DocumentationAEM 6.5Communities Guide

Author a Community Site author-a-new-community-site

Last update: Fri Oct 20 2023 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

CREATED FOR:

  • User

Create a Community Site create-a-community-site

Use the author instance to create a community site. On AEM Author instance:

  1. Sign in with administrator privileges.
  2. From global navigation, go to Communities > Sites.

The Communities Sites console provides a wizard to guide one through the steps of creating a community site. It is possible to move forward to the Next step or Back to the previous step before committing the site in the final step.

To begin creating a community site:

  • Select the Create button.

createcommunitysite

Step 1: Site Template step-site-template

template to create site

On the Site Template step, enter a title, description, the name for the URL, and select a community site template, for example:

  • Community Site Title: Getting Started Tutorial

  • Community Site Description: A site for engaging with the community.

  • Community Site Root: (leave blank for default root /content/sites)

  • Cloud Configurations: (leave blank if no cloud configurations are specified) provide path to the specified cloud configurations.

  • Community Site Base Language: (leave untouched for single language: English) use the drop-down list to choose one or more base languages from the available languages–German, Italian, French, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Traditional), and Chinese (Simplified). One community site is created for each language added, and exists within the same site folder following the best practice described in Translating Content for Multilingual Sites. The root page of each site contains a child page named by the language code of one of the languages selected, such as ‘en’ for English or ‘fr’ for French.

  • Community Site Name: engage

    • Double-check the name as it is not easily changed after the site is created
    • The initial URL is displayed underneath the Community Site Name
    • For a valid URL, append a base language code + “.html”
    • For example, https://localhost:4502/content/sites/ engage/en.html

  • Template: pull down to choose Reference Site

  • Select Next.

Step 2: Design step-design

The Design step is presented in two sections for selecting the theme and branding banner:

COMMUNITY SITE THEME community-site-theme

Select the desired style that you want applied to the template. When selected, the theme is overlaid with a check mark.

COMMUNITY SITE BRANDING community-site-branding

(Optional) Upload a banner image to display across the site pages. The banner is pinned to the left edge of the browser, between the community site header and navigation links. The banner height is cropped to 120 pixels. There is no resizing of the banner to fit the width of the browser and 120 pixel height.

community-site-branding

upload-image-site

Select Next.

Step 3: Settings step-settings

On the Settings step, before selecting Next, there are seven sections providing access to configurations involving user management, tagging, moderation, group management, analytics, and translation.

User Management user-management

Check all checkboxes for User Management

  • To allow site visitors to self-register
  • To allow site visitors to view the site without signing in
  • To allow members to send and receive messages from other community members
  • To allow signing-in with Facebook instead of registering and creating a profile
  • To allow signing-in with Twitter instead of registering and creating a profile
NOTE
For a production environment, it is necessary to create custom Facebook and Twitter applications. See Social Login with Facebook and Twitter.

community site settings

TAGGING tagging

The tags applied to community content are controlled by selecting AEM namespaces previously defined through the Tagging Console (such as the Tutorial namespace).

Finding namespaces is easy using type-ahead search. For example,

  • Type tut
  • Select Tutorial

tagging

ROLES roles

Community member roles are assigned through the settings in the Roles section.

To let a community member (or group of members) experience the site as the community manager, use the type-ahead search and select the member or group name from the options in the drop-down.

For example,

  • Type q
  • Select Quinn Harper
NOTE
Tunnel service allows selection of members and groups existing only in the publish environment.

user roles in new site

MODERATION moderation

Accept the default global settings for moderating user-generated content (UGC).

moderation

ANALYTICS analytics

If Adobe Analytics is licensed and an Analytics Cloud service and framework have been configured, then it is possible to enable Analytics and select the framework.

See Analytics Configuration for Communities Features.

analytics

TRANSLATION translation

The Translation settings specify the base language for the site and whether UGC may be translated and into which language, if so.

  • Check Allow Machine Translation
  • Leave default languages selected for translation by the default Machine Translation service
  • Leave default translation provider and config
  • There’s no need for a global store because there are no language copies
  • Select Translate entire page
  • Leave default persistence option

translation-settings

Step 4: Create Communities Site step-create-communities-site

Select Create.

create-site

When the process completes, the folder for the new site is displayed in the Communities - Sites console.

communitiessitesconsole

Publish the Community Site publish-the-community-site

The created site should be managed from the Communities - Sites console, the same console from where new sites may be created.

After selecting the community site’s folder to open it, hover over the site icon such that four action icons appear:

siteactionicons-1

On selecting the fourth ellipses icon (More Actions), Export Site and Delete Site options show up.

siteactionsnew-1

From left to right they are:

  • Open Site

    Selecting the pencil icon opens the community site in Author edit mode, where you can add or configure page components.

