AEM Communities Overview aem-communities-overview
Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Communities let you quickly create an on-premise community site that has improved performance, improved site management, and encourages the conversion of site visitors to valuable community members.
Communities Features communities-features
AEM Communities enables the development of a relationship with site visitors, which:
- Informs through blogs, Q&A, and event calendars,
- While gaining insights through forums, comments, and other community content, often referred to as user-generated content (UGC).
- It allows moderation by trusted members in the Publish environment,
- Social login with Twitter and Facebook,
- Inline translation of community content,
- Community groups creation from the published community site,
- Scoring to award badges,
- File sharing,
- Notifications and activity streams,
- Allows tagging (@mention) other registered members in User-Generated Content, to elicit their attention.
Communities features can be demonstrated using the AEM Demo Machine available publicly on GitHub.com or with the new We.Retail
reference implementation.
Community Sites community-sites
A community site is an AEM Site created using a simple wizard that results in a website with many common features pre-wired into the site.
The site creation wizard:
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Assembles features of the site, based on the selected community site template which is:
- built from community functions
- optional community groups feature
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Uses settings to configure:
- moderation
- login
- translation
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Provides essential features:
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Responsive design: uses Twitter Bootstrap themes
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Log in : self-registration, social login, user profiles
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Notifications:
members see events of relevance to them, and user-generated content where they are @mentioned. -
Messaging: members may send or receive messages within the community site.
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Search: ability to search within the community site.
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Language switching: ability to select a language for a multilingual site.
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Administration: access for authorized members to moderate and manage users within the community site.
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Eliminates many page-level authoring steps:
- Branding: optional upload of a banner image for display on all pages of the community site
- Navigation menu: navigation links are provided for the features included in the community site template.
To experience the ease of quickly creating a community site, visit Getting Started with AEM Communities.
Community Content Persistence community-content-persistence
To improve the performance and synchronization of community content, AEM Communities requires a common store specifically for user-generated content (UGC) shared between all AEM (author and publish) instances.
Community content is easily accessed through the storage resource provider (SRP), which provides a layer to separate access from the underlying topology and supports a common store for UGC.
To learn more about community content persistence and recommended deployments see:
- Community Content Storage—discusses the available SRP storage options for UGC.
- Recommended Topologies—discusses topologies based on use case and SRP choice.
- Upgrading to AEM 6.5 Communities—provides useful information regarding UGC when moving to AEM 6.5.
Communities Consoles communities-consoles
In the author environment, the global navigation console provides access to the Communities console, which contains:
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Sites console
- Site creation
- Site editing
- Site management
- Community Groups console
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Moderation console
- Common bulk moderation UI for Author and Publish environments.
- New filtering criteria.
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Members and Groups management consoles
- Lets you create and manage publish-side users (members) from the Author environment.
- Lets you ban members.
- Lets you create and manage publish-side user groups (member groups) from the author environment.
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Reports console
- Lets you generate reports on assignments, posts, and views.
The global tools console provides access to the following Communities tools:
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Site Templates console
- Create and manage community site templates.
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Group Templates console
- Create and manage community group templates.
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Community Functions console
- Create and manage community functions.
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Storage Configuration console
- Select and configure the common store for the site.
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- A sample site, Community Components provides a sample of all Communities components with their default configuration and the ability to experiment with them.
Community Site Templates community-site-templates
Community site creation is based on selection of a community site template to quickly set up a community site that is independent of any sample site.
A community site template, composed of community functions and community group templates, provides the structure for a community site. It includes login, user profiles, messaging, site menu, search, theming, and branding features.
See the Site Templates console.
Community Functions community-functions
The features expected of a community experience are well known. With AEM Communities, these features are available as building blocks, known as community functions.
Community functions are normal AEM pages includes components wired together into a feature that is easily incorporated into a community site template.
See the Community Functions console.
Community Groups and Group Templates community-groups-and-group-templates
The community groups feature is the ability for a subcommunity to be dynamically created within a community site by authorized users and community members from both the author and publish environments.
From the author environment, community groups (subcommunities) may be created within an existing community site or nested within an existing group, when the structure of the template contains the Groups function.
Creating a community group requires the selection of a community group template that provides the design of the community group pages. When a Groups function is added to a template structure, it is configured to either specify one group template or to provide a choice of templates at the time a new community group is created.
See also:
- Site Groups console for creating subcommunities in the author environment.
- Group Templates console for creating site structures for groups.
- Getting Started with AEM Communities for tutorial for quickly creating a community site including nested groups.
Community Components community-components
The community components from which a community site is built may be used to add Communities features to any AEM Site.
The community components guide is available for interactive exploration of the components.
Engagement Community engagement-community
An engagement community is a community site focused on engaging customers to inform, solicit feedback, and allow customers to interact as community members.
Features of an engagement community may include:
- Login
- Messaging
- Forums
- Comments
- Reviews
- Ratings
- Voting
- Blogs
- Groups
- Calendars
- Translation
- Moderation
- Notifications
- Scoring and badges
- Analytics reporting
To experience the ease of quickly creating an engagement community, visit Getting Started with AEM Communities.
AEM Demo Machine aem-demo-machine
The AEM Demo Machine manages and runs demos for AEM Sites, Assets, Communities, Apps and Forms, which often require more setup than simply launching a QuickStart instance. The AEM Demo Machine sets up additional infrastructure such as MongoDB, Solr, MySQL, FFmpeg, and email servers.
The AEM Demo Machine includes:
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Apache ANT scripts with configurable properties and targets.
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Packages to install.
The AEM Demo Machine was tested successfully with CQ 5.5, CQ 5.6.1, AEM 6.0, AEM 6.1, AEM 6.2, AEM 6.3, and AEM 6.4 on Windows, macOS, and Linux®.
The AEM Demo Machine requires a valid AEM license.
AEM Communities Documentation aem-communities-documentation
- Visit Deploying Communities where you can learn about recommended deployments.
- Visit Administering Communities Sites where you can learn about creating a community site, adding community groups, configuring community site templates, moderating community content, managing members, tagging, notifications, scoring, and badges.
- Visit Developing Communities where you can learn about the social component framework (SCF) and customizing Communities components and features.
- Visit Authoring Communities Components where you can learn how to author with and configure Communities components.