Testing out the latest Fluent Community version
I have a school project happening soon so I thought I would again test out Fluent Community. It has been a while since I tested it out. I made a very long video. Here are some things I observed. This is a brand new test site where I just before this installed a new WP site. I kept Akismet (not active) and added Fluent Auth, Fluent Forms, Fluent SMTP and Fluent Community.
A 19 minute video of testing Fluent Community.
https://youtu.be/qk3pDMzZPRs
(EDIT: I made the video Unlisted. As I want a more professional video in place for a public version. This turned into a feedback video.)
Pick you Fluent Community Template.
- Basic, Course, Product, Blank. Here I missed having more information. Be it in the form of a ? on the right side with big tool tips giving more information or somekind of link to Fluent Community documentation on the bottom or some other way to where I would be more informed before selecting the first option.
I liked how I could change the settings for a space.
Menu Group where Get Started is mentioned. Here I missed have a + to create a new group that would be added to the drop down. See 07.23min in the video. Perhaps even here being able to here modify the groups. That is in addition to Group settings.
I noticed a bug with changing the emoji of a space. See 08.20. Emojis are not seen. The console error is long so I sent support an email with the information.
Add Custom Link that I did not understand, and I did not get far enough to explore what that was. 09.57min.
Duplicate a group and adjust the needed parts? 10.44 min
++ Settings. All Space groups. Clicking 3 dots to the right of the group expecting to duplicate a space. 17.04 min
Defining a default space? 11.50 min
Post without logging in? 13.00 min
Students creating a nick name without needing to login? As if it was a WordPress comment. Where the admin also moderates the comments. Comments can be set for hold until the admin accepts the comments. 13.30 min + 17.30 min.
EDIT: Can we create a nick name/user name that is not our own name? I just tested on the dev school portal and I called myself first name Sun and then I could use the nick name Sun. NB. It would be nice to have a field called Nick name / User name that is different than ones name. So one can choose which name one wants to be seen in the community. Similar to the WordPress profile screen.
Where do I invite someone to the community portal? How does a person join? 14.20 min.........
Looked for Members settings for members that could just post without logging in etc. 16.15 min...
All in all I very much like the UI. I feel that features in general are well placed. But there are some confusion as can be seen in the video. I spent the 20 minutes on testing Fluent Community.
I stopped the video after struggling with working on figuring out how to invite users, how to be able to post without logging in etc.
Paal Joachim Romdahl check fComm official docs:
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Custom Links - https://fluentcommunity.co/docs/add-custom-links/
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Members invitation - you need to be in your Space > Members area and then select kebab icon (three dots located at the top right subheader) to invite them to a Space (dont invitite users from the top Members menu area but from your selected Space inside) - https://fluentcommunity.co/docs/membership-invitation-for-spaces/
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Space Templates populate some predefined Groups/Spaces/Courses - if you want start completly from zero then select Blank during Onboarding (Default Space)
https://fluentcommunity.co/docs/fluentcommunity-onboarding-guide/
Basic Course Product Blank -
submitting post/comments without user being logged (anonymous users without WP user account) is not possible (you would have a lot of SPAM etc) - this activity is designated for a community members only
Dont give up... Keep recording and share it. Good job!
Mat Thanks Mat. I basically just wanted to test out how intuitive things were. I will need to look into the docs and see how these things can be made more intuitive in the interface so one can easier understand these things.
Paal Joachim Romdahl Dont stop! There are a lot of hidden secrets LOL - docs cover most of them.
Continue your journey and have fun...
All kind of product UI/UX reviews are welcomed I guess - check this one if interested:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jCeWl43Ia1U
ps. dont forget to use some keywords in your YT videos description and popular hashtags like: #wordpress and #wordpressPlugin and #WordpressTutorial so it will be easier to get some attention there too + pin your own comment under your each YT with a link to your website post. Once you have your basic SEO there then you can focus on RECO...
Mat I don't see any explanation in the docs regarding the difference between the templates. Does anyone know the features or what that get enabled or disabled or what the template choice does, exactly?
Jeff when you select a Blank Template then you will have a clean fCommunity interface without Spaces/Courses/links but when you select: Basic Template then you wiill see: Get Started Group and a Space inside that group so you wont be lost when thinking whats possible to configure here at the first time when using fCommunity as the Admin etc. Thats it about templates so far.
