Friends and Fans

From Flux Developer Portal

About Friending and User Relationships on flux

As a social networking platform, flux provides your users with the opportunity to interact with one another through "Friend" relationships. A user can become friends with another user by clicking to "Add" that user as a friend from that user's profile page. These users will then appear in each other's "Friends" module on their profile page.

Blocking a User

One user can also block any other user by clicking to "Block" from an email message or the user profile page. A blocked user cannot contact the blocking user by sending emails, friend requests, etc. If the users are Friends, the friend relationship will be broken as well.

About Special Users

flux Special User Types (SUT) are used to identify members of the community who are important in some way. Community Admins can create as many types of special users as desired. Examples of “types” might be “celebrity,” ”host,” “musician,” etc. Admins can modify the right-hand column of profiles for each member type. Once a Special User Type is created, community members can be assigned as SUTs. When a member is an SUT, the following items are true:

• Regular members can “Become a Fan” of an SUT, rather than create a “Friend” relationship
• SUT activities will appear visually different (larger avatar and display name font) on profile feed activity dashboards.
• SUT will have Fans module and sub-pages appear on their profiles.
• SUT will have additional identification on their communities’ modules and sub-pages that indicates which communities they are SUT.
• Member Search will indicate SUTs with label and icon. Note: icon is not customizable at this point.

Note that a member can be an SUT in one community, while still being a regular member of another community. In this case, the Friend or Fan relationship will remain intact, regardless of which community you view the Member through

What does it mean to be a Special User?

• Fans! The most important distinction between special user types (SUTs) and regular members is that regular members in your community can become a “fan” instead of a “friend”. When the fan relationship has been created, SUTs will appear on the “People I’m a Fan Of” profile modules and user sub-pages of their fans.

Fan relationship requests are accepted automatically – the SUT does not have to manually accept these requests. The only people that can create a “friend” relationship with a special user is another special user, on the same community.

• Unique activity appearance – actions made by SUTs on your community will appear in the profile feeds of their friends and fans – as it does for regular members. However, the SUT activity is visibly different with a slightly larger user avatar and display name, as well as a unique color background to their messages. Note: color background is not customizable at this time.

How do I enable SUTs on my community?

• Visit “Manage Special User Profiles,” from your Community Manager start page. You can create as many types as you want. When you’ve created the SUT, and customized the profile template, you will then need to assign community members as this new type of member.

• First, click “Add New Special User Type” to enter title and description for the Special User Type you would like to create.

• Complete the form that appears on the “Edit Details’ overlay. The title you choose will appear next to display names for any members that you assign to this user type. Description will not be displayed on the front end, and is only for your reference. You can always change these later by clicking the edit icon for the user type.

Customizing SUT Profiles

• Once you’ve created the new SUT, you can customize the right hand column of the Special User’s profile template, just as you can on the template used for regular Member profiles. Note that your community must be using flux’s new profile to take advantage of this feature.

• Click the “Customize Profile Template” button. You’ll be taken to page that shows you the modules that will appear in the right-hand column of the SUT profile template. By default these modules are: My Fans, My Friends, My Videos on this Community, My Photos on this Community, and Guestbook.

• Click the “Edit” button to change the modules that appear in this column, or add custom modules

How do I make members special?

• Once you’ve created your Special User Type(s), there are two ways you can assign community members to this membership type: via the Member Management tool, or via a dropdown visible to you, as the Admin, on the Member’s profile page.

• Via Manage Members – navigate to this page from your Community Manager. Locate the Member that you wish to assign to your new Special User Type by searching or browsing. You will see information and various controls for each Member listed. To assign Special User Type, simply click the “User Type” dropdown, and select the desired type. You can always change this later.

• Via User Profile – when logged in as Community Admin, you will see additional controls in the left nav of the User Profile. To assign Special User Type, simply click the “User Type” dropdown, and select the desired type. You can always change this later.