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Organic Groups

What is an Organic 'group'?

Often called simply 'groups' (not to be confused with Groups in CiviCRM, if running the CiviCRM module) an Organic Group allows you to produce a collection of content (pages) which can (potentially) be added to and edited by members of that group. 

You can determine how people can join the group:
- people can subscribe themselves
- people can ask to join and then a group administrator approves their membership
- or you can make it an 'invite only' group

You can choose who can see the group pages:
- it can be restricted to members of that group
- or viewable by the general public.

How do I see groups?

To see the list of groups in your organisation:

- go to: yoursiteaddress.com/og where og is the path to the organic groups list

- or use the 'find a group' search block

- or, once you are logged in, look in your navigation block and click on 'groups' *

* the methods will vary according to which method your umbrella organisation has decided they want to use

To create a group:

Whether you are allowed to create a group or not will depend on the user permissions on your site (at  ..../admin/user/permissions).

Go to create content and click on 'create group'.  (this will be at ...../node/add/groupnode or through the menu).

This will bring up the Create Group Configuration page. Ignore menu settings unless you want the group to appear on your top level menus on the site home page.

Complete The Group Title (or name) and a brief description plus optional Mission statement and scroll down the page to Membership Requests.

Group Membership - At this point you can choose:

- whether the membership is open, moderated, invite only or closed
- whether to list your group in the group directory

If you want people to be able to join during registration click the 'registration form' box.

You can change all these options later, by editing the group.

You must make sure that under authoring information you put in your user name, if you want to be the group owner (e.g. if you want to be in charge of moderating members) - otherwise the default author (usually your umbrella organisation) will be in charge. 

What is a 'group page'? (or groupnode)

A group page is a page of content which belongs to a particular group.

As stated above, it may only be created by and edited by members of that group. It may be viewable either by only group members or be available to everyone.

Create an Organic Group Page

Organic Groups - Other Content Types