custom domain name and 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.
✔️ TIP: To learn more, see Private Communities.
📝 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. On the Manage Roles & Permissions page, click the settings icon.
3. On the Advanced Settings 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.
✔️ TIP: To learn more, see Roles & Permissions.
📝 NOTE: This is done per Role so you might have to do it multiple times.
1. Navigate to Settings > Membership > Roles & Permissions.
2. On the Manage Roles & Permissions page, click the pencil icon for the Role that you want to edit.
3. On the Edit Role page, scroll down to the Check all permissions... section and check the Allow box for Sign In.
4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save.
Invisibility Cloak
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.
✔️ TIP: To learn more, see Invisibility Cloak.
1. Navigate to Settings > Addons > Addons.
2. 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 probably populated with "test" and "demo" content as part of set up and implementation. It's a good idea to clear out this content before you launch your community.
✔️ TIP: To learn more, see Delete Discussions & Comments.
You can enable checkboxes on discussions and on comments in order to simultaneously select more than one (discussion or comment) and then perform actions on them as a single batch.
1. Navigate to Settings > Discussions > Posting.
2. On the Posting Settings page, slide the toggle to the right (ON) to enable checkboxes on discussions and comments.
3. In your community, access the Discussions page.
4. Check the boxes for the discussions and comments that you want to delete.
5. In the action popup that displays in the lower left, click Delete.
6. At the confirmation prompt, click Delete and then click Close.
User Registration Method
You can choose how new members register for your community.
✔️ TIP: The options are described in Registration Methods.
1. Navigate to Settings > Membership > Registration.
2. On the User Registration Settings page, choose the preferred method for your community and 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. On the OAuth Connections page, click a pencil icon to edit the oauth2 connection.
3. On the OAuth Connection 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.
