How Groups Works

When I recently joined, I joined a few groups, and there they are on my main page, but they are not active. I’ve posted intros on all of them and that seems to be the last post on each; I’m not sure, because I’ve stopped checking them as there don’t seem to be any posts. I think people would post to groups more if there were a way to let us know by email when someone posts to a group, like we can do with the forum discussions. Is that already a possiblity and I don’t understand how, or can that be made a possibility? I would love to know when someone posts to one of my groups so I can go there and read and respond.

Hey, Ellie. I have thought of this, too. I find that in general, the forums are WAY more active than the groups and very easy to follow. But I always feel like I have to go in and physically hunt for posts in my groups, so I usually don’t bother.

As an admin here, I will check out the options and get back to you. My guess is that it’s a design issue with our host site, Ning.

Melissa, actually I think I found the answer, but maybe there is a way to make this clearer for newbies. I had been posting on the “comment wall” of the groups, and there is no way to know if someone has posted there without coming to check, but each group also has “discussions,” and those can be set to be notified by email, so I’ve started participating in those discussions. That is actually more helpful than the “comment wall” that you initially see when viewing a group.

I found out another way last night from our admin Landileigh.

Do you know what an RSS feed is? If you use Outlook or Google Reader, you can subscribe to a “feed” that monitors and reports activity in little news bits. Every group has its own individual RSS feed you can subscribe to. Then you’ll know any time someone does something within the group environment.

Click on the photo below and see what I am talking about.
8407-howto_rss_group.jpg (33.6 KB)

I looked at that link before and it didn’t really make sense to me. But I don’t use outlook or google reader so maybe that’s why. For now I’ll settle for my great “aha” about the discussions within groups. :slight_smile: But thanks so much for digging for this info!!