Group Administration - Add a User to Your Group - Overview

Submitted by editor on January 20, 2010 - 5:17pm

After you create a group, and get things setup to your liking (group picture, group description, about us - mission statement, group location, etc.), the next step you'll probably be thinking about is "how do members on the site go about joining my group?"

There are three methods to add users to your group, and we'll cover all of them in the following series of tutorials.

As the group administrator, you can:

  1. Manually add a user to your group. You will need to know the member's userid
     
  2. Have a user request to join your group, then approve their request which adds them to your group
     
  3. Invite a user to join your group. The invitation prompts the user to follow step #2 (they request to join your group and you approve the request). The advantage of the invite is that a link to the "group subscribe form" for your group is provided in the invitation email so the user doesn't have to know the name of your group to track you down.

Note: If you have your group "membership request" set to "Invite only", method #1 is the only way you can add users to your group.

Note: As the group administrator, for method #2 and #3 to work, you need to have your group "membership request" and "privacy" options set properly to:

  • Membership requests: moderated
  • Private group: unchecked

And if you like the method #2 approach, you'll want to make it easy so members can easily find your group to join up. The most convenient approach is to list your group in the public group directory. That's the "Group" tab from the top-level site menu. To have your group listed in the public directory, check the "List in groups directory" checkbox from the group edit form.

So be sure to check your group settings before you proceed. If you (the group administrator) need to change your group settings, select your group from the "My groups" navigation box at the top of the right-hand sidebar, and choose the "Edit" tab to modify your group settings.

If you have the group "membership request" set to "Invite only", then method #1 (manually add a user) is the only way you'll be able to add members to your group.

Next tutorial - Manually add a member to your group