Public visibility of subgroup home pages
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This just came to my attention while I was doing some group training. ?Most likely it is a functional limitation, but it could also be poor configuration on my part. ? My premium group is not listed in the Groups.io directory.? That makes it non-searchable, but it won¡¯t prevent a non-member from getting to the group¡¯s home page if they have the url.?For our Main group, that is fine as far as public exposure goes (also the new Invite Only feature released yesterday will be a big help there.)?? What caught me off guard is that if a non-member does get to the homepage for Main, the non-member can then get to the home pages of all of my subgroups under Main via the navbar. ? Desired Behavior:? Main¡¯s subgroups to be visible in the navbar only when a member of Main is logged-in, and never visible by the public at large.? ? Issue: If I change the subgroup visibility setting from: ? Subgroup listed in parent group, messages viewable by parent group members to Subgroup not listed in parent group, messages viewable by subgroup members only it of course drops off of the navbar menu altogether so the public can¡¯t get to the subgroup¡¯s homepage even if they have the url.? However, doing so has 2 unintended consequences
?I wasn¡¯t able to readily identify anything in the owner¡¯s manual that appears to address this situation. ? Possible Work-around:? Create a wiki page to replace the subgroup directory in the navbar. The down side of that approach is that it would need to be separately maintained perpetually and in the shorter term it will confuse the heck out of people since wikis are disabled currently. ? Ideally a visibility option for Subgroup listed in parent group, subgroup not listed publicly, messages viewable by parent group members would be the hot ticket, but this may be too much of a corner case to warrant raising a #suggestion request in ? Thoughts? ? Thanks! -kenny |
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On Sat, May 24, 2025 at 06:22 PM, Kenny Paul wrote:
Yep. To put it generously, that level of "security" is pretty rudimentary. I'm not aware of any setting or [good] work-around that would provide this functionality. ?
This is for your HOA, right? In what sense is the very existence of these subgroups a more sensitive issue than it is for main?
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I'm not saying that you don't need it, only that I don't understand it.
By way of suggestion, you might consider not making them subgroups at all. Our board of directors forum is a separate group (coincidentally with its own subgroups). This provides slightly more granularity in security options and you can always make its availability known in the main group via a sticky wiki link or some such.
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May not work in your case and the transition may be painful, but it's the only recommendation I can think of using existing tools.
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Good luck,
Bruce
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On Mon, May 26, 2025 at 08:08 AM, Bruce wrote:
This is for your HOA, right? In what sense is the very existence of these subgroups a more sensitive issue than it is for main? Hi Bruce, yes, that is correct.? On some occasions direct contact information, including phone numbers is provided in the description. That is seen as being friendlier and more welcoming than relying on the owner+group@ construct.? ? ?If I had a more savvy community, your suggestion of just creating stand alone groups would make perfect sense. ;-)?
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The more thought I give this, enabling the wiki is probably the right answer here.? We could even include "un-groups" that only use mobile texting lists rather using Gio.
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Thanks!
-kenny
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On Mon, May 26, 2025 at 12:47 PM, Kenny Paul wrote:
The more thought I give this, enabling the wiki is probably the right answer here.? I've actually been thinking about this quite a bit over the past two days.
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Maybe for "invite-only" groups, the home page could be made invisible to non-members (instead of just disabling the join button)? But it didn't sound like all your subgroups were invite-only.
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Maybe the subgroup list could simply be made unclickable to non-members? Maybe maybe maybe...
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Everything I came up with either made configuration way more complicated or had the potential to frustrate someone else's needs (or both)! But I don't want to discourage you from mentioning it in beta. Mark has frequently come up with some brilliant implementation that never occurred to me.
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Regards,
Bruce
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P.S. For what it's worth, the wiki is where we put our sensitive, members-only information.
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Kenny Paul
Bruce