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January 21, 2014 By Ray Deck III   |   2 Comments

Understanding the Privacy Settings on Faithlife.com

privacy

You have a lot of control over your Faithlife Group’s privacy settings. Use this guide to get your group’s privacy settings tuned exactly right.

Group privacy levels

When you create a new Faithlife Group, you can choose between three different privacy levels. At any time, group administrators or moderators (more on what those roles entail in a minute) may change the group’s status.

Open—Anyone can find the group. New members can join immediately. Best used for churches or other groups that are open to new members at all times.

Closed—Anyone can find the group. New members must be approved before joining. Best used for small/home/community/connection/cell groups (or whatever else you might call them) that are only open to new members at certain times of the year.

Secret—Only members can find the group. New members must be invited. Best for groups that are not open to new membership like support or addiction-recovery groups. I also recommend that the church leadership team collaborate inside a secret group.

User permissions

Faithlife Groups offer five levels of accessibility that you can adjust to suite your needs.

  • Administrators create the group and promote moderators to manage the group details.
  • Moderators maintain the group. Moderators must first join as members, and then be promoted by an administrator.
  • Members are invited specifically in secret groups, but otherwise anyone can join at this level.
  • Followers are interested in the group, but aren’t members. Many groups only allow followers to reply to posts, not create entirely new posts.
  • Observers are like followers, except they maintain anonymity. Observer identities are not revealed, even to the group administrator.

You can also disable the lowest two permission levels using check boxes if you don’t expect to use them.

Recommended settings

Notice the vertical black line on each slider. These are the default privacy settings, marked so that you can return to them should you wish. You can, of course, drag the slider left or right to tune the privacy settings to suit your group’s needs and culture. I administrate several Faithlife groups, and here’s how I prefer to set the user permissions:

recommendedprivacysettings

Faithlife.com is the digital home for your faith community. It’s free to join and invite others. Tools like prayer lists, reading plans, Community Notes, and group newsletters make it easier than ever to communicate, collaborate, and fellowship around the Word of God. Join today at Faithlife.com.

Filed Under: Church Technology, Online Community Tagged With: church, church tech, church tools, community, faith, faithlife groups, social network, tutorial

Comments

  1. Charles Chuck Jaeger says

    January 22, 2014 at 7:31 pm

    How can prayer lists be shared is there a video for that?

    Reply
  2. Ray Deck III says

    January 29, 2014 at 12:14 am

    You can add a prayer list in Sidebar area of the "Group Settings" page. Maybe worth writing a post about it?

    Reply

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