Mat Ahhh! Now that would be nice to know before selecting the initial template. A description saying get some preconfigured options in place to understand how Fluent Community works. Perhaps listing what is preconfigured for each option.
Mat O another thing. I made the video unlisted as it turned into a feedback to the team and this FluentCommunity space video and not so much share to the public video. I want the instagram pretty look outward to the public and my tutorial web site (well kinda) and in here well I can show more confusion, I don't get it vibe and the newbie state etc...:)
Well I made another video. Inspired by Mat's feedback.... This time I am not sharing it as I was confused.
- I only found one place to where a link to documentation was added. That was outside the community in the backend of WordPress. By going to the WP left menu Fluent Community I came to the "start page" there is a link to the documentation. I would expect to see a documentation link some obvious place in Settings.
- In the documentation I looked into the https://fluentcommunity.co/docs/member-management/
looking for how to have a none logged in person joins a space. - Opened a private tab where I was not logged in. Went to a space and clicked Join. It went to a login screen where it asked me to login (I also came across this in the first video). That was confusing. I click Join and it asks me to login. What? I expected that I would need to sent a request to join a space, not login. Trying to login it did not recognize the email address. So the reason why I am not sharing part 2 which took me 10 minutes is that I tried multiple ways to join a space. Actually the same way over and over again and also looking at the docs quickly as I was making a video. So I have no idea why this part is so difficult. I am probably missing something that is supposed to be easy to understand...
Paal Joachim Romdahl non logged in person cannot just Join your Community Space but needs to log-in to your Wordpress with already existing account first and then Join a Space (if applicable).
Maybe it would be better for your demo when you would have already 2 user accounts created in the wp-admin>Users . One user is the Admin and second user is your logged out user but has WP Account with a Subscriber role. Then you just log-in when visitor click the Join button and continue your story/demo.
But.. if you want to show the full process in your Demo including user account registration then continue reading below.
Note: external visitors cannot just Join the thread (posts/comments) conversation in a space. So when they click Join button they need to login with their already exsiting WP User Account/credentials or if they dont have it then they Register a New User Account and then Log-In and Join a Space/Course (all community users are WP Users so they need your WP user account).
Note: its easier to show/use both already existing WP accounts (Admin+EndUserSubscriber) during making your video instead of explaining the end-user registration proces (unless you know how it is linked).
Note: if you want your new users to be able to Register a new WP user account then you need to enable this option in wp-admin > settings > general (/wp-admin/options-general.php) and select checkbox: Membership
Anyone can register.
Plus you need to make sure that you allow user registration in the fCommunity > Settings > General (/portal/admin/settings) > Enable User Registration via fComm signup form
Otherwise you wont be able to show the account registration process for a new user since it will be disabled (there will be no SighUp link/text on the fCommunity Login form).
You should take the Wordpress users management part as a separate topic in the video since its hard to give you answer here how to manage new users and how to automate granting accesses process etc.
Case1: users should not be able to Register new user accounts in your wordpress instance so you have a control who can access your WP/backend etc.
By default WP User Registration option can be disabled and that is why your visitor user dont see the option to SignUp/Register a New User Account on the login form.
When you enable the Registration for a new user account then you can have some spammers, bots accounts created because "anybody" can register a new account on your WP. I think you wanted to show this Case1 scenario in your WP so you need to enable the Registration option anyway. Later you might think about the second case scenario.
Case2: you will allow your visitors to become a Community only via purchasing the community membership in your store. In this case you wont have much spammy users in your WP/community because spammers and bots will avoid such a case scenario. This is a separate topics on managing users, memberships - check this YT when you ready for memberships: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2ljBin8E0To
Mat Hey Mat. I happen to make a new post about this. I finally looked through your comment. I have turned on WP Settings - General Membership: Anyone can sign up. Then as a none logged in user went to the portal and clicked to register. There is a checkbox for I agree to the terms and conditions but no link to what the terms and conditions are.... That puzzles me. (Testing the free version of FC and Fluent Auth)
I filled in the information and clicked the checkbox without knowing the terms/conditions. Then it went to a page to where a verification code needs to be filled in and that is a pretty good spam protection I would say, so that a lot of the fake I believe signups will just fall through.
I used more than 10 minutes to confirm the code. "Verification token has expired. Please try again." Which usually for many sites one will be able to resend the verification email, but there one will need to re-register it seems.
Have you done any performance comparisons running on a subdomain? I have been back and forth on the best practice approach for SEO and performance.