Every user in a Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) community site has their own user Profile page. It displays their personal information and an overview of their community activities, such as badges they've earned and reactions they've received.
Some aspects of the user profile are managed by account Admins, but others can be managed by each user.
This article explains how users can manage their own profiles.
Access your profile
Click the Mebox in the upper right, and in the popup:
Click your avatar image to access your profile's Activity page, where you change your profile icon and see things like your earned Badges, Reactions, and Activity log.
Click Account & Privacy Settings to edit your profile. From here, you can edit your username (if allowed in your community), email address, and account password, as well as access several other options such as managing your notification preferences and profile fields.
- These options are what we'll focus on in this article.
On the Account & Privacy Settings page, you'll see a list of options on the right, as shown below.
- Each option has a dedicated configuration page, as described in this article.
- Click Back to Profile on any page to return to the Profile page.
NOTE: The options available depend on whether:
1. the user is an Admin or non-Admin and
2. the addons enabled in your community.
The options available to you may be different than what is discussed in this article.
IMPORTANT: The knowledge base links in this article are intended for the convenience of Admin users so that they can easily access the associated enabling and configuring information.
Account & Privacy Settings
The Account & Privacy Settings page allows you to manage several important settings for your profile. These settings are grouped into the sections highlighted below.
Your Account
Click the pencil icons to update your account username, email address, and password. (See Account Password Overview to learn more.)
For each option, a dialog displays where you'll need to enter the new information, along with your account password, to update them.
NOTE: The ability to edit your username is controlled by your community, and may not be available.
Privacy
Check these boxes to choose:
- whether to make your profile public or private (see Private Profiles)
- whether to display or hide your email address on your Profile page
- whether to anonymize your analytics data
NOTE: When checking or unchecking these boxes, no save action is necessary: the update happens immediately.
IMPORTANT: The Anonymize my analytics data checkbox is only available if your community does not have a global anonymization default enabled, as outlined in this article.
If you enable this checkbox, Vanilla Analytics still tracks your community engagement but with the caveat that your user name and ID is not attributed to it, ensuring your privacy is respected.
Personal Information
Click the Export Personal Information button to display the dialog shown below. Here, you can check one or more of the boxes to export the associated information as a JSON file.
NOTE: When exporting multiple data sets at once, they'll export as separate files for ease of use/review.
NOTE: The download will be stored per your device's download settings (e.g., in your browser's Download's area or specified location on your device).
- My Personal Information exports all personal details Vanilla stores about your account, such as your email address, login activity dates, community Roles you have, various account settings you've set, and more.
- My Posts exports the full list of posts you've made in the community.
- My Comments exports the full list of comments you've made in the community.
(Admin only) Reporting & oversight
- Each export action is logged in the Audit Logger (Action filter: Personal Info Export)
- Each export action is also tracked in Vanilla Analytics, in the Export data source.
(Admin only) Customize a disclosure statement
Admins can optionally provide a customized disclosure statement that displays directly on the page, above this button.
Example
To set a disclosure statement:
- Access the Dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings > Membership > User Preferences.
- Click the Edit Disclosure button, write your statement, and click Save.
AI Settings
The AI Settings section gives you control over whether Vanilla's AI features can use your community content in various ways.
NOTE: This section appears only when one or more supported AI features are enabled in the community, and the specific options that display depend on which AI features are available.
- Allow AI Tools to process my content: This top-level setting acts as the main control for the section; if it is turned off, the remaining AI-related options are hidden or inactive. When enabled, pick and choose the remaining options to fine-tune how AI leverages your content.
- Allow Sentiment Analysis & Keyword Tracking on my posts: Allows the community to analyze your posts for tone and keyword usage in order to support reporting and moderation insights. When enabled, that content may contribute to sentiment and keyword trends in analytics. See Sentiment Analysis to learn more.
- Allow AI to Suggest Answers to my questions: Allows AI to generate suggested answers for your questions based on existing community content and knowledge base articles, helping surface relevant information more quickly. See AI Suggested Answers to learn more.
- Allow AI to use my content: Allows your questions, posts, and replies to be used by AI features to help other users, such as by contributing to suggested answers or AI-generated search summaries.
Edit profile fields
On the Edit Profile Fields page, you can update your community's default set of profile fields, along with any custom profile fields your organization may have created. Custom fields enable organizations to capture unique, organizational-specific information, while also allowing users more ways to express themselves.
Users can fill out these custom profile fields:
- During the registration process
- From their user profiles
Check out the article below to learn more.
Notification Preferences
The Notification Preferences page allows you to control what popup and/or email notifications you receive from content across your community.
Check out the article below to learn more.
Change My Picture
NOTE: Users can only change their profile picture (Avatar) if this ability is allowed in the community. See Avatars to learn more.
On the Change My Picture page, you can:
- upload an image to be used as your profile avatar
- remove/replace an existing image
NOTE: If you do not upload an image, a default image will be used.
Connections
If configured for your Vanilla Community, the Connections page enables you to self-manage the connections between your Vanilla account and your social-media accounts. This makes sharing content between platforms easier.
Access Tokens
NOTE: This page displays only to authorized users.
For information about using an access token for server to server integrations, see:
Who's Online
Vanilla includes an Online addon that, if enabled, adds the Who's Online page to user profiles (shown below).
Here, each user can choose whether to display their online status in the associated Who's Online widgets in your community.
Ignore List
On the Ignore List page, you can:
- specify the full name of users you want to ignore; a user's name must be typed/pasted exactly as it appears in the community
- unignore users you are currently ignoring
TIP: You can also ignore users from their profile, which may be an easier alternative than doing so from the Ignore List. The Ignore List is the ideal place to review who you've ignored and to unignore users.
NOTE: When you ignore a user, their comments are hidden but you will still see posts that they contributed. This ensures that potentially valuable content from other users isn't hidden from you.
Quote Settings
On the Quote Settings page, you can control how deeply nested quote chains display in posts. Specifically, you can set the “depth” at which quotes will be collapsed under one another to save space in long back‑and‑forth threads.
You can set it to:
- Don't fold quotes
- 1 level deep
- 2 levels deep
- 3 levels deep
- 4 levels deep
- 5 levels deep
In practice, this means that, once replies are quoted multiple times in a chain beyond the chosen depth, earlier nested quotes collapse behind an expander instead of all rendering inline, which keeps long discussions more readable.
Signature Settings
On the Signature Settings page, you can:
- create your personal signature
- add an image (if this option is enabled)
- click the Emoji Picker icon to add an emoji
- click the Insert Media icon to add a link to a media file
- choose whether to always hide other users' signatures
- choose whether to always remove images from other users' signatures