  • Edit Site

    Selecting the properties icon opens the community site for modification of properties, such as the title or to change the theme.

  • Publish Site

    Selecting the world icon publishes the community site (for example, if your publish server is running on your local machine, then to localhost:4503 by default).

  • Export Site

    Selecting the export icon creates a package of the community site that is both stored in Package Manager and downloaded. UGC is not included in the site package.

  • Delete Site

    Selecting the delete icon deletes the community site from within Communities > Sites console. This action removes all the items associated with the site, such as UGC, user groups, assets, and database records.

siteactions

NOTE
If not using the default port 4503 for the publish instance, then edit the default replication agent to set the port number to the correct value.
On the author instance, from the main menu:
  1. Navigate to Tools > Operations > Replication menu.
  2. Select Agents on author.
  3. Select Default Agent (publish).
  4. Next to Settings, select Edit.
  5. In pop-up dialog for Agent Settings, select Transport tab.
  6. In URI, change the port number, 4503, to the desired port number. For example, to use port 6103: https://localhost:6103/bin/receive?sling:authRequestLogin=1
  7. Select OK.
  8. (Optional) Select Clear or Force Retry to reset the replication queue.

Select Publish select-publish

After ensuring the publish server is running, select the world icon to publish the community site.

publish-site

When the community site has been successfully published, a message briefly appears ‘Site Published’.

New Community User Groups new-community-user-groups

Along with the new community site, new user groups are created which have the appropriate permissions set for various administrative functions. For details, visit User Groups for Community Sites.

For this new community site, given the site name “engage” in Step 1, the four new user groups may be seen from the Groups console (global navigation: Communities, Groups):

  • Community Engage Community managers
  • Community Engage Group administrators
  • Community Engage Members
  • Community Engage Moderators
  • Community Engage Privileged members
  • Community Engage Site content manager

Aaron McDonald is a member of

  • Community Engage Community managers
  • Community Engage Moderators
  • Community Engage Members (indirectly as a member of Moderators group)

user-group

https://localhost:4503/content/sites/engage/en.html http-localhost-content-sites-engage-en-html

engage

Configure for Authentication Error configure-for-authentication-error

Once a site has been configured and pushed to publish, configure log in mapping ( Adobe Granite Login Selector Authentication Handler) on the publish instance. The benefit is that when login credentials are not entered correctly, the authentication error redisplays the community site’s login page with an error message.

Add a Login Page Mapping as

  • /content/sites/engage/en/signin:/content/sites/engage/en

Optional Steps optional-steps

Change the Default Home Page change-the-default-home-page

When working with the publish site for demonstration purposes, it might be useful to change the default home page to the new site.

To do so requires using CRXDE Lite to edit the resource-mapping table on publish.

To get started:

  1. On publish instance, sign in with administrator privileges.

  2. Browse to https://localhost:4503/crx/de.

  3. In the project browser, expand /etc/map.

  4. Select the http node:

    • Select Create Node:

  5. With newly created localhost.4503 node selected:

    • Add property:

    • Name sling:match

      • Type String
      • Value localhost.4503/$
        (must end with ‘$’ char)

    • Add property:

      • Name sling:internalRedirect
      • Type String
      • Value /content/sites/engage/en.html

  6. Select Save All.

  7. (Optional) Delete the browsing history.

  8. Browse to https://localhost:4503/.

    • Arrive at https://localhost:4503/content/sites/engage/en.html
NOTE
To disable, simply prefix the sling:match property value with an ‘x’ - xlocalhost.4503/$ - and Save All.

optional-steps

Troubleshooting: Error Saving Map troubleshooting-error-saving-map

If unable to save changes, be sure that the node name is localhost.4503, with a ‘dot’ separator, and not localhost:4503 with a ‘colon’ separator, as localhostis not a valid namespace prefix.

error-message

Troubleshooting: Fail to Redirect troubleshooting-fail-to-redirect

The ‘$’ at the end of the regular expression sling:matchstring is crucial, so that only https://localhost:4503/ is mapped, else the redirect value is prefixed to any path that might exist after the server:port in the URL. Therefore, when AEM tries to redirect to the login page, it fails.

Modify the Site modify-the-site

After the site has been initially created, authors may use the Open Site icon to perform standard AEM authoring activities.

In addition, administrators may use the Edit Site icon to modify properties of the site, such as the title.

After any modification, remember to Save and re-Publish the site.

NOTE
If not familiar with AEM, view the documentation on basic handling and a quick guide to authoring pages.
recommendation-more-help
81e2cd9d-0789-409d-b87c-2a8ce4f28791